“I have already catalogued the contraband vanilla,” Pickles confirms. “I am choosing to classify it as ‘essential morale supplies’ for administrative purposes.”
Flossie gasps. “Oh, I LIKE him. Is he always this accommodating?”
“He is never accommodating,” I say. “He just likes vanilla.”
“I like efficiency,” Pickles corrects. “The vanilla happens to correlate with a seventeen percent improvement in station-wide satisfaction metrics, which I attribute entirely to the Captain’s baking output.”
Her cargo, despite the flashy entrance, is immaculate. Every crate organized, manifests filed in triplicate, hazardous materials properly sealed. Mother Morrison trained her well — there’s that bone-deep competence underneath the sunshine, the kind you can’t fake.
Over tea in the mess hall — she carries her own supply, six varieties, insists on sharing — Flossie talks with her hands, her whole body, her sparkly hair clips catching the station lights. She learns every colonist’s name within an hour. Produces small gifts from her cargo bag like a magician — a shawl from Nexus Seven, dried fruit from the Veridian markets, and a stuffed xenobotany plant for Tavia that makes my daughter shriek with delight.
But underneath the warmth, something catches my attention.
“Three shipments stolen on the outer rim this quarter,” Flossie says, stirring her tea. Her voice stays light but her eyes go sharp — just for a second. A different woman looking out through the sunshine. “Medical supplies, mostly. The colonies that needed them just went without for months. OOPS filed the reports, insurance covered the costs, but thepeople, lovey.” She shakes her head. “Someone should track those thieves down. Get it back.”
“That’s not really OOPS’s job,” I say carefully.
“No.” She sips her tea. “It isn’t.”
Silence. Not awkward — weighted. The silence of someone whose job doesn’t quite fit the shape of who they’re becoming. I recognize it the way you recognize your own handwriting.
Then the sunshine snaps back. “Anyway! More tea? I’ve got chamomile — it’s my post-delivery blend. Morrison hates chamomile, which is why I send her three boxes every month. It’s my personal mission to make that woman relax.”
“Knight.” Mother Morrison’s voice, still on the relay. “I heard that.”
“Then DRINK THE CHAMOMILE, Morrison!”
“Hang up and finish your delivery.”
“I’ll finish my delivery when I’m done making friends! Friends are IMPORTANT, Morrison! You should try it sometime!”
“I have friends.”
“Luzrak doesn’t count! He’s contractually obligated to tolerate you!”
“Goodbye, Knight.” The channel clicks off with the particular firmness of a woman who has ended this exact conversation hundreds of times.
Flossie grins at me. “She loves me.”
“That is not the word I’d use.”
“She loves me and she won’t admit it. It’s fine. I’m patient.” She lifts her tea cup. “To Kepler Station. And to people who build homes in impossible places.”
I clink my mug against hers and think:watch this oneThere’s something under the cardigans and the nicknames and the star-shaped clips. Something fierce and calculating and hungry for more than deliveries.
I know that hunger. I had it once, before a storm grounded me in the right place at the right time.
Evening. The greenhouse. Full circle.
Tavia insists on showing Flossie her xenobotany experiments, which means all of us are crammed between growing stations while an eight-year-old delivers a lecture on fungal networks with the confidence of a tenured professor. Flossie listens with genuine fascination, asking questions that make Tavia’s markings blaze, and somehow she’s teaching my daughter to thread sparkly clips into her black-and-teal hair while discussing mycelial communication patterns.
Cetus stands behind me. His hand rests on the small of my back — the spot that’s become our default point of contact, the place where his heat bleeds into me like a promise. Through the greenhouse windows, Kepler-7b’s sky stretches vast and slowly changing. Less orange. More green at the edges. Three years.
Three years and we walk under open sky. Three years and he claims me under the atmosphere he built. Three years and the girl who never stayed anywhere becomes the woman who helped a planet learn to breathe.
“Fondness levels across all monitored personnel,” Pickles says from the greenhouse speakers, his tone carrying the particular precision he uses when he’s about to say something that matters, “have reached one hundred percent.” A pause. Not processing — something else. Something that shouldn’t be possible for a military-grade AI core but seems to be happening anyway. “Cross-referencing with historical data, this represents an unprecedented measurement. I am... complete.”
The word sits in the air like a seedling finding soil.
