Spiced Tea and Root Beer

The Dutchman's mess hall was quiet in the late afternoon, the kind of lull that settled in between shifts. Soft lighting warmed the compact space and the replicator alcove hummed gently to itself. Outside the viewport New Ferenginar's marsh clouds drifted past in slow looping currents, green and gold under the distant sun.

Lindsy stepped inside, her stride easy and unhurried. She had just finished her afternoon Keth-Vael session in the Deck 4 alcove and the familiar calm still lingered with her. She went straight to the replicator.

"Rigellian vegetable stew with extra herbs, medium portion. Spiced herbal tea, hot, with a touch of honey."

The tray materialized with a soft chime and she carried it over to her preferred table by the viewport and set it down and pulled out her PADD. A holographic star chart bloomed above it.

A minute later the door slid open again.

Cormus walked in with his flight jacket half zipped and his hair still slightly tousled from a long afternoon in the shuttlebay. He had a look around and spotted Lindsy and his expression brightened.

"Hey," he said, nodding toward her table. "Mind if I join you? I was told the new navigator is someone I should probably get to know. Also I skipped lunch and I'm regretting it pretty heavily right now."

Lindsy looked up and smiled at him. "Lindsy Vaelor, please sit down. I was hoping I'd run into you sooner rather than later. You're the pilot who gets to make my routes actually mean something."

Cormus crossed to the replicator. "Cormus Fletcher, resident shuttle jockey." He keyed in his order without looking at the menu. "Double cheeseburger, real beef if the system is feeling generous. Fries and a tall root beer."

The tray appeared and he balanced it easily and dropped into the seat across from her. He glanced out the viewport. "Good table choice. Hard to argue with a planet doing slow turns outside your window."

"It helps me think," Lindsy said. "Watching something that big move that calmly makes the rest of it feel less overwhelming." She gestured to the chart. "I plan better when I can remind myself how small we actually are out here."

Cormus raised an eyebrow. "That's funny, I fly better when I stop thinking about scale entirely."

"How so?"

"If I think about how much mass is around me or how fast everything is moving I get stiff," he said between bites. "If I just think about feel and timing things line up a lot better."

Lindsy nodded slowly. "That actually explains a lot about pilots."

She tilted the PADD so the star chart hovered between them. "I've been narrowing down our first realistic options. Nothing ambitious yet, just enough to learn how the Dutchman handles with a full crew aboard."

Cormus leaned in and looked at the display. "Erabus is clean and predictable, good place to stretch our legs. Tautine is rougher but that's where the better contracts hide." He traced a path through the asteroid belt with his finger. "There's a slingshot around the third moon here. If we time it right we cut hours off the run."

Lindsy studied the vector and adjusted the projection, her fingers moving with practiced ease. "That eddy at the exit worried me at first but if we scout it ahead of time and adjust the entry angle." She overlaid his vector in green and watched the numbers update. "There, that brings it well within tolerance."

Cormus grinned at that. "You make it look easy."

"Years of worrying about worst case scenarios," she said and laughed a little.

"I like that," he said. "Most navigators I've flown with either plan everything to death or throw the chart out entirely."

"And you?"

"I like knowing where the edges are," Cormus said. "So I can decide when to get close to them."

Lindsy smiled at that. "These routes aren't obvious by the way, where did you dig them up?"

"Years of work," she said. "Some from validation contracts, some from captains who trusted me with paths they didn't want advertised. I've always liked the quieter routes, the ones that still exist because everyone stopped looking for them."

Cormus nodded and took another bite of his burger. "Flying's the same. Most people chase the clean lanes. It feels different when you take the ones that are a little forgotten."

"Keth-Vael teaches something like that," she said. "Observe the flow, don't fight it. I practice every afternoon, it keeps me from forcing answers when they aren't ready yet."

Cormus lifted his root beer. "To not forcing answers then."

She lifted her tea and they clinked glass and ceramic across the table.

He leaned back and looked at her. "You have a good laugh. Makes the place feel less like metal."

Her cheeks warmed a little at that. "Thank you. And you make flying sound less like showing off and more like something worth doing."

"That might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said about my piloting," he said.

They sat there for a bit after that, neither of them in any particular hurry. Outside the viewport New Ferenginar kept turning slowly below.