… Especially for those returning home.
The Straits — Season 02 / Episode 18
by Alan Tripp
— 2412 —
((One month after the end of the mission in the Straits))
Writer’s Note — This story is presented out of order as I want to begin writing the
ongoing stories of the U.S.S. Sparhawk, and it’s captain as it moves forward in the wake of the events
currently unfolding in the Straits region and Kolana Dyson Sphere Network.
The storm did not end at the Straits.
The first thing Captain Lhenya zh’Vorth th’Raelor noticed was the silence.
Not the ordinary silence of a starship under repair, because there was no such thing. Even in drydock, vessels lived.
Somewhere beyond the bulkheads, she could feel the pulse of industrial systems moving through the immense framework of the Crown of Rhya.
Massive forge-rings rotated around Rhya’thor Prime beyond the armored docking shell, and deep beneath the Sparhawk’s hull she could hear the distant thunder of gravitic clamps adjusting against structural supports.
Plasma cutters hissed in adjoining sections. Cargo drones moved like insects through illuminated gantries. The Anvil never truly slept.
But this corridor was quiet.
Intentionally quiet.
The lighting had been lowered here.
Not dark, but softened.
Warm amber strips recessed into the deck edges cast long reflections across the polished floor while muted wall sconces painted the memorial alcove in gold and shadow.
The corridor itself sat directly along one of the primary internal transit routes leading from the central habitation spine toward the command decks.
Crew would pass this place constantly once the ship returned to service. Engineers heading toward duty rotations. Security teams changing shifts. Flight control officers carrying padds and unfinished exhaustion beneath their eyes.
Every one of them would walk past this wall.
Every day.
Lhenya stopped several meters short of it.
Her hands folded automatically behind her back, though not from formality. It was an old survival instinct. A way of preventing herself from reaching for a phaser that no longer hung at her side.
The wall rose nearly floor to ceiling, forged from dark metallic plates integrated seamlessly into the corridor architecture itself.
Hundreds of names had been engraved into the surface in narrow illuminated columns.
The letters glowed softly beneath the brushed metal finish, not bright enough to dominate the corridor but impossible to ignore.
Some names were marked with service insignias. Others carried unit identifiers or memorial notations. A few simply ended with the words:
NO RECOVERY CONFIRMED
She stared at those longest.
Because she understood what those words actually meant.
Not missing.
Not unresolved.
Consumed by wilderness.
Taken by darkness.
Gone where nobody could safely follow.
The center of the memorial held the plaque.
Or what remained of it.
Lhenya felt something inside her chest tighten painfully at the sight.
The original dedication plaque of the U.S.S. Sparhawk had once been pristine bronze and blackened steel, mounted proudly within the ceremonial entry hall when the ship launched in 2400.
It had represented optimism then. Exploration. Renewal.
The Federation convincing itself that the long age of catastrophe was ending.
Now it looked like something recovered from a battlefield grave.
The right half had melted downward in warped metallic ruin. Fire scoring blackened the edges until the bronze had become almost charcoal in color.
Entire sections looked partially liquefied before hardening again in twisted folds and rough blistered scars.
One corner had collapsed inward completely, leaving a jagged hollow wound through the metal where the dedication text simply ceased to exist.
Yet somehow the ship’s name remained intact.
U.S.S. SPARHAWK
And beneath it:
“To see beyond the edge.”
Lhenya walked toward it slowly.
She did not realize she was trembling until she reached out and touched the plaque.
The metal was cool beneath her fingertips.
Rough.
Sharp in places.
Her fingers traced the melted edge carefully, moving across the hardened ridges where extreme heat had warped the once-perfect surface into scar tissue.
She could not stop touching it.
Because it felt familiar.
Not intellectually.
Emotionally.
This is what survival looked like.
Not clean.
Not noble.
Not inspirational.
Burned.
Distorted.
Half destroyed.
Still present anyway.
Her throat tightened.
She closed her eyes for a moment and suddenly the corridor vanished.
The jungle returned.
Humidity thick enough to choke on.
The sound of massive movement somewhere beyond the trees.
The smell of wet soil and blood and ruptured vegetation beneath the impossible twilight sky of the Straits interior.
Then the scream.
Not loud at first.
Confused.
Cut short.
Lhenya’s breathing faltered.
She remembered turning.
Remembered seeing Lieutenant Kaelyn Voris disappear sideways into the undergrowth with such violence that it barely looked real.
One moment Kaelyn had been there beside the survey team, weapon raised toward movement in the canopy.
The next—
Gone.
The thing had moved impossibly fast.
Massive jaws.
Muscle.
Teeth longer than Lhenya’s forearm.
The impact had torn Kaelyn nearly in half instantly.
The jungle had exploded into panic after that.
Screaming. Phaser fire. Motion detectors shrieking uselessly while branches snapped somewhere in the darkness.
But Lhenya remembered only Kaelyn.
Because Kaelyn had still been alive.
For almost thirty seconds.
Long enough to look at her.
Long enough to understand.
Long enough to beg without words.
Lhenya’s hand tightened unconsciously against the plaque.
She could still hear the wet choking sound Kaelyn had made while trying to breathe through collapsed lungs.
Could still remember kneeling in mud slick with blood while the rest of the team screamed perimeter warnings into comms that no longer functioned properly.
Kaelyn had reached for her.
And Lhenya had drawn her phaser.
Mercy.
That was the official word later.
Mercy kill under catastrophic field conditions.
Necessary action.
Humane.
But the memory never felt humane.
It felt like failure.
Her eyes opened slowly.
There.
Near the center-right memorial column.
LT. JG. KAELYN VORIS
Lhenya stared at the name until the letters blurred.
Then she touched that too.
Very gently.
The corridor remained quiet around her. Somewhere farther down the passage, two engineering crewmen passed without speaking loudly.
One of them slowed briefly when he noticed her standing there alone before respectfully continuing onward.
Nobody interrupted.
Nobody ever interrupted people here.
That was part of the design.
The memorial was not hidden deep within a ceremonial chamber visited only during official observances. It had been placed directly within the ship’s living circulation routes intentionally.
Crew would see these names every day while moving through ordinary life.
Because remembrance aboard the Sparhawk was not treated as a separate ritual.
The dead remained part of the ship.
Part of the movement.
Part of the rhythm.
Part of the continuation.
Lhenya understood immediately why the surviving crew had chosen this location.
If they buried the memory too deeply, people would begin pretending again.
Pretending the dark was empty.
Pretending everyone came home.
Pretending survival erased what happened.
The Sparhawk no longer permitted that kind of forgetting.
Her fingers moved again across the warped plaque edge.
Rough.
Broken.
Burned.
She swallowed hard against the pressure building behind her ribs.
Captain Ralen tr’Veyan had wanted the original plaque preserved exactly as it was recovered after Frontier Day. Several admirals had recommended replacement instead.
Something cleaner. Symbolic. Restored.
Ralen had refused.
“This,” he had reportedly told the reconstruction board, “is what the ship survived.”
Now Lhenya finally understood.
Not intellectually.
Emotionally.
Because standing here, touching the ruined metal beneath the quiet lights of the memorial corridor while Rhya’thor Prime turned silently beyond the docking shell outside, she realized something terrible and undeniable.
The plaque was not merely a memorial to the dead.
It was a memorial to everyone who came back damaged.
Including her.
Especially her.
The realization struck with such force that she had to brace one hand against the wall beside the plaque just to remain standing.
For a long moment she simply breathed.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Trying not to let the grief tear all the way through her in the middle of the corridor.
Then finally she lowered her head and rested her fingertips once more against the melted edge of the plaque.
Not because it comforted her.
Because it told the truth.
And in the silence of the Sparhawk’s memorial passage, beneath the names of the dead and the scarred remains of a ship that had survived things no vessel was meant to survive, Captain Lhenya zh’Vorth th’Raelor stood very still and understood with painful clarity that she would probably carry the Straits inside her for the rest of her life.
But the ship carried them too.
And somehow… that made continuing possible.