“She grew up around data,” Dove says. “That is entirely your fault.”
“I am aware.” Papa’s markings are settling now — Dove’s calm voice doing what it always does to his biology, smoothing the danger-bright into something warmer. “She’s safe?”
“She’s safe. Healthy. Very proud of herself.” Dove’s hand lands on my head, steadying and warm. “She’s coming with me on the run.”
Papa’s markings flicker. “Dove —”
“She’s here, Cetus. She’s safe and she’s here and the fuel math doesn’t work for turning around.” Dove catches my eye and winks — quick and secret, just for me. “Might as well take the scenic route. Show her the Arch.”
The wink makes my markings pulse so bright the cargo bay glows gold. She’s not mad. She’s not sending me back. She’s taking thelong way home.
Papa sees the wink. His markings do the settling pattern — the deep, steady one Pickles classified ashome— and his voice drops into the low harmonics that mean he’s given up fighting something.
“You are both grounded when you return.”
“Absolutely,” Dove says, not sounding grounded at all. “I’ll comm you from the Arch. We’ll be fine.”
“I love you. Both of you. Be safe.”
“Love you, Papa!”
The screen goes dark. Dove looks at me. I look at Dove.
“So,” she says. “Want to learn how to fly a courier ship?”
Here’s the thing about space that nobody tells you: it’s not quiet. Not on a ship, anyway.
The Rolling Pin hums. Not the same hum as the station — Papa’s station hums low and steady, like breathing. The Rolling Pin hums the way Dove hums when she’s cooking, little shifts in pitch and rhythm that mean she’s adjusting something, calibrating, responding. It’s alive in a way I didn’t expect. Thedeck plates vibrate under my bare feet (I took my boots off; Dove said I could). The bulkhead panels tick when the temperature shifts between zones. And Pickles is everywhere — in the air recyclers, the nav computer, the speaker system — which means the ship sounds like him, a little. Precise and watchful and warm underneath.
Dove lets me sit in the copilot seat. The real one, not the jump seat. She adjusts the harness for my size, checks the straps twice, and then shows me the nav display.
“Okay, sweetheart. First lesson. What do you see?”
“Stars.” Obviously.
“Nope. You see data. Every dot on this display is a gravity well, a fuel calculation, and a delivery deadline. Watch.” Her fingers move across the panel, and the star field shifts — overlays appear, colour-coded route lines threading between systems like the root networks in my greenhouse. “Courier navigation isn’t about going fast. It’s about goingsmart. See this?” She traces a curved line that loops away from the straight path between two points. “This route adds forty minutes but saves eleven percent fuel because you’re riding the gravity assist from that gas giant.”
“Papa does the same thing with atmospheric currents. He calls it ‘borrowing momentum from existing systems.’”
“Your papa and I think alike. Don’t tell him I said that, his markings will do the smug thing for a week.”
I make a note on my data pad:Dove and Papa: parallel cognitive frameworks. Compatible methodology. Further evidence of optimal pairing.
The Veridian corridor is beautiful. I press my face against the viewport while Dove runs standard checks, and the stars out here are different from the ones I see from the station — thicker, somehow, clustered in bright ribbons that streak across the dark like the bioluminescent patterns on Papa’s arms when he’s happy.
“That’s the Veridian Arch,” Dove says, leaning over my shoulder to point. Her hair brushes my cheek — it smells like the ship, like metal and recycled air and the vanilla hand cream she keeps in the cockpit. “Stellar nursery. All those bright spots? Baby stars. Still forming. Some of them won’t ignite for another million years. They’re just... gathering energy. Getting ready.”
“Like seeds,” I say. “In the greenhouse. Before they break through the soil.”
Dove goes quiet for a moment. “Yeah. Exactly like seeds.”
“Baby stars.” I flatten both hands against the viewport glass. My markings are doing so many things. “They’reyellow. Like my markings.”
“Little brighter than your markings. But yeah.” She’s quiet for a moment. “First time I flew through here, I was twenty-two and scared out of my mind. Borrowed ship, bad nav data, running from my first creditor. I came through the Arch and everything was so bright I thought my instruments were malfunctioning.”
“Were you alone?”
“Completely alone. No AI. No copilot. Not even a decent autopilot.” She leans back in the pilot seat. “That was before Pickles. Before I’d learned that alone isn’t the same as independent.”
