Cal's War Pt 5: To The Edge of the Earth Part 2
Posted on Fri Jul 24th, 2026 @ 10:17pm by Lieutenant Callum Cowan
3,670 words; about a 18 minute read
Mission:
Flashbacks
Location: RF Wayfarer
Timeline: Early 2381
Cal threw Sepik into Telluride's shuttle bay at a speed he'd have strongly advised against under almost any other circumstance.
The runabout shot through the bay doors before rotating sharply on her axis, bleeding away speed in one smooth motion before settling onto the deck scarcely twenty metres from the waiting evacuees.
Forty frightened faces stared back at them.
A handful were wounded.
Thankfully, none appeared critical.
Before the landing gear had even finished taking the runabout's weight, Mateo had already dropped the boarding ramp.
"Move!" he shouted, waving the exhausted engineers aboard. "Let's go!"
Nobody needed telling twice.
The line surged forward.
Within moments every seat aboard _Sepik_ had been filled.
The boarding ramp rose once more.
Cal didn't wait for it to seal completely before pushing the throttles forward.
The runabout leapt back into open space.
---
Chaos.
There was no other word for it.
The tactical display had become a blur of moving contacts while the open comm channel dissolved into overlapping voices.
"Whoa—Nearly!"
"...That hurt..."
"...Can't take much more of that..."
"Incoming torpedo volley!"
"Break left! Break left!"
"...I'm hit!"
"...Damn it, I'm losing power!"
"I've got you covered!"
Cal's hands danced across the controls, weaving _Sepik_ through drifting debris and bursts of emerald Borg weapons fire.
He glanced sideways.
"They're taking a beating."
Mateo's eyes remained fixed on the escape vector he'd been calculating.
"Then the sooner we leave..."
"...the sooner they can leave."
Cal nodded.
"...Yeah."
But he didn't sound convinced.
---
The runabout continued pulling away from the convoy.
Behind them the comm traffic only became more desperate.
"Oof..."
"Bet they felt that."
"Target the following coordinates!"
"We're losing shield output!"
Another violent flash lit the cockpit.
"Benji's hit!"
"I'm out!"
"I'm out!"
"I'm losing power!"
"Bail, Benji!"
---
Cal looked over his shoulder instinctively.
"They're dying for us."
Mateo answered immediately.
"We can't help them."
"We've got forty civilians sitting behind us."
"We can't let them die."
"We have nothing to help them _with_, Cal."
Silence.
Only the sound of the engines.
The tactical display.
The shouting over the comms.
Then...
Cal's eyes settled on something.
"...Maybe we do."
Without warning _Sepik_ rolled hard to starboard, abandoning the escape course entirely.
Mateo grabbed the edge of his console.
"What are you doing?"
"We need to get the ones who bailed."
"Cal—"
"If we drop the shields for transport..."
"We only need a second."
Mateo stared at him.
Looked at the tactical display.
Looked back again.
Then closed his eyes briefly.
"...¡Sabía que estabas loco!"
_"I knew you were crazy."_
He was already reaching for the transporter controls.
---
_Sepik_ surged back towards the battle.
Weapon fire flashed around them.
The runabout twisted effortlessly between fragments of wreckage as Cal threaded a course that looked impossible.
"Transporter standing by!"
"Mark!"
Three escape beacons flashed across the tactical display.
The shields dropped.
Just long enough.
The transporter hummed.
Elise Carter materialised first, stumbling as she caught herself on the bulkhead.
A heartbeat later Taren Fenn appeared beside her.
Then—
Benji.
He landed unceremoniously on the deck and immediately collapsed backwards, laughing more from relief than exhaustion.
"Thank you!"
Cal allowed himself the smallest smile.
"Couldn't let your cooking go to waste."
Benji laughed harder.
---
Outside...
The battle continued.
"We can't keep this up!"
"_Sepik_, get out of here!"
"The probe's manoeuvring!"
"It's closing!"
Mateo settled back into his seat.
"Let's go."
He looked across.
"Home time."
Cal didn't answer.
His eyes had drifted to the tactical display mounted beside his console.
Something...
Clicked.
"They're not getting out."
"No."
"We have to help."
"And _how_, exactly?"
Cal studied the display.
The tiny icon representing _Sepik_.
The probe.
Then...
The weapons panel.
His eyes narrowed.
"...Owen never got around to removing it."
Mateo followed his gaze.
The forward launcher.
Two photon torpedoes.
His stomach dropped.
"...Cal..."
"They left us two."
"They're photon torpedoes."
"They're not going to destroy a Borg probe."
"..."
"...They might make it blink."
Cal pulled _Sepik_ into a hard turn.
The stars swung violently across the canopy.
The probe filled more of the forward view with every passing second.
"We need to try."
"Even if it's only enough for them to get clear."
Mateo looked ahead.
Looked back at Cal.
He knew.
He knew exactly what was about to happen.
"Ensign..."
He stopped.
Started again.
This time much quieter.
"...Please, Cal."
"We'll give them what we've got."
"We fire."
"We run."
Cal's hands remained perfectly steady.
"I'll need targeting."
Mateo stared at the tactical console.
"...I'm a rescue pilot."
"So am I."
Another pause.
"I'll do it."
His fingers began dancing across the targeting controls.
---
Mateo's heart hammered against his ribs.
"¡No, no, no, no! ¡Cal, por favor!"
"No, no, no! Cal, please!"
"Almost..."
"¡Es una idea terrible! ¡Nos vamos a matar!"
"This is a terrible idea! We're going to get ourselves killed!"
"Nearly there..."
Mateo looked skyward for help that wasn't coming.
"¡Y lo peor es que tu madre me va a echar la culpa porque fue idea de su hijo loco!"
"And the worst part is your mother is going to blame me because it was her crazy son's idea!"
Cal smiled despite himself.
"...Firing."
Two brilliant flashes erupted beneath Sepik's bow.
The photon torpedoes streaked away into the darkness.
Straight towards the waiting Borg probe.
For a heartbeat...
Nobody aboard Sepik breathed.
"It sounds like chaos."
Emily scarcely took her eyes off the tactical display as she spoke.
Since the rescue force had launched, she and Sam had remained in _Wayfarer's_ Operations Centre, listening to the constant stream of communications flowing between Sepik and Echo Flight while medium-range sensors painted the unfolding rescue in shades of green and amber across the main display.
They had watched the convoy appear.
Watched the fighters spread out around it.
Watched Sepik disappear briefly into the surviving freighter's shuttle bay before emerging again with forty more lives aboard.
Then everything had changed.
The arrival of the Borg probe had transformed what should have been a straightforward evacuation into something else entirely.
"They're alright," Sam said quietly, never quite taking her eyes from the display.
"They're coming home."
She meant it to sound reassuring.
Neither of them believed it quite as much as she'd hoped.
Emily folded her arms tightly across herself.
"They're taking too long."
"No..."
Sam frowned.
"They've turned."
Sure enough, the icon representing Sepik had abandoned its escape course.
Instead of heading back towards Wayfarer, the little blue marker was now arcing back towards the engagement.
Emily stared.
"...Why are they going back?"
The open communications channel had become almost impossible to follow.
"...I'm hit!"
"...Bail!"
"Sepik, get out of here!"
"...They're closing!"
"...Cross, break left!"
Emily looked helplessly towards Sam.
"They're not leaving."
Sam didn't answer.
She couldn't.
Her eyes remained fixed on the tactical display.
Both women instinctively stepped closer to the sensor console as though somehow reducing the distance between themselves and the screen might make the picture clearer.
The tactical officer was already leaning over his station, fingers flying across the controls.
"They've re-entered the combat area," he muttered.
Another voice crackled over the speakers.
"...Almost..."
Emily frowned.
"...Was that Cal?"
Before anyone could answer—
The display erupted into brilliant white.
Every console across Operations flashed simultaneously.
The comm traffic dissolved into a deafening burst of static.
For one terrible heartbeat...
Every contact vanished.
Emily's heart stopped.
"What happened?"
No answer.
She looked from the blank display to the tactical officer.
"What happened?!"
The officer was already working frantically, rerouting sensor feeds and resetting filters as fast as his hands could move.
"I don't know."
He glanced up only briefly.
"Stand by."
Another agonising second passed.
"Long-range sensors are saturated."
He frowned.
"I'm attempting to compensate..."
Emily didn't hear the rest.
She stood motionless, staring at the empty section of space where, only moments before, Cal's runabout had been.
Waiting.
Just waiting.
Sepik banked hard away from the probe.
The power that had fed the torpedo launcher moments before flowed straight back into the engines as Cal pushed the runabout into the tightest turn she was willing to make.
For a heartbeat...
Nothing.
Then the cockpit lurched violently as something enormous erupted behind them.
The inertial dampers groaned in protest.
Green-white light washed through the canopy.
Nobody spoke.
Not at first.
The silence lasted only a second before the open communications channel exploded into life.
"Yeah!"
"Some bus driver!"
"Holy..."
"They got it!"
Cal instinctively looked over his shoulder.
Where the Borg probe had been...
There was only a rapidly expanding cloud of glowing debris.
He blinked once.
"...Did..."
Mateo was already staring at him.
"...Cal."
He shook his head slowly, as though trying to convince himself he'd imagined what he'd just seen.
"...What did you..."
Cal frowned.
"...We."
Mateo smiled despite himself.
"No."
A beat.
"You."
Cal looked back out through the canopy.
The tactical display no longer showed a Borg contact.
Only Echo Flight.
Only Sepik.
He let out a quiet breath.
"...Can we go home now?"
Sepik was the first craft to return to Wayfarer's launch bay, settling back onto the deck with the familiar metallic clunk that had become synonymous with another successful rescue.
Waiting for them was a contingent of the freighter's medical staff, already moving towards the runabout before her engines had even finished winding down.
Behind them, trying—and failing—to appear patient, stood Sam and Emily.
The boarding ramp lowered almost immediately.
The rescued convoy personnel were the first to disembark, weary engineers and technicians stepping gratefully back onto solid decking where medics immediately began assessing cuts, burns and exhaustion.
Behind them came the three recovered fighter pilots.
Benji Okafor bounded down the ramp with considerably more enthusiasm than someone who had only recently ejected from a starfighter ought to possess.
"I told you we'd make it!" he called back over his shoulder to Taren and Elise, both of whom were laughing almost as much as he was.
The celebration continued across the flight deck as the remainder of Echo Flight landed one by one, each Valkyrie settling gracefully into its allocated space.
Only once the last shutdown sequence had completed did Cal finally rise from the pilot's seat.
He took his time gathering his helmet before following Mateo down the ramp.
He'd barely reached the deck before a familiar voice echoed across the bay.
"Holy crap, kid!"
Lieutenant Commander Nathan Cross had abandoned his helmet somewhere between his fighter and the runabout and was already striding purposefully towards them.
"You are in the wrong game!"
Cal blinked.
"...What does that mean?"
Emily, equally confused, looked from Cross back to Cal.
"What does that mean?"
Cross laughed.
"It means he's wasting his talents driving glorified buses."
He clapped Cal firmly on the shoulder.
"That was some flying."
Only then did he turn to Mateo, offering his hand.
"And you..."
"...Nice work."
Mateo accepted the handshake with a smile.
"Thanks."
Sam folded her arms.
"...Alright."
She looked slowly around the assembled pilots.
"What exactly happened?"
Before anyone could answer another familiar voice joined the gathering.
"More importantly..."
Owen Reilly wandered over, wiping grease from his hands with a well-used cloth.
"...Did you break anything?"
Mateo laughed.
"No."
Cal rubbed the back of his neck.
"There are... two fewer torpedoes to remove when you finally take the launcher off."
Owen stared at him.
A long moment passed.
Then he slowly shook his head.
"...Pilots."
Still muttering to himself, he wandered back towards Engineering.
Brok, passing in the opposite direction, watched him go.
"...What'd they do?"
"I don't want to know," Owen replied.
"I probably do."
The Tellarite immediately changed direction to investigate.
Sam's attention never left Cal.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"...What..."
"...Did you do?"
Cal looked down at the deck.
"Well..."
He shifted his weight awkwardly.
"It seemed a shame not to use them..."
"...before we took them off."
Silence.
Jaxa Renn burst out laughing.
"It wasn't even a lucky shot!"
She pointed enthusiastically at Cal.
"He timed it perfectly."
"Right as the probe shifted shield modulation."
She shook her head in disbelief.
"Great shooting."
Emily looked between the pair of them.
"...You..."
She pointed accusingly at Cal.
"...You killed a Borg ship?"
Cal looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"...Apparently."
Cross laughed loudly enough for half the flight deck to hear.
"Cowan!"
He folded his arms.
"I've got a job for you whenever you're bored of all..." He gestured broadly around the crowded launch bay.
"...this."
"Proper starship."
"Proper food."
"No nutrient loaf."
He grinned.
"You even get to shoot things on purpose."
"He's not interested," Sam answered immediately.
"Yeah," Emily agreed.
"He belongs here."
Cross looked back at Cal.
"That right?"
Cal glanced around the launch bay.
The scarred bulkheads.
The patched deck plating.
The medics shepherding rescued civilians towards Sickbay.
Owen and Brok had somehow already resumed arguing halfway across the hangar.
Mateo was quietly helping one of the engineers carry equipment clear of the runabout.
Echo Flight's pilots were laughing together as ground crews refuelled their fighters.
He smiled.
"I think..."
"...this is where I'm meant to be."
Cross studied him for a moment before smiling.
"...Fair enough."
He pointed a finger towards Cal.
"Standing offer."
"If you ever change your mind..."
"...give me a call."
"Well—"
"Well nothing," Mateo interrupted firmly.
"He's unavailable."
Cross laughed.
"Fair enough then."
As he turned away, Benji called after him.
"Can we at least steal him for dinner occasionally?"
Emily folded her arms.
"We're keeping him."
Benji looked genuinely disappointed.
"...Worth asking."
Laughter spread easily across the launch bay.
For just a little while, the war seemed a very long way away.
The celebration carried on far longer than anybody had intended.
What had begun as a quick meal to mark another successful rescue somehow evolved into an evening that nobody seemed particularly eager to end.
Benji, having apparently anticipated such an outcome, produced yet more food from somewhere within Wayfarer's already overcrowded stores. Nobody was entirely sure where he'd hidden it all, nor did anyone question him too closely. Whatever reserves he'd brought aboard from Sabre Squadron seemed almost inexhaustible.
Someone else found a handful of proper bottles—actual drinks rather than freshly replicated substitutes—and before long an old acoustic guitar appeared from somewhere in the depths of the freighter.
Nobody ever admitted to owning it.
Nobody asked.
It simply became part of the evening.
Shras th'Zarath and Jaxa Renn spent the better part of an hour attempting to convince Cal that he'd accidentally chosen entirely the wrong career.
"You've got fighter pilot reflexes," Shras insisted, gesturing animatedly with his bottle. "You just haven't realised it yet."
"You enjoy flying," Jaxa added. "You enjoy learning. You'd fit right in."
Cal smiled politely.
"I quite like buses."
"They're not buses."
"They're definitely buses."
"They're rescue craft."
"Fast buses."
Emily, who had listened patiently for rather longer than anyone expected, finally reached the end of her tolerance.
"He's not transferring."
The table fell quiet.
Shras looked from Emily to Cal.
"...I was only asking."
"And I'm only answering."
Another pause.
"...Fair enough."
The conversation immediately moved on.
Across the room, Lieutenants Taren Fenn and Benji Okafor, together with Ensign Elise Carter, made repeated and increasingly heartfelt attempts to thank Cal for collecting them after they'd been forced to abandon their fighters.
"You really didn't have to come back," Elise admitted quietly.
Cal frowned.
"Of course we did."
Benji laughed.
"I keep telling him he nearly got himself killed."
"I wasn't leaving you there."
"It still wasn't sensible."
"No."
Cal smiled.
"But neither are rescue pilots."
That earned a chorus of agreement from Alpha Flight.
...Followed immediately by another attempt from Benji to recruit him into Sabre Squadron.
Some things, apparently, were inevitable.
Not everyone made it to the celebration.
At some point Owen and Brok had quietly disappeared back towards Engineering, both claiming they had work to do.
Nobody believed either of them.
It was generally accepted that they'd simply found somewhere quieter to continue arguing about impulse manifolds.
Hours drifted by almost unnoticed.
The conversation softened.
The laughter became less frequent, though no less genuine.
One by one people began to drift away.
A pilot nodded off in a chair before being gently steered towards bed by one of their friends.
Another quietly excused themselves after realising they'd been staring into an empty mug for several minutes.
Eventually the mess hall emptied.
Only a handful of abandoned bottles, half-finished drinks and empty food containers remained scattered across the tables as silent evidence that, for one evening at least, Wayfarer had remembered what normal felt like.
By the time Cal returned to Alpha Flight's compartment, most of the ship had already settled into its usual nighttime quiet.
He had barely drawn the curtain around his bunk before it rustled softly.
Emily appeared in the narrow gap, smiling.
"You awake?"
"I was."
Without another word he shuffled sideways until he was pressed comfortably against the bulkhead, creating what little extra room the tiny cot could offer.
Emily climbed in beside him with the practiced ease of someone who had done so before.
The blanket settled over them.
Outside, Wayfarer continued steadily through the darkness.
Neither of them spoke.
There wasn't anything left to say.
Within minutes the gentle rhythm of the ship, the exhaustion of the day, and the comfort of simply being together carried them both into sleep.
Emily slipped quietly from beneath the blanket, carefully lifting Cal's arm from around her before easing herself free.
He stirred slightly.
Didn't wake.
She smiled to herself.
Pulling the curtain aside just enough to slip through, she padded silently across the compartment, taking care to avoid the familiar collection of bags, boots and discarded flight jackets that seemed to migrate overnight.
She was almost back at her own bunk.
Almost.
Movement from the opposite side of the compartment caught her eye.
Emily stopped.
A curtain rustled softly.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then, with the same exaggerated caution Emily imagined she'd displayed only moments before, Sam emerged into the compartment.
From Mateo's bunk.
Emily waited just long enough to be certain of what she'd seen before speaking.
"Good morning."
She kept her voice low, though it did very little to hide the smile spreading across her face.
Sam froze for the briefest moment.
Her eyes found Emily's across the compartment.
A second passed.
Then she smiled too.
"...Morning."
Neither of them elaborated.
Neither of them needed to.
Sam quietly crossed back to her own bunk, drawing the curtain closed behind her with the same care Emily had shown only moments before.
Emily watched for another second before letting out a tiny laugh to herself.
Apparently...
She and Cal hadn't been nearly as subtle as they'd imagined.
Still smiling, she slipped behind her own curtain, leaving the compartment once again to the quiet hum of Wayfarer.
Cal reached the launch bay with just enough time to watch Echo Flight depart.
One by one the Valkyrie-class fighters lifted from the deck, disappearing through the open launch bay doors before banking gracefully away into the darkness beyond Wayfarer.
Their assignment was complete.
The convoy had been rescued.
Sabre Squadron's escort was no longer required.
Although they'd only been aboard for a couple of days, the launch bay already felt a little quieter as the last of the fighters vanished from sight.
Cal realised, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was going to miss them.
He suspected most of Wayfarer probably would.
"...Good riddance."
The voice came from somewhere to his left.
Owen Reilly crossed the deck carrying a crate of replacement components, not even looking up as the final fighter disappeared into space.
Cal smiled.
"Who are you going to argue with now?"
Owen snorted.
"Nobody."
He shifted the crate onto his other hip.
"And I won't have anyone questioning my basic competencies every five minutes."
"I thought they were nice."
There was a pause.
"...They were."
Another.
"...Alright."
Coming from Owen, it was practically glowing praise.
Cal chuckled quietly before turning towards his own shuttle.
Alpha Flight weren't scheduled to fly again until the following morning, but schedules meant very little during the Borg invasion.
It never hurt to be prepared.
He'd almost reached the cockpit when something caught his eye.
Beneath the pilot's canopy, just below where his seat sat inside the shuttle, someone had carefully painted a small black silhouette.
A Borg probe.
Neat.
Professional.
Exactly the sort of victory marking fighter pilots carried beneath their canopies.
Cal frowned.
"...Who..."
"Maintenance."
Owen didn't even break stride.
"They did it overnight."
Cal looked back across the deck.
"They figured if fighter pilots get little stars for their victories..."
"...rescue pilots deserved something too."
Cal studied the tiny silhouette for a long moment.
"I don't think..."
He reached up, running a thumb lightly across the fresh paint.
"...I should probably—"
"Don't let him paint over it!"
The shout echoed across the flight deck from somewhere overhead.
Cal looked up instinctively.
He couldn't even tell who'd yelled it.
Judging by the laughter that followed, neither could anybody else.
He let out a quiet sigh.
A smile spread across his face despite himself.
His thumb rested for another moment against the painted silhouette before dropping back to his side.
He supposed...
...it wasn't really about destroying a Borg probe.
It was about bringing everyone home.
If that little mark reminded the crew of Wayfarer that, even on the darkest days of the invasion, there had still been moments worth celebrating...
Perhaps it had earned its place after all.
With one last glance at the tiny black silhouette, Cal climbed into the cockpit and began preparing his shuttle for whatever tomorrow might bring.
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