When asked about it, she shrugs.

As she walks toward the airlock, I ask her one last question: What advice do you have for the next Zoe Andersen?

In the pantheon of modern aviation and early deep-space transit, certain names carry weight: the pioneers, the record-breakers, the ones who don’t flinch when the red lights start flashing.

“People think I walked into this,” she says, nursing a black coffee that has long gone cold. “My dad flew these same routes forty years ago, yeah. But he flew boxy haulers with no AI assist and a navigation system that ran on literal tape. I didn’t inherit the rank. I inherited the migraines.”

“Look,” she says, standing up to head back to the docking bay. Her boots are scuffed. Her hair is a mess. “The black doesn’t care about your legacy. The black just is . My job is to get people from Point A to Point B without them turning into frozen meat popsicles. If I can do that while telling a bad joke and petting a tomato plant? I call that a win.”

She stops. Turns.