An extremely promising start so far, and as someone who grew up on Star Trek (and other classic science fiction) and loved the Mass Effect trilogy, it feels like you've really nailed that aesthetic so far! The prose is clean yet descriptive and the characters are engaging, with a good mix of human and alien; as someone who loves worldbuilding, lore and reading anything with text attached, I'm looking forward to the S:R version of the Codex! I'm intrigued by the mystery of the MC's brother, and I appreciated the brief discussion as to why Human ships have less species diversity, noting the pragmatic reasons (high Human population, easier to make the ship fit human and human-sized species) rather than the genre-typical answers, which either don't address the demographics of a typical ship or just go "Xenophobia!" It seems like a small thing, but I think it indicates the depth of thought you're putting into this, and I wanted to let you know that I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to seeing where this project goes!