23. The Discovery
TWENTY-THREE
THE DISCOVERY
Over the next few weeks, Charlie didn't get many chances to see Reyna.
A report request came through from Coalition Command, making Reyna, Torvax, and various others work cycle through cycle to gather evidence, generate the report, and apply the finishes before submission.
The team understood. And sure, Charlie could admit she noticed Reyna's absence.
How could she not? Reyna was the captain of the Emberkind.
The ship ran only because of her presence and command.
And Charlie knew captains had responsibilities beyond just appearing in the Engineering Bay at inconvenient intervals, causing Charlie to forget which wire she was holding.
Tavi still hadn't let her forget about that incident.
Command reports seemed just like the dreaded office memo of Earth, both set to exist in every corner of the universe, one of the great constants alongside gravity, bureaucracy, and Borran's belief that everyone could be improved with food.
Still, she noticed the absence.
Charlie noticed it in Engineering the few times she would glance toward the door with absolutely no reason to.
She noticed in the galley, when that seat beside her that was regularly occupied by the Captain now remained empty through a meal.
But she especially noticed it at 0300 in the Observation Room, where the bench she sat on, waiting to see if Reyna would show, seemed longer than it had the week before.
And during the report crunch, Reyna never showed.
But the worst part for Charlie was that Reyna's absence gave her more room to think, and thinking had become an increasingly terrible hobby for Charlie Wickett.
Over the past few weeks, the six-month deadline had started changing in her mind.
The deadline itself was still there. Three months were now gone, three months were left.
At this time, Charlie was technically halfway back to Katie.
But somewhere between the engineers of the Emberkind team trusting her over Cael, the success of Earth Nights among the whole crew, the friendships she was developing with Tavi and Maren specifically, and then Reyna sitting beside her at an hour when no one should have been awake, Charlie let herself imagine that, maybe, going home might not have to mean leaving the Emberkind forever.
She hadn't said any of this aloud. In fact, she'd barely said it to herself, and even then only sideways.
She told herself she was just being thorough when she pulled up the Coalition's no-contact arrangement with Earth on her datapad, the way she'd read up on any system she needed to understand.
Coalition ships still passed through Earth's monitored sectors now and then.
And though nobody ever wrote or documented that a person could, in theory, ride one back, she read it as logistics.
And suddenly, she was letting herself wonder.
Maybe, after she went home and saw Katie with her own eyes, she could come back.
She could make the Emberkind her career, the first and only human in Coalition rotations.
And maybe, when they passed close enough to Earth, she could visit Katie.
Katie would keep the secret. Hell, it would be a task just to get Katie to stay on Earth whenever she left, but Charlie knew she would.
And she was almost certain Reyna would allow this.
Maybe she could bring Tavi a Led Zeppelin shirt.
And so the thought grew, eventually opening to a certain possibility.
Maybe she could have both.
But upon that thought was usually where she stopped, because if she kept going, that list to have both stopped being practical.
Suddenly, memories of the bench, of the way Reyna had said her name in the library as though she had chosen it carefully, of the Captain's laugh when it was true and solid and alive.
That was when Charlie realized there were limits to how much denial one woman could have in private before it became a diagnosable condition.
Kess had asked Charlie to come in for a follow-up at Med three times in the last two weeks.
The first two times, Charlie hadn't thought much of it.
Well, actually, she had, worried that some sort of alien technology was able to pick up on her thoughts and project it like a movie to Kess's console or something.
But, gratefully, that didn't seem to be the case.
Kess wanted to run extra scans on her every month, fascinated by the only human biology she'd ever had access to.
Charlie had learned to sit patiently through the process.
Kess's thoroughness didn't feel intrusive and if she could help in some way by just lying on a hospital bed for 20 minutes once a month, that didn't seem so bad.
But then the requests became more frequent, and when the third time came around, Charlie knew something wasn't what it should be.
When Kess spoke to her this time, her tone had changed.
"Could you come back to the Med Bay this afternoon, Charlie? I'd like to review your test results with you."
Having read between the lines of engineers and scientists for years, Charlie could discern the significance of each word.
"Is everything okay?"
"Your health is excellent. I have some findings that I'd like to share with you. Face to face."
And Charlie knew, right then and there, that whatever it was Kess had to tell her, it wasn't something she'd seen before.
So, of course Charlie went.
The Med Bay was quiet when she arrived, which was the first thing that felt wrong.
For one, Kess usually had ambient diagnostics running that created soft tones pinging from half a dozen monitors.
Not to mention the medical team that covered the Med Bay everyday, treating minor wounds and completing copious amounts of paperwork.
Yet, today, the monitors were silent, and the whole area was empty. It was clear to Charlie that the room had been prepared for a conversation, not a procedure.
The second thing that felt wrong was when Reyna walked in. And that she walked in without greeting Charlie.
It wasn't that she was there. Well, maybe it was, but it was more because Charlie saw her standing near the door to the Med Bay itself, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and her head down.
This was no stance Charlie had come to know of the Captain over the last three months.
This was entirely different. Her weight was shifted, her jaw set.
Contained. She looked like someone standing guard, like a replacement for Torvax, though Charlie couldn't imagine what she was guarding against.
"Captain," Charlie said softly, surprise in her voice. "I didn't know you'd be here."
"I asked to be," Reyna said, finally raising her gaze to Charlie. And something shifted within Charlie that wasn't okay.
She looked between Reyna and Kess. "Okay, now I'm nervous."
"Don't be," Kess said from the diagnostic console, her voice gentle, which was another reason Charlie was nervous. Kess was never gentle. Or, at least, Charlie had never seen her be. "Please, sit."
So, Charlie sat on the exam table. Kess pulled up her display, and Charlie saw a glimpse of her own name at the top of the file, followed by what looked like three months of medical data, some she recognized and some she didn't know how to read. Charts, cellular analysis, metabolic trend lines.
"You've been busy," Charlie commented. Kess looked over and gave her a sterile smile.
Well, shit.
Charlie glanced at Kess again, noticing her silver-blue markings.
Hers were the cool, steady neutral she wore in the Med Bay, almost like a second uniform layer.
Charlie had learned to read Kaelari markings in little ways over the past three months, both for Reyna and Kess.
Orion had discussed some of the species aboard the ship during one of the first evenings she spent with him.
She knew that the markings were sacred in their own ways.
But there was one universal way they were honored - by keeping what Kaelari called 'steady. '
Charlie could see now that, while Kess's markings were this controlled, it seemed to mean the results they were to discuss required control.
On the display behind the primary chart, Charlie also noticed a notation that she could read even without medical training. It was a scan, the same scan in fact, run on three separate dates, with three identical results.
So, whatever this was, Kess had checked her own work. Twice.
And that was how Charlie knew, before Kess even said a word, that whatever was coming was substantial.
"I've been monitoring your cellular turnover since your arrival," Kess began, her voice slipping into that same precise, measured cadence Charlie had never hear her use except for when she was providing her reports during team meetings.
"Standard protocol for any new crew member or individual traveling upon a Coalition vessel.
But, as I know you're well aware, your case has been... unique."
"Because I'm human."
"Because you're the only PERS-transported human in Coalition medical history. Not to mention the PERS device that displaced you was also malfunctioning."
Charlie already knew this. "Right. Old debris. Uncontrolled transport. That's why everything hurt so much when I... landed."
"Correct," Kess confirmed. "But, Charlie, it may also be why we're seeing that the PERS radiation signature, the one that embedded in your cells during transport, has not degraded."
Charlie blinked. "What do you mean, hasn't degraded?"
Kess tapped the display and a graph appeared with a flat line stretching across three months of data points.
"In a normal PERS displacement, residual radiation dissipates within two to four weeks.
But if you look here, your radiation signature, this line, is identical today to what it was the day you arrived. It hasn't moved."
Charlie immediately panicked. "Is that dangerous?"