“Roger, Captain. Have a safe journey.” Caph and Ford sat back and watched the front vid screens as the ground slowly disappeared beneath them. Emi thought it might feel like flying in traditional air transports, but it wasn’t. It was smooth, as if the Earth fell away, not that they were climbing.
Aaron patted her on the thigh. “Now, we wait. Caph, you want first watch?”
“Yeah, I’ll take it. I’m assuming you want to be on deck when we’re in docking range.”
“Right. Do short watches. You, then Ford, and I’ll be here.” He squeezed Emi’s hand. “Not trying to leave you out, babe, but this isn’t like a normal night watch.”
“I understand.” Her stomach growled. It would be dinner time soon. “I’ll go make supper.”
He helped her out of his lap. Twenty minutes later, Aaron and Ford joined her in the galley. They helped her finish preparations, and she took Caph’s dinner to him, then slid into Ford’s seat while he ate.
“Aren’t you going to eat, babe?”
“Yeah, in a little bit. I wanted to sit with you for a while.” He pointed at the vid screens, where purple dusk had overtaken the western landscape beneath them. “Amazing, isn’t it? I never get sick of this.”
“How many of these have you done?”
“Four like this. We’ve had other ships, smaller ones, that could lift on their own, or that could be tractored from lower. We’ve also had ships where we took command at a hub or space-side somewhere else.
This is the biggest, though, the Tamora Bight.”
“Do you miss it? When you’re in space, do you miss being on Earth?”
He shrugged. “Not so much. I’m usually too busy. It’s easy for me. My family’s scattered all over, so it’s not like I’m leaving a bunch of people behind.”
The men rarely talked about their families. Aaron was almost as alone as she was, with only a cousin who worked on a space station near Saturn. Ford had a brother and sister on a Jupiter outpost, he wasn’t close to his father, and his mother was deceased. Caph’s parents were colonists in a different solar system¯she couldn’t even begin to pronounce the name¯and his three siblings were split around the known universe.
This truly was a ready-made family they’d become.
“What about after?” she asked.
He shook his head in mock disgust. “We’re not having this conversation again, are we?”
“No, I meant if we decide to settle on Earth later, not take another mission, would you be okay not being in space?” He finished his dinner and handed her the plate, playfully pulling her in for a long, passionate kiss. “Honey, it doesn’t matter if I’m on Earth or in space or in some distant rat-hole spaceport as long as it’s the four of us there together. My home is with you three, not any place or ship or planet.”
She could agree with that—she felt it too.
“Go eat your dinner before it gets cold, sweetie.” Emi took his plate back to the galley and ate her dinner.
She thought she’d be too excited to sleep, but started yawning an hour later.
“Nerves,” Ford said with a smile. “Go to bed, watch the vid or something.”
She did, thinking she wouldn’t sleep. She awoke to find Aaron stretched out next to her, fully dressed, watching the vid screen.
“Little formal for bed, aren’t we?” she joked.
He shrugged. “Just a precaution. In case the twins need me on deck.”
“Thought they were going to trade off?”
“They are. Caph will be along in a little while.” Cuddled against Aaron’s side, she drifted again. When she awoke, Caph was stretched out next to her, dressed, and Aaron was gone.
This was one of the very few nights she didn’t sleep all the way through since joining her boys.
He pulled her to him, tightly snuggled. “Go back to sleep,” he whispered. “It’s late for you. You’ll need to get used to sleeping without a set sunrise and sunset.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“I’m used to it.” He pressed his lips to her temple in a sweet, chaste kiss. “You’ll have plenty of time to settle in on the docking hub.”
“I want to see it when we get there, before we dock,” she mumbled, already falling asleep again.
“I promise, we’ll wake you up.”
“Okay…”
Ford gently nudged her awake. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty. We’re close to the hub.”
She rolled over. The window sim looked like early dawn. “What time is it?”
“Almost six a.m.”
She sat up and he kissed her. “I’ll have your coffee waiting.”
“Thanks.”
She grabbed a quick sonic shower and dressed. Ford had her bagel toasting and her coffee ready, perfectly prepared. Emi hugged him from behind. “You’re the best, you know that?”
“Keep talking.” He grinned, playfully bumping her with his hip.
Emi helped him make breakfast for Caph and Aaron and they carried it to the bridge. Outside, the sky looked black, punctuated by pinpoints of stars, clearer and more breathtaking and in far greater quantities than she ever remembered seeing from on Earth. Ahead of them lay the large orbital hub facility, several dozen ships berthed on each side and a flurry of traffic at one end, where the smaller transport and passenger vessel terminal was located.
Caph chuckled. “It’s neat, isn’t it?” Dumbly nodding, she stared.
Space. She was in space.
Was this how her parents felt the first time they traveled to the moon? She wondered if they’d ever passed through this same orbital hub. There were fifteen of the large ones and twelve smaller, passenger-only hubs.
She jumped when Aaron touched her shoulder. “We’ll be docking in about an hour, just waiting for an available pilot tug to come get us.” He looked at her. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“Big.” Pictures and vids had not prepared her for the reality.
“Not the biggest. Third biggest. They had an open berth, otherwise we’d have to wait three more days for one of the other hubs to be in the right position for us to lift.” There wasn’t anything she could do but watch. The pilot tug hooked onto them and slowly guided them into their berth. Once they were secured, a docking crew hooked up utility umbilicals and a portable gangway to their front hatch.
The com signaled. “Tamora Bight, welcome to Orbital Hub 0-7-Alpha. Captain, your hook-ups are complete. You and your crew have permission to debark as needed. A dock foreman will get with you on your schedule.”
“Thank you.” Aaron looked at Emi. “And that’s all there is to it.” He smiled. “They’ve got a great restaurant here.” Ford lit up. “Oh yeah! I forgot about Charlie Tacos. I’ll make a reservation.”
Barring any unforeseen issues, they’d be at the orbital hub for two weeks. The first night there the boys took Emi out for dinner and she was amazed at the view of Earth from the hub’s huge observation room. Staring down at the planet slammed home the finality of her decision. She’d never give up these men or what she’d chosen, not for that hunk of rock and water beneath them.
Two weeks at the hub seemed to fly by. She learned more about the ship’s systems and took her turn at solo night watches. When the pilot tug guided them away from their hub berth, Emi watched the orbiter slip away in the front vid screens.
Two ISNC cruisers accompanied them and three other ships¯freighters¯to Mars. They had to test their jump engine, something Emi didn’t even try to understand. It almost frightened her to contemplate how fast it transported them from one side of the solar system to the other, but in their case they were only using it to jump short distances to check the power loads on the various systems.