29. Full Capacity #3
Even though what happened on the mission today wasn’t going to change the world, she’d originally told herself the Emberkind was different. But now she sat in the Captain’s office, prepared to find out she’d been wrong about that too.
“The engineering department resolved the Sylpha Canopy situation in a single operation,” Cael said.
“Rather than the standard sectional approach, we implemented a resonant frequency destabilization of the composite matrix. One single pulse. The netting released, and all recorded Gliders were recovered completely without injury in record time. Instead of three hours, the process only took eleven minutes.”
We implemented. Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Not quite. Cael hadn’t exactly said his name. But he had stood in the middle of the room, not mentioning Charlie, and let those around him fill in the blanks in a way they always did.
Charlie suddenly noticed how Maren’s shimmer went flat and still. Then her eye wandered to Tavi, who began to open his mouth but stopped when Charlie caught his eye and gave a small shake of her head. She had learned the lesson that fighting it in the moment only made you the problem.
On the wall, Vondra hadn’t moved. “Explain the destabilization,” she said. “I am not familiar with the technique in a field application.”
There was a pause. It was a small one. But Charlie heard it, and so, she suspected, did the Admiral.
“It’s a resonance principle,” Cael said. “The composite has a natural frequency. Applied correctly, the pulse destabilizes the thermal bonds across the entire structure at once.”
“Applied correctly,” Vondra said. “And what frequency did the operation use in order to be ‘applied correctly?’”
The office suddenly became very quiet.
In a flash of movement, the door to the office opened, and Torvax came in. Reyna was trailing right behind him, and Charlie immediately noticed her posture, the heavy thwack of her boots on the floor, the tension in her shoulders. She was pissed.
Charlie learned later that Torvax had been passing the office and had heard Cael on the call with the Admiral, without the Captain. He’d gone to find her without a single word.
Now, in this moment, she saw Reyna step into her own office, take in the display and Cael standing in the center, and seemingly understand the entire situation in the time it took to cross the threshold.
“Admiral,” Reyna said.
“Captain.” The water shifted. “Your Chief Engineer was about to tell me the resonant frequency his department used at the Sylpha Canopy in today’s rescue.”
Reyna looked over at Cael, and Charlie watched as he didn’t look at anyone.
“Were you?” Reyna said, her voice low.
“Captain, I was giving the Admiral the operational summary—"
“He was about to tell me the exact frequency,” Vondra interrupted. “Chief. Please answer the question.”
Silence.
“Chief Rask, I do believe the Admiral is asking for the thermal coefficient of the composite,” Reyna stated.
“The one that made the resonant approach viable over sectional cutting. I’m sure you’ll have that, since it was your department’s operation under your leadership.
I imagine you know it personally, based on the outcome. ”
More silence.
Cael’s markings flickered amber, cycling toward violet, and then toward a muddy blue-green, the vision of a Kaelari man’s composure coming apart in real time, written across his skin in colors everyone in the room could read.
On the wall, Admiral Vondra went still. The space around her seemed to darken.
“Charlie,” Reyna said without taking her eyes off Cael. Charlie stood up straight.
“Captain.”
“The Admiral has asked a question. A question I know you can answer.” Reyna broke her gaze from Cael in order to look over at Charlie, her gaze piercing Charlie in a way that made Charlie need to take a quick intake of breath. “Will you please provide the information the Admiral is seeking?”
And Charlie Wickett, sitting in the Captain’s office of a spaceship several light years from Earth, with a galactic Fleet Admiral watching from the bottom of an ocean, answered it.
She gave Vondra the frequency and the thermal coefficient.
She explained why the bonds released uniformly, why sectional cutting would have burned the membranes, and why eleven minutes beat three hours.
Her hands came up off from her sides and moved through the conversation the way they always did, because the whole process and the data and the execution lived in her fingers, her wrists, and the space she carved in the air while her brain worked.
And somewhere in the middle of it, the old feeling in her chest let go, because for the first time in a very long time, the room had turned to look at the right person.
But that wasn’t exactly it, was it? The room hadn’t turned to look at her.
Reyna had put her in front of the people who mattered, ensuring they saw her and acknowledged her by giving Charlie the platform she deserved.
When she did finish, the water on the wall held still for a long moment.
“That is a very elegant, well-documented, and executed solution,” Vondra said. “Thank you, Charlie Wickett.”
It wasn’t lost on Charlie that an admiral of an intergalactic organization had just credited a non-contact species being with doing something right in a world that Charlie Wickett should never have known.
“Captain,” Vondra went on. “I have a report in front of me. I understand now that it is laced with certain errors. I will expect the corrected version in writing, with the correct attribution, before the end of the cycle.” The water shifted, slow and deliberate.
“And I will be noting, in my own record, that a senior officer of this fleet attempted to present another crew member’s work as his own, to me, directly.
That notation does not get corrected in writing. It stays.”
“Understood, Admiral. You’ll have the corrected version, I guarantee it.” Reyna took a moment. “And your note is acknowledged.”
“Good.” A single beat rippled through the office with a frequency that could have been almost gentle. And it was aimed directly at Charlie. “Excellent work today, Wickett.”
Then the display went dark, and the office was just an office again. Cael stood in the middle with nowhere to go without drawing attention to himself.
“Leave us, Cael,” Reyna ordered.
He didn’t argue or say a single word. Instead, he just left; the door of the Captain’s office closing behind him.
“Well, that was quite a show,” Tavi said. Charlie smiled at him.
“That was ludicrous,” Maren stated. Then she looked over at Reyna. “Sorry, Captain.”
“No, don’t apologize. You’re right. It was ludicrous.”
Charlie listened to her friends and exhaled. The adrenaline was fading, but what remained was instinctual anger.
“Tavi, we should go and mark those logs before Cael tries to lock them,” Maren said.
“Yeah,” Tavi replied, looking at Charlie, then over to Reyna. “Good plan.”
“Thank you, Maren. Tavi,” Reyna said.
“Good job, Spark Plug,” Tavi said as he walked out the door beside Maren. “You did good.”
Charlie smiled at Tavi as he left the office, the door closing behind him and Maren.
Reyna walked over to her desk and stood behind it, her eyes on the surface. She began tapping against the data screen, refusing to look up at Charlie.
“What I can’t believe,” Charlie said, causing Reyna to look up at her.
Charlie would not let silence overwhelm the frustration rising like bile in her stomach.
“Is that he did all of that in front of the Admiral,” Charlie paused.
“He’d rather Vondra think he’s a liar than let it be your ship’s win with my name on it. ”
Reyna stared at her. Charlie took it as a sign to continue to speak freely.
“He never would have been able to answer her,” Charlie whispered, almost in awe of the audacity Cael Rask had against his own captain.
“He wouldn’t have been able to answer a single one of those questions.
And he was just going to stand here, in your office of all places, and give the Coalition a version of that rescue he didn’t even understand, wasn’t he? And just, hope nothing came from it?”
Reyna only continued to look at Charlie, her gaze felt unbreakable. But Charlie continued.
“And the second the Admiral pushed on it, it came apart exactly like it just did.” Charlie’s voice stayed level, but the edges of it were hot. Her anger had reached a boiling point, because it was suddenly clear the double-ended sword Cael carried into this whole dastardly plan.
“He wasn’t just taking from me. Cael was going to do this from your office, under your leadership, with your sign-off as genuine.
And then, when he eventually would fuck up and provide incorrect data on this project, causing it all to go to shit, his plan was just going to let all of it land on you? ”
Reyna stood very still, but Charlie wouldn’t break. She held Reyna’s gaze, fire burning in veins. Charlie felt her chest began to rise and fall.
“Yes,” Reyna said quietly, simply. “He was.”
Charlie didn’t move. Her eyes stayed on Reyna, doing everything in her power not to walk out of that office and tell Cael what she really thought of him. Instead, she said something small. But it held conviction. “That’s not okay.”
Reyna continued to stare back at her, and after a few moments, spoke again. “No, it’s not.”
They looked at each other across the desk.
And suddenly, something moved between them, quick and unasked.
In a single moment, everything tipped at once, away from Cael and the rescue, and fell headfirst into what Charlie was learning was becoming impossible to avoid.
It seemed to have taken them both over, before either of them could refuse. The silence held a beat too long.