The civilian transport shuttle at Kovris station hit the landing pad with meaning. Sol ‘Yorkie’ Danak reached instinctively for a non-existent emergency cut off. He’d been on shore leave for a total of one day and was already missing Starfleets’ inertial dampeners.

The shuttle doors were just as bad, initially sticking before slapping onto the decking with a bang.

“Welcome to Kovris Station.” Said the automated greeting system.

Yorkie stepped out, he took in a deep breath, and immediately sneezed!

“Ah home”, he thought.

Alpha Centauri’s finest mining colony, where the air tasted like metal, dust and regret, the floor never stopped vibrating and every bulk head had dents with stories.

“Sol!” he heard. He barely had turned before Mira, his younger sister at birth but his superior officer in attitude, barrelled into him. She gave him a massive hug that while a little much, was exactly what he needed.

“You look skinnier,” she said while pushing him backwards and looking him up and down.

“You look nosier,” he replied.

She giggled and grabbed his duffel bag from his shoulder. “Mom is making a stew, Dad is mad the door jammed again and Aunt Reva is coming over to…. Drop something off. Which means she’ll stay for at least four hours. Welcome home”

Yorkie sighed, “I should’ve gone back to Mallstoxx III.”

“You hate beaches,” Mira countered.

“Yes, but they don’t talk to me.” Sol said with a smile

“Dad’s floors talk to you,” she said. “He’s still mad you installed that vibration dampening pad when you were fourteen.”

“It was loud!”

“It was meant to be loud, apparently.”

Yorkie gave her a look and dropped his head, “why would a floor be made to be loud?”

“This is why no one understands you,” Mira said rubbing his shoulder.

—–

The front door stuck as always. Mira hit it with her hip, and it slip open. Yorkie made a mental note to fix it before he left. His mother shouted his name before they’d even stepped through.

“SOOOOL!” she shouted.

She grabbed him and hugged harder than Mira had, if at all that was possible.

“Mum, I can’t breathe,” he said.

“you don’t need to breathe, you need to eat!” she replied while pushing him toward the table. “you’ve lost weight.”

“I’ve lost my piece of mind, my weight is fine mother” he said while being forced to sit.

His Dad grunted from the kitchen, wielding a ladle like a weapon. “If you’ve brought any of those Starfleet germs back with you, I’ll have your hide!”

Aunt Reva arrived exactly eight minutes later. She said that she was just popping round with a loaf of bread but proceeded to sit down, grab some of the stew and then begin to grill Yorkie on whether he had any respectable friends yet.

Yorkie pretended to choke on a carrot, Mira patted his back and Aunt Reva rolled her eyes. It was chaos but Yorkie loved it.

—–

After dinner, Mira dragged him to the exterior promenade. It had views of the barren landscape of the moon. Nothing special really but Yorkie didn’t realise how much he missed the view.

“So,” Mira said while leaning on a railing. “Have you saved the galaxy yet?

Yorkie shrugged, still taking in the view. “I’ve fixed things.”

She tilted her head, “You fixed things here too.”

“These things stayed fixed afterwards.” He smiled

She hopped off the railing and smacked him, “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

He sighed, “ok, fine. There was a derelict station that tried to hold me and a few others prisoner, we persuaded it not to.”

Mira blinked, “what? Explain that in a way that makes sense.”

“No.” he responded.

She groaned, “Just once, Sol, could you have a normal trip? Maybe go to a beach, meet some new people, maybe get sunburned and don’t touch any machinery.”

“I’m always going to have to touch machinery” he relied

Mira buried her face in her hands, “you’re impossible.”

“maybe” he said and patted her shoulder.

—–

The next morning Yorkie woke before the station’s lights came on to signify the daytime. His internal clock refusing to allow vacation mode.

He snuck out before Mira and his parents awoke and wandered down to the maintenance section like he was returning to his old hunting grounds.

“Danak, you’re… erm…. not supposed to be working.” One of the engineering crew called over.

“I’m not working,” Yorkie replied and carried on walking.

“You’re carrying a toolkit.” The crewman pointed

Yorkie laughed, “it’s emotional support.”

And it really was, he rarely went anywhere without his tools, it had become habit.

He found the generator with the weird noise he heard yesterday. He crouched down and popped open the access panel barehanded. To the local engineer’s horror.

The alignment was off by a fraction, he saw the issue straight away. “Easy fix” he thought to himself.

He managed to perform the fix pretty quickly and was running a quick diagnostic when someone cleared their throat behind him.

He turned to see Karthi, the chief engineer, stood behind him with arms crossed.

“Danak,” she said, “I heard you were back here on leave.”

Yorkie shrugged, “yep, this thing was loud.”

“That’s not a reason to….”

“It is for me” he replied.

She stared for a moment and then shook her head and sighed. “You want a job when your enlistment is up?”

“No offense,” Yorkie said closing the access hatch, “but I prefer a place where things don’t fall apart when someone sneezes.”

The generator came back to life, humming smoothly. Karthi listened for a moment and then nodded. “Leave the kit, come and have a coffee.”

Yorkie smiled, “deal.”

He didn’t leave the kit, but he did take the coffee. It was terrible, but he drank it anyway.

—–

That night Yorkie was back in his parents’ quarters. He sat on the bolted-on balcony outside his old room. The view hadn’t changed at all, a barren moon, occasional mining crawlers and the slow rotation of the stars above.

As he sat there, breathing the air filtered through machinery that he knew he could fix blindfolded, he realised something that annoyed him….

He missed this.

The noise and chaos of the station. The stubborn machinery that made everything vibrate. His families attempts to smother him in love and food.

He’d spend his entire childhood dreaming of leaving, he needed those stars and still did. But every so often he needed this too.

Kovris was definitely not perfect, it was dirty and falling to bits at the best of times, but it was home.