Held in Reserve: Above Reproach

Posted on Sun Apr 12th, 2026 @ 4:10pm by Lieutenant Darik Moreau

3,439 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Ghost Starship
Location: Tycho City, Luna
Timeline: [Character Backpost] 2373

2373, Tycho City, Luna

The grass in the dome was too green.

It always was, a colour that looked like it had been chosen by committee and tested for morale, but Darik noticed it more today because he had time to notice it, because Tomas had brought him out in just after school and called it a treat, because the air was cool and carefully clean and the little trees had the same curved leaves every season, never browning, never dropping, never being anything except what they were supposed to be. It had taken a while to get used to, the domes of Luna. Of course, Luna was something people on Earth called it…the people here? They called it the Moon.

Darik sat on the low wall that edged the play area, legs swinging, shoes tapping the stone in a steady rhythm. Children ran in looping patterns that made no sense, chasing each other until they got dizzy in the lower gravity and squealed like the dome itself was a toy. It was one of the low gravity areas in Tycho City, there was also an Earth gravity playground close by…but Darik’s favourite was here, where he could jump higher if he wanted to. Not that he played with the other kids. His Federation Standard had been too accented when he had moved here, now it was neutral…but any kids who had played with him one day wouldn’t the next day after their parents had seen him. But he never said anything. The one time he had, his father’s eyes had darkened and he had left the room.

His father stood nearby with a cup in his hand, having replicated himself a coffee on the way over. He was watching the space the way he watched museum corridors, not quite relaxed, eyes moving, always aware of where people were.

He was wearing his museum jacket, the one with the stitched patch on the breast, and Darik knew it meant his father had come straight from work. That was normal. Tomas did normal things. Tomas liked normal things. When things were normal, Tomas’s voice stayed even and he remembered to smile at the right times. And they had a routine. Darik went to school, his father went to work, after school he was picked up, had an hour with his father before he went home and his father went and did a few more hours at work. During that time, he’d do his homework or play in the flat.

Darik had not said his mother’s name out loud in nearly a year. He still spoke to her every night. Not with a comm unit, not with a screen, not with anything that would leave a record or a trail. No, he spoke to her in the dark of his own room, voice low, as if she might hear him through walls and distance and vacuum, as if words could travel if you made them careful enough. He told her what the dome smelled like. He told her about the museum, about the drawers and labels Tomas let him see sometimes. He told her about school and the way the teacher never looked at his neck cords and forehead ridges for longer than a polite second.

He did not tell his father he did that, and his father did not ask. Some things lived in the flat like furniture, always there, always avoided. His mother’s name was one of them. When Tomas heard it, even accidentally, something in his face tightened and his voice went too controlled. Tomas did not shout. Tomas did not forbid it, because it wasn’t his style. But he would become silence and Darik would feel bad, because he could see it upset him.

So Darik kept it private. He kept it safe. He kept it inside his own head, his own chest. He’d close his eyes and remember how his mother’s palm felt against his, the scent of her skin in the warmth of Cardassia Prime.

He sat in the too-green park and watched children spin in low gravity and, without meaning to, counted the days since the last time he had seen her. He knew the number. He always knew the number. The announcement came through the public kiosk by the tram stop, crisp and bright and polite, as if it was reminding people to mind the gap.

A small chime, then a voice, calm enough to be reassuring, and Darik turned his head because everybody turned their head, because the sound pulled attention the way gravity pulled loose objects.

“Federation News Service advisory. Effective immediately, the United Federation of Planets is at war with the Cardassian Union.” The voice kept going, listing names and locations that meant nothing to Darik yet, words that slid past the way adult words often did, but those ones stayed, the ones in the middle, because Tomas went still in a way Darik recognised.

Not the stillness Tomas had when he was concentrating on a display label or balancing a crate. A different stillness. A locked one. Darik’s stomach went cold in a single clean drop, because war was not just a word. War meant ships. War meant Cardassia Prime.

War meant his mother.

For a heartbeat his mind showed him his mother the way it always did when he was tired, her hands steady, her voice precise, the way she had made everything sound like it could be solved if you named it properly. He remembered the heat of the stone under his bare feet, remembered amber light panels, remembered her smoothing his hair down with a touch that was firm, not soft, because softness had never been her language.

Where was she now.

She would be on Cardassia Prime. That was what his father had told him when they first came to Luna, when Darik had asked, quietly, and Tomas had answered too quickly, as if speed made it less painful. Cardassia Prime, as if that fixed her in place like a dot on a map.

But people moved in war, and the Cardassian military moved. And that was what she was. His mother was military. So…Maybe she was on a ship. Maybe she had been assigned somewhere, because she was not the kind of person who watched from the sidelines if there was something to be done. Darik’s mind tried to build an answer and found too many possibilities, each one sharper than the last.

Maybe she was fighting. Maybe she was near the border already. Maybe she had been near the first place the voice had named.

Darik did not move. He kept his face still the way he had practised. If he moved, if he asked, if he spoke her name out loud, his father would hear it and something would happen to him that Darik could not fix, or begin to understand yet.

So he held it down inside his chest and waited for the world to tell him what it intended.

He saw his father’s cup tipping in his hand, spilling a little liquid which seemed to fall slower, the drops rounder than in normal gravity. He saw the way his father’s throat moved, the way his lips parted. He saw his skin look ashen.

And then his father looked at him. He did not look at the kiosk. He did not look at the other adults, or at the PADDs around them doing little dings of messages and announcements. He looked at Darik like Darik was the only thing in the dome that mattered, and there was shock on his face, sharp and naked, like his father had forgotten that expressions were something you controlled.

For a half second Darik thought he was going to speak. He thought his father would say something sensible, something that sounded like the Federation, something like we will be fine or it will be handled or it is far away. That his mother would be fine. But instead, his father ran to him and pulled him into a hug.

It happened too quickly for Darik to prepare for it. Tomas pulled him in hard enough that Darik’s shoulder bumped his chest, hard enough that Darik’s balance shifted and his feet scraped on the wall as he tried to find somewhere to go. His father’s jacket smelled of soap and moondust and the faint chemical tang of whatever the museum used to clean its floors. Darik’s cheek pressed against it and for a second his arms were pinned awkwardly at his sides, trapped between them.

Tomas’s hand flattened on the back of his head. It covered too much, fingers spreading over hair and skull, protective and clumsy at the same time. Darik could feel Tomas’s breath, not steady, a hitch in it like he had been running.

It was the first proper hug Darik had had from him in years.

Darik knew that because his body knew it, because his chest went tight and his stomach lurched as if he had missed a step, because the sensation was so unfamiliar it felt like a mistake. Tomas had touched him, yes, had guided him by the shoulder, had smoothed his hair down when it stuck up, had held his wrist to keep him from darting into a crowded transport, but this was different. This was his father forgetting himself. This was Tomas holding on like he was afraid Darik could be taken out of his hands.

Darik thought, stupidly, of his mother’s hands.

Not because the hug felt like hers, it did not, but because it was contact, because it was sudden, because it arrived out of fear, because it made him aware of how long it had been since anyone had held him like they meant it.

He did not move at first. He did not know what was expected. Then he lifted one arm and rested it around Tomas’s waist, careful, because he did not want to do it wrong. Tomas held him tighter for a beat, as if he had been waiting for permission, and Darik stared past Tomas’s side at the too-green grass and the children still running as if the world had not changed.

Adults nearby had gone quiet. A few spoke in low voices, not arguing, not panicking, just the shift that happened when something moved from conversation into reality. Darik heard a woman say, “It’s started, then,” and another reply, “They said it would,” and the words sat heavy.

His father let him go slowly, like he was releasing something fragile. He kept both hands on Darik’s shoulders. His eyes were too bright. He blinked once, hard, and his mouth twitched as if it wanted to form the shape of something kind.

“We’re going home,” his father said, and he sounded normal again, which was the part that scared Darik most. Normal was what Tomas did when he needed to keep things from collapsing.

“Alright,” Darik said, because that was always the correct answer and he jumped down from the wall. He had a scrape on his arm, the sleeve covering it now.

Tomas’s hand slid down and took Darik’s, fingers wrapping too tight. “Stay close,” he ordered, the tone locked down.

“I am,” Darik said, and meant it. He remembered that tone from the flight across from Cardassian space on a freighter, where people were loud and his father had not let him alone for as much as a minute. This felt the same, the space suddenly dangerous.

They walked out of the park and towards the tram line, and the dome felt different, though nothing in it had changed. The air was a little too cold for Darik’s comfort, but he had gotten used to always having a chill. The plants were still green. The lights still threw the same gentle glow across the walkway. But people had shifted, as if they had been given new instructions and he didn’t understand.

Darik noticed it in the small ways first. A group of teenagers who had been laughing went quiet as Tomas and Darik passed. An older man’s eyes went to Darik’s neck, then forehead and eyes and then away too quickly, like he had been caught doing something impolite. A woman speaking into a comm unit glanced at Tomas’s museum patch, then at Darik again, and her voice dropped and her mouth twisting slightly.

It might have been that they had always looked. It might have been that Darik had never paid attention before. But today he felt it like a physical thing, a pressure against his skin, eyes landing and sliding off and landing again.

Whispers moved around them like a draft. He did not catch every word. He caught the shape of them, the careful tone, the way people spoke around a name instead of using it. Someone said, “Cardassian,” too softly, not an insult, not quite, but not neutral either, the way you said hazard or warning or contamination.

Darik thought, without meaning to, of his mother again. If people here were whispering, what were people on Cardassia Prime doing. If the Federation had announced war in a bright calm voice, what had Cardassia announced. What did his mother hear when she stepped outside. Was she safe? Was she angry? Was she already putting on her uniform jacket…getting ready for her duty? Duty. Family. Loyalty. The Cardassian Union. Did she have to listen to whispers about her son and husband?

He swallowed the thoughts down. He did not let them touch his face. He could not afford to let his father see them there, because if father saw her on Darik’s expression he would hear her name even without Darik speaking it, and Darik could not make Tomas go through that in public.

Tomas’s grip tightened again. Darik looked up at him and saw his father’s face in profile, saw the controlled set of his jaw, the blankness around his eyes that meant he was working very hard to keep his expression tidy. Tomas stared straight ahead, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, the way you refused to acknowledge a problem because you could not afford to. He just held his son's hand.

Darik saw the fear anyway. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t five anymore. He knew his mother wasn’t coming. So he saw it in the way his father walked a fraction faster, the way he seemed to shield Darik against looks from people with his body. The way he seemed to tense up like...like he was about to fall. He was just a civilian, an assistant at a small museum who had a small flat with his son who carried the shapes of another world on his face.

Darik looked down at their joined hands. His father’s thumb rubbed across his knuckles once, without thinking, and Darik felt something in his chest twist. He understood in that moment, with the clarity that came when adults stopped pretending. His father was afraid that other people would decide things about them. His father was afraid that Darik would be a reason.

And Darik was afraid of something else, quieter and sharper.

He was afraid that if he mentioned his mother, even once, his father would break…and he didn’t like being a reason. He didn’t like being the thing that made them different.

The tram arrived with a smooth hiss, doors opening, people stepping on in neat lines like they always did. They moved inside and took a place near the wall. His father kept Darik close, his hand still locked around his, and when the tram began to glide forward Darik watched their reflections in the window. He saw himself first. Dark hair, too neatly combed back. Blue eyes that watched too much. The cords of his neck catching the light when he turned his head, the ridges on his head…the tear-shape on his forehead. He looked alien, not like the Bolians, or Andorians, or Trills. Alien in a sharper way, a more severe way, not...integrated, not soft and gentle. His eyes went to his father behind him, taller, pale, his mouth set in that controlled line that he knew followed his own mouth, the same blue eyes but a smooth forehead, eyebrows where Darik had ridges. The family resemblance was there, enough to show father and son...and in all that, the museum patch visible like a label, marking him as someone who belonged there.

Darik thought of labels. He thought of drawers in the archive. He thought of how Tomas would straighten an information placard until it lined up perfectly, as if a straight line made the world safer. He understood then that the rules had changed.

If the Federation was at war, people would want simple stories. They would want to know who belonged and who did not. They would look at Darik and make decisions without asking him. Darik could not stop them looking.

But he could control what they saw.

He could be quiet. He could be polite. He could be correct. He could be the child who said please and thank you without being reminded, who stood still when told, who did not cause trouble, who did not cry in public, who did not give anyone a reason to say he was ungrateful or dangerous or wrong.

Above reproach. His father had said that when they had come, when he had first met his paternal grandfather who had looked at him like he had tasted something bitter. That he couldn’t change how he looked, but he could be above reproach. And don’t give them a reason to treat him differently.

His mother’s voice, remembered, tried to rise in his mind, not soft, not comforting, but firm, the way she had taught him rules on Cardassia. He pushed it down too, because the rules here were different, and he could not afford to be divided, not now.

He turned his head slightly and leaned closer to his father, just enough that he would feel it, a silent promise and a practical one.

Tomas looked down at him, eyes flicking over his face, searching for something Darik could not name. Darik held his expression steady and gave him the simplest thing he could. “I can be good,” Darik said quietly as he looked at him, blue eyes wide. The words were small and not dramatic…it wasn’t bravery either. It was the beginning of a plan, like the games his mother would play with him where they pretended to be other people.

He saw his father’s mouth open as if he was going to say no, as if he was going to argue that Darik did not need to be anything except a child. The tram rocked gently as it rounded a curve and Tomas’s hand tightened again, and whatever he had meant to say did not come out.

Instead Tomas bent his head slightly, close enough that Darik felt his breath on his hair, and said, rougher than before: “You already are.”

Darik kept his eyes on the window and watched the dome slide past, green and perfect and unreal, and he held on to the echo of the hug in his bones, that sudden fierce contact, the proof that his father still loved him. That he wasn’t something that couldn’t be loved.

His mother existed in the same way, at night, in the dark, in words that Darik spoke quietly when nobody could hear. She existed in the shape of his memories and in how his ridges looked, and how straight his hair could be pulled.

He did not know what war would bring. He did not know how far it would reach. He knew war the way Cardassians knew war, as something to rise up to and duty and strength…but he also knew it the human way, the Federation way, as something to be avoided. It was confusing. But he knew one thing with the same certainty he had had about the travel case being too small. He knew it in his stomach, in his mouth, in the steady tightening of his own control.

He would not be the reason they were judged. He would make sure of it.

[OFF]

Lt. Darik Moreau
Chief Intelligence
USS Missouri

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