Chapter 32 - Hope by Firelight

The probe was officially on its way back towards Earth, doing its thing.

"Alright, now what?" Luca said, still catching his breath from carrying Emily down from the observation lounge and trying to inject a bit of levity into the room. "Anyone hungry?" Honestly, he tuned out most of the tech talk.

Ryan and Danny were chattering like chipmunks, heads buried in screens, probably having some nerd party only they understood. He focused on the main screen instead, the one showing Alpha Centauri. Danny and Ryan had whipped up some CGI version of the system, and it looked pretty damn cool.

Joey perked up from his chair, smoothing down his dress uniform jacket. "You know what? I could go for some comfort food right about now. Chicken wings sound good to anyone?"

Everyone said yes at once, and Joey grinned. "Alright, I'll put them in the oven," he said, heading for the door.

"Wait, what?" Emily shot up straight, her eyes wide. "Joey, you can't bring food into the lounge!"

Zoe gasped dramatically, hand flying to her chest. "The lounge is sacred! It's our sanctuary!" She looked genuinely horrified. "And we're still in our dress uniforms! You know the rules: loungewear only in the lounge!"

"Come on, guys," Joey said, pausing at the door. "It's just wings. I'll be careful."

"Just wings?" Emily's voice climbed an octave. "Joey, those things are basically sauce bombs waiting to happen!"

Luca held up a hand, fighting a grin. "Okay, okay. Executive decision." He looked between Emily and Zoe's panicked faces. "Tonight is a special circumstance."

Emily squinted her eyes at him, crossing her arms. "That's what you said yesterday with the pizza!"

"You're right, Em," Luca said, raising both hands in surrender. "Absolutely. But tonight's extra special. We just discovered a potentially habitable planet. I think we can bend the lounge rules this once."

Emily's squint intensified. "This is the last time, Luca. I mean it. Promise me."

"Fine, I promise," Luca muttered.

Emily's squint sharpened, and she stepped closer, pointing a finger at his chest. "If I catch a single drop of sauce on my carpet, I will personally oversee you cleaning this entire lounge. Every. Single. Surface."

His throat clicked. Emily in full supervisor mode was terrifying. "Deal," he said quickly. "But that means you have to trust me to keep everyone in line."

"Oh, I'll be watching," Emily said. She pointed at Joey, then swept her finger around the room, in particular pointing at Ryan and Danny. "If anyone, and I mean anyone, gets even a drop of sauce on those leather couches, you're all on cleaning duty for a week. And I'm talking deep cleaning!"

"Deal," Joey said, already halfway out the door before the girls could mount further protests.

Luca noticed Danny and Ryan had quietly excused themselves, their heads close together, and they were talking in hushed tones as they made their way towards the door. They looked like kids sneaking out of class.

"Are those actual asteroids?" Zoe squinted at the display. "They're so, like, organized." She tilted her head like they might be movie props.

Chris was practically preening. "Yep," he said, sounding like he’d personally sculpted each rock in orbit. Apparently, their fancy telescope satellite was printing out data faster than they could process it.

Then Joey came back in, buzzing. "Think of the resources. Metals, rare minerals. The asteroid belt alone could fund the next ten missions." He was already running the numbers; Luca could see it on his face. Okay, fine, Luca had thought about that too. They weren't exactly swimming in cash; if anything, they were drowning under a mountain of debt. A big score out here could change everything. It's not like they were here on some pleasure cruise.

Emily had calmed down a bit and was more on his wavelength. She leaned closer, her hand brushing against his as she pointed at the screen. "I want to know if there’s life," she announced, eyes all lit up. "Intelligent life, preferably. Not just some space mold."

"That's the dream, isn't it?" Luca said. Something out there besides rocks and radiation. He looked over at her, and yeah, that intensity in her face was doing things to his brain that had nothing to do with exoplanets.

The others kept going, talking over each other about satellites and mineral deposits and whatever else. Luca let it wash over him. They were actually doing this. Six weeks ago he'd been terrified of the chair, and now they were mapping a new star system like it was Tuesday.

The door slid open and Danny busted in, looking like he’d just won the lottery, tablet waving around like a flag. “Hey guys, we just got the latest readings from the telescope. You've gotta see this.”

Everyone shut up. Whatever Danny had found, his voice made that clear before the words did. Emily straightened up beside Luca.

"What is it?" Luca asked, though part of him already knew. Danny's hands were shaking slightly as he connected his tablet to the main display, and Ryan had gone completely still behind him; this wasn't just another asteroid or data point.

The main screen lit up, and Luca forgot what he was chewing.

There it was. An actual telescope image of a world orbiting another star. The planet sat in the black, its surface swirled with white clouds that caught and reflected the light of Proxima Centauri. A ring system encircled it, barely visible but real.

"Jesus Christ." Chris's camera hung loose in his hands. He'd actually stopped filming.

"The readings are off the charts," Ryan said, speaking slowly, the words coming out careful. "Atmospheric composition, magnetic field, surface temperature ranges... guys, this isn't just potentially habitable." He paused. "This thing could actually support human life."

Emily grabbed his arm, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks. "My God." She didn't look away from the screen. "We're actually looking at it. We're looking at another world."

Luca's brain went quiet. Not the panicked kind of quiet. The other kind, where something too big to process just sits there and you let it. Every kid who'd ever pointed at a star and said "what's out there" had been pointing at this. And somehow it was seven idiots in dress uniforms who got to see it first.

"I'm calling it New Dawn," Ryan said quietly. New Dawn. Luca turned the name over in his head. It should have sounded corny. It didn't.

"New Dawn," Zoe repeated, her voice small with wonder. "We're really going there, aren't we?"

Luca looked around the room. Seven people in dress uniforms who hadn't even gotten their wings yet, and they'd discovered a habitable planet. It was almost funny.

"Yeah," he said, not trying to hide it. "We're really going there."

---

By the time the wings were ready, the excitement had settled into something quieter. The crew dropped into their usual spots, and the lounge did what it always did: made the rest of the universe feel far away. Red leather couches, the electric fireplace doing its best impression of a real one, and the viewport on the far wall reminding everyone that no, they were definitely still in space.

Joey emerged from the galley carrying two platters of wings, and Luca's stomach growled before he'd even rounded the corner. "Hot wings, coming through!" He set them down on the coffee table between the couches. "Got some ranch and blue cheese too, for the civilized among us."

"You're a saint, Joey," Emily said, already reaching for a wing. She'd loosened her dress uniform jacket and kicked off her shoes, curling up on the main sofa.

Luca settled beside her, close enough that their knees brushed when he leaned forward to grab food. "This is what I'm talking about," he said, gesturing around the room with a wing. "All the fancy tech in the world, but sometimes you just need good food and good company."

Danny and Ryan had claimed spots on the smaller couch, their tablets abandoned for the moment as they dove into the wings. But Zoe had somehow ended up on the floor between Danny's legs, leaning back against his shins like he was furniture. She'd grabbed a wing in each hand and looked perfectly at home there.

Ryan gestured at the open cushion beside him. "There's a whole luxury suite right here, Zoe. Just say the word."

"I'm good," she said, tipping her head back against Danny's knee to grin up at him. "Danny's warm."

Danny went red to his ears. "I... yeah. Body heat. It's a... physics thing."

Zoe patted his calf without looking. "Sure it is."

Nobody had touched the pool table in weeks, which was a crime. One of the wall-mounted TVs played some old comedy on mute, courtesy of Joey. Luca couldn't tell which one. He kept meaning to ask Joey where he'd gotten all those shows, because the man had a library that could survive a nuclear winter.

"It's weird," Zoe said, sauce on her chin. "Knowing that in eight or nine days we might actually be there, seeing New Dawn up close."

Chris had his camera out again, panning slowly across the room. He caught Luca's look and shrugged. "Someday people are going to want to know what this looked like. The night before everything changed." He said it casually, but he wasn't wrong.

"Think it'll look anything like the projections?" Emily asked. She'd shifted closer to Luca on the sofa, her shoulder pressed against his arm.

She had sauce on her lower lip and firelight in her eyes, and Luca's brain briefly forgot how sentences worked. "We'll know soon enough," he said. "But I hope it's even better than what we're imagining."

She was quiet for a moment, then glanced up at him. "Do you miss it? Home, I mean."

"Home's not really a place," he said, and the words came out before he could second-guess them. His arm had found its way along the back of the sofa behind her at some point. Smooth, Rossi. "It's... I don't know. The people, I guess."

Emily shifted slightly, leaning into the warmth of his side. Her head settled against his shoulder, and his arm came down around her without hesitation. Some things never changed, thank god. She smelled like shampoo and fake woodsmoke and wings, which shouldn't have worked but did.

"Look at you two," Zoe called out from her spot on the floor, gesturing toward Luca and Emily with a wing. "Already making yourselves at home."

Luca rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. His hand landed on Emily's shoulder, thumb tracing circles against the fabric of her uniform. She hummed, barely audible, and pressed closer.

"Captain's found his co-pilot," Ryan said, stretching his arms behind his head. Luca considered throwing a wing at him. Decided it wasn't worth wasting a wing.

"Executive Officer," Emily corrected with a sleepy smile, not bothering to move away from Luca's warmth. She'd earned that title, had been the obvious choice since day one. Hell, she probably should have been captain, but she'd never wanted the responsibility.

"Same thing," Danny said, then immediately went pink when everyone looked at him. Zoe had hooked her arm around his calf like it belonged to her, and the guy had clearly lost the ability to form sentences. "I mean... you know... complementary skill sets and all that."

Joey snorted from his chair. "Smooth, Danny."

The fireplace popped. The ship hummed underneath them the way it always did, that low vibration Luca had stopped noticing weeks ago. Somewhere past the viewport, New Dawn was waiting.

Emily's breathing slowed, and Luca realized she was drifting off against his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to the top of her hair. It happened before he thought about it, which was probably the only reason it happened at all. Zoe caught it. Her smile said she was filing that away for later use.

"Long day," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else.

Emily smiled against his shoulder. He didn't have to look down to know.

---

[!captains-log] Captain’s Log

Communication probe launched at 2147 hours. Initial findings and the PR messages are on their way back to Earth. Weird to think some version of tonight is already heading home without us.

Danny and Ryan’s latest analysis confirms what we were hoping: Proxima b might actually be habitable. Atmospheric data, magnetic shielding, orbital stability. All of it looks good.

Really good.

Still too early to call it, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.

We’re eight days out. Ryan named it New Dawn. I wasn’t going to argue. It fits.

The crew is settling in. Less stress, more jokes, fewer people looking at me like they’re waiting for me to screw up. The ship feels lived-in now, in a good way. Like ours.

Emily fell asleep on my shoulder in the lounge tonight. In front of everyone. Zoe definitely took a mental photograph. I don’t care.

Tomorrow we start final approach prep. Eight days and we’ll know what’s down there.

>

Personal Note:

>

Dad always said the best crews weren’t the ones who followed orders, but the ones who believed in something bigger than themselves.

I think I’m starting to get what he meant.