Finding a Path

Posted on Wed Oct 22nd, 2025 @ 5:28pm by Ensign Grosh Frav

I’ve been staring at the transfer order for an hour now. Pathfinder Station. Engineering Division, Auxiliary Systems. A quiet posting, they said. “Stable environment.” I think that’s Starfleet’s polite way of saying you’ve earned a break after almost dying.

The Sojourner feels different since the Kazon incident. The ship hums the same, but the sound sits wrong in my chest, like a familiar melody played a half-step off. I’ve walked those corridors a hundred times since, but every bulkhead feels like it’s still holding its breath. Maybe that’s me.

I keep replaying. The alarms. The fire suppression fields flickering when they shouldn’t have. The smell of burned insulation. It’s funny what you remember, not the big things, like the weapon impact or the shouting, but the small, stupid details. Like the way my hands shook when I tried to reseal a plasma conduit. Tellarites aren’t supposed to shake. We’re supposed to argue and curse and fight our way through anything. But in that moment, I wasn’t an engineer or a proud son of Tellar Prime. I was just… scared.

We got through it. Barely. A few injuries. A few systems lost. It was close enough. Too close.

When the reassignment came, I didn’t fight it. That alone tells me something’s changed. The old me would have argued until the someone’s ears bled. But I think I’m tired of fighting, of everything being life or death.

Pathfinder isn’t a starship. It doesn’t move, doesn’t wander into trouble. It’s rooted , and for the first time, that sounds… good. Maybe I need something rooted. A place where I can rebuild, quietly. Where the hum in my chest matches the hum of the deck again.

I told Lieutenants Tork and Parsons I was taking the transfer. I know they see people come and go all the time, but it felt like leaving home again. I’ve never fit the mold. I don’t bark or bluster like my father did. I never saw the point of shouting when a steady hand and a plan would do. But lately, I’ve wondered if maybe he had it right , if making enough noise kept the ghosts away.

When I was a kid in Phinda City, quiet meant danger. You didn’t want silence; silence meant the gang across the street was planning something. You learned to sleep through noise, to feel safe only when you could hear life moving around you. Maybe that’s why this quiet feels heavier than it should.

Still, I want it. I need it.

I packed light, my tools, my trusty cudgel, and a small holo of my brothers. They keep me grounded, even if we barely talk anymore. I think they’d laugh to see me now, a Starfleet officer talking about “peace and quiet.”

Maybe that’s what I’m really looking for: not silence, but peace. A kind of stillness that isn’t empty, that hums gently beneath everything like a warp core at idle.

Tomorrow, I leave the Sojourner. I’ll hand over my tools, say the usual goodbyes. I doubt I’ll make a speech. What’s there to say? We survived. We did our jobs. And now, I’m moving on.

I don’t know what Pathfinder Station will be like. Maybe it’ll bore me senseless. Maybe it’ll heal something I didn’t realize was broken. Either way, it feels like the right next step.

For now, that’s enough.