Scorch Marks
Posted on Wed Jun 17th, 2026 @ 11:22pm by Lieutenant Junior Grade Ralen Vessa
1,965 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Mini Mission-Adjustments [USS Orcrist]
Location: San Francisco, Earth
Timeline: MD002 - 1611 hours
Starfleet knew better than to give Ralen Vessa three days of shore leave.
To be fair, Starfleet had not technically given her three days. The Orcrist was in the middle of final adjustments, personnel transfers, supply rotation, and whatever else command liked to call “minor operational refinement” when an entire ship had been opened up like a watch on an engineer’s bench. Existing crew had been granted time off where possible. Incoming crew had been told to report according to staggered transport windows.
Vessa’s window was at 1700.
At 1611, she was in a bar three blocks from Starfleet Transport Operations with a split knuckle, an empty glass, and two flight school ensigns staring at her as though they had just met either a cautionary tale or a religious experience.
The bar was called The Low Orbit, which Vessa thought was a stupid name for a place that had never left the ground. It sat tucked between a noodle shop and a civilian tailor that specialised in Starfleet dress uniforms for relatives who wanted to look dignified in photographs. The front windows were rain-streaked, the floor was scuffed dark by generations of boots, and the walls were crowded with old squadron patches, Academy pennants, framed flight wings, and a cracked helmet signed by someone who had probably been famous before Vessa was born.
It was perfect.
“Again,” one of the ensigns said, leaning forward over the little table in the corner.
He was all bright eyes and academy polish, too new to have had the shine properly sanded off. The other one, a Tellarite with a broad jaw and a suspicious squint, looked less impressed but more interested, which Vessa respected.
Vessa glanced down at the cards between them. “You’re sure?”
“No,” the Tellarite said.
His friend ignored him. “Yes.”
Vessa smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the sort of smile flight instructors saw half a second before simulator insurance became an issue.
“Your funeral.”
The ensign pushed another handful of credits into the centre. “You said Bajorans were terrible at cards.”
“No,” Vessa said, flipping one card over with a finger. “I said I was terrible at cards.”
The Tellarite groaned before the last card even fell.
Vessa swept the pot towards herself, casual as breathing. “Very different sentence.”
The ensign stared at the table. “You cheated.”
“Probably.”
“You can’t just say probably.”
“I can if you can’t prove anything.”
The Tellarite barked a laugh into his drink. The human ensign looked offended for almost two seconds, then began laughing too, which saved him. Vessa liked people who could laugh at losing. Pilots who could not tended to die furious over things that had already happened.
Her travel duffel sat under the table, one boot hooked through the strap. It was battered, grey, and old enough to have survived several postings, two formal reprimands, one plasma coolant leak, and an unfortunate incident involving Andorian brandy and a maintenance hatch on Starbase 72. Her new assignment orders were tucked in the inner pocket of her jacket, right beside a small chip containing East Mark Flight’s personnel files. She had read them twice on the shuttle down from Luna and once more in the bar while pretending not to.
Names. Service records. Training scores. Minor injuries. Transfer notes. Commendations. Red flags.
Pilots reduced to neat lines of data, waiting for her to become responsible for them.
That thought had sent her to the bar faster than a red alert.
“Are you really going to the Orcrist?” the human ensign asked.
Vessa took a sip from her glass. “That depends who’s asking.”
“People are saying you’re the new Deputy CAG.”
“People say lots of things. Most of them get worse with confidence.”
“But you are?”
Vessa looked at him over the rim of the glass. “I’m East Mark Flight Leader.”
The Tellarite’s ears twitched. “That was not an answer.”
“Good. You’re learning.”
The human’s eyes brightened again. “You’re Scorch.”
There it was.
Vessa leaned back in her chair and considered denying it. She often did, depending on the room, the company, and how much trouble the truth might cause. The call sign had followed her from Advanced Flight Training like smoke caught in fabric. There were worse names. There were kinder ones. None had stuck as well.
The Tellarite sat up straighter. “The Scorch?”
“That makes me sound like a disease.”
“You brought a Peregrine trainer back through atmosphere with port-side plating burned black.”
Vessa raised a finger. “Training craft.”
“You were ordered not to attempt the manoeuvre.”
“That part gets overplayed.”
“You lost comms, inertial trim, and half your stabiliser authority.”
“And yet,” Vessa said, tapping the table with two fingers, “here I am. Drinking your friend’s money.”
The human ensign looked delighted. The Tellarite looked as though he was deciding whether admiration required a formal apology to common sense.
Behind them, the bar door opened and let in a slice of wet San Francisco afternoon. Vessa glanced up by habit. Two Starfleet officers entered, both in uniform, both too clean. One wore lieutenant’s pips. The other had the unmistakable posture of someone who had spent the day directing traffic and resenting every molecule of it.
Transport coordination, then.
Vessa checked the time.
1619.
Plenty.
The lieutenant spotted her almost immediately. That was the trouble with the eyebrow scar, the Bajoran nose ridges, and the old flight jacket with scorch-darkened seams. She was hard to mistake for someone else unless someone else had also made a hobby out of looking like a disciplinary footnote.
“Lieutenant Ralen?”
The two ensigns went quiet in the way junior officers did when rank entered the ecosystem.
Vessa did not stand. “Depends how official this is.”
“Your transport window is at 1700.”
“That is an hour from now.”
“Forty minutes.”
“That’s still an hour if you’re optimistic.”
The lieutenant stopped beside the table. His gaze moved from the cards to the credits to her split knuckle. “Do I need to ask?”
“No.”
“Good. I didn’t want to.”
The Tellarite muttered, “She cheated.”
Vessa pointed at him without looking. “You’re alive because I like you.”
The lieutenant exhaled through his nose. There was almost a laugh in it, but he murdered it before it could damage his dignity. “Command requested all incoming flight officers report promptly. The Orcrist has begun receiving new crew ahead of final operational clearance.”
“I know.”
“The CAG will expect you.”
“I know that too.”
“Then perhaps you should consider making your way to transport operations.”
Vessa finished her drink and set the glass down with care. “You always this much fun, Lieutenant?”
“Only with officers whose records arrive before they do.”
The human ensign made a small noise that might have been awe. Vessa gave him a warning look. He shut up.
She stood then, slinging the duffel over one shoulder. The old ache moved under her ribs, not pain exactly, more memory wearing steel-capped boots. New ship. New pilots. New command staff deciding what sort of problem she was going to be. It should have felt familiar by now.
It did.
That was the part she disliked.
At the bar, she dropped half the winnings beside her empty glass. “For the table.”
The bartender, an older Bolian with kind eyes and no visible patience for nonsense, looked at the credits, then at her hand. “You bleed on my table, Scorch?”
Vessa glanced at her knuckles. “Not much.”
“That is not no.”
“Put it on my tab.”
“You do not have a tab.”
“Then this is an emotional opportunity for both of us.”
The Bolian shook his head, but his mouth twitched. “Get out before someone promotes you again.”
“Terrible thing to say to a person.”
Outside, San Francisco smelled of rain, salt, transport exhaust, and too many flowers trying to prove civilisation had won. Vessa stepped onto the pavement and paused beneath the awning. The sky had gone silver over the bay. Across the water, Starfleet structures rose clean and bright against the cloud, all glass, metal, and impossible ideals.
She had hated it the first time she saw it.
That was not entirely true. She had wanted to hate it. She had arrived at the Academy with a chip on her shoulder, a duffel full of borrowed clothes, and the firm belief that polished places existed to look down on people like her. San Francisco had been too soft, too clean, too sure of itself. Nobody had checked the sky before stepping outside. Nobody listened for failing thrusters in the distance. Nobody seemed to understand that safety was a mood, not a fact.
Then flight training had started, and the city had become background noise to the only thing that mattered.
She shifted her duffel and started walking.
The lieutenant fell into step beside her. “You know, most incoming Deputy CAGs arrive with more ceremony.”
“Most incoming Deputy CAGs are overcompensating.”
“That may be the first time anyone has accused senior flight officers of too much ceremony and not enough ego.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“Your CAG has requested you review East Mark’s readiness schedule tonight.”
“Of course he has.”
“He?”
“Statistical guess.”
“Hmm.”
Vessa’s mouth curved slightly. “Better.”
The lieutenant glanced at her. “You know him?”
“No.”
“That sounded approving for someone you don’t know.”
“I like being wrong when it improves the room.”
They passed a group of cadets coming the other way, all damp hair, pressed uniforms, and the brittle excitement of people who had not yet learned what space could take from them. One of them noticed Vessa’s flight jacket. Another noticed the call sign patch, half-hidden under the strap of her duffel.
SCORCH.
The cadet whispered something to the others. Vessa pretended not to hear. She heard everything.
For half a step, she saw Jaro instead. Nineteen, grinning, leaning against the side of their father’s shuttle with grease on his cheek and a stolen ration bar in his hand. The memory came without asking, sharp and stupid and gone before it could become anything useful.
She kept walking.
Transport Operations was busier than she liked. Officers, civilians, cargo techs, families saying goodbye, crewmen trying to look calm while clutching transfer orders. A child cried near one of the waiting areas. Somewhere to the left, someone argued with a transport chief about baggage restrictions, which was a bold choice in a building full of people who could scatter a person into atoms for a living.
Vessa stepped onto the incoming crew platform at 1657.
The lieutenant checked her name off on a padd. “Almost early.”
“Careful. You’ll ruin my reputation.”
“I suspect your reputation is load-bearing.”
She snorted despite herself.
A transport chief looked up from the console. “USS Orcrist, one to beam up. Lieutenant Junior Grade Ralen Vessa, Deputy Commander Air Group.”
The title landed oddly in the air.
Vessa adjusted the duffel on her shoulder. For a second, she wanted the cockpit instead. Small space. Controls under her hands. Throttle, vector, roll, burn. Problems that moved fast enough to make sense. People were harder. Pilots were worse. Pilots looked at you like you knew where you were going and sometimes followed before you had decided whether you deserved it.
She stepped onto the pad.
The lieutenant gave her a small nod. “Good luck, Scorch.”
Vessa looked back, grey-green eyes bright with something that was almost amusement and almost a warning.
“Luck’s for people who fly badly.”
The transporter took her before anyone could answer, San Francisco dissolving into light around her.
A Post By:
Lieutenant JG Ralen "Scorch" Vessa
Deputy CAG
Flight Commander, East Mark Flight
USS Orcrist
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