36. I’m Sorry, Captain #3
Then the ground moved. Reyna heard it come through the channel, a low grinding roll and every loose thing in that town creaking and snapping. She heard Charlie's breath change.
Four hundred and nine.
Nobody on the Bridge said anything.
"... it's fine," Charlie said softly. "That was just the shelf. Everything's fine, it's nineteen kilometers away."
Reyna realized she was not saying it to the Bridge. She was saying it to herself, out loud. She heard the unease in Charlie's voice.
"Torvax," Reyna said. "Give me the headset."
Torvax turned around.
"Captain?"
Reyna held out her hand.
She was breathing hard. She watched Torvax hear the increase and witnessed it stop being data to him.
Her command was slipping. She could feel it. She stood there with her hand out while her First Mate looked straight at what was really going on underneath.
The same way he'd known to give her the Observation Room thirteen years ago.
He didn't look away.
"Please, Torvax."
She watched the word land on him, and Torvax Vale took the headset off and put it in her hand.
Reyna closed her hand around his, holding the headset for a single second.
"Thank you, Torvax."
He nodded, letting the headset go in her hands.
Reyna put it on.
"Wickett," she said. "Get back on the shuttle. Right now."
The pause on the other end was short.
"... Rey?"
Reyna closed her eyes.
"Get back on the shuttle, Wickett."
There was a long pause over the comm.
"I'm not going to do that."
"Yes, you are," Reyna said, her voice flat. "You are going to walk up that ramp and sit down and let it lift, and it will come back, and you will be on it when it does."
"And the debris pile takes another twenty tremors while I'm in orbit?"
"I'm aware."
"Are you?"
"I am aware of every number on this display, Wickett, including the four hundred and nine tremors that have now occurred on planet." Reyna heard her own voice climbing but didn't stop it. "So, you are going to get on that shuttle."
"I'm also aware." Charlie's voice stayed low. "Captain, one of those colonists is dying. You know that. And you want me to get on a shuttle and go for a ride just to come back to find out that we let them die?"
"I want you to follow an order."
Silence.
The Bridge held its breath. Kess stopped working and turned around.
"Wickett."
Nothing.
"Wickett."
No response. Reyna felt her control going. She felt it begin to come apart in her chest as she began to pace for the second time that night.
"That is an order, Charlotte Wickett!" Her voice came out of her at a volume that had never been on this Bridge.
The name went out across the void and into a wide array of headsets both planet-side and shipside.
Nothing came back.
Reyna stood in front of her own chair with her fist clenched around the headset.
She felt a single tear roll down her cheek.
"Charlie." Only quiet responded. "Please."
And then nothing.
Reyna didn't breathe. She stood there, the headset crushed in her fist, waiting for something to come back. A word, or a sound. Charlie's breathing, even. Anything that meant she was still there.
CHARLIE
"Charlie. Please."
Charlie staggered.
It was the please. Because that wasn't the Captain. That was Reyna, and Charlie had learned by now that she would do just about anything that voice asked her to.
Which was the entire problem.
Because she wanted to. She stood next to three people trapped under a building, and she wanted, so badly, to get up and walk to the shuttle and go to her.
And the truth was, if Reyna said please one more time, Charlie would not be able to deny her. She could feel it giving already, the soft place opening in her own resolve.
Charlie was not going to let the best thing that ever happened to her talk her into being the kind of person who left.
She looked down at her datapad.
I'm sorry, she thought. I'm so sorry, but if I keep listening to you, I'll do what you're asking. And I just can't.
"I'm sorry, Captain," she said.
And she cut the channel.
REYNA
Softly, Reyna heard words she would never forget.
"I'm sorry, Captain."
Reyna didn't move.
Why is she apologizing?
Then, the console chirped.
It was a small sound, probably the smallest sound on the entire Bridge. One soft electronic note.
But Reyna knew exactly what that sound was before she looked down at the display.
COMMUNICATIONS INDICATORS
brECK, T. — CHANNEL OPEN.
LAITH, M. — CHANNEL OPEN.
WICKETT, C. — CHANNEL CLOSED.
"No," Reyna whispered.
Her hands shot to the console. She keyed the channel.
Nothing.
She keyed it again.
"No. No—"
"Captain," Torvax's voice. "It seems she's cut communic—"
"NO!"
And for the first time in Reyna Solas's life, her markings broke.
Reyna felt it go through her like a hull letting go, from her sternum raging through her arms, and every constellation she held gold for her entire adult life went blinding white. Every mark on her body, all at once. She stood on the Bridge of the Emberkind and lit the room up.
She couldn't stop it. She didn't know how. There was nothing in her that was capable of reigning it back in.
Kess made a sound.
Reyna heard it, a short, sharp inhale from the medical console. She saw Kess's own markings flicker silver-blue in answer before she caught them and shut them down. Reyna saw her hand close on the edge of the console. She saw her take one step.
And stop.
Because Kess Pheras had been Kaelari for seventy-eight years and knew exactly what was happening.
You do not interact with a Kaelari whose markings have broken, especially when it occurs with others around.
So Kess stayed where she was, holding her position, giving Reyna the only thing she had left to give her.
She did not go to her.
Reyna knew Torvax didn't know what her markings breaking meant. He had absolutely no idea. As a species, Kaelari never talked about it, and in all his years beside Reyna, he had never seen her skin do anything at all.
But somehow, he knew what he was looking at anyway.
He turned around, sat down at his station, and put his eyes on his console. He began talking to the ground team in a level voice.
"Bridge to Ground Team."
"Go for ground team." Maren.
"Are you airborne?"
"That's affirmative, Bridge."
"Confirmation is required on Wickett. We lost communication."
"She's..." Maren started.
"She's not here, Bridge." Tavi.
Reyna's breath hitched.
She'd stayed behind.
The white held for just under a minute. Then it faded, draining back the way a flare goes out.
Her gold came up underneath it, all wrong.
It wasn't steady, or the same color gold Reyna had worn every day of her life like a coat of paint.
It came up unevenly, guttering in places, dim through her forearms and too bright at her collar.
It never righted itself. Reyna stood there, feeling her own body holding a wrong color by a thread.
She took the headset off and held it out toward Torvax. He took it from her without a word.
Reyna sat back down in her chair on the Bridge and stared at a display where a woman's channel had gone dark.
Twenty minutes later, not much had changed. The shuttle was en route and Kess was gearing up to go back with them planet-side to tend to the injured colonist.
And nothing had been heard from Charlie.
"Torvax. Update."
"Shuttle is at nineteen minutes to rendezvous, Captain. Palus vitals nominal."
"Kess."
Kess paused pulling on her utility belt to check her screen. "The third one is dropping, Captain."
"Understood," Reyna said.
She had said understood on this Bridge ten thousand times. It had never once meant so little.
Reyna saw Orion appear again over her right shoulder, approaching slow and gentle as if approaching a spooked animal. She didn't tear her eyes away from the communications display in front of her.
"Captain?"
"Not now, please, Orion," Reyna clipped.
"Captain, I have to insist. I really think you should see what I have found."
"Orion." Reyna didn't look up. "Charlie is down there."
"Yes, Captain." He walked closer to her. "But you see, that's exactly why."
Reyna turned around.
Orion was standing with his datapad in his hands. He'd been told 'no' once already tonight. He'd even watched what happened after. And yet he'd still come back anyway.
"What is it?" She asked, a bit softer now.
"Charlie's playlist."
Reyna straightened. Now she could admit that just the mention of Charlie's name did that to her. In fact, it had been doing it for months.
But then the rest of what she'd just heard caught up.
"Charlie's... playlist?"
"Yes, Captain."
He came around to her side and turned the datapad around so she could see it. Reyna looked down, seeing a collection... a list... of Earth songs.
"I've been working on this since the party," he said, his voice quiet. "Captain, before you look at it, I'm pretty sure you'll see what everyone else sees, so let me save you the time." He nodded at the datapad. "It isn't a list of songs she likes."
"It's literally called 'Charlie's Favorites,'" Reyna commented, looking back up at him.
"I know, Captain." He tapped his datapad again. She looked down. "But if you look at my analysis of it, it appears to be a record of things that have happened to her."
Reyna looked at him. "You analyzed her playlist?"
"She's heard every song in that library hundreds of times, Captain," he said.
"She doesn't just add one because it's good.
To her, they're all good." He stood up straight.
"She adds one when something happens, and the song she picks lines up with...
whatever it was that happened." He looked over at her.
"I don't believe she knows she's doing it. "
"That's a pretty large claim," Reyna said, though she had to admit she was intrigued.
"It's why I made the timestamps." He nodded at the datapad again. "I've pulled it up against a view of the playlist itself. Start there."
Reyna took the datapad from his hands. He stepped back, a small smile on his face.
She looked down, seeing Tavi's music program on one side, and a spreadsheet on the other.