Held in Reserve: The Better Use

Posted on Sat Jul 4th, 2026 @ 2:44pm by Lieutenant Darik Moreau

2,951 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Ghost Starship
Location: Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth
Timeline: [Character Backpost] 2383

2383, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco

The training yard was warm, which was how Darik liked it.

Most of the sweat at the back of his neck and along his spine came from the drills rather than the heat, the clean result of effort instead of discomfort. The session had run longer than scheduled, a mix of close-quarters drills and timed movement exercises that had pushed most of the first-years past neat presentation and into something more honest. Darik had not minded that. The work itself had been clear, structured, with enough repetition to refine and enough pressure to keep him focused. It suited him.

He was leaning forward, hands braced on his thighs as he caught his breath. There was a faint pull through his shoulders from the drills and a lingering warmth along his spine where the uniform had trapped heat, but none of it was enough to distract. Around him, the other cadets were already filtering out in loose clusters, voices returning now that the instructors were no longer correcting them.

“Moreau,” the instructor’s voice carried without being raised as the last exercise group began to break apart. “Stay.”

Darik’s head turned at once and he straightened, his expression smoothing into the same controlled attentiveness he had worn through the whole session. “Yes, sir,” he replied, watching Lieutenant Commander Bjerke even as a couple of cadets nearby glanced over in quick, reflexive curiosity before looking away again with the private relief of people who had not been the ones singled out.

He did not acknowledge them. He had not made friends yet, even if he knew names, his appearance and proximity enough to make most keep a little distance. A few of the other cadets looked at him with something closer to sympathy. One red-haired human girl gave him a weak shrug before laughing and walking out with the rest.

Darik remained where he was as the others filed out. Standing there alone, he became aware again of the sweat cooling at the back of his neck and the way the cadet uniform sat against him now that movement had stopped. It fit well enough in the abstract, all sharp Starfleet lines and clean construction, but the collar pressed too firmly against the cords of his neck once the fabric was damp, rubbing slightly when he turned too quickly and leaving a faint but persistent irritation that had been needling at him through the last twenty minutes of drills. He had already made a private note to see whether it could be altered without drawing attention to the request. Failing that, he would work out how to adjust it himself. He might have to ask his father. Tomas had always been good at altering clothes to fit, the ancient way.

He had changed in the two months since arriving at the Academy, though not so dramatically that it showed at a glance. Training had put strength across his shoulders and back, and there was more certainty now in the way he carried himself through exertion, but he remained lean, long-limbed, built more for endurance and control than for visible bulk. His body had sharpened rather than thickened. Where he had once seemed slightly uncertain in his own height, he now carried it with more intention, each step placed rather than simply taken. His hair was cut short, kept close at the back and sides in Academy fashion, the top just long enough that a few strands had come loose across his brow where sweat had pulled them forward. It made the dark colour look lighter in the sun than it would have if worn longer, which he did not mind. There was nothing in the cut that read Cardassian, nothing slicked or arranged in a way that might invite comparison. It was neat, practical, and unremarkable by design.

Lieutenant Commander Bjerke stood a few metres away with his hands folded at the small of his back, watching the yard rather than Darik. He was not an imposing man in the blunt physical way some instructors seemed to think necessary, not broad enough or loud enough to dominate a room by force alone, but there was a contained certainty to him that made presence unnecessary. He looked like a man who did not waste effort, in speech or movement, and whose authority came less from display than from consistency. When Darik had first arrived at the Academy, there had been the briefest hesitation the first time Bjerke had looked at him, the familiar recalibration that came with visible Cardassian features in a Federation space. It had passed quickly. Bjerke had corrected for it with the same efficiency he applied to everything else, and now regarded him no differently than any other cadet worth his time.

“You’re working harder than you need to, Cadet Moreau,” Bjerke said at last as he turned his head just enough to bring Darik into focus, his tone as even as it had been throughout the term.

Darik held his posture and met the look properly, though not challengingly. “Sir?” he asked, because the statement was too precise to pretend he had misunderstood and too unusual not to require clarification.

“In the drills,” Bjerke replied, stepping closer without any of the performance some men brought to these moments. He did not circle Darik or inspect him. He just moved closer so he could speak normally. “You’re meeting the requirements, but you’re doing it as if someone’s about to take it away from you if you don’t.”

There was no accusation in the words and no overt criticism either, which made them harder to fend off. Darik kept his face composed, though he could feel the shape of the observation settling somewhere behind his ribs in a way he did not like. “I was under the impression exceeding the requirement was encouraged, sir,” he said, keeping his voice level and his phrasing exact. It was not a deflection so much as a test of the premise, a check to see if the rules truly did apply in such a way.

“It is,” Bjerke answered, his expression unchanged as he watched Darik with that same blunt steadiness. “That’s not what you’re doing.”

The pause that followed was not dramatic, but deliberate, and Darik recognised it for what it was. There was an expectation in it, not necessarily for explanation, but for some sign of understanding. He did not rush to fill the space. He had never seen the value in speaking too quickly when somebody else was still defining the shape of the conversation.

Bjerke let the silence sit for a moment longer before continuing. “You’re compensating,” he said, the word given no extra force, only precision. “There’s a difference.”

Darik felt his jaw tighten just slightly, more reflex than choice, and corrected for it at once before the movement could become anything readable. “With respect, sir, I am meeting or exceeding all current performance metrics,” he replied in a curt voice, keeping his eyes on Bjerke and his hands neatly folded behind his back, where they gripped each other out of sight.

“Yes,” Bjerke said, giving a small nod that managed to convey both his acceptance of the words and the irrelevance of them. “And you’re doing it in a way that will wear you out inside a year if you keep it up.” His eyes moved briefly over Darik’s posture, his shoulders, the set of his stance, then returned to his face. “You’re approaching everything like a problem to be solved with force and repetition. More effort, more refinement, more control. It’s effective, up to a point. It is not the only way to operate. Also, you are going to pop a vein doing that. Relax your hands, Cadet.”

Darik made his hands unclench and let them fall from behind his back to his sides. It was all too close to things he preferred not to have named aloud, particularly not here, not in the middle of an Academy yard with sweat drying on his skin and the cadet uniform pressing faintly wrong at the cords of his neck. “I can adjust my pacing, sir,” he said after a moment, because that at least was practical, and practical things could be managed.

Bjerke’s mouth flattened almost imperceptibly, not displeased, but unconvinced. “That is not what I am talking about,” he said, shifting his stance slightly as he glanced back towards the open yard where the drills had taken place minutes earlier. “You’re spending too much energy proving something before anyone has asked for proof. You’re not trying to be the best. You’re trying to make sure we don’t change our minds.”

Darik went still in a different way then, less formal and more contained, as if every part of him had drawn in by a fraction. Desperate. It was not a word he would have chosen for himself, but the shape of it sat sourly in his mouth all the same. Was he that obvious. Was that how it looked. His blue eyes narrowed slightly as he turned it over.

Bjerke watched him with the same unnerving lack of drama. “Have you considered Intelligence?” he asked, the question delivered plainly enough that it almost felt as if he were asking about an elective module rather than the shape of Darik’s future.

For a moment Darik only looked at him. His expression did not shift, but his focus narrowed, attention tightening onto the word itself and all the things attached to it. Then, before he could stop it, something bitter and old moved in him with enough force to be recognisable. Of course. Of course that would be the answer. Let the half-Cardassian cadet be a spy, the shifty one, the one that could not quite be trusted in the room. Let them look at the ridges, the neck cords, the carefulness he had been forced into young, and decide the natural place for him was somewhere quieter and less visible. For one brief, ugly moment the suggestion seemed to arrive already contaminated by every assumption he had spent years trying not to invite. “Sir,” he said carefully, because the first response had to be neutral if he wanted to keep the rest of himself hidden, “my current track is Security.”

“I’m aware,” Bjerke replied, and there was nothing casual in the answer. He knew exactly what he was suggesting.

“Then I’m not certain I understand the relevance,” Darik said, choosing the sentence with care. He was not prepared to sound defensive, and he refused to sound uncertain if he could avoid it. Yet he could feel the bitterness still there, sharp and low, waiting for confirmation that he had understood correctly.

Bjerke seemed to expect the resistance, though perhaps not its shape. “You’re a natural at seeing the shape of a room and the dynamics,” he said, his voice remaining level as his eyes stayed on Darik’s face. “You adjust without needing instruction repeated. You’re aware of positioning, of intent, not just movement. You observe constantly, and you make corrections in real time without drawing attention to the fact you’ve done it. These are good basic skills that can be trained further.” His eyes held there a second longer, not on Darik’s features exactly, but on him as a whole. “And on top of that, you are expending twice the energy required to prove you can keep up physically.”

Darik held the look without comment, though the bitterness in him shifted slightly at the wording. Bjerke had not said anything about Cardassian instincts, or inherited aptitude, or the sort of cultural shorthand people liked to dress up as insight. He had not pointed at blood, or appearance, or anything Darik had not chosen. He had pointed, instead, at what for Darik was just habit. Things he did because it had always been safer to do them.

“You believe I am misallocated,” Darik said at last, giving the thought structure rather than emotion, though his eyes had sharpened with something more searching now.

“I believe,” Bjerke replied easily, “that you’re currently applying yourself in a way that prioritises being accepted over being effective.”

There was the faintest shift in Darik then, not in posture but somewhere behind the eyes, a tightening of focus that came when somebody had moved too close to something private and he was deciding, very quickly, how much of that closeness had been earned. He let the silence sit again, longer this time, and looked briefly past Bjerke across the now-empty yard before returning to him. “I am effective, sir,” he said, because he needed that stated plainly.

“Yes,” Bjerke answered, and the word carried no contradiction. “You are. Which is why I am having this conversation now, and not six months from now when you’ve learned how to hide the inefficiencies. I am having it now before you get set in a certain way.”

Darik absorbed that in silence. The phrasing was clinical enough to be almost impersonal, which should have made it easier. Instead it made the whole thing feel structural. Not a judgement. Not even an intrusion. Just a recognition of pattern. He could feel the earlier flash of bitterness thinning under something more complicated now, because the man standing in front of him did not seem to want some imagined Cardassian gift. He wanted the exacting, self-managing, watchful parts of Darik that had been built on Luna as much as on Cardassia Prime, taught by war, by caution, by his father’s fear, by the long habit of reading a room before stepping fully into it. He wanted the things Darik had taught himself because nobody else was going to keep him safe from being misread.

“And you think Intelligence is a more efficient application,” Darik said after a moment, keeping his tone even as he tested the logic of it.

Bjerke inclined his head once. “I think you’re already doing half the work Intelligence would require, but unpolished,” he said. “You simply haven’t named it that way.” He paused, then added with the same blunt exactness, “This is not about your face, Mister Moreau. It is about the way your mind works, and the habits you have built around it. Security is something you chose, but I do not think it is the best use of your talents.”

The words were not gentle, but they were honest and somehow that mattered far more. Darik let out a breath, frowning as he considered it. He wanted to serve. That was the underlying thing. Darik Moreau wanted to serve the Federation, serve Starfleet. And here he was being told that what he had chosen, his track, was not the best use of his talents. The words stung for a brief moment, and then settled. “If I were to consider it,” he said slowly, the sentence emerging only after he had turned it over enough times to trust its edges, “what would you expect me to change?”

Bjerke’s answer came with the same infuriating lack of hesitation as everything else. “Less energy spent trying to make yourself acceptable for the task. More attention to the fine detail.” His eyes stayed on Darik as he said it, steady and unembellished. “You got in. Now you stay in based on your scores, nothing else. There is no magic spell or conspiracy that will make you pass or fail here. Work hard, but do not break yourself trying to earn the right twice.”

Darik frowned slightly at the way he put it, not understanding every turn of phrase, but understanding enough of the shape of it. “Understood, sir,” he said, giving a small nod, his hands relaxed now at his sides.

Bjerke regarded him for another second as if checking whether the words had gone somewhere meaningful or merely been filed away for later analysis. Then he stepped back, the conversation evidently complete in his own mind. “Give it some thought, Mister Moreau,” he said, his tone returning to something closer to ordinary instruction as he turned towards the exit. “Academic Advisory will be the place to raise it if you decide to stop being stubborn about it.”

Darik’s mouth almost shifted at that, not quite enough to be called a smile, but enough that he was aware of it and let it settle before answering. “Yes, sir,” he said, watching Bjerke properly this time as the man walked away without further ceremony, his movements as economical as ever.

When he was alone again, Darik did not leave straight away. He tilted his head back slightly, looking up at the clear stretch of sky above the open training yard, letting the warmth sit against his skin as the last of the drill tension worked its way out of his shoulders. It was quiet now, the space stripped back to painted lines and empty ground, the work already finished and filed away.

For a moment, he let the question sit where Bjerke had left it. Security, where he had put himself and understood the shape of the work. Or Intelligence, where it was increasingly clear they thought he would be better used, whether he liked that or not. His mouth tightened slightly, more thoughtful than displeased, and he reached up to tug at the collar where it pressed against the side of his neck. The fabric shifted, but not enough.

That, at least, was immediate. He would fix the collar first.

[OFF]

Lt. Darik Moreau
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Missouri

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