Lo Que Cargamos: Part VIII - Witness

Posted on Mon Jan 5th, 2026 @ 1:27pm by 1st Lieutenant Ángel Martinez

2,425 words; about a 12 minute read

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

Warning: Contains violence and war imagery. Reader discretion is advised.

2388: USS Pathfinder, Martinez’s Quarter, 02:12 hours

The ship moved gently beneath them, inertial dampeners keeping it so smooth you didn’t feel it. It was an intellectual knowledge based on what you saw outside. Martinez lay on their bunk, one arm behind their head, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The lights were dimmed, but not fully off. Darkness gave the memories too much room. This half-light was easier. It left things in outline.

They had meant to sleep hours ago.

Instead, they stared at the strip of medals on the shelf above the desk. Set in a clean, regulation display. Nothing extravagant. Just proof. Campaigns. Citations. Recognition. Things officers kept, and Martinez had felt they needed to honour it. Made it feel better whenever their family came to visit, or another officer entered. A blank shelf would have been shame. And yet…

None of them were for Theta-9. That mission had never been official. No orders given. No record filed. No command signature. Just a sandstorm, a dead boy kneeling in a room, and a decision made by a squad too tired of silence. The brass never asked what it cost to act. Only how cleanly it could be buried.

Martinez exhaled. Not loudly, not a sigh…just slow and measured. They still remembered the way Jace stood at the edge of the fallback zone that night, hands red with blood no one had assigned him to spill. The way Terrow cried, too full of the emotions to centre himself. The way everyone moved like ghosts. Not numb. Just full. Overfilled. Cracked open and sealed up in the same breath. And Martinez had thought, even then, that if they ever made officer, they would never let a squad carry that weight alone.

That promise still lived in their spine, even after coming across to the Marines and eight years as an officer. In every field decision. In every time they stood between a squad and a foolish order from above. It had shaped how they briefed missions, how they read tone over phrasing in an ops directive, how they listened for the silence after someone said "we're fine." How they would pull aside a Colonel, look them in the eye and ask for the truth. Even if the truth hurt.

The medals stared back from the shelf. Neat. Polished. Clean.

The Federation gave out medals easily. Too easily, sometimes. For gallantry. For showing up. For carrying out duty. But not for breaking orders that should never have been written. Not for saving lives that weren’t authorised to be saved. Not for being a person being first and a soldier second.

Martinez got up. Moved to the desk and reached up and flipped the case onto its face. Not out of bitterness. Just clarity. They had done things worth remembering. But the part they were proudest of had no commendation. No speech. No file on a PADD. Not remembered by anyone who stood beside them now.

Just a night in the desert, a team of ghosts, and the fact that they had not waited. No one had told them to save those prisoners. They just had. And if Command ever tried to tell one of their squads that silence was the correct course again, Martinez would already be standing in its way. Eyes open. Orders ready. And no apology.

2375: Feldin-3, Outer Trenches

There had been consequences. Jace deemed too much of a loose wire, the brass unable to hide the fact there wasn’t a Sergeant running the squad. They could have promoted Jace. But they hadn’t. Could have promoted Martinez too, but again…no. They had promoted a Corporal from another squad and transported him to them. Not a punishment, even if for Martinez it felt like it. Jace hadn’t really reacted. There had been no power struggle. The squad had still looked to Jace.

Martinez had done both. Followed the Sergeant but also Jace, balanced between the two. Maybe that had been what had gone wrong.

Or maybe it was just the way things went in war.

The trench was shallow. Better than open ground, but only just. It had already caved once on the south end, and the wind had started again, dragging grit across the lip like it was trying to skin the world bare.

Sergeant Brell was down. It wasn’t the first time Martinez had seen someone take a blast like that. Shoulder to chest, centre mass miss by an inch or two. Maybe not fatal, but not survivable without help. Not out here.

Jace had been the one to pull him back. Now he was crouched beside the Sergeant, pressure on the wound, one knee in the dust. Blood soaked through the gauze like nothing at all. The rest of the squad held the line in a loose formation. Kerren still muttering into comms, trying to thread a signal through half-shattered relays. Banik had pushed out, checking ahead. Terrow was pale but holding, rifle braced, one eye always tracking Jace. Martinez had Brell's flank, rifle up, breath shallow, eyes focused on the ridge in case the enemy regrouped, tried to attack again.

The medic was dead. Shot took out half her chest, the medkit with it. Gone before anyone even had time to react.

And Brell…he was trying to talk.

Martinez couldn’t hear all of it at first, just fragments through the noise. Phaser fire up top. Dominion somewhere in the ridgeline. No push yet, but that wouldn’t last.

"You shouldn't have pushed me…" Brell’s voice broke through. Martinez's head turned slightly, the voice drawing attention the way a familiar song on the wind did. Jace didn’t respond, just kept his hands moving, mechanical now. Gauze, pressure, check for shock. Keeping the Sergeant alive until the shuttle in orbit could get a lock on him. Classic training, even if each layer of gauze blossomed red within seconds. Martinez had more medical training, from teenage years wanting to help…but this wasn’t about experience, it was about pressure. And they couldn’t stop covering this flank.

“Always the hero,” Brell rasped. “That’s the joke, right? Don’t even know you’re not one…” Jace stayed still. Martinez could see his jaw clench. Then Brell’s voice lowered, the tone shifting. “You’re not a trooper. You’re a weapon. That’s what they made. What they kept. You kill fast. Brutal. Clean. You keep people alive, sure...but they’re never gonna promote you. You scare ’em too much.”

Martinez froze for a moment. Watched. Felt the old pressure of dread crawl up their spine. It wasn’t new. They’d heard versions of it before, in mess halls, in the pauses between drills. Never from someone bleeding out in Jace’s hands. Never directed squarely at the man who would step in front of a disruptor blast for his people.

“You’re not Starfleet,” Brell breathed, coughed, and then murmured. “You’re what they use to survive the shit they don’t put in speeches. But when the war ends…they won’t need you. No medals. No reassignment. Just gone. Quietly.” Another cough and Martinez closed their eyes for a second. Opened them again.

Jace didn’t flinch. Didn’t even look up.

Martinez’s gut twisted. They wanted to shout. To tell Brell to shut up and breathe, to let Jace work. But they didn’t. Not because they agreed, but because they saw it…the flicker in Jace’s eyes as the Sergeant continued. Not pain. Not even surprise. Just the kind of quiet that came after hearing something too many times and believing it. The kind that made it feel true. A look that Martinez had not seen in him since the pit and Sergeant Tho kneeling over his bleeding and battered body.

“So you’ve got two choices, Morven. Change. Or go out on your terms. But don’t let ’em box you like a mad dog.”

Then the transporter shimmered into life, white-blue light engulfing the Sergeant. A breath later, he was gone. The blood stayed. Some of it on Jace’s gloves. More on the ground. Martinez didn’t approach right away. The squad regrouped, rotated watch, checked on Kerren’s arm where a burn was starting to blister. Jace stayed where he was.

When the sun finally dropped below the ridge, they found him sitting near the perimeter beacon. Helmet off. Arms across his knees. Sleeves stiff with dried blood. His own, maybe. Most likely not. “You always find the worst places to sit,” Martinez said, easing down the slope. Made their way next to him, a step at the time. Like approaching a wounded animal you trusted but knew could bite.

Jace didn’t look up. Didn’t speak for a long moment. Then: “He’s not wrong.”

Martinez’s chest tightened. “About what?”

No answer. But they saw it. Not in his face, but in the silence. The way his shoulders held tight across his frame, as if bracing against something worse than the wind. It broke Martinez’s heart in quiet places. “You saved his life,” they said, quieter now.
Another stretch of silence. Then, just the faintest shift in Jace’s posture. The kind that said he’d heard them. Let it settle but wasn’t ready to carry it yet.

“That part never makes it into the reports,” Martinez added, voice softening with the touch of accent reserved for moments like this. “You pull people out of fire like it’s nothing.”

Still silence from Jace. But they saw the twitch of his jaw, the smallest crack in the armour of stillness. It hurt, to see him sit like that, as if breathing or moving would bring what he’d think he’d deserve. That it would turn him more into a feral creature.

Martinez didn’t think so. They just saw someone who had pushed down pain for so long it had become part of their bones. So they moved close, not to press...just presence. They knelt slowly, not with reverence or submission. But to be there. Without ceremony they leant close and pressed a kiss to his cheek, felt the stubble, tasted the salt of sweat and bitterness of the smoke in the air…hint of iron from blood. And underneath it, the faint scent of mint.

It wasn’t a comfort, not really. It was not an offer or a question, just…a promise, a gesture. Real, honest…from their own battered heart. Then they stood. “You don’t have to say anything,” they said. “Just…don’t forget someone saw you.”

They left him there. Not alone. Not really. Just Jace. Still breathing. Still stained. Still standing.

And Martinez walked back toward the trenches with their heart heavy and their hands steady. Ready for the next silence. Ready to bear it, if he couldn’t.

2388: USS Pathfinder, Martinez’s quarters, 05:37

Martinez woke before the alarm. For once, not from a nightmare or shift rotation. Just...finished sleeping. It felt like...maybe five hours? Four? Enough for now, especially this solidly. They couldn’t remember the last time they slept through eight hours. Perhaps they never did. The ceiling above was quiet. No creaking bulkhead. No wind scraping over a trench’s lip. Just the soft hush of regulated air and the dim blue of pre-dawn ship lighting. They lay there a moment, blinking slowly. Breathing steady. It was rare to sleep this solidly, without something to shake them awake. Rarer still not to regret it.

They turned their head slightly on the pillow. In the dark, the memory came. Jace, crouched beside Brell in the trench. Hands soaked to the wrist in someone else’s blood. Not flinching. Not speaking. Just present. The look in his eyes when Brell started talking...like he had known every word before it was said. And still took it, one line at a time, like it had to be earned.

Martinez’s mouth twitched. Not quite a frown.

They had seen that look before. In the quieter spaces. Not on the battlefield, but after. The quiet in Jace did not come from emptiness. It came from pressure. From grief sealed off so tightly it hummed.

They had always wondered about those softer parts inside him. The ones that patched other people’s wounds but never his own. The ones that picked up fallen rifles without needing thanks. The ones that remembered the names of the dead, even when he never spoke them.

They hoped someone else had seen it too. Across the years. That someone, somewhere, had sat with him long enough to notice how his fingers stilled after a fight. How he watched exits even when off duty. How he never quite let himself sit with his back to a door. How his hands could take a knife and carve into metal, beautiful shapes that meant nothing yet everything.

Martinez exhaled and rubbed a hand over their face. Then turned and looked at the chronometer. 05:43.

They had an hour and twelve minutes before their morning briefing and two hours and fifteen before they were meant to meet…what was his name again? Laran. That was it. Tall, quiet, with an Orion accent softened by years in the Fleet. He worked in Astrometrics. Liked spice tea and those little white packets of replicated sugar that everyone else thought tasted like paper.

They had met at a maintenance lecture of all things. He had made a joke about stellar drift and directional dating, and Martinez, against all better judgement, had laughed. The kind of dry, tired laugh that sounded more human than most things lately.

He had asked, a few days later, if Martinez liked nut-flavoured protein paste. Martinez had raised an eyebrow. Laran had grinned and said it was a breakfast offer, not a warning. So now there was a breakfast date. Possibly terrible. Possibly good. Probably messy. Martinez did not mind.

They got up slowly. Stretching with a quiet groan, muscles stiff from too much sleep, not too little. A better ache. They undressed, folded the clothes and went to the sonic shower. Let the buzz dance across skin, thought about the day ahead. Thought about work, about the date…

And the scent of mint and feel of stubble and taste of sweat and dust.

---end---

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