“You coming with me?” Thrym asked her.

Romy glanced back. “I’d better go with Elara or nothing will get done. You take the twins.” She shot him an evil smile, leaning back to snatch up Elara’s arm.

Phobos was speaking as Romy sealed their pod behind Elara. “Thrym, poor dude, how do you always get stuck with us?”

The two girls giggled as they buckled themselves into their usual seats: Elara in the pilot’s seat, and Romy on docking controls. The interior was as white and bland as the exterior—even for a spaceship. Each pod was uniform, with four bucket seats, the minimum of pilot controls, docking controls—for catching the debris—and a compartment under their feet with emergency gear.

The girls had done this a hundred times over the twelve years they’d been alive. At twenty-four years old, Romy found it easy to slip into the task automatically, no matter who she worked with from their knot. The movements of the others were as familiar to her as her own.

“Pressurising pod.” Elara’s voice crackled through Romy’s headset. It was hard to hear out in space once the thrusters and stabilisers were going. Even with noise-cancelling tech.

Above Romy, rows of buttons and panels flickered to life, throwing neon blue light through the craft. Most of their two-year cadet training was spent learning what each of these did. Romy reached up for the left-most switch. “Shutting off vents. Initiating Terminal Launch sequence.”

She watched as Elara tested the thrusters. “Programmed manoeuvres clear,” Elara confirmed. “Open valve.”

Romy sighed, looking at her watch. She hoped they were back in time for the lecture this evening. It was one of her favourites. “Valve opened,” She called. The familiar sound of liquid hydrogen and oxygen flowing into the pumps gave a subtle hiss.

Romy smiled as Elara hissed along with the gases, for as long as her breath allowed. Every time.

Her friend reached overhead. “I’m sure we’ll be back in time for the lecture, Ro.”

Elara could read Romy like a nanopad.

“I know. It’s just it’s my favourite: the first introduction.”

A typical debris shift usually lasted two hours, but if the space junk concentration was at hazardous levels, the group stayed longer. At max, ten hours. Knot 27 had only had to do the ten-hour shift once, after a two-week battle with the Poachers when they were just fifteen. She should be back in time. But you never knew what you’d find out here.

Elara hid a small smile. “Launching in T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven—I don’t know why you go anyway; you probably have it memorised—three, two, one.”

They drifted away from Orbito One for fifty metres, entering space, their playground.

“All right, where’s the damn debris?” Elara grumbled.