A Thing She Could Fix

Posted on Thu May 14th, 2026 @ 3:31pm by Ensign Sophie Bishop

1,249 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Year One: The Point of No Return
Location: Sophie's Quarters, USS Moore
Timeline: MD005 - 1712 hrs

Sophie made it all the way back to her quarters before she realised she was still carrying the padd.

Not just carrying it. Holding it too tightly, thumb pressed against the edge like she could leave a dent in Starfleet issue plastic by sheer stubbornness. She stopped just inside the door as it hissed shut behind her, looked down at it, then let out a small breath that was nearly a laugh and not quite.

“Well, that was smooth,” she murmured to herself.

Her quarters were quiet in that particular way starship quarters could be quiet. Not silent. Never silent. There was always the low hum in the walls, the almost-there vibration through the deck, the soft environmental hiss that meant several hundred people were alive and breathing because the ship said so. It ought to have been comforting.

Mostly, it was.

Sophie crossed to the little desk by the viewport and set the padd down beside the tidy stack of others. She had meant to go over the log again. Maybe add a note. Maybe prove to herself that the whole reason she had gone to Lieutenant Zhevou’s office in the first place had been professional and reasonable and not, in any way, a clumsy excuse to ask questions she hadn’t known how to ask.

She looked at the padd.

The padd looked innocent.

“That is your fault,” she told it softly.

The replicator gave her peppermint tea without argument, which was more than could be said for the rest of the day. She took the mug in both hands and stood there for a moment, letting the warmth sink into her palms. Back home, her mother had always said not every problem needed chasing the second it appeared. Some things needed ten minutes, a cup of something hot, and enough sense not to make it worse.

Sophie had never been especially good at the last part.

She moved to the viewport and sat sideways in the chair there, one knee drawn up under her. The stars beyond the glass were steady, stretched only faintly by the ship’s motion. Somewhere beneath all of that, underneath duty rosters and departmental reports and senior officers talking in tones that made the air feel thinner, the Moore kept going.

That was the part she understood best.

Broken circuit. Find the fault. Reroute the load. Keep the system running.

People were not circuits, though. Starfleet was not a machine no matter how much the Academy sometimes made it sound like one. There were rules, yes. Procedures. Articles. Chains of command. Neat little diagrams that showed who answered to whom and what to do when one person failed to answer at all.

None of those diagrams had included Lieutenant Zhevou asking her why she had signed up.

Sophie’s eyes drifted to the little holo-frame on her desk. Newton, the family cat, frozen mid-stretch in a patch of Oklahoma sunlight. Ridiculous creature. Mean to curtains. Sweet to exactly three people and one old quilt. Sophie had brought the holo because it made her quarters feel less temporary, and because sometimes, when the ship felt too bright and too polished, it helped to remember dust on boots and porch screens and her mother yelling through the house that someone had left tack in the mudroom again.

‘Why did I sign up?’

She knew the clean answer. She could give that one in uniform, back straight, eyes forward. Service. Exploration. Duty. The betterment of the Federation and its ideals.

All true.

None of it wrong.

Just not the whole of it.

She had signed up because Starfleet had seemed like the place where things were put right. Where frightened people got rescued, broken things got repaired, and no one important shrugged and said that was just how the universe worked. She had signed up because her father spoke about the uniform like it meant something solid. Because the Academy had taught her that systems could be trusted if good people kept them honest. Because she liked the idea that, somewhere out past the comfortable edges of home, there were people who needed someone to keep the lights on and the doors opening.

She took a sip of tea and made a face. Too hot.

Of course it was too hot. She had not waited. There was probably a metaphor in that, but she was in no mood to be emotionally bullied by peppermint.

Dashku had not given her the sort of answer Sophie had expected. Not neat, not soft, not wrapped in something inspirational. She had talked about fear. About faith. About how quickly people could be led when they stopped trusting anything except the loudest voice in the room. About knowing who you were and standing there even if it meant standing alone.

Sophie had believed her.

That was the strangest part. Not that Dashku was right, exactly, though Sophie thought she was. It was that nothing about the conversation had made Starfleet feel smaller. Messier, maybe. Less like the shining thing from recruitment holos and Academy speeches. But not smaller.

More real.

She did not know if she liked that yet.

Her gaze dropped to the mug between her hands. The steam curled upward and vanished before it touched her face.

Senior officers were not supposed to argue where ensigns could hear. That had been the shape of it in her head. Problems went up the chain, got handled by people with more pips and more experience, and came back down as orders clean enough for everyone else to follow. That was not how things had felt lately. Things leaked. Feelings leaked. Doubt moved faster than official updates and settled into corners, into lounges, into the small pauses before someone answered a question too carefully.

And Anjar.

Sophie did not know Commodore Anjar. Not really. She knew the outline: orders, Romulans, Federation citizens, impossible choices wearing a Starfleet uniform. She wanted the answer to be simple because simple was kinder. Simple meant nobody had to sit alone with a choice that hurt no matter which way it turned.

But Dashku was right. Getting her to trial mattered. Not because Starfleet was perfect. Maybe not even because Command was right.

Because without the process, all that was left was fear wearing someone else’s certainty.

Sophie leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes.

‘I still believe in it.’

The thought came quietly. No trumpet call. No swell of Academy music. Just a small, stubborn thing sitting in her chest.

‘I do.’

But maybe believing in Starfleet did not mean pretending it never cracked. Maybe it meant noticing the cracks and still choosing not to kick at them just because everyone else was scared. Maybe it meant doing the log properly even when the ship felt strange. Making the handover clear. Checking the small things. Keeping the lights on.

She opened her eyes again.

The tea had cooled enough to drink.

Sophie stood, crossed back to the desk, and picked up the padd. The report was fine. Of course it was fine. Dashku had known that before Sophie walked in.

Still, Sophie opened it, added one short note to the end of the handover summary, and saved it.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing grand.

Just a clearer flag on a minor routing delay and a suggested check for the next shift.

A thing that was nearly broken.

A thing she could fix.

 

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