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Among the handful of workers who took their lunch break in the lounge with the best view of the UplandGatewayOne transit ring exterior, a small, excited commotion broke out when somebody finally spotted a ship coming in.
It had been a slow break, and Amaliya was due back at work within the next few minutes, but she resolved to stick around just long enough to see which ship it was.
“It looks like it's probably one of the smaller support vessel classes,” said Rizki, their dark eyebrows furrowing as they squinted for a better look at the still-distant ship, little more than a reflective speck on the darkness of the void. “Can't see much more yet.”
Standing next to them, Amaliya tilted her head this way and that, as if it would help her see the distant vessel any clearer. “It's moving so damn slow,” she muttered under her breath, disappointed that she probably wasn't going to get to see it dock before she had to go back to her same damn boring job at one of the warehouses on station.
To be fair, the company of the other shipspotters wasn't bad. Over the course of the past few months, they’d made themselves a little club, since they were all the same flavor of weird, but it was definitely more fun when they got to see a busy port. The lull in traffic today had made the flow of conversation turbulent, and hard for Amaliya to follow. It was easier when everybody was talking about the same thing, like right now.
“If it's a support ship, where do you think its--” started Wira, before interrupting himself as a larger, lumbering ship came into view. In a hushed, awed voice, he said, “Oh, its baseship just came through the wormhole! Damn, look at that!”
It was absolutely massive, easily 20 times the size of the smallish ship that had preceded it. Amaliya didn't know much about the engineering aspect of spaceships, but she could just imagine the amount of work hours it’d take to design, build, and maintain such a large ship. It reminded her of a documentary she’d seen once, of a giant colony ship that was repurposed to become part of the station in the system its colonists inhabited.
Just as much, it reminded her of another baseship, one she’d seen in person when she was younger - Episteme, with the gleaming silver and red livery. The ship that had first made ships seem interesting. Amaliya hadn't seen it in a long time, and she hoped it hadn't ended up in a scrapyard somewhere even though she knew that was most likely.
“I know this one,” Amaliya said, squinting at it. Even at this far distance, she could make out the stunningly crisp mint-green-and-white paint on the massive ship’s hull, though not the registration embossed on its side yet. “That's one of the PSUMNT’s ships. Holism. That’d probably make the support vessel Sum Total, since they seem to run together most of the time.”
The lunch club at large seemed to agree with her assessment, replying with various hums of agreement and ‘yeah, that tracks.’
Another tiny little speck appeared, and Wira exclaimed, “Ope, another little one just came through!”
“Too tiny to see which one that is,” hummed Rizki. “Another PSUMNT ship, maybe? About the same size as Sum Total. Looks like it's with them.”
With a little shrug, Amaliya mused, “Dunno… Holism almost always runs with Sum Total, but sometimes they need an extra support vessel for some reason or another. Just whichever one happened to be nearby, I guess.”
As they watched, (the ship presumed to be) Sum Total drifted slowly off to one side of Holism, allowing the larger ship to move forward while the two smaller ships’ paths met.
“Oh, Sum Total ’s limping, that's why it's moving so slow,” Wira proposed, which was accepted by the group with another little chorus of hums of agreement. It looked like the other ship was moving into position to help Sum Total navigate to dock at the ring, though the ring’s positioning tractors would help more with the actual alignment. “I thought that was weird. It's always zipping off ahead of Holism whenever I see it.”
Imagining the wear and tear on the smallish ship’s engines and other systems, Amaliya commented, “The command crew must think that since it's smaller and more maneuverable, they can push it. I bet its engineering team love their jobs.”
No one in their little club worked for the University, or any other ship-related enterprise, so that truly was just an educated guess. The crews of University ships were notoriously insular, so Amaliya had never really had the chance to talk to any of them, either.
In fact, despite her fascination with ships, Amaliya had never once so much as left the system, though when she was younger she had harbored illusions of stowing away on one of the University's big, gleaming spaceships and starting a new life somewhere else.
… Teenager dreams, basically. UplandGatewayOne was fine for the now-adult Amaliya. Speaking of being an adult…
Amaliya heaved a sigh, crumpling her food packet’s wrapper into a ball. “Sorry to cut this short, everybody, but I got to get back to work.”
Among the lunch club, the general sentiment was resigned acceptance. Wira frowned, earnestly feeling sorry for her missing out as he said, “How about I let you know which ships they are when we figure it out, Ama?”
“I can record ‘em docking for you, even!” interjected Rizki, holding up their little camera - as if they weren't going to record it anyway.
Amaliya couldn't help but smile a little bit at the genuine care, though, even if… yeah, maybe it was weird to treat routine comings and goings of ships at the transit ring as a spectator sport. Amaliya’s mother would have said it was weird, but Amaliya herself had long since found that she liked weird.
She got to her feet, stretching, her joints making little pop noises that were probably less worrying than they sounded. (Probably.) “That’d be nice. Thanks, you two.”
Maybe she’d at least get to see when Holism and Sum Total took off again, whenever that was.