The Shape of Belonging - II - That Could Have Gone Better

Posted on Fri Sep 4th, 2026 @ 9:13pm by Commander Rosa Coy

1,461 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: USS Veyra

I have learned that embarrassment has a very particular temperature.

It begins somewhere behind the ears. Then it moves down the neck, across the shoulders, and eventually settles in the stomach with enough heat to make you consider whether abandoning your career and returning to Bajor might be a perfectly reasonable response to even a small professional disagreement. This particular lesson began three months after I reported aboard the Veyra.

At the time, I'd been feeling confident. Perhaps overly so. That should have been my first warning. The assignment was rather routine. We were moving agricultural equipment between two orbital platforms, with a cargo tug handling the heavier containers, while I brought the shuttle in alongside to transfer personnel and smaller equipment.

I had done the approach dozens of times. I had practiced it in countless simulations. I had flown it under Commander Coy's supervision. I knew the approach profile. I knew the traffic pattern. I knew exactly where I needed to be. What I did not know was that the cargo tug had been instructed to alter its holding position by approximately thirty meters. That information had been entered into the traffic system. I missed that particular nugget.

Some mistakes happen because someone makes a bad decision. Some mistakes happen because someone lacks sufficient information. And then some mistakes happen because someone is staring directly at the information they need and somehow manages to miss it completely. Mine was the third kind.

I remember Kade's voice in my ear. "Leftie, you're drifting."

"I have it."

"You're drifting."

"I said I have it."

There was a pause, then, much more carefully, he said, "You really should look left."

I looked left. The cargo tug filled the viewport. I remember thinking, with remarkable clarity, That is much closer than it was a moment ago. I pulled hard on the controls and the shuttle responded. The cargo tug responded. Neither of us responded quickly enough. The collision wasn't dramatic. There was no explosion or anything. No hull breach. There was simply a tremendous metallic thunk that traveled through the shuttle, followed by a second, softer impact as the cargo container mounted to the tug shifted against its restraints.

Then came the silence. I stared through the forward viewport. The cargo tug was still there. Very much still there. Very much in my way.

"Damage report," Kade said. I could hear him trying very hard not to laugh.

"Minor impact damage to the shuttle's starboard maneuvering assembly," I said.

"And the tug?"

I checked. "Minor structural scoring."

"Anything else?"

I looked at the cargo manifest, and my stomach dropped. Three containers had shifted. Their restraint indicators were still green, but the cargo integrity warning was flashing. I opened the external camera. The first container had developed a small rupture. Green material floated around it, oozed from it like a slime, hydroponic fertilizer.

I shut my eyes, and I considered my options. One involved resigning from Starfleet. Another involved changing my name. A third involved returning to Bajor, finding a quiet farm somewhere outside the city, and spending the rest of my life growing something that could never file a complaint with Starfleet Command.

"Leftie?"

I opened my eyes. Kade was still there. "I appear to have made a mistake."

"I noticed."

"Three containers."

"I noticed those too."

"I think I've ruined the fertilizer."

Kade finally laughed. I wanted the deck to open beneath me. Instead, I heard Chief Rell over the comm.

"Alright, who hit my cargo tug?"

I stared at the console.

Kade leaned closer. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yes." He smiled.

I opened the channel. "Chief Rell, I collided with the cargo tug."

There was a pause. "Why?"

I swallowed. "Because I failed to see the revised holding position."

Then Rell sighed. "All right."

That was it. No shouting. No accusation. Just, "All right." Somehow that made me feel worse. We completed the transfer with the assistance of the tug crew. Nobody was injured. The shuttle remained operational. The damaged fertilizer was contained, though three crates were eventually declared unusable. The official report took less than an hour.

The embarrassment lasted considerably longer. By the time I returned to the Veyra, I had already decided I would avoid the mess for a few days. That plan lasted approximately seven minutes. I walked in and found everyone eating dinner.

Kade looked up, and his normally smug face changed.

I knew immediately. "Don't." I distinctly remember growling.

He smiled. "I haven't said anything."

"You're thinking about it."

"I think about many things."

"You're thinking about the cargo tug."

Rell looked up from his meal. "The cargo tug?"

Thenn turned toward me. "Oh?"

That single syllable told me the story had already spread. I sat down.

Kade leaned back in his chair. "Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally flew a shuttle into a mooring beacon?"

I stared at him. "No."

"Good." He smiled. "Because that story is about me." Everyone looked at him. Kade continued. "I was nineteen. Academy training shuttle. Perfect weather. Perfect visibility. Perfect confidence."

Rell muttered, "That sounds dangerous already."

"It was." Kade looked at me. "I was showing off for a cadet instructor."

Thenn grinned. "Of course you were."

"I was demonstrating how quickly I could reverse a shuttle into a docking cradle."

"How quickly?"

"Very."

"How quickly?"

Kade looked down at his plate. "Faster than the mooring beacon could move."

The table erupted. I laughed before I could stop myself. Kade continued the story with increasing enthusiasm, explaining how the beacon had survived, how the shuttle had not been impressed, and how the instructor had apparently used the phrase "spectacularly unnecessary" three times in his report. By the time he finished, I had stopped thinking about my own mistake.

Looking around the table, everyone was laughing. Including me.

Kade pointed his fork at me. "See?"

"See what?"

"You're not the first."

I just looked at him.

He shrugged. "And you won't be the last."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I ate. The next week, Kade told the story again. Though he'd improved it, slightly. Apparently I had nearly destroyed a civilian cargo tug while transporting enough fertilizer to sustain an entire colony.

Thenn corrected him. "It was only three containers."

"Three containers of fertilizer."

"Three damaged containers."

"Three containers that had a promising future."

Rell added, "The fertilizer had a family?"

I laughed so hard I nearly choked. The story became a small tradition. Every week, someone added something. The collision became an impact event. The impact event became a navigational demonstration. Eventually, Kade claimed I had performed the maneuver intentionally to test the structural integrity of the tug. I denied that version, but of course nobody believed me.

Months passed. The story remained. And somewhere along the way, I stopped being embarrassed by it. I began correcting the details. That was how I knew it had changed, that I had changed. One evening, we were sitting in the mess when Thenn started telling a new officer about the cargo tug. I leaned forward. "You're telling it wrong." Everyone went quiet.

Kade slowly lowered his fork. "Excuse me?"

"The tug was thirty meters outside of its original holding position."

Kade's expression became suspicious. "Continue."

"I failed to notice the update."

Rell grinned. "You're admitting it?"

"I've always admitted it."

"You called the collision a navigational anomaly."

"I was under emotional distress."

Thenn laughed.

Kade leaned back. "She's become one of us."

I rolled my eyes. Then I smiled. I thought about that first night, when I had sat alone in my quarters convinced that one mistake had exposed every weakness I possessed. How I had wanted to go home. Not because Bajor was calling me. But because home was the place where I already knew who I was. The Veyra felt different. Here, I was new. I had been watched, measured, and mostly uncertain.

I'd thought belonging meant proving I deserved to stay. Now I understood something else. Belonging meant having people who remembered your mistakes and loved you enough to keep telling the story. I still check every revised traffic position twice. Sometimes three times. I will never make that particular mistake again. I know exactly where the cargo tug will be. And if someone on the Veyra ever lets me forget the day I hit it, I suppose I will have to admit that perhaps this is what family feels like.

They're embarrassing, yes. Loud, most definitely. Unforgiving, possibly, at least on the surface. Yet somehow, right now anyway, this is exactly where I am meant to be.

TBC

 

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