Thoughts In The Dark

Posted on Tue Jan 7th, 2025 @ 12:58am by Captain Malcom Llwyedd & Petty Officer 1st Class Baris Demir

1,303 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Interlude 1 Gamma Quadrant
Location: USS Firebird, Quartermaster's Quarters
Timeline: Interlude 1 Gamma Quadrant

[ON]
Baris made his way up the corridor with steady steps that bore the scuff of fatigue. He wasn’t sure the time of day; only the weariness that ached in each join. Voices from a lounge up ahead grew steadily clearer and mixed with the scattered crew in the halls. His stomach drew him to the lounge.

“Computer, a cup of voćno, and some suho voće,” he said. While he sipped the voćno, Baris listened to snippets of scattered conversations. Holodeck plans. Work schedules. The Alien Coalition.

“The way they look at you like you’re not even there.”

“When it ran at me I saw my death in its dark eyes.”

“Their thinking is so twisted I wonder if we’ll ever understand each other.”

Words trying to make sense of their new, trapped reality. Doing what Starfleet does best: layer on the ethics, self-governance, and Prime Directive to cover small pockets of fear and doubt that never went away. Baris left quickly with the suho voće and didn’t stop until the door to his quarters slid shut. The immediate quiet fell like a blanket that couldn’t quite shut out the memories. He chewed slowly while staring at the painting of his family aboard the Boslic vessel Promini Vijede. Chance the Stars.

It’s strange to think about what might have been if I stayed aboard the freighter, thought Baris. Negotiating for trade routes, bartering at spaceports, and never having to explain myself to people who don’t think I belong. Instead, I’m alone in the Gamma Quadrant, quartermaster of a small starship and a starbase that’s barely standing. The way people talked about the alien Coalition was sometimes very close to how he heard them talk about Boslics. Baris knew most of them didn’t think of him as Boslic. He was simply Starfleet now, but that didn’t change the sting when they described his species. Or the bite their conversations about the aliens had because, deep down, he was as alien to them as the Ygin were.

Baris chased down the crumbs of the mixed berries and nuts with the last of the voćno and set the mug down. His uniform chafed over the bruises and sores accumulated through too many days of packing, hauling, and reorganizing.

Sometimes I think the uniform doesn’t fit—not because it’s tight but because it wasn’t made with me in mind.

The moment he read the message that Starfleet accepted his application was both exhilarating and scary. He had wondered what Starfleet was thinking when they admitted him. Not in a self-pitying way—he worked damn hard to get there—but because when you’re one of a handful of your species in an academy full of familiar figures you started to feel like an experiment. Like they’re watching to see if you’d sink or swim. No one said that outright. Baris caught it in the looks, the subtle remarks, the comments that weren’t meant to irritate but always did.
“Boslics aren’t exactly known for discipline.” “I didn’t know your people joined Starfleet.” “Freighter life to Federation service—that’s quite the leap.”

“They think I don’t hear it. But I do,” he said to the faces of his parents in the painting. “We’ve struck a truce with an alien Coalition that tried to wipe out the starbase. The Coalition is a patchwork of species, a couple of them untrustworthy and hostile. They all outnumber me in this quadrant. I'm feeling alone again but that is my lot. I’m not on the horse, as we would say; my position isn’t advantageous. I wear the uniform but some talk about the aliens in a familiar way. The words are sharper than they realize because I’ve heard the same tone used about me. About our people.”

Baris took a quick sonic shower and stumped to the bed for a quick sleep. The lights dimmed. The power cells hummed. The stars watched silently. Eventually, he slept. Slept, and dreamed. He was standing beside Tilik Nosin, his betrothed, and her parents aboard another Boslic freighter. Before him was a bridge to an airlock and they were waiting for him to cross. He began to cross it slowly, feeling the bridge sway with each step. He could not go back but the bridge swayed more and more with each step. He gripped on tighter and tighter until the bridge kicked violently to the side and flung him over the edge.

Baris woke up sweating, his breaths short gasps that sounded like a peeler scaling the thick, brown skin off of river beets. His breathing slowly calmed; slowly quieted. He pondered the dream. At the time he left the Nosin family, Baris had spent most of his adult life feeling like he was on a narrow bridge. Granted, he had only been an adult for two years but at the age of 20 years that was nearly forever. Baris was too much Starfleet for the Boslic traders and too much Boslic for Starfleet. Except that they had taken his application.

Now, in the Gamma Quadrant, that bridge felt even slimmer. They were surrounded by species they barely knew, some of them openly hostile, some of them more curious than anything else. Like Uluv, the Ygin. Four arms, two heads, and enough knowledge of Coalition tech to fill a dozen cargo bays. He was trying to help us integrate their systems, but every time he spoke, Baris saw the way some of the crew looked at him. Suspicion. Distrust. Fear. Baris had seen those looks before. They were the same ones that appeared from the corners of the Academy. The same ones that stood in the shadows of the starbase.

What’s worse was that Baris caught himself doing it to them too. He grew up around freighter crews that didn’t trust outsiders. We stuck to ourselves. You never knew when someone would cheat you, steal your cargo, or leave you stranded in some backwater system. That instinct doesn’t just go away. So when he heard about the Coalition shielding systems being prone to failure, or how their weapons overheat, his first thought wasn’t, “How can we help them?” it was “How can we use this to our advantage?”

Maybe that’s why he threw himself into being a quartermaster. It’s a job that made sense to him. Inventory doesn’t judge you. Numbers don’t care where you’re from. When he saw at a cargo bay full of crates, he didn’t see politics or prejudice. He saw order. Control. Self-sefficiency. He saw a problem he could solve. And if that meant he came across as harsh, so be it. At least the supplies are where they’re supposed to be. Where people needed them. At least the replicators were working. At least no one had to question whether he was doing his job.

Sleep was coming back to him. Baris focused on the sheets around him. The quiet sounds. The darkness. Focus. Breath. Let slumber comer. As that curtain slowly closed across his consciousness, Baris couldn’t help but wonder. If the Federation is supposed to be a place where everyone belongs, why did he still feel like he was standing on the outside? And where in the mix of upbringing, training, and personality was the solution to the biggest problem that stalked the deep night, and left his emotions raw with the scuff of fatigue?

[OFF]

Petty Officer 1st Class Baris Demir (NPC by Leed)
Quartermaster
USS Firebird NCC-88298

 

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