The TFS Emberlight was smaller than she expected. ---Mid-range survey vessel. ---Fourteen crew. ---Three bots. ---One A-I core. ===It smelled like metal and recycled air. ---Dru didn’t mind. She was second seat on rotation, ---junior pilot, ---responsible for shuttle landings and evasive maneuvers. She kept an old rock from the homestead in her locker,--- now worn smooth from her palm. ---Wrote letters to her parents she never sent. ---Fixed things by hand, even when bots offered. Her first trial came fast.--- A routine scan near the Perseus Drift turned violent---gravitational shear from a rogue binary system. ---The ship buckled. ---The senior pilot was thrown against the console, unconscious. ---Dru took the helm. No one told her to. ---She just moved. She executed a manual slingshot maneuver using a nearby moon’s gravity. ---Textbook impossible. ---But she pulled it off. The ship groaned, ---the AI core screamed, ---and the crew held their breath. ---When they stabilized, the captain looked at her like she’d rewritten the laws of motion. ---She hadn’t. ---She’d just listened to the silence between stars. ---They called her “the calm in the storm.” ---She didn’t argue. ---She just kept flying. Command school came next. ---Fast-track. ---Honors. Her commanding officer said, “You’re not meant to follow. You’re meant to lead.” ---She hesitated.---Wanted to stay with the Emberlight. ---But she knew. ---The ember had caught. One night, alone in the cockpit, she watched a comet arc across the viewport.---The stars didn’t blink. ---The silence didn’t flinch. ---She whispered to no one:--- “I don’t chase glory. ---I chase the silence.---And it answers.”
