Interlude — Stars & Sparks

  Jessica & Kessa aboard the Starlifter Joy

  “You sure this is safe?” Kessa asked, squinting at the tangle of wires dangling from the open access panel.

  Jessica Star didn’t even look up from where she was half?buried in the belly of the Starlifter Joy. “Define safe.”

  “Uh… not deadly.”

  Jessica’s boots kicked playfully as she grunted, twisting a spanner. “Then yes! Absolutely. Ninety?eight percent chance of survival. Maybe ninety?seven.”

  Kessa folded her arms. “That is not reassuring.”

  Jessica wriggled out from under the conduit with a grin smeared in engine grease. “Oh, relax. You Hartleys are too tense. Bet you even frown in your sleep.”

  “I do not!”

  “You do,” Jessica said, tapping Kessa’s nose with the spanner. “Meanwhile, your brother sleeps like someone wondering if the stars are judging him.”

  Kessa snorted. “That’s fair.”

  Behind them, the Joy hummed with a low, rattling complaint — like an old dog with opinions.

  Jessica patted the bulkhead affectionately. “There, sweetheart. I hear you. Hold on.”

  “You talk to your ship,” Kessa observed.

  “Of course I do. She gets jealous if I don’t. Ships are emotional creatures.”

  Kessa gave her a look. “Ships are metal.”

  Jessica waggled her eyebrows. “Have you MET your ship? The Clover absolutely has moods. I’ve felt her.”

  Kessa opened her mouth to argue… and then remembered the Clover humming warmly when she’d pressed her hand to the hull.

  “…Okay fine,” she muttered. “Maybe a little.”

  Jessica grinned triumphantly. “I knew it.”

  Kessa leaned against a crate, watching the older woman tinker with wires. “So how long have you been doing this?”

  “Hauling? Since before I had adult teeth. Repairing? Since before I knew what a healthy childhood looked like.”

  Kessa laughed. “We didn’t exactly have a normal childhood either.”

  “Oh, I know,” Jessica said, sliding a new panel into place. “I met you two when you were tiny chaos gremlins crawling around Jorin’s cargo nets.”

  Kessa smirked. “Kael used to cry when he got stuck.”

  Jessica snorted. “You used to push him into the nets.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Kessa gasped dramatically. “Jessica Star! I did nothing of the sort.”

  “Sweetheart, you absolutely did. He’d whimper, and you’d say, ‘Climb more better.’”

  Kessa dissolved into laughter. “Okay, that sounds like me.”

  Jessica tightened one final bolt, stood, and flicked a switch on the wall.

  The Joy’s engine purred smoothly. Like magic.

  Kessa blinked. “How did you do that?”

  “Experience. And charm. And this.” Jessica waved the torque spanner she’d named Lefty. “Never underestimate the power of a good tool and a better attitude.”

  Kessa watched the older hauler dust off her hands. There was something graceful about Jessica — messy hair, neon jacket, grease stains and all. She carried herself like someone who trusted the universe to hand her whatever she needed, even if it came wrapped in trouble.

  “Kael likes you,” Kessa said suddenly.

  Jessica froze mid?wipe. “What.”

  “You balance him out. He gets all tight and worried, and you get all… breezy.”

  Jessica blinked. “Are you trying to set me up with your brother?”

  “No!” Kessa paused, reconsidered. “…Maybe unintentionally.”

  Jessica pressed a hand to her forehead. “Void save me.”

  Kessa grinned. “Relax. I’m not matchmaking. I just… think you get him. More than most people do.”

  Jessica exhaled slowly, some of her bravado slipping. “Your brother is good people. Overthinks himself into tiny knots, but good. And he cares deeply. That’s rare out here.”

  Kessa tilted her head. “Why’d you say yes when he asked for help earlier?”

  Jessica shrugged, eyes softening. “Because Jorin trusted him. And because I see pieces of Jorin in both of you.”

  Kessa swallowed around the sudden tightness in her throat.

  Jessica stepped closer and tapped the younger woman’s chin gently. “Hey. Don’t go sentimental on me. Not in a room full of exposed wiring.”

  Kessa laughed quietly.

  Jessica pulled a folded cloth from her pocket and smeared the grease off Kessa’s cheek. “There. Now you look less like you lost a fight to a plasma hose.”

  “I totally won,” Kessa said.

  “Of course you did.”

  Jessica tossed the rag aside, then offered her arm dramatically. “Come on. Let’s go bother your brother. Maybe we can convince him his eyebrows don’t need to be so stressed.”

  Kessa snorted. “Impossible.”

  Jessica winked. “Challenge accepted.”

  Together they strode out of the engine bay — one neon?bright and unshakeable, one chaos?charged and humming with laughter.

  Behind them, the Starlifter Joy purred in contentment.

  And maybe — just maybe — so did the universe.

  “What’s that one?” She pointed to a shy pulse near the horizon, off-spine, not quite a beacon, not quite a star.

  He followed her finger, and something softened in his face. “That,” he said, voice lowering, “is a small light with a large story.”

  “A station?”

  “A promise.”

  Jessica frowned. “How do you dock with a promise?”

  “Slowly,” Jorin said. “And only when you’re ready to hear it.”

  She filed that away in the place she kept important things: behind her ribs, next to the notion that machines listen better when you’re kind.

  They watched the jumpfield for a long time—until Jessica’s head found Jorin’s shoulder and her breath matched the lane’s pulse.

  Before they climbed back down, Jorin pressed a coin into her palm—an old hauler token, warm from his hand.

  “For luck?” she asked.

  “For remembering,” he said. “On the days you forget your ears are as sharp as your courage.”

  She closed her fingers tight around it. “I won’t forget.”

  “I know,” Jorin said, eyes on the horizon where the small light blinked its patient hello. “You’ll be there when the right people go looking.”

  “Who are the right people?”

  “You’ll know,” he said softly. “And I bet you’ll help them get there.”

  Years later, she would. And standing on the Clover’s dock, she’d hear that same soft pulse inside the hull and think: oh… we’re ready now.