Sunny is Coming

Seven years is a long time to spend with only four people.

Lena did the math again—thirteen more years to finish her contract in the Kuiper Belt. Thirteen more years sealed inside Epsilon Station with Aria, Sofia, Jada, and Howard, breathing their recycled air and drinking their recycled… [well, you know].

Howard looked better seven years ago. As they say, out in the Kuiper Belt, rare earths are common, but handsome earthlings are rare.

To endure the monotony, Lena had assembled a monster playlist of all 12,739 different versions of “Sunny” recorded since 1963. She hit play on the next song—a lounge-jazz take—and tried to disappear into the music...

Right as Frank Sinatra crooned, the interstellar relay chimed.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Message from Vesta Station

Corporate has approved your request for a new xenobiologist. Sending our very best enginner. Sunny Hale, male, 38, life sciences & resource extraction specialist. ETA 13 June 2197 17:43:95.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

'Sunny'. Considering how dark the Kuiper Belt was, his name felt like corporate trolling.

She opened the profile photo. Tall. Bearded. Hair still winning the battle. Something flickered in her chest...

Lena decided to drop his photo into the group chat.

Lena (Chief Engineer): Sisters. Incoming pic. Vesta finally heard us. New man. Zero-g football in his bio. Pic attached.

Aria (Hydroponics): OH MY STARS! ✨ Howard is sweet but he’s my grandpa's age. I’ve been practicing dating the AI for years. Is Sunny single??

Sofia (Med Officer): Does it matter? 🍾 ×100. Welcome party. He should have some good new stories.

Jada (Security): Look at those arms.💪🏼 I’m calling dibs on first contact.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lena: You can’t all jump him with the same pickup line. Cards on the table.

Jada: “Help me open this champagne bottle?”

Aria: “My ex-boyfriend is stalking me.”

Sofia: “My zipper’s stuck. The back one.” 😉

Lena: Those will work. Aria, stalking in the Kuiper Belt? You'll need to add a few flashbacks.

🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

They spent the next thirty-six hours in a fever of preparation. Fake stalker profiles were built. Zippers were snagged. Howard was warned to stay in his lane.

Sunny's shuttle flared against the black on final approach.

Howard watched from the dome, arms crossed. “Poor bastard has no idea what he’s flying into.”

Sunny stepped through the lock—tall, cryo-pale, duffel over one shoulder, jaw set.

The welcoming committee stood in a loose semicircle...

Sunny looked them over, expression flat.

Jada (hand extended, then withdrawn at the sight of engine grime): "Welcome to Epsilon!"

Aria (already recoiling): "Uh… mouthwash is in the dispenser if you need—"

Sofia (brightly): "Hi there! Zipper emergency. Back side. Help?"

Sunny nodded but didn't move. “Heard it was an all-female crew. Lucky me.” His tone landed somewhere between sarcasm and exhaustion.

Lena (pointing sideways): "And that’s Howard."

Their dislike of Sunny was instant and mutual.

By hour six, Sunny had complained about the lighting, the food texture, the low thrum of the gravity sim, “the estrogen fog” that apparently made the air smell like vanilla body spray.

He stared too long. He corrected Sofia mid-sentence about her own triage algorithm. He called Lena’s latest injector calibration “adorable.”

The group chat turned venomous.

Sofia: Red flag parade. Mansplained my own damn protocol.

Aria: Keeps staring when I’m pruning. Creepy.

Jada: He’s giving me security drill notes. I run security.

Lena: He told me the coolant-loop bypass I designed was 'cute'. I am going to space him.

In space, necessity is a powerful solvent.

First crack: the number-three air scrubber choked on metallic dust. Sunny diagnosed the matrix fouling in four minutes, rebuilt the pre-filter stack in twelve, and didn’t once say “I told you so.” Jada watched the whole thing from the doorway, arms folded, then muttered, “Okay… that was clean work.”

Second crack: Aria’s prize hydro-batch—her experimental wasabi-radish hybrid—started wilting from a trace ethylene leak. Sunny spent four hours tracing micro-leaks with a handheld spectrometer, patched the line, and then quietly recalibrated the ethylene scrubber cycle without being asked. Aria found the tray looking healthy the next morning. She didn’t say thank you. But she stopped avoiding him in the corridors.

Third crack: Howard’s ancient back seized during a core swap. Sunny braced him, talked him through isometric stretches, then carried both tool crates back to the shop one-handed. Howard grumbled “not bad, kid” the next morning over coffee—first voluntary pleasantry in three years.

Even Lena softened. Sunny started feeding Ganza, her cantankerous space-monitor lizard, so she didn’t lose fingers to the feeding port anymore. He never asked for credit. He just did it.

Her playlist of “Sunny” covers slowly shifted from romantic longing t to background comfort.

Everyone shifted, except Sofia.

Sofia—on night eleven—took Sunny to her quarters.

Sofia: It lasted three minutes. He treated me like a quick systems check. Then told me to leave my own room.

Jada: Jerk.

Aria: Huge jerk.

Lena: Jerk! Glad it wasn’t me.

💣💣💣💣💣

And yet, Jada kept inviting him to spar in the zero-g boxing deck.

Aria laughed, actually laughed, when he tripped over a loose panel and pinwheeled in zero-g.

Lena found herself explaining fusion quirks to him late one shift and realized she was enjoying the conversation.

Sofia watched it all, barely concealing her anger, and then totally not concealing it.

Sofia: You’re all falling for the competent-asshole routine. He humiliated me and now you're acting like he's the damn rings of Saturn.

Lena: He’s useful. That’s different from liking him.

Sofia: Useful is worse. I’m surrounded by traitors.

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Diary of a Chief Engineer (Lena)

Sofia stopped joining movie nights. She ate in the med bay. When Sunny walked into a room she walked out. When he spoke in briefings she stared at her tablet. The others noticed and they just let the rift grow.

The ship runs smoother. The air is cleaner. The food tastes better. Ganza hasn’t bitten anyone in weeks. Even Howard said “thank you” yesterday.

Out here in the darkness of the Kuiper Belt, Sunny has made life a little bit brighter.

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Message to Vesta Station

Corporate headquarters has approved your request for a new hydroponics specialist. We are sending Vesta Station our very best scientist, Aria Xenia. Female, age 38, skilled in life sciences and resource management. ETA 13 June 2197 17:43:95.

────⋆⋅☆⋅⋆──