First thing Rin learned about Mikey was that he really liked to talk. The whole way from the Employment Office (withdrawing the resume for some reason required the confirmation of a human supervisor, and she had a sour face through the whole interaction) to the Crew Terminal (getting a pass without an employment voucher also required the involvement of a person, who looked like he feared he’d catch a virus from the two of them or something) and finally through the gate (around which other Hopestar crew mingled, and Rin realised the jackets with logos also came in light brown and black variants), Michael Thoresson kept talking right until the decontamination, where he had to close his mouth not to get sick. Okay, this sounded hostile. Rin didn’t really hate that or find it annoying, but it was quite fascinating. Not everything made sense, but he felt like he learned more about Hopestar in this half an hour than for years seeing it mentioned in the blogs.

Mikey (that was pretty much his opening sentence: “Yeah, and just call me Mikey. Is it okay if I call you Rin?”) explained that because Hopestar was privately built and was not based on any common designs, it wasn’t as automated as many modern SpaceShuttle or Comet crafts. It meant more buttons, more displays, more things to keep in mind but “you’ll get used to it fast enough, it’s actually very intuitive.” This also meant the cockpit crew was much bigger and required human presence at all times. Instead of mapping the subspace path in advance, they had dedicated navigators to calculate manoeuvres on the go, which often helped save on fuel (“but it’s not a big deal if we spend a bit more for passenger comfort, captain is pretty chill about it”). Most of the piloting work happened in local space between subspace jumps and then during subspace turns, so sitting at the station during the shift gave time to just relax and do something else. This seemed weird to Rin, as his years in the academy wired into his brain that at any moment he had to monitor the instruments. But if half the instruments were already monitored by other people… (“There will be a comm operator, a subspace navigator, and systems engineer on shift with you. Third shift is the nicest, honestly.”)

Gravity inside the ship was different, a bit lower than what he was used to in flight simulators, and the air had the crispness of an atmosphere that has been kept local for a very long time. Venting the whole ship out and in again, including decontam, would require at least a couple of days even on middle sized shuttles, so no wonder a ship as massive as Hopestar didn’t do it often. The crew lift pod had buttons for seven decks and three more accessible only with engineer authorisation. The crew deck was almost on the top (only below the cockpit itself) and that’s where they arrived a few moments later.

A talk with the captain was… strange. Rin didn’t expect it to happen in the first place, big ships often had dedicated recruitment specialists (or so he was led to believe). Or if not, he at least thought an actual pilot should be the one interviewing. Turns out, the Chief Pilot Paolo Andrade was on shift at this very moment and “we’ll say this first hop is a trial period anyways, so you can learn and get to know everyone.” And Mikey wasn’t there because… well, Rin had no idea why and didn’t feel confident to ask.

Now he was in their cabin on the opposite side of the deck (the corridor ran in an elliptic shape with rooms on both sides; this one was towards the bulkhead as opposed to centre ones). It had two retractable bunks with storage space inside the wall, a small media screen for each of them, and a little door leading to the sanitary unit. Mikey rushed there to take a shower, giving Rin some privacy to change into the pilot uniform they’ve picked up at the laundry station. It was a little too big for him (he was quite used to this, nothing “standard” seemed to come in his size), and the steward at the station promised they’ll make sure to order new sets and pick them up at Kashi-Sulak.

It still felt weird.

This was his new home for the foreseeable future, and he didn’t feel like he belonged.

Mikey stepped out of the san unit in a fresh t-shirt and textile pants (also Hopestar branded; Rin had a couple of those in a set he was given), his blond hair dried in a chaotic mess. He fell back into his bunk, turned the media screen to a mirror setting and started combing the hair into something more presentable with a brush and some kind of spray. 

“Everything’s fitting well? You don’t have to be in full uniform outside your shift, but you’re kind of expected to wear it in the cockpit.”

Rin adjusted the vacuum zip between the end of the sleeve of his soft undershirt and the glove. “Yeah, it feels nice… Nicer than what you get at the academy.”

Mikey grinned at him. “Oh, are they also into full-plastic wear in Pan-Am? I remember constantly getting this nasty rash around the collar bone from the PJs Col-Ac gave us.”

Rin looked up at him. “That’s Colossus Academy, right? Are you from that colony?”

Mikey now had the brush in the corner of his mouth and tried to adjust strands of hair in a perfect order. “Well, as much as I can be from anywhere, really. But I’ve spent four years in the flight academy there, yeah. My birth place in the ID says ‘Ring of the Moon’ though.”

He looked over to Rin and clearly enjoyed his surprise.

“I didn’t know people could give birth there.” The way history class explained it, before subspace technologies got developed enough to make travel safe and affordable, humanity was really into megastructures. Building a station around the Moon, at first just called “The Ring”, was a big step towards colonising Mars and the rest of the solar system. By the time colonies in other systems became the main goal, rings around Europa and Enceladus had also been built. Nowadays, the Moon’s ring acted as a key station in the inner system transit, while the other two mostly hosted research labs and were partially disassembled.

“Well, there are a couple of hospitals for workers and passengers and such. But yeah, you’d usually go down to Earth or Mars for the pregnancy, as space travel is a big no-no for the last month at least. Which was exactly what my mom was trying to do; she was travelling from a mixed colony to give birth in a private clinic on Earth to get me citizenship and went into labour too early, still on the ship. They managed to dock to the ring and rushed her into the ER where I was born. And yes, it means I have no proper citizenship at all.”

This took Rin a couple of moments to comprehend. “Wait, really? Surely, the ring falls under-”

“Nope! Not Earth, not Mars! Also not the colony your parents are from, because fuck you, that’s why.” He said all of this with a wide grin and, finally satisfied with his look, sat up to face Rin. “It didn’t really matter. Gave my parents more freedom to travel between several colonies. When mom died, dad took me to Colossus and I eventually applied to Col-Ac. And now having a stamp makes the whole idea of citizenship meaningless anyways.”

They sat in silence for a couple of moments like this, before Mikey asked in a gentler voice. “What’s your story then? You don’t have to tell, of course, if it’s a sore subject, but people will ask me… you know.”

Rin felt his stomach fall and had to look away from him. He knew what Mikey expected: a heartbreaking narrative involving forbidden love and family drama. They all assumed he was… like them. It made his insides squeeze unpleasantly. Yes, he didn’t know much about the stamped, but he wasn’t really one of them. He wasn’t deviant. He dated women during his time in Academy, he met Maggie through a dating app (it didn’t work out romantically, but they became good friends nevertheless). But now everyone would think he was into men.

He expected to be disgusted. Instead, he felt tired.

“There’s no story,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Got it after a medical assessment as part of graduation.”  

“Oh.” Mikey’s smile dissolved then turned fakely cheerful. “Sorry. I think Dr Batt has the same? She may even have become a doctor in the first place to research the… uh… infertility stuff…”

Rin sighed. On one hand, he was grateful Mikey tried to show support, be it as awkward as it was. But he really wasn’t prepared to endure this from everyone else he would meet here.

“Will… everyone think I’m weird?”

Mikey blinked, then snorted. “Dude, everybody is weird on this ship, that’s the whole point. You can be weird because of the type of people you like, or your gender, or for liking fake vegetables too much, but if you are not weird, you wouldn’t have gotten on this ship in the first place.”

Somehow, this was not reassuring.

They took a different lift pod to the cockpit and stepped out into a short corridor that was wider than the one on the crew deck and had seats lining the walls. At the end of it was a two-pane door with an access panel, and Mikey took a moment to check his hair in the reflection of his interface before entering the code. Once inside, Rin couldn’t help but stare in awe.

The cockpit wasn’t a crammed capsule he was used to seeing in simulators, but an open semicircle with stations lining the bulkhead and a domed ceiling. Two curved screens in the middle played the role of windows, showing the current camera view of the spaceport and a dark outline of the mountains on the horizon. A sidebar had smaller squares for stations somewhere else on the ship, most of them empty at the moment. The top one showed the camera facing a man who was sitting at the aftmost elevated station in the cockpit overlooking the rest.

Mikey straightened a little bit and tried to make his voice a bit deeper as he said: “Mister Andrade, here’s Rin Richard, our new Third Pilot candidate.” 

Rin also felt like straightening when Paolo Andrade turned in his chair and looked down at them. He wore the same light grey outfit as everyone in the cockpit, but his one fit perfectly. And despite all this time Mikey spent combing his hair, Andrade’s just looked much better taken care of. There was enough confidence in the way he carried himself, that no one would doubt this was the Chief Pilot.

“Mr Richard. Welcome to Hopestar. Captain Kamenev sent your resume ahead, and hopefully you won’t have trouble adjusting to our setup. Mr Thoresson, I expect you to introduce Mr Richard to our workflow so he can take the third shift as soon as possible.”

Mikey grinned. “Of course, Mr Andrade. I’ve already talked him through the main concepts.”

Rin could’ve sworn he heard a snicker from one of the stations behind him but the other two pilots didn’t react so he didn’t look over.

“Two hours thirteen minutes to take off. You have forty minutes to familiarise yourself before the startup checks.”

Two pilot stations were in the centre right under the main screens, and Mikey pointed to the portside one. Rin was relieved to immediately recognise most of the screens even if they were located somewhat differently. He put on the headset to get access to the local comm channel, which at this time was filled with background noise and an occasional clicking sound. Mikey launched the instructions file on the control interface, and Rin was still reading through it, when Andrade sent a notification and left the cockpit. 

There was a moment of silence, then a man from what seemed to be a communications station turned around and said in a mocking voice. “Of cooourse, Mr Andrade.” This led to a wave of giggles around the room. 

Mikey rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Karim, I didn’t sound like that at all.”

“You always try to sound so serious in his presence.” Karim teased, and someone else agreed through comm. It seemed, some used the comm to chat even inside the room if they didn’t feel like raising their voice or turning around.

A navigator, who was the only woman in the cockpit so far, commented on comm. “Sounds to me like you are the one who is pining for the Chief Pilot, Karim.”

“Bullshit. I may find him hot, but I’m definitely not pining. We all know, pining is Mikey’s side hustle”

A wave of snickering ran through the semicircle of stations. Mikey turned in his chair to flip Karim an obscene gesture. Rin sat silently and stared at the words on the interface without reading them. He hoped no one would ask him anything.