The Ritual of the Phaser Rifle

Posted on 13 Dec 2025 @ 12:30am by Ensign Veenak & Crewman Apprentice Thobius Chaluk

1,337 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Shakedown
Location: Various Locations, USS Cygnus

Crewman Thobius Chaluk stood at the central console of the Security Department, staring at the blinking lights with the intensity of a Romulan making a declaration before the Praetorate. It was not the kind of intensity one typically reserved for the dramatic. No, this was for something far more monumental: reassigning the locker inventory for the department’s stasis rifles.

The Cygnus was en route to a routine Federation outpost along the Vega Epsilon Sector, and the Security Department had decided, for reasons no one had explained other than “efficiency,” that all gear needed to be cataloged, counted, and relabeled. The task fell, as always, to the lowest-ranking, most eager-eyed crewman. And so here stood Thobius Chaluk, nineteen years old, in the middle of a room filled with neatly stacked rifles, belts, hand phasers, and assorted sundries, wondering if the universe had any greater purpose than the careful alignment of phaser rifle serial numbers.

He sighed audibly, not loudly, just enough to register with the Romulan’s own internal sense of formality and disappointment. “Perhaps,” he muttered under his breath, “this is the true test of loyalty. Or insanity.” The console’s holographic interface blinked with a gentle green glow, reminding him that he had exactly twelve hours to log all 924 rifles into the new database format, complete with maintenance status, last discharge date, and current hull-side assignments.

Thobius approached the first locker with ceremonial care. There was a certain art to this task, he thought, even if the artistry was invisible to anyone but himself. He opened the locker and extracted Rifle 42-B. It was cold to the touch, freshly sterilized, and bore the faint smell of oiled metal, an oddly comforting scent, reminiscent of his father’s workshop back on Romulus. “Rorem would have approved,” he whispered, as if the rifle itself were listening.

He swiped through the console, carefully typing in the serial number: SR-042B. He double-checked the status: online, ready, unblemished. Good. Excellent. Perfect. One rifle down, 923 to go.

As he replaced the rifle in its newly assigned slot (exactly one locker to the left of where it had previously resided) he noticed Ensign Veenak leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, smirking with a barely-contained chuckle.

“Making friends with the rifles again, Chaluk?” she asked, her tone teasing but sharp.

Thobius looked up slowly, eyes narrowing. “They appreciate my attention to detail. You, however, would have no idea what it means to respect the history of stasis weaponry. Ma'am” His voice was formal, clipped, the Romulan equivalent of polite, but respectful, dismissal.

Veenak snorted, leaning against the frame. “Sure, sure. I’ll remember that when the rifles start writing poems about you.”

Ignoring her, Thobius returned to the console. He felt the familiar vibration under his boots, the Cygnus’s warp nacelles were still not perfectly aligned after the recent recalibration, and every footstep sent a small shudder through his knees and up his back. Most crew found it annoying. Thobius found it… meditative. Like the steady pulse of a heartbeat beneath the chaos of starship life. At some point, Ensign Veenak had disappeared, onto another assignment, likely from her superior officer.

By the fourth locker, he began cataloging patterns in the rifles’ serial numbers. There was symmetry to them, a hidden structure that most officers ignored in their haste. “SR-042B next to SR-043C,” he muttered to himself, “logically, the numerical sequence implies the maintenance cycle should follow a staggered pattern… yes… perfect.” He tapped the console, realigning entries in what he hoped was an optimal security distribution schema.

Around the tenth locker, the first complication arrived. Rifle 57-F had been returned from the training holodeck in a slightly disheveled state. The safety clip was loose, the barrel polished unevenly, and someone (probably one of the younger ensigns) had left a faint smudge of fingerprints on the stock.

Thobius regarded it with suspicion. “Who dares defile the purity of the firearm?” he muttered, dragging his thumb over his recording PADD to log the discrepancy. “A note will suffice. Maintenance schedule updated. Anomaly noted. Future disciplinary review unnecessary… for now.” He knew he had less than zero authority to dole out punishment, but he did allow himself a brief moment to relish in the thought that someday he would.

He replaced the rifle, adjusted the locker to a precise 2.3-degree angle, and moved on. By now, the vibrations underfoot were steady enough that he began imagining them as a kind of musical accompaniment, a soft hum that punctuated the tedium with rhythm. He hummed quietly to himself, a tune from a Romulan lullaby his mother had taught him, barely audible above the hum of the ship.

By mid-afternoon, Thobius was fully immersed in what he privately called, The Ritual of the Rifles. He had cataloged 587 of the 924 weapons, each entry treated with the solemnity of a ceremonial address to the Senate. Even the smallest details mattered: the subtle scratches, the polish streaks, the angle of the straps. Each rifle had a story, and in his mind, he was chronicling a small fragment of history aboard the Cygnus.

He paused briefly to stretch, running a hand through his black hair. “It is… perhaps less dramatic than boarding a Klingon raider or investigating a temporal anomaly,” he muttered. “Yet the balance of order depends on such… minutiae.”

Just then, a small alarm beeped on the console. His heart jumped for a fraction of a second — a real emergency? A shipwide security breach? No. It was Locker 99-B. A misaligned entry flagged by the automated system.

Thobius sighed. He walked over, lifting the rifle with exaggerated solemnity. “I see you are testing my patience, SR-099B,” he said softly. The console displayed the issue. Someone had mistyped the maintenance code, marking it as “Requires Cleaning” when it was already sterilized. He corrected the entry and gave the rifle a slight nod, as if it understood its error.

The shift continued in this rhythm: rifle, log, locker, console. Occasionally, some officer would wander in with a casual observation, which Thobius absorbed and nodded to, though his mind was firmly elsewhere. He imagined, with vivid detail, the rifles standing like sentinels along the lockers, silently guarding the ship and its crew.

Hours passed. By the 820th rifle, Thobius was beginning to feel the subtle ache of repetitive motion, the stiffness in his shoulders, the dull thrum of concentration. He paused, surveying the neat rows of gleaming stasis rifles, all aligned, all cataloged, all accounted for which he had just completed. He allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. The Security Departments phaser rifles, at least for this day, was perfectly organized.

He leaned against a console and closed his eyes for a moment, imagining his father Rorem shaking his head with mild approval, his sister Dimila giving a sarcastic thumbs-up from the Holodeck’s family log, and his mother Bireesa quietly frowning at how seriously he took even the smallest duties. And somewhere in the background, the faint vibrations of the warp nacelles, imperfect but steady, reminded him that even a starship in motion could find its rhythm, if one only paid attention.

By the time the Cygnus passed into the next sector, Thobius had completed the last log entry. The rifles were cataloged, lockers aligned, and the Security Department rifles orderly. He stepped back, feeling a subtle pride in his work. It was, admittedly, mundane. But within that mundane task, he had discovered a rhythm, a story, and a quiet measure of control over the chaos of life aboard a starship.

“Order,” he whispered softly to the empty room, “is a victory in itself.”

And with that, Crewman Thobius Chaluk returned to his console to perform the final system checks, still vigilant, still precise, still quietly amused by the absurdity of a nineteen-year-old Romulan taking profound satisfaction from the perfect alignment of stasis rifles.


OFF

Crewman Apprentice Thobius Chaluk
Security
USS Cygnus

and

Ensign Veenak (briefly)
Operations Officer
USS Cygnus

 

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