At first I almost doubted the pod’s treatment had changed anything at all.  Stella had to assure me it would work, but was simply a slow process.  Letting the pod work its magic while I slept at night was supposed to speed things along, though.

Sure enough, before long I found myself looking more and more familiar to myself in the mirror each day.  Softer around the edges, less scruffy, and of course developing in the chest.  Smiling a lot.  Even my hair was growing faster as a side-effect.  I started having to borrow Stella’s weighted ties to keep it down my back and out of the way.

I also happened to be going through a lot more provisions than I had been before.  More than once I found myself grateful we were well-stocked.

Heck, I started practicing changing my speaking voice when I was alone in my cabin.  And singing shanties in alto.  If Stella ever heard, she didn’t say anything.

The closer we got to Sanctuary, the giddier I felt.  What would everyone back home think of the new me?

A few days out it occurred to me:  I needed new clothes, for space and ashore.  My old ones at home I’d probably need to adjust at best, and Stella’s hand-me-downs were fine for an unplanned voyage with only the previous owner to see me, but were far from ideal.  I needed something that would actually fit me.  And I probably needed a new pressure suit on account of my changing proportions too, for that matter.  Some errands were in order, as soon as possible.

The day we expected to arrive, I caught Stella muttering to herself.

“Prodigal Queen?  Ugh, what was I thinking...  Hey Weaver?”

“Hm?”

“I keep trying to think of a good name for the ship, but nothing seems to stick in my mind. Would you like to try coming up with something?”

“What, off the top of my head?”

“No, no hurry, but think on it until we make port?”

“Sure.”

The visual blinked on as we shifted to ordinary motion.

Ahead was a planet, a little on the small side, its day side shining mostly golden-brown with a few patches of blue.

Home.

We were near where Port Aerie should be, hidden from sensor pulses by refractory structures on its hull.

It took a bit of time, but I tuned our comm to Aerie’s channel and made the call.

“Identity, please,” said the operator.  I didn’t recognize the voice.  Not that new blood was uncommon, but there was something strikingly familiar as well.

“Hello Sanctuary, this is Engineer Weaver Cleary aboard the fine songbird Duchess of Rogues.  ID Kingfisher, starlight-indigo-three-three-nine-four-seven.  Tell Captain Osman I said ‘Sorry it took so long.’”

Nailed it.

"Thank you Duchess.  Just one moment…  Ah, here it is.  Your auth-code is older but it still checks out.  Hold while I arrange your clearance."

The call went silent for a time, and I jumped a bit when the operator opened it back up.

“Alright Duchess, we're finding you an open garage.  Welcome to Sanctuary, Miss Cleary.  Captain Osman says to say ‘Welcome home,’ and ‘Tell your father he owes me a visit.’”

That last part was a bit of a thinker.  I had no idea what my dad had to do with anything.  I had never met the man, and Cap’n had never given me any reason to think she had either.  But we had things to do, so I set the question aside.

“Duchess of Rogues, huh?” Stella asked me with a smirk as we drifted into our dock a short while later.  I blushed.  Was it too much?

“I kept trying to think of names for her, and I kept coming back to something I overheard the knights calling you…”

She grinned.

“I like it.”

"Just returning the favor for the name you gave me," I said, just as the docking clamps grabbed us.

The hangar we were assigned here at Port Aerie wasn't just your typical short-term berth like we had at Mara.  I was a member of a pirate crew, and I had come home with a new ship that could be outfitted, so we got a drydock hangar, fully airlocked so maintenance crews could work more freely.

Once there was external pressure, the docking assembly drew us into the hangar proper, where the inner bay doors slid shut behind us and a gangplank slid to meet our access hatch.

There was a woman waiting to greet us when we stepped ashore.  She was idly bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, which made her hair, a big cloud of little ringlets, bounce too.

"Welcome, ladies," she said as we got near.  I recognized her voice as the operator I spoke to on the comm.  "I'm Aqila.  My aunt asked me to invite you to meet with her.  She heard the name 'Cleary' and nearly spit out her tea.  So you're Weaver and…?"

"Stella."

"Good to meet you both!  I'll show you to the place, if that's alright."

We both agreed and followed after her.

She was cute, and seemed nice, and Stella must have been rubbing off on me, because I was really tempted to invite her to hang out with us when there was a chance.

Aqila led us to a briefing room near our hangar.  To be honest, I could have been told to go there and found my way on my own, but there was no harm in a little extra courtesy, I supposed.  Though, strangely, the place seemed to have changed an awful lot since I had seen it, as if the furnishings and even some of the layout had been thoroughly overhauled.

We followed her in, and whoever I expected to see waiting, it hadn't been Captain Osman herself, same poise as ever, head scarf done up neatly as ever.  She looked older than I remembered: more worn, the lines on her face much deeper.

But Aqila had said…  No.  Now that I looked for it, there was definitely a family resemblance.

“Cap’n?  Since when do you have a niece my age?”

She chuckled, as if at a joke.

“Your father’s sense of humor I see.  If he had ever bothered to let me know he was still alive, he might have heard when Aqila was born.  But that’s between me and him.  I had to meet the daughter of my long lost engineer.”

And then everything finally added up in my mind.  I had to sit down before I fell over.  I was, to put it mildly, a complete freaking dipshit.

“Captain,” Stella chimed in, “I think there may be some misunderstandings to iron out.  Just how long has it been since your engineer went missing? ”