Between Coordinates
Posted on Sun Feb 22nd, 2026 @ 6:41am by Maren Malbrooke
Edited on on Sun Feb 22nd, 2026 @ 12:21pm
588 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission:
The Mysteries of Maren
Location: Unknown Space, Prime Universe
Timeline: MD001 0945 hrs Prime Timeline
The plan had not been dramatic.
That was what her father had insisted.
It was a relocation. A corridor window opened by old contacts. A patched civilian shuttle with a reinforced warp core that Tyler trusted more than he trusted optimism. They would move sectors, change identifiers, disappear again.
Maren had argued anyway.
She had argued about the transfer orders. About the regulation facility. About not running this time.
Tyler had shut her down with that still, unyielding look that meant the conversation was over.
The last thing she remembered clearly was the tremor in the deck as the shuttle spooled into an emergency micro-warp jump. Dominion patrol signatures had flared too early. Someone had sold the corridor. Or the timing had slipped. It didn’t matter.
The stars had stretched wrong.
Then everything had torn sideways.
Now—
Maren came back to consciousness in fragments.
Sound first. A strained, irregular hum. Not the clean resonance of a stable core — this was ragged, stuttering. Something vented somewhere in uneven bursts. The air smelled burnt and metallic.
Then pain.
Her cheek pressed against cracked deck plating. The shuttle was angled slightly, one side lower than the other. Emergency lighting pulsed in dim amber instead of steady white. A thin trail of smoke curled lazily from an overhead conduit.
She inhaled and tasted blood.
When she tried to move, her body answered in protest. Her shoulder throbbed. Her ribs felt compressed, like she’d been caught in a restraint field too long. She lifted her head slowly, vision swimming, and warm liquid slipped down past her temple.
Her forehead had split open.
The cockpit partition ahead of her was fractured, one side partially collapsed inward. A panel sparked intermittently, showering brief flashes of light across the damaged interior. A bulkhead seam had split along the starboard side, but it hadn’t breached. The shuttle had survived something it shouldn’t have.
She pushed onto one elbow and the deck shifted faintly under her weight, unstable but holding. Warning indicators blinked erratically across the forward console. Warp core offline. Structural integrity fluctuating but intact. Navigation unreadable.
Memory came rushing back in a single sharp wave.
The patrol signatures.
Her father’s voice — calm, clipped, controlled.
The surge in her chest when she felt too many emotions too close at once.
The way space had bent wrong.
“Dad—”
The word tore out before she could stop it.
No answer.
No movement from the pilot’s seat.
Her breathing quickened. Not panic. Not yet. She reached outward instinctively with her senses, bracing for the familiar cold pressure of Dominion presence. For the layered emotional suppression that always accompanied enforcement vessels.
There was nothing.
No patrol tension. No structured hostility. No compliance broadcasts humming in the background of space itself.
Just… openness.
It hit her harder than the crash.
She dragged herself upright, gripping the side of a damaged console for balance. Her pupils widened as she scanned the cockpit display. The star charts that flickered weakly across the screen were formatted in Federation registry code.
Clean.
Unoccupied.
Her jaw clenched.
“That’s not possible,” she muttered, voice rough.
The shuttle creaked around her, wounded but alive. Whatever had happened during the jump had not killed her.
It had taken her somewhere else.
And she was standing.
Bleeding. Bruised. Disoriented.
But standing.
If someone came through that hatch, they would not find her on the floor.
They would find her ready to fight.
A Post By:
Maren Malbrooke
Civilian, USS Pioneer
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