33. Songbird #4
"Okay, Torvax, old buddy," Charlie clamped a hand on his shoulder.
"When Captain Reyna Solas walks through that door, right over there, you are going to make the loudest noise you have ever made in your life, at the exact moment everyone else does.
And then, immediately following, you are going to say the word surprise.
" She looked up into the face of a man trying very hard to understand party protocols.
"That's the whole thing, the complete entirety of it. That's the assignment."
Torvax considered this, looking over at the door as though it held secrets. "Understood, Charlie."
Charlie took a deep breath. "Fantastic."
"I will be timing it," Torvax added.
"Of course you will," Charlie responded as she walked away.
The library didn't look like the library anymore.
Maren's lights were down low and gold, threaded along the shelves the way Charlie had described. The entire room glowed like a porch.
Borran's spread went the length of two tables and half of it Charlie couldn't name, but the other half was casseroles of varying flavors, sizes, and cuisines.
Borran had done exactly what he said he would.
Make them better. There was also a cake the size of an entire engineering bay console, and Orion had put out actual paper streamers he'd made from something in the archive.
The habitat contingent was in the corner, a self-containment gate surrounding them. Selowen had brought six of the calmest creatures on the ship, and the Niblets had immediately taken over an entire chair. Pinlo was sitting in the middle of the group like a small moss-covered queen holding court.
Charlie had changed out of her coveralls.
With Tavi's help, she'd found something that fit and looked pretty decent in the crew closet, consisting of a clean, white button-down with the top two buttons left undone, decent black fitting pants, and dress boots she'd actually shined.
She'd looked at herself in the mirror back at her quarters for exactly eleven seconds before telling herself it was because it was a party.
Torvax's voice came over the comm, bringing her back to the library.
"The captain is in the corridor. Sixteen seconds."
The room went quiet all at once, forty-odd people from multiple worlds crouching behind shelves and under tables, and Charlie realized she was holding her breath along with every one of them.
Then the door opened and Charlie watched Reyna walk in from her hiding place. Not only did Charlie's heart clench so violently in her chest when she saw her, the nervous excitement of this whole ordeal made it feel like a giraffe was thrashing around in her ribcage.
"SURPRISE!" Came the collective out pour, and Charlie watched as every single one of Reyna's crew members jumped out from hidden places, showering her with the love they carried for her as a captain, but also as a person.
They completely nailed it. Every crew member got it right, and they all spoke with one voice on the first try.
Reyna stopped in the doorway.
And Charlie, who had spent months learning her face, watched everything happen.
Reyna didn't gasp. She didn't move at all.
Her gold held, steady as it always did. But her eyes went across the room, taking in the lights, the tables, the streamers, the crew, forty people grinning at her out of the warm gold of their created porch, and something changed in her that Charlie had never seen before.
She'd worn something different. Not the uniform. Something soft and dark with her rank pinned at the collar, and her hair was up.
Torvax had told her she was coming down here for a systems review.
Which meant she hadn't gotten dressed for a party. She'd gotten dressed for a Monday.
Seventy-five years old and the only thing this woman let herself have on her birthday was putting on something nice and merely going to work in it.
"What," Reyna said, "is this."
"It's your birthday!" Tavi bellowed from somewhere in the vicinity of the crowd.
Reyna's mouth opened and then closed, the look of bewilderment on her face hard to miss.
"Happy seventy-fifth, Captain," said Kess, approaching Reyna from the horde, perfectly calm as if she hadn't been crouched behind a chair only thirty seconds ago.
Then the room came apart in an eruption of happy chaos, everybody all at once, as Reyna Solas got swallowed up by her own crew.
Frankly, it was turning into the best party Charlie had ever been to, and she'd been to some real kickers at Caltech back in college. Whoever said geeks couldn't party had never been to a mechanical engineering soiree.
The Niblets breached the containment gate sometime during the second hour.
Nobody saw it happen, yet one moment the corner was orderly, and the next there were three of them up on the dessert table.
The cake the size of an engineering console had a section missing from the back of it, cored out clean.
Borran crossed the library at a speed Charlie hadn’t known he could manage, but Selowen calmed him, not moving at all. “They will be finished shortly,” she said.
They did finish, quite quickly.
They also left with a streamer.
Borran stood at the end of the table with his arms crossed and his tusks catching the light, watching people eat his food.
When Reyna got to him, he said four words.
"Aye, the Wee Captain," and put a plate of incredible looking food in her hands.
Charlie watched Reyna give him a hug, knowing that was the entire conversation.
Tavi ran the music like a man possessed to the point that the Emberkind's library had an actual beat to it.
People who had never danced in their lives were doing whatever the hell they thought dancing was, and Charlie loved every one of them for it.
Torvax stood by the door, documenting and protecting, all the things he did best. Maren watched her lights work, and Charlie saw her smile every time she watched a crew member enjoy the atmosphere.
And Reyna, in all her infinite wisdom when it came to running a starship, who had a protocol for absolutely everything, did not appear to have one for this.
That was the part that got Charlie. She would watch Reyna keep getting caught by crew who wanted to speak to her, by juniors who'd never had a reason to talk to her before, and every single time she stopped and turned her complete attention on them, she listened to everything they had to say.
But in the space between, in the half-seconds when nobody had hold of her, Charlie watched her scan the room, counting heads and checking exits, completely reading her people the way she read a bridge.
Forty some-odd people in this library for her, and the woman was running a status check.
"That one's her favorite," Orion said, appearing at her elbow.
Charlie turned to him. "Sorry?"
"Pinlo," he stated. " For twelve years now." He was watching Reyna. "She has never once said it out loud to anyone on the ship except Selowen and me." He turned to Charlie. "Good job."
Charlie looked back across the library.
She had asked for Pinlo because Pinlo made her feel like she could take on anything. That was the whole and entire reason. She'd walked into that habitat wing and asked Selowen if the one she liked best could be the one to visit the birthday party.
Turns out, it was Reyna's one, too.
They made their way to her, eventually. She should have known they would.
"Charlie!" And of course it was Tavi.
Towing the captain by the sleeve through a crowd, Tavi approached. "Charlie, she's asking who did this. Tell her who did this."
Charlie eyed Tavi with the most subtle stink eye she could form. "Nobody did this, Tavi, like I told you earlier." Charlie said. "It just happened."
"It just happened," Maren repeated, arriving with Orion.
She said it flatly, obviously in on it with Tavi to blow Charlie's whole cover.
Her shimmer was flashing wildly, and the one thing Charlie could say she learned about Noethan's besides their shimmer is knowing when one is setting up an ambush.
"Captain," Maren continued, addressing Reyna directly.
"An accurate account would be that Charlie came to us exactly eight days ago and proceeded to have the entire event structured before she finished telling us it was even happening. "
"That's not—" Charlie tried to explain.
"She wrote a full dissertation for Borran about Earth," Orion added, cutting Charlie off completely. "Pages and pages of the foods they make and how they're eaten, adding details about which ones are for celebrations, including birthdays, and why."
"Okay, that's a big—" Charlie tried again.
"She described what a summer night looked like on Earth to me," Maren interjected this time. "It was the only way I was able to build the lights and scene you see around you now."
"Maren."
"You said string lights, Charlie," Maren's shimmer flared bright as she argued with Charlie. "You described your porch at home with Frank and Helen and Katie." She shook her head teasingly. " You forget, I have it recorded. Documented. Would you like me to play it back?"
"Absolutely not," Charlie said quietly, lowering her gaze to the floor.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Maren said, not letting the smugness dampen at all.
"She asked about Kaelari customs," Orion gently stated directly to Reyna. "She wanted to know what Kaelari people do for celebrations, gatherings. She said, and I remember it precisely, 'I want to give her an Earth one, but I want her to feel her own people in the room.'"
The library continued its raucous merriment around them. Somewhere behind Charlie, she could hear the song change over the sound system.
Charlie made herself look up.
Reyna was looking directly at her, her gaze locked, not saying anything at all.
"It's not a big deal," Charlie said, which was one of the stupidest sentence she had ever produced. She rolled her eyes at herself immediately after.