Trauma Reflection

Posted on Sat Jan 24th, 2026 @ 6:54am by Major Samantha Snyder

700 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: The Hand That Rocks The Babe
Location: Marine Storage
Timeline: Current

The compartment lights in Marine Storage Locker Three illuminated the room softly as Major Samantha Snyder worked in practiced silence.

Rifle components were cleaned and reassembled with mechanical precision. Power packs were slotted into foam-lined racks. Environmental seals were checked twice, then once more for habit rather than necessity. Everything had to be perfect before Velis III. A viral outbreak didn’t allow room for error, panic, hesitation, or faulty equipment could kill just as efficiently as any enemy.

She knelt, sliding a sealed deployment crate back into its housing.

That was when she saw it.

The fabric was folded neatly inside a narrow personal storage drawer, something she hadn’t opened in since that night. A simple civilian top, dark blue, old Earth cotton blend. Nothing remarkable about it at first glance.

Except she knew exactly what she’d been wearing when it happened. Samantha’s hand froze inches from the cloth and for a moment, the compartment seemed to narrow. She had forgotten she’d put it there. Forgotten the drawer. Forgotten the fabric. Forgotten everything about that night.

.....or so she’d believed.

It came back in fragments: blurred corridors that weren’t real, voices echoing where no voices should have been, the weight of fear twisting into violence. The dream had felt real. Too real. And Bianca—standing where an enemy should have been.

Her fists clenched unconsciously. She remembered waking with the taste of panic in her mouth. The horror afterward. The look on Bianca’s battered and bruised face. The sickening realization that it hadn’t been a training simulation or combat reflex—but her own mind turning against her while she slept.

Starfleet could prepare officers for war zones, alien pathogens, and planetary collapse. No manual existed for facing what you were capable of when you weren’t awake.

Samantha swallowed and forced herself to breathe.

She had sealed the clothing away afterward without thinking, stuffed it into storage like unexploded ordnance, something dangerous best kept out of sight. Then she’d buried herself in duty, drills, reports, readiness cycles. The Dreadnought never stopped moving, and neither had she.

Until now. Her fingers brushed the fabric at last. It was cool, familiar, and it made her stomach knot.

Velis III loomed ahead. A world on the brink. A virus that didn’t care about rank insignia or moral certainty. Her Marines would be looking to her when boots hit contaminated soil.

She couldn’t afford hesitation, couldn’t afford ghosts. With a slow exhale, Samantha folded the garment tighter and placed it back into the drawer. She sealed it this time—not to hide from it, but to acknowledge it was real… and contained. The past didn’t get to decide who she was today.

She straightened, shoulders squaring as the locker sealed with a sharp hiss. Her armor waited beside her, scarred, reliable, honest in a way memories never were. Major Samantha Snyder clipped her combadge back into place.

Sam leaned against the closed door of the locker as the visions swept through her like a storm. The assault, the panic, the fear, the run to the marine deck, hiding in a shower. She remembered the bout with the Colonel, at the time she hated him for what he'd done but looking back, he was simply trying to be a friend in a way marines knew best.

Sam had nearly lost Bianca, the one woman who was patient, stood by her, even took her out of the uniform of the Major and into a dress like a woman. At the time it felt alien, Sam in a dress...a marine, she had everything she needed and it came in the form of a green uniform, Bianca changed all of that. The recovery for Sam at least was still ongoing, in the deepest recesses of her mind she worried that a flinch in bed would spark a repeat.

Sam remembered one night she wrapped her hands in a pillowcase, an act to prevent her lashing out or at least to wake her before anything happened.

Some things, some.....events, were harder to let go. Others would haunt, this would be both for Sam.

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