2. Two Truths #4
Elena just stared at Reyna. It felt like a lifetime, but was probably only seconds. But Reyna held her own. This was the part that horrified her. She didn't fret standing up to a leader. Sure, maybe she wasn't a leader yet, but Elena exuded leadership like some species exuded oxygen.
Then Elena's mouth twitched, the glimpse of a smirk hiding beneath her features. "Fine," she said. "What would you do?"
And since she was given this opportunity, Reyna told her. And lo and behold, Elena listened, implementing her suggestion.
They won the exercise four minutes later.
But it was after, when Elena looked at Reyna with an expression that said I see you, that Reyna realized voicing her opinions, even if they were to keep her friend from being reckless, weren't a good idea if it meant she'd garner attention.
At Elena's look, Reyna ended up busying herself with her equipment, avoiding any semblance of the topic or what it meant for her, or her cohort through Elena's eyes.
But see, that was the thing about Elena and Jere.
Even when Reyna decided to pull back on her suggestions, they still kept noticing her.
Even when she was careful to position herself in the background, taking on roles that were necessary but didn't act with any pomp and circumstance.
And yet, her two friends kept seeking her out, turning towards her to find her there, hidden in the wings.
And instead of letting her stay invisible, which is what she wanted and told them repeatedly, they would hand her a role, and not one in the background.
Elena would hand her tactics and missions.
Jere always handed her the comedic relief and laughter.
And between the two of them, they practically dragged Reyna into a version of herself she didn't even know existed.
This version was the same one who argued about flanking strategy and pointed out logistical flaws.
This version was the one who said things out loud that she'd previously kept sealed with no plans to ever let them free.
Even during late nights in corridors, where Elena outlined the captain she wanted to be while Jere got excited on her behalf, Reyna would point out every logistical flaw until Elena threw something soft at her head.
"You're supposed to be supportive," Elena would whine.
"I am being supportive. I'm supporting you by making sure your plans don't get people killed."
"She has a point," Jere offered.
"Shut up, Jere."
"Shutting up."
But what became legend were the nights that were truly absurd. And sometimes they were legend before they were even over.
Later in life, the three of them would call the time Elena wished for Jere to have not been her responsibility in an exercise (one of many), 'The Simulation Incident.
' It happened to be Elena's least favorite story of a mission of hers going sideways.
Which naturally meant that it was one of Jere's most treasured tales of their time at Novahall.
Reyna held most of the details in memory for decades after.
It was a perfectly standard tactical exercise.
They were performing a mission that included a hostage extraction, a multi-threat assessment with alternating variables only chosen by the system once their team entered the simulation, and all to be completed as timed objectives.
Elena had the luck of the draw, having been appointed team lead the day before.
She then spent three hours that night mapping all the contingencies on a borrowed datapad she'd borrowed from a crew member in her bunk squad, as hers was in repairs after using it to swat away a ferocious beast in their last simulation. Though she was given kudos for her quick thinking in her beast takedown, the technology department at the academy didn’t praise her quick thinking.
Reyna and Jere sat with her as she developed the plan for tomorrow's mission, with Reyna there to help point out flaws.
Jere truly had no purpose being there as he knew his expertise in animals wouldn't help so much when it came to hostages, so just ate snacks.
However, he did offer commentary occasionally that was, in his own words, invaluable.
On the day of the exercise, it began well. Elena's plan from the night before was clean and accounted for every variable that came their way.
That is, except the one no plan could have ever considered.
Jere himself and his love for animal welfare.
After fourteen minutes into the simulation, all was running smoothly with Elena directing their team through a corridor breach, Reyna covering the left flank. They were moving forward, continuing through the plans Elena had mapped, when Jere completely stopped moving.
"Rey," he said over comms, pulling Reyna from her task. "There's something in the ventilation shaft here."
Reyna rolled her eyes, even though Jere couldn't see it in her tactical suit. "It's a simulation, Jere. Everything in here is fake."
"Rey. That doesn't mean it's not there!"
"Whatever is in the ventilation shaft is not meant for this exercise. Leave it alone."
"Just because it's a simulated nesting creature does not mean it's not in distress."
Reyna actually stopped now, turning around to face Jere at his vantage point. "How in the hell do you know its in distress?"
"It's easy, Rey. The environmental parameters, the ones coming up in my suit, the ones for that shaft are completely wrong for any nesting species, particularly on this 'simulated' planet. The temperature in there alone would cause immediate respiratory failure in a real specimen."
"Jere," Elena said, her tone matching the one used for moments when her plans were about to be derailed by something completely unnecessary.
Like Jerel Nox'Thelan Carrothi's conscience.
"Stay on mission," Elena ordered.
"I can fix it. No problem whatsoever. I'll fix the ventilation settings, do my job as the animal specialist on this simulated mission, and still make it in time for the extraction window. It'll only take me ninety seconds."
"You do NOT have ninety seconds," Reyna whisper-yelled.
"Fine then, eighty seconds."
"Jere—!"
But by the time Reyna finished saying his name, he was already gone.
She watched his position indicator on her tactical display run sharply off course and then disappear into a simulated maintenance corridor that was absolutely not part of the mission.
For all she knew, it would lead to a dead end altogether.
So, instead, Reyna took the three seconds she didn't have to recalculate the left flank coverage Jere was meant to cover.
She helped Elena redistribute the remaining team across both entry points, and informed her that the plan was salvageable, but only as long as they moved now and just pretended Jere didn't exist.
"I always knew it would come to this," Elena muttered.
"Pretending Jere doesn't exist?"
"No," Elena said with resignation. However, two seconds later, she came back on over Reyna's comms. "But, also yes." Reyna laughed quietly to herself as the extraction continued on without the distracted member of their trio.
Reyna and Elena completed the simulated mission with their cohort with only six seconds to spare.
Moments later, Jere emerged from the same maintenance corridor he'd tucked away in, looking enormously pleased with himself.
Going by his expression, Reyna knew that he had obviously adjusted the simulated ventilation settings for a simulated creature in a simulated shaft, and now appeared to consider this a truly meaningful accomplishment.
"The nesting parameters are corrected," he announced, confirming Reyna's suspicion. "She would have survived."
"She's not real, Jere," Reyna said.
"That's not the point, Rey."
"What is the point, then?"
"The point is that the simulation designers got the environmental specs wrong for a Korveth cliff-nester, and someone needed to say something. Those temperature tolerances were off by at least twelve degrees. It was sloppy work."
Elena stared at him for a long time. Then she turned to Reyna. "Is it too late to request a different cohort?"
"I looked into it," Reyna said. "The transfer window closed last term."
"So you're stuck with me," Jere said. Elena eyed him. "Oh, don't give me that look. You know you love me."
Once graded, the instructor marked their team as "effective but chaotic.
" Elena treated this as a professional wound that would require years to get over.
But Jere had it engraved on a small piece of scrap metal that he kept on his desk for the remainder of their time at Novahall.
Reyna occasionally caught herself looking at it and having to turn away before her expression betrayed her, because if either of them ever found out that she thought the entire event was funny, she would never hear the end of it.
As time went on, it was interactions like these, ones that were loud, ridiculous, and, most of the time, full of arguments about tactics and animals and whether Jere's enthusiasm constituted a security risk, that helped form them into a crew of their own.
And though this small group of three helped Reyna learn that she could, safely, open up to people around her and lean into other parts of her personality, they also taught her how to trust, even outside of a mission.
In these moments, every now and then, the noise stopped, and what was underneath came through.
There was one night where Jere got a comm from his former research posting. A species he'd been tracking, the Veylani reef crawlers, a population he'd spent months trying to protect, had been wiped out by a mining expansion.
All of them. Every last one.
He sat in the corridor outside his quarters with his back against the wall and his hands hanging between his knees. He was so small and so reserved, that Reyna almost walked past him.
But she didn't.