After hearing that repair teams had beamed over to the Triton, McCallister felt a wave of relief. It wasn’t long until confirmation that his old ship was secure; however, the image of her on his viewscreen showing a damaged warp nacelle was no optimistic view. Instead, it had made him think back to when he commanded the Triton and the Breen had attacked them. But, at least this time, the warp core was still intact and not destroyed by a tricobalt device.

“Sir, the Themis’ fighters aren’t able to disable the shuttlecraft,” announced Duncan beside him. 

“Clarify, Number One,” McCallister said, confused that a wing of Valkyrie-class fighters were having trouble taking out a type-14 shuttle. 

Putting the image on the main screen of the battle, McCallister was impressed at how quickly the former Borg drone had flown the shuttle from the Triton and, in that time, had upgraded its shields to withstand the assault. The fighters were pounding it with their pulse phaser cannons and micro-torpedoes. Yet, each direct shot did nothing. 

“Lieutenant Marova, can we move to assist in time?” McCallister asked his helm officer.

The Hekaran woman shook her head, “It looks like the shuttle is heading down to the moon; we won’t get in range fast enough to do anything, sir.”

Not wanting to do anything, McCallister told her to move them anyway and full impulse. So the Odyssey glided away from the Triton to provide whatever support to the Themis and Bellerophon. 

“It looks like the Bellerophon has recovered their away teams off from the moon,” announced Lieutenant Keli. The chief security and tactical officer was monitoring what was happening with an intense focus on the holographic LCARS interface. “Um, sir, that shuttle is making an extremely reckless dive into the moon’s atmosphere. It looks like the Themis is moving to stop them.”

“Put it up, Keli,” McCallister ordered.

The view of the Ross-class firing a torpedo and then striking it with a bolt of phaser energy, thus creating a photonic shockwave, appeared across the wide viewscreen. However, when the shuttle survived and flew through the explosion, a sense of confusion filled many on the bridge, including its captain. “How the hell did it survive that?” He commented. 

“Sir, it looks like Captain Cambil is ordering Captain McCallister to destroy whatever they found on the moon,” Jen announced from ops. 

“The spatial trajector?” Duncan asked for verification. 

The Trill nodded. “My best guess is the drone is heading to the device to use it.”

“Damn,” McCallister cursed, knowing that it would cause them more issues if it could do that. “Marova, how long until we reach the moon.”

“Less than a minute, sir,” The helm officer said after taking a quick glance down at her readouts. 

“Sir, the Bellerophon has just launched a tricobalt device at the moon,” Banfield declared from the science station. “Its yield is twenty-thousand teracochranes; at that magnitude, it will vaporise everything, including the trajector and over a quarter of the moon. However, we will see a massive shockwave if that trajector is operational and is hit by a tricobalt device.”

 At that moment, James knew Horatio and Bexa had no choice. Would he have done the same? Probably. He stood as he watched the event unfold before him and far away that he could do nothing. As Banfield predicted, the tricobalt device hit the moon, and a massive explosion erupted. A part of the moon appeared to break away from itself, and rocks of all sizes blew away at high speeds in all directions. They were far enough not to receive heavy damage, but James felt his heart drop into his gut as he saw both the Bellerophon and Themis take the brunt of the blast. Both ships were pushed backwards and spun away from the moon. 

No longer was the Odyssey coming to support the retrieval of a Borg drone, but it was now coming to save its sister ships. It didn’t take long before everyone was responding to the emergency of now moving to rescue their comrades. Everything that happened came naturally to the Odyssey crew. First, tractor beams were activated to help catch both ships. Next, the powerful shields from the Odyssey were expanded to cover both vessels as they moved away from the danger zone. Then away teams were prepared to begin heading over to both ships. Bexa and Horatio already announced they had injured crewmembers and required immediate assistance. Max shared that Triton was coming up to render further assistance; even though they could not go to warp, they still had impulse ability.

The squadron rushed to the aid of those who needed it. 

This was their true test. How well would they react under the pressure of the chaos that now sat on their doorstep? 

McCallister was confident they would succeed, but at what price?

Stardate: 78005.4

Sat staring out of the broad windows out of his ready room, McCallister was waiting. Waiting for the arrival of three individuals. Stifling a yawn, the fleet captain was comfortable in his chair. He usually didn’t take time to just look out his window while working at his desk. Regardless, it was now late, and he was tired.

The door chime went off.

“Come,” he replied.

The doors parted as he turned his chair around and immediately smiled at all three of his guests. Horatio, Bexa and Rio. 

“I feel like we’re being called to the principal’s office, James.” His brother said. Horatio looked awful, the worst one out of the three of them. The Bellerophon had taken the worst damage, and many of Horatio’s crew were injured. Thankfully there were no fatalities. Seeing that his younger brother hadn’t lost his sense of humour, James knew Horatio’s natural defence was to lighten the mood when things seemed bleak. James recognised it as it was something he used to do. 

Offering them all a seat and a drink, they accepted as James went over to the replicator. 

“So come on, James, Horatio is right; I feel like we’re about to be told off,” Bexa remarked as the replicator created their order.

“Come on, Bexa, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Rio stated. 

Shaking his head as he started to pass their drinks over to them. “I’m not going to tell anyone off, Bexa.”

“Really? I feel like I should be for pulling such a stupid stunt, especially when my science officer warned me,” Horatio said as he took the drink from his brother and instantly recognised that James had made him a hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate flakes in it. It was the same drink James always made him when they went camping as kids. He smirked at it and thanked his brother.

“I did order you to do it,” Bexa added as she sipped her Deka tea. “I’m just to blame.”

“I disagree,” James repeated his attempt at telling them they weren’t in trouble through his words and tone. “It was certainly one of those situations that a snapped decision needed to be made.”

“Agreed,” Rio said supportively. “I would have done the same thing in the same situation. We couldn’t have allowed that drone to use the device to escape.”

“And now we have three ships heavily damaged and a moon blasted to bits,” Horatio said, disgruntled with the situation. “Not really a stellar performance for our first mission together as a squadron.”

“We’ll learn from it,” James said calmly after handing Rio her raktajino and sitting back in his chair. “And don’t worry about Command; I’ll clear everything up with them. We just need to know everything about what happened before that drone escaped.”

 “I’ve got my security chief and first officer running through everything now,” Rio reported. “Thankfully, my helmsmen recovered. Whatever shield upgrades the drone made to the shuttle meant that Ensign Andar survived the shockwave.”

“What about the other former drones?” Horatio asked. “What do we do with them now?”

Leaning back in his chair, James considered that point carefully. “I don’t want to alienate them further; I’ve got a team looking at what could have called that drone towards the device. However, Commander Banfield has theorised the Bellerophon’s away teams may have triggered a low-level homing signal that we were unaware of, and now that we’ve destroyed the Borg Queen’s Cell, the call from the collective, even a murmur, may no longer exist.”

“You can’t be certain of that, J-P,” Rio stated as she pushed a curl of her red-fiery hair behind her left ear. “The call of the Borg Collective is a powerful one.”

Understanding where his former mentor was coming from, James bobbed his head in agreement. “I’m sure it is, but I’m not prepared to throw the rest of them out to the wolves just because of one individual’s act. Also, we don’t know what caused this particular person to do what they did.”

The four captains went silent before Cambil spoke up. “Well, let’s hope that the last we hear from any Borg for the time being. Where are we head to out to next?”

“Once repairs are complete and we’re ready to get underway, we’ll proceed to the nearest underspace aperture, where a Turei escort will show us the underspace current to use to begin our expeditionary into the Swallow Nebula region,” James said with some enthusiasm. 

“Finally, a bit of good old fashion exploration,” Rio remarked.

“Indeed, there’s a trading colony I think we should begin at first and see if we can get any information about the local area first before we proceed any further.” James shared. 

“Get the lay of the land,” Horatio stated. “Seems wise.”

Raising her mug, Cambil put it in front of her fellow captains. “To the journey.”

They all joined in and repeated the same phrase, knowing that what lay ahead of them would certainly keep them on their toes.