Nikolai started getting anxious a whole day before they arrived at Antio. He was almost certain he booked the dock correctly, and all the approach charts were fresh when they downloaded them back at Kashi-Sulak. But what if he made a mistake? What if he (and everyone else who double-checked him) forgot something? He always had this dread hanging over him when they flew to a new place. He had it half the time when they flew old routes.

This hop felt too quiet. Thanks to the overhaul on the engines, the stream of complaints from engineers thinned enough for all daily reports to fit on a single screen, and most of them were quality-of-life improvements and not actual problems. Then again, the complaints from the stewards were now much louder, and Nikolai felt guilty for letting so many pile up. This was one of the reasons why stewards often felt underappreciated compared to pilots or engineers.

His train of miserable thoughts got interrupted when Paolo walked into his office (Nick kept the door open at his “working” hours, and it was less than an hour after the first shift finished, so he didn’t close it yet) and threw himself into the chair opposite his desk. The Chief Pilot looked both angry and miserable and lost for words. Nikolai didn’t mind waiting: it gave him a reason to procrastinate on writing an apologetic reply to Petra. So they sat and stared at each other for a full minute.

Finally Paolo blinked and took a breath. “I apologised to Richard.”

Nikolai raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Oh, really? Took you long enough.”

“I am pretty sure he hates me now.”

“Oh.”

Why did he let Paolo deliver a sensitive apology without checking first what he was going to say? It was silly to expect this to go smoothly. Another failure on Nick’s part. Why did he agree to be the captain of the Hopestar again? They should’ve hired someone else from the get go. 

“Everybody new ends up hating me, and you can’t expect me not to blame it on a fucking conspiracy.”

Nikolai honestly believed Paolo was a good person. He could be one. In situations that required fast decision making and precision, he was indispensable. But when it came to interpersonal relationships, he was an even bigger disaster than himself. Sometimes, Nick felt like they’ve made a breakthrough, but a few months would pass and Paolo would be back to his paranoid hostility to anyone who didn’t show him “proper respect”.

“No one hates you.”

“Everyone fucking hates me!” Paolo snapped, and Nick’s heart fell because he could see the tears welling in his eyes. “Hate, or despise, or laugh at me! And it doesn’t matter if I’m trying or not. I’ve spent this week clean and fucking miserable and for what?! So a fucking newbie would tell me I suck as a pilot?”

“What did you tell him to cause this?” Nikolai inquired patiently.

“Fucking nothing! Just- just- I apologised, okay? Said I was sorry he got pulled into this situation with me and Haasan. And then he dug into me as if I’ve been treating him unfairly all this time!”

“Have you?”

“No!” Paolo glared at him, then pouted. “I mean, I have to be strict, we are flying a fucking spaceship. He is getting better, of course.” A new thought infuriated him again. “Did you know he was going to the library? And you are telling me this was not Haasan trying to-”

“Paolo.”

“You always side with him!”

“Paolo, shut up!”

Nikolai wasn’t sure where this came from, but he was suddenly very angry and tired. Paolo snapped his mouth shut and stared at him, surprised. Another silent minute passed as Nick tried to collect his thoughts.

“I asked you to apologise to Mr Richard because you started a fight in front of him. I asked Andrew to do the same because he almost put Mr Richard in danger. You are the first one to report back and you completely messed it up, as far as I can tell. I don’t have much confidence in Andrew, but at least I can trust him to pretend to be remorseful. Instead of whatever you are doing.”

Paolo leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with resentment. “I am doing nothing!”

“Paolo, can you not antagonise a licensed pilot who is the sole reason for why we are taking the fast corridor?!”

“I wasn’t antagonising-”

“Stop bringing Andrew up then!”

Paolo blinked, as if something clicked in his mind. “Is this what’s happening? Are these two now a thing? Since-”

Suddenly, the gravity decided to change the vector, and they got thrown towards the fore. Paolo managed to grab onto his chair and fell to the floor next to it, but Nikolai flew the whole way to the wall and hit it with his shoulder before sliding down (so it wasn’t gravity, but momentum, good to know). The doors shut and an automatic warning played through the comm. He could also feel the normalcy of space back and raw against his skin - the ship got torn out of the subspace for some reason. And it was very-very bad.

Paolo crawled over and touched his shoulder. “Nick? Are you okay? Anything hurt?”

Here was Paolo Nikolai trusted so much: clear-eyed and serious, ready to solve a problem, his priorities laid out in perfect order. This is what almost five years in the military academy trained into people. Then again, all the issues Paolo had also came from there. 

“No, no, I am okay. I think.” Nick sat up with a hiss. His shoulder was fine but there would be a big bruise.

“We’ve left the subspace for some reason.”

“Yeah, I can feel that.”

Then the hum of subspace engines got silenced: a controlled shut down. You don’t use them in normal space, and you don’t jump back without proper navigational calculations. Oh, he really hoped they were not falling into a star or a black hole right now.

Paolo finally got up and walked to the door but the lockdown was still in place. He tried his access codes but they didn’t work: only the Captain and the Chief Engineer had overrides, and Nick didn’t intend to use them until he was certain their atmosphere wasn’t cycling out. 

Then the normal space engines roared to life. “In reverse mode.” Paolo murmured, listening to the sound. “They are slowing the ship down. Good.”

Nikolai got up with a wince and limped back to his station. He accessed the main workspace and projected it to the office wall. All the cameras were working, and the sensors showed no problems with any of the critical systems. And yet they left the subspace a day earlier than intended.

The cameras showed everyone who was at their station and a view of the cockpit. Thoresson was in charge and looked scared, but he was talking to the dedicated engineer on the open comm and they were troubleshooting together. The navigators tried to figure out their position. In the engineering corner, Rob’s window was empty, but Nick could see him behind Irene at her station. He didn’t seem hurt. Good.

“We didn’t mess up a turn, did we?” Paolo scanned through the data too, a deep frown on his face. “If we did, we would have exploded, not returned somewhat safely…”

Nikolai agreed. “It has to be something else… A glitch in the system?”

“Or sabotage.”

Suddenly, a blood-chilling clang echoed through the hull from aft. Then another one, further down. Nick swallowed hard. “Did we hit something?”

Paolo punched the closed door. “Fuck. This is coming from the airlock.” And without waiting for the captain to understand. “We are being boarded.”

The normal space engines turned off, and the lockdown lifted automatically. The door slid open, and they could hear the airlock cycling at the aft end of the crew deck: it existed for safety reasons and could be used to access save pods. They never used it before, but someone was hacking the controls and cycling through. Paolo turned around and searched with his eyes through the office. “Fuck, do you have a cutter? Something heavy?”

Nikolai sat down in his chair, his knees trembling. “No, d-don’t attack them… We will have to negotiate, and-”

“And they will cut us up for food!”

This was silly, of course. Raiders or pirates or whomever those were did not eat other people. At least, Nick never heard about that from Andrew or other trustworthy sources. “Paolo, I beg you. We are a passenger ship, we don’t have weapons, we can’t protect our passengers and crew if the ugliness starts. Do not provoke them.”

The public comm went alive. Petra, her voice trembling, tried to sound confident. “To all passengers: stay in your cabins and close the doors manually. If you are in the public space, stay where you are. If you are in the corridor, get to the closest public space. To all crew, remember the training exercise and-” The comm died, probably hacked by the same routine as the airlock controls.

And then the cycle ended and down the corridor someone yelled an order. It had to be an order. Nikolai and Paolo stared at each other, baffled. It was probably Far-Galactic but with such a thick accent and something muffling the voice, neither of them could understand. Several people were shouting the same thing, getting closer. Paolo lunged for a hefty-looking statuette on the captain’s desk but it was screwed to the surface tightly. “Fuck!”

And then a man jumped into the room, a huge black rifle in his hands, his space suit assembled from half a dozen barely matching pieces, his dark helmet painted with flame tongues and a skull. He shouted, and this time he was close enough for Nikolai to finally understand. “Face down on the floor! Don’t move or I will shoot!”

Nick slid down from his chair to the floor. It was time to take the ultimate responsibility. Instead, he felt tears in his eyes. He looked to Paolo, pleading, and he looked back, scared but determined, still on his feet.

“I said face down!” The pirate pointed his rifle at Paolo.

He straightened and grit his teeth, sent a warning look to Nikolai and finally responded, in terrible F-G. “Shoot not. I am captain.” Then he pointed at Nick. “That is First Pilot.”