Lu couldn’t seem to get herself as excited as everyone else was about docking with the Chinese ship.

She thought it would be cool t meet the old guy, of course.

And she though picking up extra energy and getting them aon their way home was wonderful. She’d stopped thinking about going home because the feeling in her chest that it might never happen was just too painful. And now—now it seemed like a real possibility. They were all thinking about it.

But they’d only be going home if they survived the actual docking. She’d seen too many action vids of docking accidents and spacewalks gone wrong to think the process was simple. It took trained pilots using great skill to pull alongside another ship, mesh the two together, and physically transfer over, particularly at t...

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