Fatigue had a way of softening every edge, even on a ship built for hard vacuum and harder men. Jaxon Cole stared at himself in the scratched mirror of his tiny cabin, noting the new lines on his face—marks of too many nights spent pacing instead of sleeping, of too many compromises made and unmade in the heart's quiet hours. He told himself he'd shave, maybe tomorrow, but doubted he'd find the time.
He found himself clutching the old coin he'd kept since childhood, thumb brushing over the faded inscription. Words he'd once mocked for sentimentality now felt like a small, necessary shield: *What we carry forward, we become.*
Outside, the corridor hummed with the cautious energy of a crew bracing for more unknowns. He almost collided with Laina, who was balancing a tray of bizarre-smelling tea—a gift from the alien medics. Her hair was a wild snarl, her eyes rimmed with exhaustion but fierce.
She paused. "Last night, three new cases of homesickness. Two humans, one alien. All missing places they can't quite remember." She offered the tray. "Drink? Or are you planning to run on stubbornness and memory alone?"
He chuckled, cracked and unguarded. "I thought that's what being a captain was."
Laina rolled her eyes, then hugged the tray close. "If you need to talk—about anything—find me. We're all waiting for someone else to go first."
Jaxon nodded, his gratitude genuine but unspoken as always.
On the bridge, Izzy and Kael traded positions at the sensor console. Izzy's hands quivered as she shifted levers; she'd been caught off guard by her own terror, the sudden tightness in her throat whenever the artifact pulsed, whenever an old code swept across her screen.
Kael noticed, but didn't pry. "I once spent five moon cycles afraid of the sunrise," they said quietly. "Our winter—our real winter—lasts years. I thought I'd never see the season change. Thought maybe I didn't want it to."
Izzy's eyes welled. "And then?"
"I saw it anyway," Kael replied, voice gentle as starlight. "It was nothing like I imagined. It was better, and it hurt, and it promised things I didn't think possible. Sometimes, what's next is kind because you endured what was before."
Izzy nodded, letting the tears fall. "Sometimes I just want someone to say it's all fine."
Kael paused, considering. "It isn't. But you're not alone in it."
Meanwhile, Milo presided over a heated game of cards in the mess, intent on teaching the alien recruits how to cheat—"you gotta see the bluff coming, or you'll never know when you're winning by accident." The table erupted when Yhral, impossibly, revealed four aces pulled from somewhere Milo still swore was classified as a war crime.
"Maybe we should keep losing to them if it means we stop fighting for real," Milo grinned, clutching his stomach as laughter overtook even his hard-bitten cynicism.
The laughter rolled through the room, infectious, dissolving the last lingering tension from the aborted argument over lunch hours before. For just a moment, the mess was, indeed, a home.
Bennett, meanwhile, was on hull patrol, picking his way along the underside of the ship with his alien counterpart. Each time the artifact pulsed, their suit comms fizzed and popped with static—like a heartbeat, or perhaps an old friend knocking at the door.
Bennett found himself talking about nothing—old mistakes, a first love he'd never told anyone about, dreams he'd given up in favor of the Fleet. "I always figured I'd settle on a planet somewhere after all this was done," he mused, "but maybe home's more about who waits for you at the airlock."
The alien—quiet, curious, never quite sure of the right pause—replied, "Then if we walk together, perhaps we're always home. Even if we're lost."
When the shift was over, the entire assembly gathered in the observation dome, watching the distant glow from the asteroid cluster where the artifact's beckon now pointed—a cold, glittering promise.
Jaxon hesitated, then began, not as a captain but as the eldest of this fractured found family. "All my life I prepared for war. I thought it was the only story we'd ever get. But we—me, you, all of us here—we survived because we risked looking foolish, or strange, or afraid. We kept feeling, instead of shutting ourselves off. If that's all the universe sees of us, I'll be proud."
A hush followed, until Izzy stood, hair a mess, eyes bright. "I never thought I'd make friends with a being who lives in color, or laugh on a ship that's supposed to be haunted. I love you idiots. And I'm scared. But I'm still here."
Milo grunted. "What she said, double."
Someone—maybe Laina or Kael—started singing, a tune from neither species and both, and everyone, human and alien, joined in. The sound—awkward, beautiful, out of tune—rose up and out into the dark, where the Nightingale moved, battered and brave, into the next unknown.
They did not know what waited ahead, only what they carried forward: each other—the best and messiest hope in any universe.