12. She’s Us #3
"Most of it, at least the ones that really matter." Charlie looked down at the Walkman, and her expression shifted into something quieter. "Katie is here, in the music." Reyna walked over to Charlie, standing close to look at the details of the Walkman device.
"How so?" Reyna prompted, encouraging Charlie to talk so she could listen, just like Kess had suggested.
Charlie looked up at Reyna. "She made me a mixtape - a cassette of songs she recorded on her own specifically for me - every Christmas.
" Charlie put her hand inside her pocket and pulled out a square made of plastic with what looked like two wheels in the middle of it.
"Those are my most cherished pieces of music," she said as she returned her gaze to Reyna.
"And every single one of them made it with me.
Here." Charlie held out the plastic square to her, and Reyna looked down at it.
She could see what looked like art drawn on the outside of it, little pictures of certain things she recognized and others she didn't.
"This is one of them? A 'mixtape?'" Reyna asked as she took the square from Charlie and turned it over in her hands, looking at all the art. She saw Charlie nod out of the corner of her eye, then raised her gaze just as Charlie did the same.
"That one is from Christmas 1985, five years ago," Charlie continued. Reyna looked down at the mixtape in her hand once more before returning it to Charlie.
"Based on just those few things," Reyna started. "I can understand why music means so much to you."
Charlie shrugged. "It's the things in life that help us keep going that come to matter more than we ever thought possible. Who ever knew I'd find relaxation in a some harmonic echoes from machines?" At that, Reyna placing her hand against the ship's wall, just like Charlie had been doing earlier.
"You mean just like how you were also listening to the ship?" Reyna asked, her mouth twitching in a smile.
Charlie blinked, then grinned. "Yeah. I can feel the engines through the walls," she said, matter of factly, nodding her head up and down as she turned towards the wall in question.
"I've learned that the frequency shifts depending on where you are, which means the propulsion core is somewhere...
" She pointed down the corridor. "That direction. Maybe four or five decks down."
"That's... correct, actually," Reyna said, not bothering to hide her surprise.
"The harmonics give it away," Charlie mentioned as though it were obvious.
"The resonance pattern weakens the further you get from the source, but it also distorts differently depending on the structural materials between here and there.
Metal conducts it cleaner than composite.
So you can map the path by—" Charlie stopped herself.
Reyna's eyebrows pinched together. "Sorry. I'm doing the 'thing.'"
"What is the 'thing?'"
"The thing where I talk about engines and people's eyes glaze over," Charlie let out with a laugh. But somehow, Reyna heard the unspoken words underneath that laugh, the ones that told Charlie she bothered people because of how passionate she came across.
"My eyes aren't glazing over," Reyna said sternly. Charlie looked over at her, and smiled. And Reyna could see that one came from the heart.
Reyna realized Charlie was slightly taller than she was, tall enough that she had to lift her chin only just to look into her eyes. She looked back and forth between Charlie's eyes.
"Would you like to see the engine room?" Reyna asked, finding purpose in her gaze.
Charlie's face answered before her mouth did. Her eyes went wide, her cheeks went slack as her mouth opened, and her body began to visibly vibrate. Reyna could see that something that had been restless and caged suddenly came alive.
"Yes," she said. "Oh my god, yes."
The Emberkind's main engineering bay was four decks down, just as Charlie had predicted in her placement of the propulsion core location.
It was a wide space that hummed with the contained energy of a ship built for long-haul missions.
Consoles lined the walls, diagnostic stations glowed with scrolling data, and the engine housing dominated the far end like a cathedral altar, curved and massive, thrumming with the deep pulse Reyna knew Charlie had been tracking through corridor walls all week.
Charlie walked in and Reyna watched her entire body settle into instinct.
She watched as her posture shifted and her eyes went sharp.
Her hands, which had been at her sides, rose slightly, as Charlie began running her fingers against the nearest metal surface, as though she was reading all the data the room held within its walls.
"Captain." The voice came from behind a console bank on the far side. A man stood, straightened to his full height, which was considerable, and walked toward them. "I wasn't expecting you."
"Cael Rask, this is Charlie Wickett," Reyna said, indicating to Cael and Charlie respectively. "Charlie, Cael is the Chief Engineer here on the Emberkind." Charlie dropped her hands and turned from Reyna to Cael with wide eyes.
"No kidding."
"And Cael, Charlie arrived aboard the Emberkind just last week."
"The human." Cael's gaze moved to Charlie and stayed there.
"Cael has been the Emberkind's Chief Engineer for twelve years," Reyna began. "I hired him during a troublesome year on the Emberkind and we necessitated the need to fill critical roles after losing the original captain."
"Something you'd be familiar with, Ms. Wickett," Cael added, lifting his chin to Charlie. "A PERS accident."
Reyna saw Charlie turn fully towards her before she spoke. "You lost your captain in a PERS accident?"
Her voice was quiet and remorseful, but kind. Always kind. Reyna was beginning to understand kindness to be a fundamental core trait of Charlie Wickett.
"A tale for another time," Reyna said, looking into Charlie's eyes to communicate her true promise to that before turning back to Cael. Charlie nodded gently so only Reyna could see.
"Well then, yes, Cael, I guess I do have something similar there," Charlie said. "It's very nice to meet you, either way," Charlie extended her hand. The handshake again. Cael looked at it, then at Reyna.
"It's an Earth greeting," Reyna said. "You take her hand and shake it."
Cael did, perfunctorily, taking her hand with barely a touch and as brief as he could manage, with the clear intention of putting it down as soon as possible.
"Welcome aboard," he said flatly.
Reyna watched Charlie register the dismissal but immediately move on.
Fast learner.
Charlie walked away from where she and Cael stood, moving to look at the engine housing. She watched as she raised her hand and stop just short of touching it.
Reyna could almost feel Charlie's want to feel the engine here, in its home, where it lives and breathes and moves. If she didn't know any better, she would think she could see the energy between the engine of her ship and Charlie's fingers, pulling towards each other like magnets.
Then, Charlie did make contact against the metal, and it felt as though the ship breathed deeply.
Charlie's palm was flat, her fingers spread, her eyes closed.
She was listening to those machines, touching the metal as though it were speaking to her.
And perhaps it was. Charlie seemed to listen through her fingertips, her strong hands working across the housing as if it were telling her where to go, what to find, and any assortment of other pieces of data only Charlie could hear.
Reyna had watched Cael work in this room for twelve years, and she had never once seen him register with the engines like Charlie was doing right now, directly in front of both of them.
Seconds passed and Charlie continued to move around the housing, hand trailing, head tilted. Cael watched from where he stood next to Reyna with an expression that hovered between boredom and territorial awareness.
It was then that Maren arrived at a station nearby, her violet-gray eyes noticing Charlie and starting to track her with an expression of curious interest and notability.
Suddenly, all eyes turned to Charlie as she stopped. Reyna watched her pull her hand away from the housing, look at it, and then look at the console nearest to her. Before she could register, Charlie turned to her and set her eyes on Reyna.
"Your engine configuration is suboptimal."
The room went still.
"I'm sorry?" Reyna asked with a scoff.
Cael straightened. "Excuse me?"
"The engines," Charlie said.
But Reyna noticed Charlie wasn't looking at Cael. She was looking right at Reyna.
"They're running within spec, I can tell that much.
But within spec and optimal aren't the same thing.
" She walked over to part of the housing she had been only a minute or so ago.
"You've got a harmonic imbalance in the secondary coupling array, here, that's bleeding about twenty percent of your potential output into vibration waste.
" Then Charlie turned to Reyna. "Did you know that? "
"Charlie, to be honest, I'm not entirely following what you just said," Reyna confessed.
"She's speaking in conjecture is what she's doing," Cael said. Reyna turned to him. "What she's saying is impossible. The data shows everything runs smoothly on this ship. Never better."
Charlie didn't say anything, but instead returned to Reyna's side, reached for her hand, and led her over to where she'd just been standing. She raised Reyna's hand to the housing, placing her palm flat on the metal.
"You can feel it." She put her own hand on the housing next to Reyna's. "Right there, do you feel that? That pulse?"