Lo Que Cargamos: Part VII - Shapes

Posted on Mon Jan 5th, 2026 @ 12:55am by 1st Lieutenant Ángel Martinez

2,491 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Character Backstories
Location: USS Pathfinder, Various
Timeline: 2388/2375

2388: USS Pathfinder, Martinez's Quarters, 01:06 hours

The ceiling was dark. No lights pulsing. No red alert, or reverie. No reason to be awake. And yet, they were. Martinez lay on their back, arms crossed under their head, eyes fixed on the quiet square of black above. No stars visible. Just the blank curve of ship metal plated white and grey. But they were not seeing it. Not really.

They were back in the storm. Not the one outside the camp. The one after. The one that started in their chest the moment they saw that boy’s body. Young. Cardassian. Blue cloth tied round his neck like an act of faith. Like a prayer you made when no one would answer.

He had tried. And he had died for it.

Martinez still remembered the feel of the lock in their hand as they opened the cells. Remembered the slight tremble, not from fear, but from the weight of knowing it had taken too long. They had waited. Observed. Followed orders. Five days of watching cruelty wear skin down to bone before they moved. And someone had paid the price for that delay.

They breathed in. Slowly. Their ribs rose, then fell.

After the war, they went home. Not for long. Just long enough to feel dirt again. Real dirt. Not Martian dust or chemical sand. The kind in the backyard garden with terraformed Martian soil, under fingernails, behind old boots. Their mother had met them at the tram stop. Said nothing at first. Just took their kitbag and walked beside them like she always had, the ghost of Diego walking between them, unspoken but present.

That night, they sat at the kitchen table. Same chipped mug. Same herbs drying over the cooker, cinnamon in the air. They had stared at their hands for a long time before they said it. Not what they had done. But what they had failed to do.

“I waited,” they had said. “We all did. For orders. For clarity. For permission, maybe. But we watched that boy die. It took that, just that, to make us act. We were supposed to be better.” Their voice had broken there. Not loud. Just a crack in the middle. Like a faultline finally shifting.

Their mother didn’t speak straight away. She stood, brewed something warm. Not their favourite from childhood though. But Diego’s. Sweetened just a little. Familiar and grounded. Set it in front of them without a word. Then she knelt beside the chair and wrapped her arms around them.

Martinez had not cried when the camp fell. Not when the prisoners staggered out. Not even when Jace had spoken with that voice like gravel and regret. But they had cried then. In the kitchen. In the smell of cinnamon and warm ceramic. With the hum of the antique food processor still broken in the background and a neighbour’s dog barking on the next block.

She hadn’t told them it was alright. She hadn’t said it was justified. She had only held them and said, "You came back. You still feel it. That’s how I know it didn’t take all of you."

The words must have hurt. Diego hadn’t come back, but Martinez had. So they had tried, so hard, to grasp who they had been before. To ease the pain for the family by proving the war hadn’t changed them.

Even if it had.

Martinez turned on their side now. In the dark. Pillow creased. Arm tucked close. They had made peace with many things. The ghosts. The orders. Even the silence. But that boy’s body remained...they still carried that.

Not as guilt. But as weight. A truth they had to lift each time they chose to lead. And sometimes, on nights like this, when the ship was quiet and the ache of memory softened into something almost tender, they remembered that kitchen. The mug between their hands. Their mother’s arms around them.

And the lesson she had never needed to speak: You cannot go back. But you can go forward and not forget who you were.

2375: Forward Command Base 77th

The lights in the converted cargo space buzzed faintly above Martinez’s head, flickering in time with the hum of an overworked generator. It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t exactly bright either. Just enough lights to say the room still functioned, just enough sound to remind you the storm hadn’t stopped. Outside the reinforced windows, the desert howled and shrieked.

Thirty hours had passed. No word from Command. They’d done the things you were supposed to. Martinez filed the report, never signed since there wasn’t a Sergeant. Had kept every line true, checked with Jace is something felt unsure. Got a nod or a grunt in reply, or a slight frown. They were fluid in Corporal Jace Morven. They had all stripped off the grit-caked uniforms, rinsed out their mouths…Changed clothes. Ate something, even if it barely registered. There hadn’t been any sense of ritual to it. No honour. Just the mechanical process of removing the mission from their skin.

The prisoners were gone. Evacuated. Folded into med shuttles with no ceremony, no debrief, no words of thanks that felt real. Just a line of thin shadows moving from one kind of trauma to the next. But at least they were alive now. Free.

Martinez sat on the floor with their back against the cold wall, legs stretched out, a battered PADD in their lap. They weren’t reading it anymore, the screen having gone off into idle. Their hands were still. Jace sat across the room on the edge of his bunk. Boots still on and elbows resting on his knees. His uniform was clean, sure, but the soles of those boots were still stained dark. He hadn’t scrubbed them. Usually he would have put in some effort but Martinez saw the way his hands were loose, the way his eyes were fixed in a spot where nothing existed.

The others had gone quiet. Banik kept to her corner, headphones in but not playing anything. Kerren had left the room an hour ago, hadn't returned. Terrow was asleep in the med bay after collapsing from the empathic feedback. Only two of them were awake now, and the silence between them stretched like fabric worn thin.

Martinez listened. To the soft press of the wind, to the ceiling groaning under pressure, to their own pulse echoing faintly in their ears. Eventually, they spoke. Their voice felt like it had travelled through sand to reach the air. “You think they’re going to court-martial us?”
Jace didn’t look up. “Probably not.” His voice was flat, nothing really there. A calculation laid bare for Martinez to hear.

“You that confident?” they asked, shifting to look at him. Because sometimes, they’d take Jace’s calculation over a half-verified factoid.

“No.” His voice didn’t shift. “Just doesn’t feel important to them. Not yet.”

Martinez let their head lean back against the bulkhead and stared up at the ceiling. One panel was still scorched from a heating coil surge last month. A maintenance note had been filed, but no one came. “One of the prisoners. Bajoran. Kept thanking me. Over and over. Like I saved him.” Their brow creased. “I didn’t even open his cell. Banik did.”

Jace’s eyes moved to the floor. “People look for shapes. Something to hold on to. They pick whoever’s still standing.”

That hit too cleanly. Martinez turned their head to look at him. “You make sense of it?” they asked, voice hushed as if anything loud would shatter the moment between them.

His jaw worked once, then again. “No. But I know what I saw.” His eyes lifted, found Martinez across the room. “I saw a boy executed for trying to help. And I saw what we did because of it.”

The weight in the air shifted again. Martinez’s breath came slower. “You don’t regret it.”

“No.” That word was solid. No edge, no burn. Just anchored. “I regret it took that long.”

Martinez nodded, the gesture barely there. Their thoughts moved back to the image that wouldn’t leave them: the boy’s body slumped forward, the neat line where his life had been taken, the blue scrap of fabric still tied around his throat. “They said he had a name. Damar. His cousin was part of the camp. Reported him for sharing food, they think.” The detail had been picked out from the POWs. Some conflicts, the name possibly, but it felt better to name the Cardassian. To avoid the boy being reduced to just species.

Jace didn’t respond right away. When he moved, it was small. He shifted, then reached for something at his belt. A strip of cloth. Red, or it had been once. Faded now, frayed at the corners. He turned it over in his fingers. Martinez didn’t need to ask.

“When I was a kid, there was a boy. Not much older than Damar. Had a scarf like this. I kept it,” Jace said.

Martinez didn’t interrupt. Just waited. Turkana IV. Jace had mentioned it. Martinez didn’t know much about the colony, except it was outside of the Federation and not the sort of place you survived easily.

Jace’s voice dropped, rough with memory. “Because he ran. And I didn’t.”

Martinez didn’t speak. They didn’t try to fix it, even if they knew what it meant. That Jace had been fighting, killing, since he was a child. While Martinez was rocking their youngest sister to sleep to give mama a break, Jace was picking up a weapon and trying to survive.

They stood, crossed the room, and sat beside him on the edge of the bunk. Not close enough to press against him. Just close enough to be there. Guarding the moment as much as the man.

Jace didn’t look at them. His voice came quiet. “We’ll get orders soon. A reprimand. Maybe nothing. Maybe a medal.”

Martinez let out a dry breath, not quite a laugh. “Federation’s real good at medals,” they said and shook their head. When it looked good. When they had time. Or when someone had died real good.

Jace nodded once. “Don’t want one.”

Martinez shifted, just enough for their shoulder to meet his. It wasn’t about touch. It was about truth. “Then we don’t take it.” As simple as that, the choice. If Jace didn’t want it, Martinez didn’t either. Because what they had done wasn’t about medals. It had been about staying who they were.

They stayed like that, side by side. No more words. Just the wind outside. Just the storm. They had already said the most important thing. Not in words, but in action.

A few hours later, Jace was called to report to Colonel Halric. The corridor swallowed him up.

Martinez didn’t move. Just sat still, legs stretched out, back to the wall, staring at the empty doorway long after it closed. Somewhere in the base, the generator kicked again, rattling faintly. Banik turned over in her bunk and muttered something incoherent. Kerren hadn’t come back yet. Terrow was still in med bay…couldn’t keep the shields up anymore, not with the weight he’d carried in his head. Needed rest. Counselling. Not bad enough to send away, just bad enough to need a moment. Triage by necessity.

Martinez counted the minutes. Let the dark settle in. When the door finally opened again, it was quiet. Jace stepped inside, jaw set like diamonds, eyes firm like marble. He didn’t speak. Just dropped onto the edge of his bunk, elbows on his knees, looking at the floor like it might shift. His shoulders stayed tight, like the tension hadn’t bled out even after the debrief.

Martinez studied him. Said nothing. Waited.

Eventually, Jace exhaled through his nose. “No action taken.”

Martinez lifted their head slightly. “Just like that?” they asked, with some disbelief. And some concern. Not for the squad. But for the man who had stood in front of a colonel.

Jace gave a half-shake of his head. “Not like that. They don’t like it. But I suppose they can’t punish us without saying why they’re punishing us.”

Martinez let out a breath, long and slow. “So we’re fine?” the question was quiet so not to wake Banik, but truthful. Fine was…relative. Would anything be fine after this war? They had no answer to that…and it was too large a philosophical question to pose to Jace.

“Far as I can tell.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, then rested it behind his neck. “Difficult to know. We’ll find out eventually.”

Silence stretched between them. Martinez shifted, adjusting their legs, the stiff ache of long hours without sleep catching up. “You think it’s done though?”

“No.” Jace’s tone didn’t change. “It never is.” He didn’t look at them, not right away. Just kept his eyes on the wall, then finally spoke again. “You ever see the churn start?”

Martinez blinked. “What?”

Jace looked over. Voice low, flat. “When I was a kid, we lived underground. Tunnels. Caves. Above ground was woods and ruin, things that exploded if you got too close. When the power shifted…one group falling, another rising…you’d feel it before you knew it. Quiet got too quiet. Trades went weird. Folk started vanishing. You learned the signs. That churn? You didn’t see it happen. You felt it coming. Always meant something ugly. Always meant someone was going to die and your feet would get sticky with blood.” He leaned back slightly, fingers laced. “This...feels like that. Someone made a choice. Not for us. For the shape of the war. We just happened to be the knife.”

Martinez was silent for a long time. Then, quietly, trying to bury the dread. “You think we’ll get moved? Disbanded?”

“Maybe. Or used again.” Jace said and looked at them, eyes softening a little. A flicker. Then flint again as his eyes unfocused.

They didn’t speak after that. Jace sat with the same stillness he always carried in the aftermath. Martinez watched the man he’d followed into a storm and out again, steady as a bulkhead. After a few moments, they stood. Crossed the room without a word and sat beside him. Close enough to share silence, thigh brushing thigh. The man didn’t tense and Martinez stayed still.

Eventually, Jace said, quiet again, “We did what we had to.” Martinez didn’t nod. Didn’t answer. Just stayed there. It was enough.

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