General musings from a Lanthanite

Posted on Thu Jun 18th, 2026 @ 4:16pm by Lieutenant JG Dan Murphy
Edited on Thu Jun 18th, 2026 @ 4:18pm

469 words; about a 2 minute read

The silence is the loudest part.

When you spend eleven months running tactical simulations on a Sovereign-class starship, your brain tunes into a specific frequency. You get used to the low, rhythmic thrum of the warp core vibrating through the deckplates. You expect the sharp, high-pitched chirp of the main sensor array updating your tactical grid every three seconds.

Now? Nothing.

The Liberty is completely powered down for core maintenance. No hum. No chirps. Just the echoing clank of Starbase 84’s engineering drones scraping micro-meteorite scoring off our primary hull.

We took a beating in the Paulson Nebula. Three weeks ago, a localized plasma storm caught us with our shields down during a routine patrol. As Strategic Operations Chief, it was my job to predict the environmental shifts. I miscalculated the dissipation rate of the secondary wave by four minutes.

Four minutes is an eternity when you are responsible for the safety of seven hundred people.The hull integrity dropped to forty percent before Captain Vance managed to pull us clear. Nobody died, thank the Prophets, but the forward torpedo bays are melted shut and half the main deflector dish is floating somewhere near the neutral zone.

Standing here in the quiet of my quarters, looking out the viewport at the massive spacedock scaffolding surrounding us, I feel incredibly small. On duty, surrounded by LCARS displays and tactical overlays, you feel like you are controlling the universe. You press a button, the ship moves. You plot a course, the stars bend. But when the power grid goes dark, you realise you are just a fragile biological organism trapped inside a metal shell, separated from a freezing vacuum by a few centimetres of tritanium alloy.

The engineers say we will be docked here for another twelve days. The crew is thrilled. Most of them are already down on the starbase promenade, spending their latinum on real food and holosuite programs.

I tried going down yesterday. I sat at a lounge in the civilian sector for twenty minutes, listening to people laugh and complain about cargo shipping schedules. I couldn't handle it. The contrast was too sharp. The galaxy feels like it is balancing on the edge of a knife right now, yet here everyone is, drinking synthehol and arguing over dabo wheels.

I came back aboard early. I prefer the ghosts of the empty corridors right now.

Tomorrow, the yard technicians start rebuilding the tactical sub-processors. I told Commander Chen I would oversee the installation personally. I need to make sure those sensor grids are calibrated perfectly. I am not going to miss another plasma spike. I am not going to let this ship get broken again.

Until then, I suppose I will just sit here in the dark, waiting for the heartbeat of the Liberty to come back online.

 

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