Phaedrae Journal Entry 4

Posted on Sun Mar 2nd, 2025 @ 4:26pm by Lieutenant Phaedrae Cyn

763 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Personal Logs, Journals, Letters Home, etc.
Timeline: approx. 25 years ago

It was a strange and sudden freedom I had. After nearly a full month of confinement in one form or another, I was allowed to move about the ship with minimal supervision. The crew consisted of twelve Bajorans—all men. Well, boys, really. I think the "captain" got the title just because he was the oldest. Early thirties, maybe. The engineer was the only one who seemed to know what he was doing, which I figured out just by listening to how the others talked. Later, I confirmed it in conversation with him—mostly because he wouldn’t shut up about it. He had opinions, particularly when ranting about the idiots who broke the plasma flow regulator.

I never really cared to learn his name, but when I did, I laughed. Renal. Maybe it means something noble in his native tongue, but in mine? Yeah, my brain went straight to a hundred different butthole jokes. (Silently, of course.)

The plasma flow regulator is a small but critical device that controls power distribution to non-essential systems. Most of the time, it’s fine. But when it fails, you feel it. The gravity in the cargo bay was going crazy, fluctuating between near-weightlessness and bone-crushing heaviness. Pretty sure it caused a few other problems, too, but since we weren’t docking with anything, no one cared yet.

Renal was a fat guy. And fixing the plasma flow regulator? That required squeezing into a cramped Jeffries tube, maneuvering around scorching-hot plasma conduits, and half-dismantling a panel just to reach the access point. He had two options: lose a quarter of his body weight or let the ship’s gravity continue its little tantrum.

Then he had a brilliant idea. And since I was bored out of my mind, I crawled into the Jeffries tube to do the repair.

The first thing you pass in there are cooling conduits. Cooling is a deceptive name. They weren’t cool at all. Then you get to the hot plasma conduits, which do not lie about being hot. My shirt almost singed when I stopped to wipe sweat out of my eyes.

Renal talked me through it, and I’ll admit, pulling bits and pieces out of the panel was kind of fun. It gave me something to do, and maybe I even learned a thing or two—but who wants to admit that? Between his lingering guilt for not feeding me when I first got here and his sudden gratitude for my help, Renal started thinking of me as a friend.

I still thought of him as my captor.

So, yeah. Weird work dynamic.

And at night, I was still stuck in Pet’s quarters. That was... gross. His stink had absorbed into everything. Even after I left, I could still smell it in my nose, like my brain refused to forget. The room itself was tiny—just enough space for a bed on one wall, a couch on the other, and a narrow walkway between. The floor? A landfill of dirty clothes and what I hope were just old food crumbs.

In this day and age, there’s no excuse for that. Three steps to the refresher, and poof, problem solved.

The first night, after I cleared enough of the couch to maybe think about sleeping, I used a blanket to make a little tent to hide in. The couch smelled disgusting. The blanket? Crispy. I fixed that the next day.

That night, as I lay curled up in my makeshift hideaway, I could hear Pet breathing. Then... other sounds.

My brother is almost eighteen years older than me and doesn’t live with us. My dad is (presumably) old enough to have the sense to keep that kind of thing private. So at first, I didn’t get what I was hearing.

Then I did.

I really, really wish I hadn’t.

By the second night, the room smelled a little fresher, the blanket was back to its original, pre-Pet state, and I settled onto the couch like a normal person. I heard the sounds again, but I refused to move or do anything to confirm my suspicions.

Unfortunately, denial only lasts so long.

He had stamina, I’ll give him that. Because if I was right—and by the end of the week, I was sure I was—he managed himself twice that night.

And the week continued like that.

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