In The Quiet Between

Posted on Thu Oct 16th, 2025 @ 4:38pm by Lieutenant Axod Qo

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Counselor's Office
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 2300

The hum of the Sojourner was different now. It wasn’t the familiar, low vibration that once lulled the crew into easy rhythm; it trembled with a subtle irregularity, a ghost of the events of the last few days. To most, it was imperceptible. But to Axod Qo, sitting cross-legged on the cool deck plating of his Counseling Office, it was impossible not to hear.

The ship felt unsettled. So did he. He closed his eyes. Inhale, hold, release. The breath traveled deep into him, following the slow current of practiced meditation, a rhythm older than words. The air carried a faint note of Alriin bark, and beneath it, the metallic tang of recycled atmosphere. The scent grounded him, but not entirely.
He had chosen stillness, but stillness refused to come.

It had been a couple of days since the Kazon attack, since the Sojourner’s decks had run with smoke and fear, since the lights had flickered with the pulse of weapons fire, since the sound of distress had echoed through the corridors like the beating of a panicked heart. The repairs were well underway now, but the minds within it… those would be slower to heal.

He let his palms rest on his knees. Beneath his fingertips, the hum of the deck thrummed like a pulse, the heartbeat of a wounded giant still standing.

‘Seven crew members rescued.’ He thought.Numbers that looked clean in a report, but numbers never carried the scent of terror or the taste of helplessness.

There was a weight that lingered in the air now. The way people avoided each other’s eyes in corridors. The small silences that filled conversations like hairline fractures. He knew those silences well. He lived among them.

The an oil lap flickered before him faintly. The lamp was from Doosodaria, one of the few personal items he had brought along with him. Inside, a fragrant oil fed the warm, dancing flame. Doosodarian meditation wasn’t about purging thought; it was about watching it. Watching the storm, tracing its movements, finding its rhythm, until rhythm itself became calm.

He imagined the thoughts he carried as those flames of light, each one a fragment of memory from the past days. The cries of the wounded. His closed eyes squeezed tightly.

He had been trained to detach, to maintain the stillness of a counselor, but the illusion had cracked when the captain’s voice, tight and raw, had filled the conference room, speaking not as an officer, but as someone afraid for the person they loved. Axod had tried to hold firm, to be the steady voice in the chaos. But there had been a moment, just one, when he felt himself waver.

It was not the captain’s anger that haunted him now, it was his own reaction to it. The faint tremor of judgment that had flickered through him. The cold precision of his words when he told Kodak that “Displays of extreme emotion are not a privilege of command.”. The memory left an ache in him, quiet and persistent.

He inhaled again, deeper this time, allowing the breath to travel through the ache, to find its boundaries. The Doosodarian way: name nothing, resist nothing, observe everything.

He was not ashamed of his choices. He had acted as the counselor he was trained to be. Yet, as the quiet pressed around him, he recognized the truth beneath the professionalism, he had felt fear too. Not for himself, but for the captain, for the ship, for the fragile community that had become, without him realizing it, something resembling home.

Doosodarians were not a people easily untethered. They believed in grounding through connection; to place, to sound, to one another. Even light was considered a companion. Yet here, in the sterile calm of a Starfleet vessel assigned to the Delta Quadrant, grounding was a more fragile thing.

He had learned to create it where he could. In the scent of Alriin bark. In the pulse of the flame. In the repetition of breath.

He could sense the ship outside his walls, dozens of minds moving in slow, uncertain rhythm. The rescued seven among them,now they were his responsibility.
Lieutenant Commander Victoria Cross, Lieutenant Irynya,Lieutenant Cassian Maritz, Ensign Mei Ratthi, Ensign Noah Balsam, Andrew Munro and Kaldri. The names replayed over and over again in his mind.

He let the thought dissolve into the air, watching as the lamp's flame softened. He opened his eyes, scanning the room out of habit and reaching from a PADD that was placed nearby. He had begun to plan, with the expertise of Commander t’Nai, a support group of sorts. The recreation hall would be transformed into a circle of support . Uniforms optional, hierarchy suspended. A place where command and crew could share the same aid without the burden of rank.

He thought about what he would say, or rather, what he would not say. The Doosodarian tradition of communal reflection had no beginning speech, no declaration of purpose. It began with breath. With one person breathing, and the others listening, until stillness found them.

He knew that many Starfleet minds would not allow that stillness. Humans, particularly, were typically uneasy with silence. They filled it with apology or explanation.He would need to adjust to ensure everyone felt seen and validated for their emotions.

He had tailored his approach many times in his career. But this time, it mattered more. Because the Sojourner was no longer just his assignment; it was his vessel of belonging. Its crew were not merely patients, they were fragments of the same constellation, tethered together at the edge of the galaxy.

He felt the calm settle then, not sudden, but like light rising through water. His breath slowed to match the pulse of the flame again.