It's Still Alright...
Posted on Sat Jun 20th, 2026 @ 2:03am by Lieutenant Callum Cowan
1,682 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Silence at Ulysses
Location: Chief Flight Control Officer's Quarters
Timeline: Mission 1 Day 1 0400
Starbase Thirty
Weeks Ago
Lieutenant Commander Mateo Alvarez watched from across the bar with the expression of a man observing a slow-motion shuttle accident.
The establishment was one of dozens that had appeared throughout Starbase Thirty since the end of the war. Fresh paint covered bulkheads that had once worn emergency lighting. New furniture occupied spaces that, only a few years earlier, had been filled with exhausted rescue crews, refugees, and officers grabbing whatever sleep they could find between crises. Somebody, somewhere, had decided the quadrant was ready to start enjoying itself again.
Mateo remained unconvinced.
Especially when Lieutenant Callum Cowan was involved.
He watched as his friend crossed the room with a confidence not entirely unsupported by previous experience. Cal moved easily between crowded tables, offering a smile here, a nod there, eventually arriving beside a woman sitting alone at the bar.
By anybody's standards she was beautiful. Dark hair pulled into a neat bun. Red lipstick. Civilian clothes that somehow looked more put together than most Starfleet uniforms.
Mateo lifted his glass and settled in.
This was either going to end brilliantly or disastrously.
Either way, it was going to be entertaining.
The conversation lasted longer than he expected.
The woman smiled once.
Cal laughed at something she said.
For a brief moment Mateo suspected his friend might actually pull this off.
Then the woman said something else.
Cal's shoulders dropped almost imperceptibly.
The lieutenant laughed again, offered a polite nod, and began making the long walk back toward the table.
Mateo immediately started grinning.
"So?" he asked before Cal had even sat down. "What did she say?"
Cal lowered himself into the chair opposite him and reached for his drink.
A grin spread across his face.
Not the grin of a successful man.
The grin of a man who had just acquired a very good story.
"She said," he began, already fighting laughter, "that she had just spent three months aboard a research station."
Mateo nodded.
"Right."
"And that every Starfleet flyboy who passed through that station tried exactly the same line."
The older pilot closed his eyes.
"Oh no."
"Oh yes."
"And?"
"And she said that if it hadn't worked for any of them, it wasn't going to work for me today."
For a second there was silence.
Then both men dissolved into laughter.
The kind that arrived suddenly and completely without permission.
A few nearby patrons glanced over.
Neither officer paid the slightest attention.
The war had ended months ago.
The galaxy could survive two former rescue pilots behaving like idiots in a bar.
Eventually Cal managed to recover enough to reach for the PADD sitting beside his drink. "What was the wager again?" he asked. "Extra replicator rations for a week?"
Mateo waved a dismissive hand.
"No, don't worry about it."
"A bet's a bet."
"Cal."
The older pilot leaned forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"The laughter and the story alone are payment enough."
Cal narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
Mateo maintained a perfectly serious expression.
For approximately two seconds.
"This time."
Another round of laughter followed.
For a while they simply sat there enjoying the moment.
The bar buzzed with conversation around them.
People laughed.
Music played softly from hidden speakers.
Somewhere near the far wall a group of junior officers were losing money at a game they clearly didn't understand.
Life.
Normal life.
The sort of thing that had almost disappeared during the invasion.
Back then nobody opened new bars.
Nobody worried about pickup lines.
Nobody made plans six months into the future.
The galaxy had spent years living from emergency to emergency.
Now it was trying to remember how to breathe again.
Most days Cal wasn't entirely sure he remembered how.
Mateo finished his drink and glanced out through the viewport overlooking the station promenade.
"So."
Cal immediately recognised the tone.
"So?"
"When do you leave for Ithaca?"
There it was.
The question sitting quietly behind the evening all along.
Soon.
Too soon, perhaps.
The thought settled over the table.
Not unpleasantly.
Just inevitably.
Like a chapter approaching its final page.
Cal smiled.
Chief Flight Controller's Quarters
USS Ithaca
Mission Day One
It had been approximately three hours since Lieutenant Callum Cowan had woken up.
Not that he had been keeping track.
Well.
Not intentionally.
The chronometer glowing softly beside his bed had merely happened to catch his attention every few minutes for the better part of the morning.
Three hours.
Three hours of staring at a ceiling that still didn't quite feel like his.
The quarters assigned to him aboard the USS Ithaca were perfectly comfortable by any reasonable standard. The room was clean, tidy, and possessed the sort of practical efficiency Starfleet seemed to favour when building small ships. A desk occupied one corner. A handful of personal belongings sat where he'd unpacked them weeks earlier. A framed photograph of his family rested beside a stack of padds waiting to be read.
It should have felt familiar by now.
It didn't.
The lighting was different.
The ambient hum of the ship was different.
Even the mattress felt different.
Not worse.
Just different.
At three o'clock in the morning, different was enough.
For a while after the war he had tried to make productive use of the extra hours.
If sleep wasn't coming, there was always something to do. Reports to read. Maintenance logs to review. Shuttle systems to study. Entire nights had disappeared into work simply because sitting still felt harder.
That strategy had lasted right up until Commander Hayes had discovered what he was doing.
The resulting conversation had been brief.
Painfully brief.
"If you've somehow found spare time, Lieutenant, I'd recommend sleeping in it."
Cal had attempted to explain.
Hayes had informed him that this was not a discussion.
After that, the former rescue pilot had reluctantly stopped turning insomnia into additional duty shifts.
The sleeplessness remained.
Only now there was less paperwork involved.
A small part of him had hoped a new ship might help.
A new environment.
A quieter assignment.
A crew that wasn't launching rescue operations into active disaster zones.
The logic seemed sound enough.
Unfortunately his brain had declined to cooperate.
The wake-up alarm sounded.
Cal closed his eyes.
The alarm continued sounding.
For several seconds he seriously considered pretending not to hear it.
Eventually common sense prevailed.
"Computer, silence alarm."
The chirping stopped immediately.
The room fell quiet once more.
With a sigh, he pushed himself upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Cold deck plating met bare feet.
The sensation helped.
A little.
The lights brightened gradually as he crossed the quarters, following him into the small bathroom beyond. Soft illumination reflected from the mirror above the sink.
Cal stopped.
Looked up.
And immediately laughed.
The man staring back appeared to have spent the night wrestling a plasma conduit.
His dark hair pointed in several directions at once. One side appeared to be attempting a complete evacuation from the rest of his head. The shadows beneath his eyes suggested either exhaustion or a promising career as a horror holonovel villain.
He leaned closer to the mirror.
"Would've thought my hair might stay in reasonable condition considering the sleep situation."
The reflection offered no defence.
Cal ran a hand through the tangled mess.
It achieved absolutely nothing.
"Honestly, you'd think three hours awake before breakfast would give it time to sort itself out."
The hair remained unconvinced.
For a moment he simply stood there smiling faintly at his own reflection.
It felt ridiculous.
Wonderfully normal.
No emergency launch.
No casualty report.
No commander pounding on his door because half a colony needed evacuating before lunch.
Just an officer standing in a bathroom complaining about his hair.
A few years ago he might have considered that boring.
These days it felt like progress.
He turned on the sink and splashed cool water across his face.
The shock of it finally began clearing the last remnants of sleep from his thoughts.
"At least they have good coffee here."
That, thankfully, was true.
After some of the things Squadron 17 had passed off as coffee during the war, Ithaca's replicators were producing nothing short of miracles.
A few minutes later the reflection staring back from the mirror looked considerably more presentable.
Not perfect.
That would have required a miracle.
But presentable.
The uniform helped.
Starfleet had somehow managed to design a garment capable of making even sleep-deprived officers appear vaguely competent. Cal adjusted the collar, straightened the shoulders and gave himself one final inspection.
Good enough.
The quarters were quiet as he crossed back through them. His combadge rested where he had left it the night before. A half-finished padd sat on the desk beside a cooling cup of coffee from the previous evening. The room already looked lived in.
Not home.
Not yet.
But perhaps the beginnings of one.
With a final glance around the compartment, he stepped into the corridor beyond.
The ship was beginning to wake.
Officers moved between duty stations carrying padds and cups of coffee. Conversations drifted through the corridors. Somewhere in the distance a turbolift door opened and closed. The familiar rhythms of a starship starting another day.
Cal found himself smiling.
The sensation arrived unexpectedly. Three months ago he had known exactly what to expect every morning;
An emergency. A rescue. A casualty report. Something on fire. Something broken. Someone needing help.
The details changed.
The pattern never did. But now?
Now he had absolutely no idea what the day was going to bring.
A new captain.
A new crew.
A missing station near the Tholian border.
A briefing he had not yet attended.
For the first time in years the future felt uncertain in a way that had nothing to do with survival.
Oddly enough, that was far more intimidating.
The thought lingered as he turned toward the mess hall.
Coffee first.
Then uncertainty.
One problem at a time.
The doors slid open.
Lieutenant Callum Cowan stepped through them and into the first day of the rest of his life.
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