The Quiet Between the Pulses

Posted on Fri Sep 19th, 2025 @ 6:22pm by Captain David Hawkins
Edited on on Fri Sep 19th, 2025 @ 6:22pm

Mission: Between the Pulses
Location: Somewhere Near Velis Prime
Timeline: MD 0
1108 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure

/// ON ///

She sat alone in the cockpit of the shuttle, stars crawling past in a silent, beautiful stream of light and void. The hum of the vessel was constant, soothing. Like a heart, hers? ... pulsing with steady purpose now that her thoughts were no longer clouded by whispers not her own.

Her fingers, still small childlike, rested on the panel before her, twitching with an instinct she hadn't learned but somehow always known. She had only left the atmosphere an hour ago, and yet everything behind her already felt like a dream. A lie so big it had shaped every corner of her life and made her believe she was something she wasn't: a savior. A healer. A chosen one.

But the lie was rotting now. Peeling away like paint in the rain, and what remained underneath was too raw to look at.

She closed her eyes, and let the memory take her.

She remembered the fires. The screams. The sick pressing against the steps of the shrine with fevered prayers on their lips. Mothers holding limp children. Old men crawling when their legs gave out. And she—little Vashta—coming down the steps barefoot, smiling softly, gently touching their foreheads.

They would gasp. Shudder. Cry. And then they would rise.

They said it was a miracle. They said the gods had given her light and power. She believed them.

She wanted to believe them.

But now she knew. There were no gods in the mountains. Only steel. And silence. And a Queen that bore her face.

How strange it felt now, looking back on it all. Her “blessings” were nothing more than programmed dispersals. The shrine? A relay node, channeling dormant Borg subroutines through her body. Her “healing” was not divine. It was a subtle assimilation—so slow, so gentle, no one had realized.

Not even her.

She had been taught to love it. To revere it. And Moman… Moman had been the architect of her worship.

Her brow furrowed. She touched the scar under her right eye—still faint, still tender. She had no memory of how she got it. Just that it bled in the temple when she fell during her visions. She had thought it was part of a holy ritual. Moman told her the gods had marked her.

But now she remembered the green lights above her. The hiss of machinery. The click of an injector.

Moman had lied.

That name—Moman—it caught in her throat now. He had raised her. Held her when she cried. Told her stories of her father’s strength and her mother’s beauty. Of gods in the sky and purpose in her blood. Of destiny. Of service.

She used to braid his long hair for him as a child. He'd smile, tired and old, and tell her that she had the hands of a healer, not a ruler.

"Let me carry the burden, child," he would whisper. "Just bring them light."

But the light had teeth.

He hadn’t just protected her. He had crafted her. Built her worldview like a cage made of praise and ritual and ceremony. And inside it, she had lived thinking she was free.

Why did it hurt so much? She understood now. She saw his logic. A fragment of the Collective had survived in him—embedded like a shard of glass in the brain. He had resisted full assimilation, but something had remained. Faith, yes, but twisted. Shaped into doctrine. Obsession.

She was the Queen to him. Not just a savior. A weapon.

Not his daughter.

Not his beloved Princess.

Just a reborn code wrapped in soft flesh.

The stars outside blurred as she shifted the shuttle to higher warp. She didn’t know where she was going. That was the only true thing right now.

Where could she go?

Starfleet had offered to help her—to “deactivate” the nanites. Make her human again. Whatever that meant. Strip her of her “gift.”

But the nanites were hers. She had not asked for them, no. But they were a part of her. They hummed under her skin with thoughts she now controlled. They answered her. They obeyed her. They no longer belonged to the Collective. And she no longer belonged to Moman.

She thought of the shrine. Of the people kneeling in the square, waiting for her blessing. Would they survive without her? Would they heal on their own?

She wasn’t sure. And it tore her apart.

She had wanted to help. She had loved helping. It had made her feel alive. Useful. Holy.

But was that her feeling, or was it just another line in the programming?

Even now, a part of her yearned to go back. Just one more child healed. One more mother’s relief. One more day pretending that she was what they believed her to be.

But lies, no matter how noble, are still chains.
She had to be more than what others made of her.

Moman’s last words rang in her ears. "You are the Queen. You were made to be more. They cannot stop what you are."

And she had looked at him—this man who had held her when she had nightmares, who had wept when she was first crowned—and said the only thing she could:

“I was made, yes. But not for you.”

Her hands trembled now. Not with fear, but with feeling.

She felt everything.

The loss of home.

The betrayal.

The shattered worship.

The shattered self.

But beneath it, something else stirred. Something colder. Sharper. More... focused.

She had no people now.

No world.

No gods.

But she had knowledge. And freedom. And if she was the shadow of a Queen… then it was time she decided what kind of Queen she wanted to be.

Not for domination. Not for assimilation. Not for control.

But for truth.

For herself.

For what could be.

The nav console beeped. A proximity alert. She paused. A Federation beacon. A colony station, far off the charts, small, isolated. No doubt with a medical center. A place to gather supplies. Fuel. Data.

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing.

Would they recognize her?

Perhaps.

Would they fear her?

Definitely.

She smiled softly.

Let them.

Let them see her.

Let them wonder.

Then let them learn that the future did not belong to tyrants in steel and shadows, nor old men who prayed to decayed gods. The future would be made, one moment at a time, by the ones who refused to be chained.

Even if they were born in chains.

Princess Vashta no longer existed.

Only Vashta remained.

And she was coming.

/// OFF ///