Held in Reserve: Lane Four

Posted on Fri May 8th, 2026 @ 10:44pm by Lieutenant Darik Moreau

2,715 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Ghost Starship
Location: Tycho City, Luna
Timeline: [Character Backpost] 2378

2378, Tycho City, Luna

The programme had been described as an opportunity.

The word had appeared three times on the school bulletin in bright Federation Standard, tucked between phrases like team cohesion, personal resilience and holistic development, all of them arranged with the sort of confidence that suggested nobody involved had considered the possibility that some people might dislike being developed in public. Darik Moreau had read the notice once while passing the corridor display and then a second time when he realised the programme was compulsory.

It lasted three weeks, which to him was three weeks too long, especially since he had just started Glittering Oceans by Betazoid fantasy writer Rix Pusain. So far he was enjoying it and honestly had looked forward to spending any time between lessons going into that world.

Each class would rotate through a series of sports and physical disciplines chosen, according to the administration, to build character, confidence and collaborative thinking. The message had been repeated during morning assembly with a great deal of adult satisfaction, and around him students had started whispering almost immediately about what would look best on future Starfleet applications. Words like leadership, endurance, initiative and teamwork were thrown around. One boy in the row ahead of Darik had actually used the phrase “well-rounded profile” with such earnestness that Darik had stared at the back of his head and wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to move through the world so entirely at ease with it.

He had stood quietly with his hands folded behind his back and known, with complete certainty, that he would dislike most of the programme before it even began. Not the exercise itself. He did not mind movement, or repetition, or being told to improve. What he disliked was organised group effort in the way schools liked to arrange it, loud and exposed and full of social instinct masquerading as fun. Team sports demanded immediate trust. Partner work demanded a kind of easy rhythm with other people that always felt a little beyond him, as if everybody else had been given part of the instructions in advance. Even the encouragement sounded wrong to him most of the time, too bright, too public, too much like performance.

Also. Mandatory fun. The message was we will all have fun together and learn together. It was enough to make Darik shudder. He had spent years learning how to exist correctly in groups. That was not the same as enjoying them. He had changed in the last year. He had gotten taller, now taller than most of his peers. The softness of his jaw was going, making him appear a little sharper than he felt. He was still all elbows and knees, clumsy when he forgot he had gained three inches over the winter break, and he was either starving hungry or freezing cold. He had started to outgrow things as well. All in all, he would very much have liked to avoid all of this.

The first week confirmed his expectations with such efficiency that by the beginning of the second he had already stopped hoping to be surprised. A zero-G ball sport in the gymnasium where everybody shouted over one another and the instructors kept talking about communication while half the class ignored each other completely unless the score demanded otherwise. A paired coordination drill where Darik followed every instruction exactly and still finished with the uncomfortable conviction that he had somehow failed at something nobody had bothered to name. He did not embarrass himself. He did not fail, at least not visibly. But each session left him with the same flat little relief when it ended, as if enduring it without incident had become the real objective.

Any time teams were picked by students, he noticed he was getting picked as one of the last ones. Which did not surprise him. Friendship groups would always pick each other and Darik had, as much by design as anything else, stayed away from them. He was no longer picked on in any significant way, the war was over after all, but the wounds had barely scabbed over for the Federation. There was still that sense he was something that did not fit in.

By the time the next rotation came round he had already worked out where to stand while waiting to be assigned, where in the changing room he was least likely to be jostled, and which expression made teachers least inclined to encourage him. When his name was called, he stepped forward automatically.

“Archery range,” the assistant instructor said, checking the roster before waving the small group toward the far corridor.

One of the boys beside Darik made a face. “That one’s dull,” he muttered, while another complained that they should have been assigned climbing, or zero-gravity manoeuvres, or something that would actually be useful. Starfleet used phasers. Bow and arrow was barbaric, something you at best did in a holosuite where the programme would make anyone Robin Hood.

Darik said nothing. He followed the group through the side passage and let the sound of the main athletics complex fall away behind him as the door sealed.

The range was quieter. Not silent, there were still voices and the sound of arrows striking targets and that faint ever-present hum of environmental systems keeping the people in the domes alive. The targets stood fixed at measured intervals down the length of the range, circular and still beneath the lights.

The instructor waiting for them was Andorian. She stood near the equipment rack with a PADD tucked under one arm, looking over the lanes with the calm severity of somebody who expected the room to do exactly what she told it to. She was taller than most Human women, blue-skinned and spare, with white hair braided tightly back from her face and antennae angled forward in a way that made her look perpetually attentive rather than welcoming. An athletics club jacket sat neatly across her shoulders, but not quite evenly. One side pulled differently when she moved, and when she turned to set the PADD down Darik saw the reason for it, or part of one. There was an old scar disappearing beneath the line of her collar, pale against the blue, and a contained carefulness in the way she shifted her weight, not weakness but adaptation. She moved like someone who knew exactly what each part of her body would allow and did not waste effort arguing with it. She also held one arm differently, closer to her body than most would. Protectively.

Darik noticed those things at once and then looked away, because staring was obvious and because he had already learned that people rarely liked being read back.

“Group three. I am Shreya zh’Thenis, and I am the archery instructor,” she said, her voice clipped and low, carrying easily without needing to rise. “You will take a lane when directed. You will not touch anything until instructed. If you damage the equipment, you will spend the remainder of the programme maintaining it, which will be much less interesting for you and only slightly less irritating for me.”

A couple of students laughed uncertainly, as if trying to determine whether that had been a joke. That died quickly when zh’Thenis did not clarify but instead picked up the roster and started assigning lanes like an officer assigning duty rotations. Quick and efficient, no harshness but no warmth either. She would look at a student and give them a bow based on their build.

When Darik stepped forward at the sound of his name, her eyes moved over him once. Briefly. Assessing reach, posture, the set of his shoulders. Nothing else. No pause over his ridges and cords, no politeness settling into place a fraction too late, no extra moment of social processing while adults decided how to be normal around him. She handed him a bow. “Lane four,” she said and after a glance of how he held it, added, “and do not strangle it. It has done nothing to you. Yet.”

The bow was heavier than he expected, not impossibly so but solid in the hands, its weight balanced and real. Darik turned it once on the way to the lane, feeling the pull of stored tension in its shape. The marked position on the floor was narrow, neatly bounded, the target downrange fixed and waiting. It did not move. It did not change its mind. It simply remained where it had been put. He liked that. Nothing to read, just one thing in front of him.

“Feet,” zh’Thenis seemed to appear from nowhere, and Darik adjusted his stance at once, glancing at the hologram that showed proper stance and how to hold the bow. But he struggled translating the image. “No. Parallel,” she corrected, stepping into the lane beside him. “You look as if you’re preparing to run from it. Stand properly, straight back. Don’t make yourself smaller than you are. And now lift the bow.”

He shifted his feet, frowning, his body tensing with it. She moved in a circle around him, paying attention. “Better. Now stop lifting your shoulder as if pain is inevitable.” The correction was so specific, so cleanly delivered, that he obeyed before he had fully thought it through. She reached out then and pressed two fingers, firm and exact, to the outside of his elbow. “Do not lock the joint,” she said, moving his arm a fraction. “Control it. There is a difference.”

Her touch was brief and entirely functional. She had already moved away by the time he registered it. Darik waited, without entirely meaning to, for the familiar moment that often followed when an adult noticed what he was and some additional layer came down over the interaction.

It did not come. She had moved away and there were no parting words, no little stab or comment. It made a small smile pull at the corner of his lips before he could stop it.

Instructor zh’Thenis was correcting the next student in the same voice. “If you intend to miss, at least miss consistently, so I can unpick whatever is making you miss,” she told a boy two lanes over, taking the bow out of his hands and putting it back with faint disgust. “Again.”

Darik looked back at the target and raised his own bow. The first draw felt wrong in his body at once. Too much tension. His shoulder tightened before the rest of him had caught up. The arrow wobbled on release and struck the outer ring with a dull sound that would have embarrassed him more if the Andorian had sounded disappointed. Instead she only said, from somewhere behind him, “Again. You need to see the target, find it, release. No hesitation.”

He reached for another arrow, but paused first to watch the others, not just the people from his group but the ones who had been here before they came in…the ones who did it as a hobby. Some of the taller ones had a stance that looked like it might work better for his build. Weight shifted differently, maybe. He had seen the instructor adjust that girl’s bow arm a minute ago, straightening it out. Another boy nearby was anchoring higher on his face than Darik had tried.

Darik adjusted his feet, tested his grip. The second time he raised the bow, something felt different. His neck cords did not press awkwardly into the string path. The central ridge on his forehead stayed clear when he turned his head to aim. He drew the string back in one motion until his hand settled near his jaw, finding a spot he thought he could repeat. His bow arm straightened but did not lock the way it had the first time.

The target came into focus. He let out half a breath and released. The arrow flew with less wobble, the flight cleaner. When it struck the target the sound was different. A solid thunk instead of the glancing knock of the first shot. Still not centred, but closer.

“Do not anticipate the release,” Instructor zh’Thenis said. “The bow knows what it is doing. Your job is not to interfere.”

He nodded once, though she could not see him, and reached for another arrow. Around him, other students were still talking between attempts, joking quietly, complaining, turning it into competition within minutes because children seemed incapable of leaving any structure alone for long. Darik barely heard them. The range had narrowed to something simpler. The lane beneath his feet. The weight in his hands. The target at the far end of the line.

The next shot hit closer in. Then the one after that.

When zh’Thenis stepped back into his lane, she watched him draw without speaking, her antennae angled slightly toward the bow rather than his face. Darik could feel her attention the way he felt the pull in the string, precise and unsentimental. “Lower your shoulder,” she said at last.

He adjusted, lowering the shoulder and letting out a breath when he realised he had been holding it. It helped him relax.

He heard her voice close to him, no-nonsense but without any bite. More like she was observing him, not as something wrong, but as potential. He liked the feeling. “Again.”

He followed through. The arrow struck near the inner ring, and the sound of it seemed to go through him in a way he did not expect. It was not triumph or pleasure or even that sense of haha, I did it. No, it was… I made that happen.

Zh’Thenis was quiet for a moment as she watched the target, and a small smile pulled at the corner of her lips. “Not bad for a rookie,” she said and gave a nod. She walked past him to another student.

Darik remained where he was with another arrow balanced between his fingers. He realised, after a moment, that he wanted another shot. And it was not because he was being watched, or wanted praise, but because things were making sense. Stance, breath, draw, release. Nothing to read except the target, nothing to focus on except himself. It made the world around him quiet.

He felt useful. Because what he was now made sense, the skills he had now worked somehow. He liked how that felt.

When the session ended and Instructor zh’Thenis called time, several students lowered their bows with visible relief. One complained about the weight of the draw. Another declared that he preferred real sports, with running and teamwork. Darik returned his bow to the rack with careful hands and tried not to look as though the ending of the session felt, to him, like an interruption rather than a release.

As he turned to follow the others out, zh’Thenis glanced up from the roster. “You,” she said, and Darik stopped at once. Her eyes settled on him briefly, not unkind, not warm, simply direct. “You listen,” she said after a moment. “That is rare at your age.” One antenna shifted, just slightly, before she looked back down at the tablet. “Lane four will be open again tomorrow, if the rota brings you back. Try not to forget everything in the meantime.”

Darik inclined his head because he was not entirely certain what response belonged to a statement like that. Thank you? Sure? I’ll be there? He had no answer and while his lips worked around the words, she had already moved on.

He stepped back into the corridor a moment later with the others, and the noise of the athletics complex came rushing back around him as the door opened. Somebody ahead was already talking again about Academy applications and leadership pathways and which activities would read best on a personal statement.

Darik listened for a moment, then looked down at his hands. He could still feel the way the bow had felt in his grip, and found he wanted it back almost at once.

[OFF]

Lt. Darik Moreau
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Missouri

RSS Feed