As usual, Irene woke up before the alarm and started thinking about upcoming maintenance. Normal space engines, hover engines, fuel tanks, gravitation generators, landing gear. All the things that were crucial for their arrival on Earth in 17 hours. They haven’t landed there for over eight months, and this stay was planned to be longer than usual: 22 hours in ship time. 

Most importantly, she would have her first shore leave in three years.

It was not that she was denied shore leave. She simply never found much use for it. If she wanted rest, she could take a few hours now and then and sleep in, or watch a movie marathon at one of the media theatres, or work on her personal projects. Leaving Hopestar was unnecessary. 

This time was special. Irene was meeting with Gülnara, a woman who joined the Hopestar crew at the same time as her, with whom she shared a cabin for over ten years, who left the ship seven years ago. And who, technically, was still her wife.

Of course, such marriage was not recognised on Earth or anywhere in the Human sphere of influence. But some mixed colonies and Gemi worlds did not care much about the red stamps in the IDs and genders in the marriage unions. They were willing to extend the same financial benefits that ‘traditional’ families had. Hopestar offered some too: family cabins, same shift guarantees, matching leave times...

It didn’t matter much anymore. Gülnara chose to leave for a whole mix of reasons. One of which was Irene herself.

As usual, Irene took a cold shower and headed for the cafeteria on the third deck to get a cup of hot brew and two protein pancakes for breakfast. She sat alone at her table but greeted five other engineers who always ate at the same time and sat at the same places. Occasionally, a new steward would appear and take someone’s seat, and the whole system would stumble, leading to disoriented engineers standing in the middle of the room with their trays and the unfortunate newbie developing a new sort of anxiety. 

With breakfast eaten, Irene visited the prayer room and dedicated half an hour to her soul. Today, she shared it with two passengers, who followed unfamiliar rituals. She nodded at them as a greeting and as a farewell and received the same in response.

She returned to her cabin to change into her black overalls, braided her hair into a tight spiral around her scalp, and wrapped a bright headscarf around it. Today, it was orange with stylized black animals that existed on Earth in the old times.

As usual, Irene was half an hour early to her shift. She used her access to descend to the Ninth deck: a narrow space running half the circumference of the ship on the side of the starboard NS engine. The port NS engine could be accessed from here too but using an even narrower catwalk. She planned to have a full sweep of the deck in the next couple of hours.

She greeted the Chief NSE Engineer with a polite smile. Bak Ha-neul and Irene often did not see eye-to-eye, despite being one of the few women in the department. But as Irene was on her way to becoming the Chief Engineer, she tried to keep neutral relationships with the rest of the crew. Hopestar falling apart because she couldn’t deal with a couple of assholes was not an option. Cockpit Dedicated Engineer Lev Rogov gave her a small wave from his station; they didn’t share a shift but he was one of those rare extraverted people who stayed friendly with everyone. His second shift counterpart, R. Khan was a complete opposite to the point that nobody knew his first name. The rest of the first shift didn’t even notice her; everyone was busy with their work.

As usual, Robert Hoffman was busy at the central station and didn’t notice her approach. Today, he had Captain Kamenev on call, but they didn’t talk, just sat there, doing their tasks. Irene could see Kamenev in the corner of the interface screen, seemingly coding. He looked paler than usual, perhaps sick again? After catching a flu on Tiktik over a year ago, the captain struggled to properly recover.

This was another reason for why Irene had to take over as fast as possible. Robert clearly wanted to retire, if not for his sake then for his husband’s. She knew more about how fragile Kamenev’s health was than many others on the ship. Despite the renovation, there was an unsaid worry that he wouldn't last another decade.

Irene tapped Robert on the shoulder. He looked up slowly (he never startled), then checked the clock on the interface. “Is it time already?”

“No, but soon.” She said with a smile and took a seat to his right, her interface coming to life.

Kamenev heard that and looked up too, a warm smile on his lips. “Hello, Irene.” Yeah, definitely sick, his voice was more hoarse than usual.

“Greetings. Should I take over early today?”

The captain chuckled. “You can attempt.”

Robert rolled his eyes and tapped his soldering pen against the corner of the processing board. By the look of it, it was a part of a maintenance bot, one of the semi-automatic machines that could crawl along the surface of the ship during a subspace hop and check it for malfunctions. Exposure to subspace meant they kept breaking regularly; they couldn’t be more insulated, because it made their sensors less reliable. A whole squad of Maintenance Engineers was responsible for these bots, checking every assistance request, ensuring all the surfaces were under observation and all the sensors were sending reliable data. Robert didn’t need to be the one fixing the bots, but he kept adding improvements to them. Or accidentally destroying them.

“I am almost done.” He grumbled. ‘Almost done’ among engineers could mean anything between 10 minutes and 4 hours. Working with tech was unpredictable, and solving one issue could lead to five others.

Irene didn’t call him out on that. She was, after all, as prone to working too long as him. (Exhibit one: her being early to the shift.) Instead, she opened their shared board for reported issues. She was pleased to see the coolant leak in the cargo bay had finally been fixed. It has been haunting them for the past month; patching one section led to a puncture in another. They had to increase their coolant purchase by 30%, which was not that big of a spending compared to fuel or food but moved them closer to the red zone where they would have to tap into their reserves. The reserves they desperately needed for unending fixes, overhauls, and upgrades. Irene rarely saw the expense charts, and she hoped she would never need to look at them in the future. 

Whoever would take the place of the Captain, she didn’t envy them. Who had patience for running the accounting of a ship that travelled between trade-based economy worlds and capitalistic Human SOI systems that hated the whole idea of Hopestar? If they fell into the red zone, they would have to stop visiting the SOI colonies. And Earth.

Ten issues on the list were marked as fixed. Fourteen more have been added during the past two shifts. Most of them didn’t require Irene’s attention: Hopestar had an amazing crew of engineers who could offer solutions to any problem they felt qualified in. However, strange issues that didn’t have obvious fixes appeared occasionally, and Irene had to take charge in creating a group to solve them. She liked this job; at the end of the day, when they suddenly had a breakthrough after another brainstorming session, she felt a huge sense of satisfaction. Guiding people, who were as smart and possibly smarter than her, in the right direction felt amazing. 

Unfortunately, not everyone shared this feeling. Being assigned to the problem-solving group got a bad rep in the past few years, which got even worse after Irene’s bad call led to Systems Engineer Svetlana Gorokhova getting hurt. This made Irene learn something new about the engineers as a group: they were very vindictive.

Irene opened the group chat and found no new messages since she logged off 12 hours ago (four hours past the end of her shift). She tried to fight the wave of annoyance. This didn’t mean the rest of the group deliberately ignored this chat, she told herself. There were no breakthroughs or new ideas, and so no one posted anything.

“I’ve been thinking we should check the subspace engine power system again once we are back in normal space. I know, all the readings are in the expected range, but I still think the voltage being 3% higher is our culprit.” She hit ‘send’ and waited a couple of moments, watching the ‘read’ indicator count up.

Then, she switched to another chat. “I was hoping we could have a meeting when you start your shift. We should divide the decks and make a full inspection sweep before leaving subspace.” This one was with José Ramírez, the Grav Gen Engineer in the second shift (also known as Grav Ramírez. They also had Cargo Ramírez, Systems Ramírez, and Dedicated Ramírez in the third shift. And a couple of steward Ramírezes, but she didn’t know how those were differentiated between). He wasn’t Irene’s favourite guy but she trusted his expertise. 

She checked the time: another twenty minutes till the shift switch. Okay, maybe she could start with reading the logs of all the normal space systems, currently dormant. There were no reported issues, but sometimes a small change in the stats hinted at possible developing problems. She accessed the first file when Robert grunted at her side and looked up at her.

“Why the hell is Grav Ramírez asking my permission to leave the station? Isn’t he on your shift?”

Irene felt her cheeks flush and an unpleasant mix of guilt and frustration bubbled in her stomach. “I… I wanted to use him for the full systems inspection. I never implied it would mean leaving his shift or getting in trouble or anything like that!” She hated defending herself. She felt betrayed that Ramírez didn’t ask her any clarifying questions but went immediately to the Chief Engineer. Knowing well that she would be by his side.

Robert rubbed his nose with the base of his palm. “Just tell him I don’t care. I know he is new, just explain to him that we are not a corp and don’t keep minute-by-minute presence charts. If he is not at his station because of doing his job - I couldn’t care less.”

Irene nodded and pressed her lips tightly, trying to keep a neutral face. It took time for people, who started their lives in a corporate work environment, to readjust to Hopestar’s way of doing business. But it felt different in this case. Ramírez could’ve told her that he had concerns about leaving his station. He could’ve said he had reservations about this meeting. Instead, he went directly to her immediate higher-up. 

By the time the shift finally changed (Robert didn’t leave in time), Irene walked over to Ramírez’s station on a tiny deck above the main Engineering. He didn’t act hostile or annoyed or in any way confrontational. He listened to her plan, approved every step of it, and agreed to take the systems part of the maintenance sweep. So, perhaps, he didn’t try to undermine her when he wrote to Robert earlier, and it was just an adjustment thing. She still couldn’t shake off the annoyance and suspicion.

As usual, Irene took only one break for a prayer just half an hour before the full-attention call was sounded on the inner comm. Her shift was finished by then but she didn’t plan to leave her station any time soon.

They were arriving at the Home System.