The main control comm space projected to the back wall of Nikolai’s office and he turned his chair to look at it. There were graphs and tables of data and half a dozen smaller windows on the side with the faces of department chiefs and their immediate deputies. Nick was one of the faces for everyone else so he tried to look professional, even though his function was simply to monitor the departure in case someone was doing something wrong.

No one was doing anything wrong, because they were a professional crew.

Rob and Irene were muting themselves on the channel until they had to speak, because of the constant humm of the normal space engines. Engineers had their operational space right between the two of them, and unless Hopestar was docked, it was never quiet. During the designing stage, Nick proposed moving main monitoring stations a few decks above, but Rob was adamant: engineers had to be the first to notice and react to any kind of malfunction. Listening to the hum of the engines was one of the ways to do so. There were still a couple of stations on each deck, but engineers rarely stayed there for longer than they needed to. So, perhaps, Rob had a point.

Most comm chatter came from the pilots. Paolo’s facial expression was a mix of boredom and annoyance, which was his “professional neutral” default. Despite being a phenomenal pilot, he had a whole bag of anger issues to sort through and in the past decade not much progress has been made. (Andrew and Paolo carried so much trauma with them, and Nick wished he knew how to help Paolo the way he seemed to have helped Andrew. They were like sons to him, or at least what he expected it to be like to have adult children.) (Rob would baulk at the idea of having children.) 

(The anger could also have been caused by Nikolai mishandling the hiring process. An hour and a half before take off, Paolo came down from the cockpit to his office, demanding answers about the new pilot.

“You could’ve asked me to set up a comm call. You could’ve sent Thoresson up so I could be present. Is this your way of retaliating for what happened with Yaya?!”

Nikolai sat there and tried to figure out where he went wrong with this whole situation. He had to admit, he rarely understood why people were angry. He understood sadness, exhaustion, and guilt, but not why they kept turning into anger in people like Paolo. Yaya used to be the Second Pilot under Paolo; she found an opportunity on K’chs and left to start her new business. They had a heartwarming goodbye party and all. Why did it sound now like Paolo felt responsible for her leaving?

“Did Yaya tell you something when she quit?”

This made Paolo stop and think for a moment. They stared at each other in silence, clearly confused by this interaction.

“No, but I was sure she did tell you… something. I don’t know. We didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye.”

Nick sighed and pressed his fingers together in front of him. He suddenly remembered Rob sharing gossip about Paolo and Yaya possibly becoming an item. He didn’t really listen, because he cared little about such gossip. “If you did, I was not aware of it. The moment I have concerns about your performance or leadership style, you will be the first one to know.”

Paolo’s shoulders relaxed and a moment later he breathed out and rubbed his face with a scowl. “Listen, what else was I supposed to think? Yaya and I spend months hating each other, then she leaves, and now you hire someone without involving me. That boy is more qualified than any of us. It does look like you are preparing a replacement for me.”

“I don’t know him, Paolo! Maybe once we land on Colossus, he decides Hopestar is not the right choice for him. You know, as much as we try to be open-minded, med-stamped often struggle to settle in…”

“Right.” Paolo paced around the room, clearly trying to flush the anger from his head and return to a constructive conversation. “I am not going to babysit him through adjustment. He either gets used to us as we are, or he can go to hell as far as I care.”

This left Nikolai in a depressed state. This day has been too long and he was ready for it to end so he could find a quiet nook to work on his code. So many things needed patches.)

The other pilot camera kept jumping between Oyun and Oddi, two navigators for normal space and subspace respectively. They worked on calculating the jump, giving all the information to the pilots who had to adjust the course. Subspace was tricky; sometimes entering it a few kilometres apart meant your hop would take twice as long; sometimes it meant you would never return. But the Sol system, and specifically the orbits of the inner planets, was mapped well and all they had to do was to follow the established routes to existing jump points. It was still exciting to try and figure out a better position each time. Something transports with computer navigation could never do.

Finally, there were stewards. Petra Seidel was making sure the passengers had been properly informed and no one was roaming the corridors. She received this information from stewards on the decks reporting through their interfaces. She also had access to sensor data telling her if the retractable furniture in the cabins had been stowed away properly. Makoti Zulu was doing the same but for all the staff not currently on shift. Petra had a renovation booked for next year, and Zulu was actively learning the ropes.

Nikolai was really proud of the team he assembled.

If he could take any responsibility for it, of course. They were the ones who should be proud.

His gaze trailed to a view of the cockpit and to the new pilot. Rin Richard seemed really tense and out of place, but he was already actively using the instruments and performing certain actions before Thoresson pointed them out. Professionally, he seemed like a great choice. Nick worried he would have trouble fitting in all the other ways.

(“You would just hire me like this?” Richard asked him after Nikolai started downloading his data into the management software. “Even though I… I am not really…”

“You may have never expected to end up on this side, but you are here now,” Nick answered with a small smile. “By sheer luck, you’ve been given a chance to start your career as a pilot on a ship that doesn’t care about what’s in your ID. You can adjust to this, or you can choose not to and go back whenever you wish to and start a career in something else.”

“Like mining.” Richard said darkly.

Nick sighed. “You misunderstand my intentions. I am encouraging you to try. Get to know the people here, learn things you’ve never known about, and find out that what you’ve seen in the media is a huge misrepresentation. Hopestar is home to so many people, and the only things we share in common are red stamps in our IDs. Everything else doesn’t matter. No one will try and… change you, or whatever the newest scary thing they say we do. So give it a chance. A two hops contract, and then we’ll have this talk again.”)

Petra sent a ship-wide announcement warning about the upcoming subspace jump. Navigators confirmed each other’s data. Paolo sent his authorisation for the jump. Irene confirmed the subspace engines were ready to start up. Zulu acknowledged all staff were in place. Nikolai took a deep breath and gave his authorisation. The engine controllers accepted the command.

Normal space engines shut down, and there was a moment of stillness. It was fake, of course, the ship was still moving through space at half the speed of light, but nothing was actively propelling it forward. And then the subspace engine kicked in and the reality got weird. The cockpit screens tried their best to provide a visual representation of all the sensor data, which ended up being a colourful whirl that faded into blackness. It wasn’t black, of course, but there was almost nothing in subspace to show for the human eye. But this “almost” in the wrong place could cost them their lives.

Travelling through subspace was smooth, however people still felt the wrongness of it all. A buzzing felt by some sense that you didn’t know you had, a sound your ears couldn’t pick up. But Nikolai has spent almost half of his life here. He felt the transition but nothing else afterwards. Paolo and Rob reported no abnormalities, so Nick logged off and got up. There was a short period of time when corridors would be empty and he planned to get lost.

Several hours later, after Rob left his station (an hour later than he promised, as usual), they went to have dinner at one of the staff cafeterias on the third deck. There were only a couple of engineers there, both of whom just had a full shift with Rob so neither bothered them. Xiu, who worked at the counter, served them extra dessert “because it would get stale otherwise”. They took the corner table and ate quietly without small talk. 

They’ve known each other for over 70 years now. They left home 66 years ago and never went back. They lived for two decades among Gemi and then were able to fund the construction of Hopestar, the first human ship based on Gemi designs. They flew it all over human space and saved up enough money to go through the renovation 13 years ago (it didn’t go smoothly, but they were fine). And now they had the rest of their lives to live together.

“You’ve been staring at me for five minutes now,” Rob said with a soft chuckle as he finished his hot brew. 

Nick smiled and felt his cheeks grow warm. “I am just thinking about how much I love you.”

Rob snorted and pressed their knees together under the table. “Stop acting all cute.”

“That’s just who I am.”

Rob put his cup down and started gathering their plates for cleaning. “Oh, believe me, I know.”