What Remains
The memorial wall stretched the entire length of Corridor Seven.
Chief Petty Officer Dominic Reyes walked past it every day on his way to the engineering bay. Three thousand, four hundred, and twelve names etched into black granite, gold letters catching the overhead lights. Crew members of the UEN Resolute, lost during the Battle of Harvest Moon.
He’d stopped reading the names months ago. He knew them all anyway.
The Resolute was back in service now. Eighteen months in drydock, a complete refit of the forward sections, new plating where Vethrak weapons had torn through the hull. She looked almost normal if you didn’t know where to look. If you couldn’t see the subtle differences where reconstruction met original structure, the seams that marked where the ship had been broken and remade.
Reyes could see them. He saw them every time he closed his eyes.
His shift started at 0600. Reactor maintenance, the kind of steady, predictable work that kept the Resolute running and kept his hands busy. The new crew were good: young, eager, trained on systems that had been theoretical when Reyes had started his career. They didn’t flinch at shadows. They hadn’t learned to yet.
“Chief?” Ensign Kowalski appeared at his elbow, datapad in hand. Fresh from the Academy, maybe twenty-three years old. He had that look they all had now, the ones who’d grown up during the war. Serious. Focused. Old in ways that had nothing to do with age.
“What’ve you got?”
“Coolant flow in Section Four is running twelve percent above baseline. Probably a sensor drift, but regulations say—”
“I’ll check it personally.” Reyes took the datapad. “Good catch.”
Kowalski nodded and returned to his station. No unnecessary words, no small talk. The new ones were efficient. Reyes missed the banter sometimes, the easy jokes that used to fill the engineering bay. He missed a lot of things.
Section Four was deep in the ship’s core, past the memorial wall, past the rebuilt corridors, into territory that still felt like the old Resolute. The deck plates here were original, scarred and worn by decades of boots. The walls carried ghosts of old postings, faded notices that no one had bothered to remove.
The coolant sensor was exactly where the schematics said it would be: a small box mounted at knee height, blinking amber. Reyes knelt, pulled out his toolkit, and got to work.
The sensor drift turned out to be a corroded contact, an easy fix. He replaced the component, ran a diagnostic, watched the readings settle back to normal. Twelve minutes of work. Simple. Satisfying.
He should have headed back to the main bay. Instead, he sat on the deck plates, back against the wall, and let himself breathe.
Section Four had been Officer’s Country before the refit. Lieutenant Commander Sarah Chen had bunked three doors down. Petty Officer First Class Miguel Santos had run the auxiliary systems from a console that no longer existed. Ensign Yuki Tanaka had decorated her door with pictures of cats, a small rebellion against regulation that everyone pretended not to notice.
The pictures were gone now. The door was gone. Everything was new and clean and functional.
Reyes pulled a small object from his pocket. A patch, faded and worn: the Resolute‘s original emblem, a sword crossed with a star. He’d found it in the debris during the evacuation, tucked into a corner that the fire hadn’t reached. He didn’t know whose it had been. It didn’t matter.
Three thousand, four hundred, and twelve names on the memorial wall.
One ship, rebuilt and returned to service.
One crew, scattered across the fleet: some reassigned, some retired, some still here, walking corridors that remembered what they’d lost.
The Resolute was a good ship. Strong. Capable. Ready for whatever came next. The refit had made her better than she’d ever been, upgraded systems and reinforced hull and all the improvements that eighteen months of drydock could provide.
Reyes tucked the patch back into his pocket and stood.
The memorial wall waited in Corridor Seven. Three thousand, four hundred, and twelve names catching the light. He would walk past it again tomorrow, and the day after, and every day until his service ended or the ship found another battle.
The new crew would learn the names eventually. They would add their own ghosts to the walls, their own scars to the deck plates. That was the job. That was the war.
Reyes returned to the engineering bay. Kowalski looked up from his station, eyebrow raised in question.
“Sensor drift,” Reyes said. “Fixed.”
He picked up his next work order and got back to it. The Resolute needed him. The dead needed him to keep going.
He could do that much.
The UEN Resolute (CVN-7) returned to active duty in Year 9 following extensive reconstruction. She currently serves as the flagship of Battlegroup Seventeen. A memorial service is held annually on the anniversary of the Battle of Harvest Moon.