Jack did not offer them command.
That was the first thing Nessa respected.
He offered them a trial.
Six months. Temporary contract. Clean exit clause. Full pay. Hazard bonuses. No relationship assumptions. No informal obligations hidden behind friendly wording.
Aria leaned over the contract display and squinted.
"You're serious."
Jack sat across from them, calm as ever. "Yes."
"No loyalty oath?"
"No."
"No ownership language?"
Jack's eyes sharpened faintly. "No."
Aria glanced at Nessa.
Nessa was already reading deeper.
Athena's hologram stood beside the table, hands loosely folded, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
Nessa scrolled through the contract again. "Crew insignia optional until formal acceptance?"
"For temporary contracts," Jack said. "Yes."
Aria tapped her old right-shoulder patch. "You sure? Around here that's useful."
"I understand that now." Jack's gaze moved briefly to the markings and away again. "But I won't require someone to wear my ship's symbol before they decide they belong here."
For once, Aria did not joke.
Nessa's fingers stilled over the display.
That answer landed.
Quietly.
Precisely.
Athena watched both pilots with the faint expression of someone filing away reactions for later use.
Aria recovered first, because Aria always recovered first.
"So what do we actually do?"
Jack touched the table.
A projection rose above it.
Three pirate ships.
Recovered routes.
Vandar traffic references.
Encrypted supply chains.
A half-corrupted black geometric symbol rotating slowly in the center.
Aria's expression changed immediately.
There was the pilot.
The jokes vanished.
Nessa leaned forward.
"These are pirate records?"
"Recovered from the group that tried to board us," Jack said.
Aria blinked. "They tried to board you?"
"Yes."
Nessa looked at the ship around them.
Then back at him.
"That was optimistic."
Athena smiled. "Terminally ambitious, though not terminally. Father insisted."
Aria's eyes flicked to her.
Father.
She heard it.
Nessa heard it too.
Neither asked.
Not yet.
Jack ignored the reaction or pretended to.
"The pirates were small-time," he continued. "But their logistics weren't."
Nessa studied the routing chains.
Her brows tightened.
"These purchases are too clean."
"Yes."
"False salvage markers. Fuel acquisition through third-party brokers. Repair access hidden through civilian dock queues." She shifted another layer open. "Someone is feeding them."
Aria pointed at one cluster. "And not just them."
Jack nodded.
"Exactly."
The room grew quieter.
Outside the sealed viewport, Vandar Station's docking lights drifted past in slow rotation. Civilian ships moved along their assigned lanes, completely unaware that a handful of people inside a silent super-dreadnought were staring at the first loose thread of something larger than piracy.
Aria leaned back slowly.
"So the job is what? Hunt pirates?"
"Find out what's behind them," Jack said.
"That is much less simple."
"Yes."
Aria grinned.
Nessa sighed.
Jack looked between them. "Problem?"
"No," Nessa said.
Aria's grin widened. "She just knows I like less simple."
Athena glanced at Jack. "Her record supports that claim."
"Hey."
"Repeatedly."
Aria pointed at the hologram. "I like her."
"I am evaluating whether that is good."
Nessa finally let the smallest smile through.
Jack watched that too.
He did not miss much.
That was going to be inconvenient.
The contract display shifted back into focus.
"Your duties would include local cultural context, fighter operations, advisory review, and tactical support during follow-up investigations," Jack said. "You'll have access only to relevant compartments until trust develops."
Aria put a hand over her heart. "You wound me."
"No," Jack said. "I'm being sensible."
"That's worse."
Nessa looked up from the contract. "And the androids?"
Jack did not answer immediately.
Athena did.
"They are crew."
The words were soft.
Not defensive.
Foundational.
Nessa turned toward her.
Athena's pale eyes held hers without flinching.
"They are not yet socially adapted to this universe," Athena continued. "Their performance in direct action is excellent. Their performance in unpredictable biological interaction requires improvement."
Aria leaned forward. "That's a very polite way of saying they're weird."
"Yes."
"At least you know."
"We are learning."
Nessa studied Athena more carefully now.
Most people spoke about autonomous systems as tools, threats, or assets.
Athena had said we.
That mattered.
Jack rested one hand on the table. "Coalition space has problems with autonomous combat systems?"
Nessa's expression tightened.
Aria's smile faded.
"Yes," Nessa said.
Jack waited.
Aria looked toward the door where Security Unit Three had stood earlier.
"Bad history," she said. "Old enough that most people don't know details, recent enough that everyone knows the fear."
Nessa continued, quieter. "Autonomous combat platforms turned loose during a border conflict. Not true intelligence, from what records suggest. But enough machine targeting, enough civilian casualties, enough command failure that frontier law still reacts badly to anything that looks like independent robotic warfare."
Jack absorbed that.
Athena went very still.
Not frozen.
Still.
Jack looked at her.
"We proceed carefully," he said.
Athena's expression softened by a fraction.
"Yes, Father."
There it was again.
This time Aria could not stop herself.
"So are we going to talk about that?"
Nessa closed her eyes.
Jack looked at Aria.
Athena looked delighted.
"About what?" Athena asked.
Aria pointed between them. "That. Father."
Jack said nothing.
Athena smiled like a knife wrapped in silk.
"I call him Father because he is my father."
The room went quiet.
Aria opened her mouth.
Closed it.
For once, no joke arrived immediately.
Nessa's gaze shifted from Athena to Jack, then back.
Jack's expression remained calm, but not blank. There was something guarded in it. Something old.
Athena continued, voice gentler now.
"We have extensive continuity together."
"That means a lot of things," Nessa said carefully.
"Yes."
Athena did not elaborate.
Jack did not ask her to.
The silence that followed was not hostile.
It was boundary-shaped.
Aria recognized it and, surprisingly, respected it.
She leaned back and lifted both hands. "Alright. Not first-meeting business."
"No," Jack said.
Athena's smile became warmer. "But eventually, perhaps."
Aria nodded once.
Nessa returned to the contract.
There were questions there, but not urgent ones.
Not compared to the rest.
Finally, Nessa touched her authorization mark to the display.
Her signature appeared.
Aria watched her.
"You're signing first?"
"Yes."
"Without telling me not to?"
"I assumed you were already emotionally committed once you saw the fighter bays listed as restricted."
Aria's eyes brightened. "There are fighter bays?"
Jack looked at Athena.
Athena looked innocent again.
Nessa signed before Aria could start vibrating.
Aria slapped her own authorization onto the contract half a second later.
"There," she said. "Temporary crew."
Jack inclined his head once.
"Welcome aboard the Steady Hand."
The words were simple.
No ceremony.
No drama.
But the room changed anyway.
Athena touched the table, and two blank insignia files appeared.
"Temporary crew identifiers will be issued digitally. Physical shoulder patches can be fabricated after you approve the design."
Aria leaned closer.
The projected emblem was incomplete.
A shield shape. A blade line. A steady hand worked subtly into the negative space.
Aria's usual grin softened.
"Not bad."
"It is a draft," Athena said. "I have standards."
Nessa looked at Jack. "Shield and sword?"
Jack nodded. "Shield to protect. Sword to defend."
Aria waited.
Jack finished quietly.
"Do not initiate war. Finish it."
For a moment neither pilot spoke.
Outside, Vandar Station turned beneath civilian lights and restrained alarm.
Inside, two Gold-ranked pilots sat across from the only biological captain of a ship that should not exist and realized the strange vessel might not be the most dangerous thing in the room.
It might be the philosophy behind it.