Reece squinted through the the cockpit windows at a brightly shining star moving quickly against the vast blackness of space. The shuttle’s trajectory was leading the object which quickly grew large enough to see clearly; Zhengzhou International Space Staion. The station was roughly ring-shaped, and a somewhat ugly monstrosity, having been built up over the last couple of decades from dozens of modules of increasing size and complexity. Normally spinning to maintain artificial gravity, the space station was now motionless, awaiting the new crew.

Abruptly, the intercom blared out a moment of static followed by a rich male voice with a slight Australian accent. “Pssshht... G’day, mates. Do you read me? Over.”

“Loud and clear Zhengzhou, this is Commander Alex Rogers, we’re about three minutes out yet. Over”

“Well then, nice ta meet ya, Rogers. We’ve got airlock three set up and ready for you to dock. Hope your journey was a beauty,” came the immediate response. “Oh, the name’s Thomas Hall. See you blokes in a minute. Over and out.”

“Alright folks, nothing left to do but get docked with this monster,” stated Rogers feigning nonchalance as he studied the approaching station. He did have a mild sense of humor, if somewhat dry.

He looked over to Pasha. “How’re we looking?”

“Ready for a beer. Other than that, we’re good. All systems online, airlock three is locked in, aaaaand…calculations complete,” answered Pasha as he finished his set-up. “Autopilot should guide us in.”

Everyone aboard breathed a long sigh of relief. This was the most dangerous part of the mission by far. Even more difficult than re-entry, and they didn’t want anything to go wrong. Just as their apprehension began to ebb, the collision detection system (CDS) activated, filling the cockpit with loud beeps and blaring sirens. The shuttle lurched to the left, away from the space station.

“What in the abyss happened!?!” screamed Rogers.

“The cursed 'sids' overrode the autopilot. That’s not supposed to happen!” replied Pasha, his face turning white.

“If we miss this window, we’ll have to fly through space junk for eight more hours before we can try again, and I don’t have to tell you what that’ll mean,” growled the commander.

All four members of the crew understood. A colossal ring of space junk had built up over the years. Trying to navigate it would be an almost certain death sentence.

“Commander, deactivating the CDS,” stated Reece as the faulty system seemed totally bent on getting them killed.

The commander paused a second. “Okay, Reece…Do it! Do you see that panel right above your head with the two green levers on it?”

Surprised the commander seemed to think he didn’t know the shuttle inside and out, Reece looked up at him somewhat offended. The feeling passed in an instant. This was life or death. He cocked his head to the side to look straight up from his seat, located the CDS panel and immediately flipped a switch.

“Good. Flip those two levers down right now!” Rogers urgently commanded, not realizing that Reece had already flipped one of them.

To deactivate the CDS system, the manual stated that both switches must be thrown together. However, Reece had studied the system in detail. While the shuttle was on autopilot, the CDS could be shut down manually. That would keep it from sending any new commands to the flight control system. However, it wouldn’t unlatch the last command. In this case, it would essentially keep the shuttle perpetually turning left. With that knowledge, he reached up and pulled the left lever down, removing power to the CDS computer. Waiting for a second, he turned it right back on again, rebooting the device.

As it booted up, the CDS sent default commands to the nav computer. This technique essentially unlatched the old commands while it calculated the new commands. As the old commands were removed, the lockout alert on the autopilot finally stopped. Before the malfunctioning CDS could issue new commands, Reece shut down both levers in case a command had made it into the queue.

“Got it!” Reece loudly replied, not bothering to inform the commander of what he actually did.

With the CDS down, the shuttle lurched back to the right as the autopilot corrected and realigned with the docking port. Two seconds before docking, the autopilot indicator turned green, letting them know that they were again in the correct pipeline.

The station quickly came up to meet them. The shuttle's forward thrusters fired, slowing them down significantly. They soon matched the velocity, pitch, roll, and yaw of the station, making a perfect if rather swift docking maneuver. A dull thump and slight tremble accompanied the series of beeps and blips that sounded as the docking indicator panel lit up with several green LEDs.

Everyone took in a gulp of air as they all had been holding their breath the last thirty or so seconds. Pasha looked especially ashen. “Ooookkkaaayyy, we’re successfully docked, sir.”

“Thank the stars, and good job back there Danielson!” exclaimed Rogers. “I saw what you did. Very impressive under the circumstances. Now, how is everyone?”

“A fresh change of drawers and I’ll be good to go,” replied Pasha, with a worried little half-smile on his face.

Sora looked nauseous but gave a thumbs up.

“Good to go,” replied Reece. “And I think I’m about ready for that beer now.”

“Yeah, I think we all are,” laughed Rogers in relief as he looked over to the still white Pasha. “We need to get some color back in this one. So, let’s go meet our fellow station-mates. The sooner we get unloaded and onboard, the sooner they can get the station rotating again and give us some gravity, however artificial it may be.”

With that, the four crew members unlatched themselves from their crew seats. Reece grabbed the thick hatch's handles and wrenched on them. The hatch slowly opened outward with a slight hiss. He pulled himself up into the airlock. Once he was all the way inside, Rogers entered.

The hatch on the other side of the airlock hissed and slowly swung open as well. Through the portal opening, Reece could see the scruffy face of a thirty-something light-skinned man with wild brown hair. From the angle Reece was floating at, he also spied two other crew mates, or at least their shapely feminine legs, the rest of them obscured by the airlock wall.

“Hey. You blokes had us worried for a few moments there,” said the guy as he ran his hands hopelessly through his unkempt hair.

“This must be Thomas,” thought Reece. “The Australian voice over the inter-comm clearly belonged to him.”

“You and us both,” replied Reece. “Nice to meet you.”

Thomas helped Reece, followed by the commander, then Sora, and finally Pasha through the airlock and into the space-station proper. Thomas shut the airlock as the crew situated themselves. The two pairs of legs belonged to a couple of female astronauts who were both floating horizontally. They gripped handholds on the wall to hold themselves in place as they pressed several buttons on a panel near the door.

“All secure,” said the lady floating closest to Reece as the strands of her long black ponytail floated and separated. “You can fire up the gravity ring.”

Her skin was a golden tan and she had a long and slender, yet busty build. She looked at him with beautiful almond-shaped hooded eyes filled with light brown irises. "Hi," she said, almost shyly, smiling genuinely and nodded a greeting before turning her attention back to the interface panel as the intercom lit up.

“Copy that,” came a baritone voice over it. “Gravity ring engaged.”

Reece could feel the entire structure start to move as it slowly spun up. Reece marveled at how smoothly they moved thanks to the frictionless electromagnets. It took the ring no more than three minutes before they started to feel “gravity” take hold of them and their orientation started to shift to the outermost wall of the ring. Within five minutes, it felt completely normal. However, their equilibrium was off, and they stumbled with their first few steps.

“No worries,” laughed Thomas. “You’ll get used to it. By tomorrow you’ll all be pros.”

“Of course, this is what we all trained for,” said the commander flatly.

The others from the shuttle all had doubtful looks on their faces as they considered the commander’s words.

“Well then, let me take you on the grand tour,” exclaimed Thomas rubbing his hands together and breaking the silence. “At the end, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the crew. Most of them should be eating about now. Once we finish up at the mess hall, we can get you situated. Oh, but where are my manners? I’m Thomas, you heard me over the intercom earlier. And these two Sheilas are Aika Takahashi and Stefanie Becker, our networks and software tech and station doctor respectively.”

Turning his attention to the two women, Thomas added, “Thanks ladies, I’ll let you two get back to it.”

Both women nodded to the new group as they each mumbled a greeting. Where Aika was a tall and athletic beauty, Stephanie was cute in a tom-boyish way, her curly red hair framing a cherubic face. They couldn't have been more different.

“Alright, let’s get to it,” announced Thomas as he directed the new arrivals. “First, we have two other shuttles docked here. The one to your left is Hermes. It’ll be leaving in a few days with the crew you’re replacing. Sombra is over to your right. So, moving on.”

He turned and guided them away from the two women as they turned back to each other and started talking, glancing back a couple of times before they resumed their work. Reece caught Aika's eyes on him before he turned his attention back to their guide. Hmmm.

Leading them through the station, Thomas explained each module. Each one consisted of a thirty-meter square room connected to a three-meter-wide ring which doubled as a hallway, looping around the entire station. Between each module’s hallway section were two bulkheads that could be sealed in case of a breach or other structural compromise.

The tour ended with Thomas leading the crew into one of the largest single rooms within the modules on the space station, the mess hall. It was octagonal and about twenty meters in diameter with four large stainless-steel tables bolted to the floor in a square pattern. A couple of portholes served as windows for the room. Several steel chairs were placed around the tables, most occupied by a diverse collection of professional astronauts that looked like they’d been on-station a few weeks too long.

Nearest to the new crew members was a burly, pink-skinned, red-bearded man who held a wry smile and a twinkle in his blue eyes.

“So, these are the hotshots that stuck their landing,” exclaimed the bearded man sarcastically with a flourish of his meaty hand at the new crew members.

“I can’t wait to hear the explanation for that rather interesting docking,” snickered an olive-skinned woman from the back. She had dark brown almond-shaped eyes and shoulder-length dark-brown hair. She was short and thin and spoke with an American accent. Several of the other crew members laughed in agreement.

“Yeah, was launching into space just a bit too dull for ya, had ta go en turn a simple docking into a battle maneuver!?!” added another, a scrawny, pasty-faced man.

“Never mind them”, interrupted Thomas, indicating the mess hall crew behind him. “They’re just a bit jumpy from the scare you gave them, plus…they don’t get out much.”

“Be that as it may, Thomas,” cut in the red-bearded guy, chuckling darkly. “They do owe us an explanation. After all, we all need to work together, and I need to know if I’m working with loose cannons or idiots.”

“Listen, everyone," replied Rogers. “Everything was going by the book when the cursed CDS system kicked in and drove us off course in the last few moments of our approach. So, if you have a problem with our docking, look at the CDS, not us.”

While Rogers spoke, Reece began to take the measure of his new crewmates. Aside from the three who had spoken, there looked to be another five people in the mess hall. He spotted a dark-skinned man, thin yet thickly muscled with a shaved head. He sat near an even darker-skinned man, sinewy and older with salt-n-pepper hair cut short. He was sitting cross-legged on the mess hall floor. A ruddy-skinned man, and grey bearded guy with glasses sat together. And last was a woman with long silky dark hair and dark olive-colored skin, with a build that was both statuesque and athletic. She suddenly stood up and gazed at Reece with her light brown eyes. Smiling wickedly, she approached him.

“So, Thomas, aren’t you going to introduce us?” she asked with a mild lilting and rhythmic accent. She continued to study the crew with a playful gleam in her eye. As she approached, Reece studied her face. She had smoothly chiseled features, a long attractive nose, and full pink lips. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were thick and full and very dark, giving her a rare sultry beauty, hinting at something both exciting and dangerous.

“Sure... Naeva,” replied Thomas to the woman, somewhat caught off-guard by her boldness “Uh, so we’ve all looked at your files before you docked, so let me introduce you to the rest of our crew. This here is Naeva Amari, she’s our mission software specialist and the first Iranian female to go to space.”

With that, Naeva smiled and bowed her head slightly toward Reece lingering a moment before doing the same with the rest of his crew, though without the same level of interest.

Thomas cleared his throat and continued, “The loud red-head there,” indicating the big man with the bushy beard, “... is Taylor Johnson, our current station commander.”

Commander Johnson smiled politely and gave a slight nod.

“Next is Thato Singh,” he continued, indicating the salt-n-pepper haired man with dark skin. “He’s our astronomer and a darned good yoga-teacher to boot.”

Thomas continued to list off the last five members of the crew. Reece made a mental note, the stuck-up ass was named Aldo something and he was another biologist, the same as Sora. He felt sorry for the sweet girl now that she had to put up with the guy’s antics. The short olive-skinned woman was Chinese American and it turned out was married to Stefanie Becker, the curly red-haired woman he met earlier. Her name was Zia, and she was another biologist.

“What were they studying up here to need three biologists?” wondered Reece to himself. “It didn’t matter, for now. I need to get to work on my system checks and worry about my own business.”

The next name was Angel Hernandez, a fellow systems engineer. He was currently in charge of the systems on the station, and the crew member Reece would be replacing soon. The younger dark-skinned man, Solomon, was a mission pilot and was also shipping back to the ground once crew change was finished. The pale-skinned, scrawny guy was Jared, another mission doctor who had the look of someone with a chip on his shoulder. Reece already had a bad feeling about him.

With introductions done, Reece was ready to get out of there and get started on his assignment.

“Hey Commander,” Reece interjected. “I need to get started familiarizing myself with my systems up here. Angel, you wanna give me the advanced tour?” He nodded to the rest of the crew. “Nice to meet you.”

The commander nodded his assent while Angel got up, and walked over to him. Naeva frowned slightly and returned to her seat. He couldn't put his finger on it, but Reece could feel a tension in the air.

“Let’s go, amigo” said Angel as he approached Reece and offered him his hand. The two shook and exited the mess hall, leaving the rest of the station’s crew to their own devices.

“Not one for crowds either, huh?” noted Angel, looking over his shoulder with a smile.

“Nah, not really,” replied Reece. “I’ve always found social gatherings a bit pretentious. I prefer one-on-one interactions where people tend to be themselves. You know...where you can really get to know someone.”

“Ah, yeah. I get that,” agreed Angel. “You struck me as more of a man of action, rather than talking about action. I imagine that’s what Naeva saw in you back there. In fact, I’m willing to bet a month’s pay that you were the one that fixed the CDS, am I right?”

“Guilty as charged,” smiled Reece at the man who was quickly growing on him.

“I’ve been telling the purse-holders for months that the CDS or ‘sids’ system was flaky and needed more testing," grumbled Angel. "They always say the same thing. It’s not in the budget. Well, neither is losing an entire shuttle and its crew, for all the god’s sake. Anyhow, let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Let’s,” responded Reece with a nod.