SPACE JOCKEY VEGA is our Chief Night-Shift Courier at Space Jockey Reviews. She got her name from the brightest star in Lyra, and she earned the nickname Night Owl the hard way: she flies the graveyard shift. When the rest of the crew is asleep and the station lights dim to violet, Vega kicks off her boots (she never wears them in the cockpit, rule number one) and settles into the pilot seat of the Lyric, her sleek little racing ship, with her bare feet up on the dash and a ringed gas giant filling the window.

Her job is simple to say and impossible to do: she keeps the Space Jockey Reviews universe moving. Review copies, rare paperbacks, midnight movie reels and mystery packages from far-off writers all travel through the Asteroid Belt, and Vega is the one who gets them there. Some nights that means threading the Lyric through a ring of tumbling ice. Other nights it means wrestling a runaway asteroid back to the docking arm with a glowing violet tether, barefoot on the cold hangar deck, grinning the whole time because the magnetic floor tickles.

Her favorite stop is a quiet moon at the edge of the belt, where the aurora rolls across the sky and two moons hang over the delivery dock. She parks on the nose of the Lyric, sits cross-legged with her star chart, waves at the night, and checks one more crate off her list. Small pods, bigger worlds, is her motto.

Vega never reviews the books herself. Her promise is that every story reaches the readers who need it, on time, with a smile. Ask any jockey on the crew and they will tell you the same thing: if a package is out there in the dark, Vega will find it.