The Passenger

Posted on Sat Feb 14th, 2026 @ 5:48am by Lieutenant Anthony Cardel

Mission: Season 6: Episode 6: Conglomerate
Location: Gateway Anchorage 12
Timeline: May 24th, 2397
854 words - 1.7 OF Standard Post Measure

He was a passenger.

He blinked in boredom, his eyes drifting left to right along the crowded line. A transfer from a transfer to a transfer.

The line crept forward a single foot, and Anthony stepped up, ending up uncomfortably close to a group of older women chatting back and forth about something he couldn’t bring himself to care about. He wasn’t in a rush. The shuttle that would take him to wherever he was headed was at least six hours away. If he didn’t know better, his CO had arranged every possible layover to get him there.

Get him there as slowly as possible, his mind shouted. The thought echoed dully in his head. He should’ve felt something. Regret. Annoyance. Anything.

The line moved forward another foot.

He shuffled his bags along, accidentally bumping into the luggage of the women in front of him. One of them shot him a sharp glare. Her hair had once been an auburn, reddish brown, but now long streaks of grey framed her face.

Their eyes met. Her glare flared for a moment, rising to the slight he’d caused, then faltered. Confusion crossed her expression, followed by discomfort, and finally pity.

He looked away. It didn’t matter what her face had said. She didn’t know him. And if he was honest, he didn’t really know himself either. He was a passenger in his own life. He should’ve felt despair or an existential crisis.

Instead, it was just another motion.
Another corridor.
A set of doors opening and closing in front of him.

He didn’t have the agency he wanted in his life right now.

And even if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d actually use it.

Nothing else mattered.

The line moved forward another foot.

This time he kept a better distance from the group ahead of him. Whatever he was feeling wasn’t going to improve by getting into a shouting match with a handful of civilians. Even without a Starfleet uniform, it followed him everywhere “like an old tattoo he couldn’t quite scrub off.

His eyes dropped to his padd, still loaded with work he was finishing up for the USS Halcyon. Four years aboard the ship, and it all reduced to final confirmations and transfer notes. He’d once liked the work. Then he’d hated it. Now it was just motion. Clicks, references, confirmations. It used to excite him.

Before the Halcyon, there had been the USS Kestrel.

Back on the Kestrel, there had been a time when the smallest flicker of telemetry could set his pulse racing. That was how he’d uncovered the mole operating out of a local colony.

For months, the crew had been chasing what they thought was a nuisance pirate. Every time the colony gave Starfleet too wide a berth, several tons of equipment went missing. It drove the Andorian captain into a fury whenever his communications officer relayed yet another distress signal.

Everyone knew there was a mole. It was the only way an amateur pirate kept slipping through their fingers every single time. Over those months, the captain had changed everything. Sensor coverage. Patrol patterns. Even moving the ship to a four-shift rotation instead of three. Intel had been worked to exhaustion, and so had Anthony, trying to make sense of how they were being led around like a drunk at a bar.

It had been something about the Tuesday morning data syncs from the colony. A massive spike every week that overwhelmed the department. Hours spent combing through telemetry, searching for patterns. Nothing, week after week.

Until one afternoon, after lunch, when Anthony was sipping lukewarm coffee in a quiet office. Most of the work was already done. Only the smallest data sync remained, routine updates from the local trade board requesting equipment. The most boring data they received.

He nearly sprayed coffee across the console when he noticed the pattern.

The mole was a traffic controller, a former Starfleet officer no one had suspected. He’d been leaking information through requisition forms.

The former supply officer had mapped not only the USS Kestrel’s entire schedule, but the colony’s resupply timetable for the next three years. He’d grown lazy, slipping a quick update to his pirate contacts flying an old Klingon Bird-of-Prey. That mistake made Anthony a legend aboard the Kestrel.

The captain had been ecstatic, nearly sweeping him off his feet, promoting him to Lieutenant Junior Grade that very afternoon.

He’d felt pride that day.

Drinks flowed endlessly as the ship celebrated together. It’d been a good time. A hopeful future.

Even now, the memory pierced his apathy, and he grinned like a teenager recalling his first kiss.

The line moved forward another foot.

His mind snapped back as he finally reached the front of the queue. An older Bolian with thinning hair sat behind a console, leaning forward to give him a slow once-over with tired grey eyes.

“Where ya going, bud?”

Anthony smiled faintly and handed over his padd.

He was a passenger.