4. Fostering #2
"Okay, sure thing, Captain. I'll make sure all that works out just perfectly!
" Reyna shouted down the corridor, the sound trailing Elena but probably not landing in her ears.
"Just like I always do," Reyna mumbled to herself, but she couldn't stop the smile from spreading across her face.
"I'm going to have to make this work, aren't I," she trailed off to herself as she walked down the corridor, already calculating the refit timeline on her datapad before rounding the corner to get to her office.
In the days that followed, the trio of Elena, Reyna, and Jere were given their first opportunity to work together as a unit since they'd been split up after Novahall.
If Reyna was being truthful, it was also the last time she ever underestimated the power Elena Voss had when she made the decision that something was going to exist. Elena didn’t fail to provide the command authority, the strategic framework, and the political instincts needed to make this a success, likely stemming from those generations of knowing how the Coalition worked and processed.
And Jere, greeted back into their midst with such gusto, even virtually, provided the passion and the knowledge of individual species needs, especially when it came to particular habitat requirements, that turned the whole wild idea into a viable plan.
Reyna made all of what Elena initiated and Jere depicted work, meshing all of their contributions together into a single, salvageable manifest, and she was damn good at that.
Reyna was able to take Elena's specialized vision and Jere's specialized science and turn them into everything they needed to make this happen.
This included everything from logistics and timelines, to resource allocations and operational procedures.
Reyna's special talent was that she could see the problems before they existed, channeling her inner room scanner, and have solutions for every single one of them before anyone even noticed they were possibilities.
When Elena's ambition outpaced reality and Jere's enthusiasm went beyond the stars, Reyna took her job seriously as a reality check and hauled it back in.
But for certain aspects, such as when Elena and Jere wanted to build a specialized humidifier for the Wetland Wing they were planning, and it was clear it would exceed the budget, Reyna made it a priority and found the budget.
Because that was their motto for this project: the animals came first.
That didn't mean that when both Elena and Jere got so excited about a particular design, planning to include some of the heaviest and sometimes most rare materials in the galaxy, that they forgot the ship still needed to actually fly, Reyna took them down a peg and reminded them. Firmly.
"We can't allocate seventy percent of environmental power to the habitats," she'd explained one day when Elena and Jere were discussing all they could do with a fully customizable and adaptable atmosphere generator right in the cargo hold.
"And why the hell not?" Elena and Jere said, simultaneously, indignantly.
Reyna stared at their stoic faces, hoping if she gave them a moment, they'd come to the realization on their own.
As the staredown continued, she realized that, no, they needed a push.
"Because we need to breathe?" Reyna actually posed it as a question because she had a hard time believe they'd gone that far down the rabbit hole that they'd forgotten basic living needs.
Both Elena and Jere's eyes grew wide as realization dawned on them.
"... oh," Elena said first.
"Yeah," Jere followed.
"Yeah. Oh."
"Well, at least the animals would be happy!" Jere added.
"Even I draw the line at accidental manslaughter due to unsupported life needs aboard my ship, Jere," Elena stated. Jere nodded.
"Fair."
And that was how it went. They worked across distances that changed frequently, they worked through communication delays where sometimes responses took upwards of five minutes, which sometimes frustrated Elena to no end as she'd be moving along with her plans, and right in the middle of Step 8, Jere's responses would come through on Step 3.
Not to mention their competing schedules, between Elena's captainship, Reyna's requirements to run the Emberkind smoothly, and Jere's continuing mobile outreach.
But they found a rhythm. Elena would present, Jere would explain, and Reyna would refine. And slowly, piece by piece and refinement by refinement, a proposal came to be through all their work, and even Reyna knew it was solid.
In fact, the Coalition agreed. Granted, it wasn't easily. It wasn't without negotiation, compromise, and Elena having to pull every Voss family connection she had with Reyna sitting beside her, all the data at her fingertips for any objection that arose.
When the time came, the final approval was from Admiral Vondra, the Lithyn sector commander who had been overseeing the Emberkind's region of operations for almost two decades.
The trio would find out later that it was Vondra herself that kept the Emberkind in commission and would never allow it to be taken out of work.
Reyna had never spoken directly with someone from the Lithyn species before that first briefing.
So, when the viewscreen in Elena's office showed a figure of dark stone seated in shallow water, with geode eyes that caught light like trapped amber, not blinking or moving, Reyna often had to silently ask Jere if the Admiral was asleep during their presentation.
He said 'no' each time but didn't always look so sure of his answer.
During the interview, the Admiral ended up only asking three questions, each one detailed but not to the extent they anticipated, making Reyna's data preparation feel like overkill.
Actually, every one of them covered crew safety, not even touching on logistics or budget or how they were going to get enough manpower for the endeavor.
Even political inquiries were kept off the table.
The Admiral's whole purpose was to ensure crew safety more than anything else.
At that, Reyna decided she liked the Admiral.
After answering all the questions and discussing the finer details, mostly provided by Jere, the Admiral said the one word they'd all been waiting to hear.
"Approved."
After that, they celebrated. It was indeed a raucous event for the likes of the relic ship, where Borran, the chef on the Emberkind that had been there since before either Elena or Reyna were born, cooked for hours.
Reyna and Elena had Jere on comms while the three of them revered in each other's company, Reyna and Elena enjoying all of Borran's culinary creations, not to mention imbibing themselves on his Concordian mead.
Jere repeated emphatically how he hated he was missing that the most. Elena promised she'd save him some.
That did not happen.
A few days went by, and the Emberkind arrived in Concordia for its complete refit based on the plans and approval from the proposal.
The new habitat systems to be built in the cargo hold, along with all the environmental controls to be installed, capable of sustaining multiple biomes simultaneously.
Then there were the medical facilities for alien fauna, the research and lab rooms, and even the quarantine bays for those rehabilitative animals they hoped to nurse back to health.
In addition, and as one of the safety measures inquired by Admiral Vondra, there was a special focus put on a new safety system called the Personal Emergency Retrieval System (PERS).
The system, which used trinkets picked out by individual crew members to keep on their person at all times, provided the ability to transport crew members of the Emberkind back to the ship in case of dangerous events off-ship.
In the retrofit, the Concordia engineers would install beacons, now required by the Coalition, throughout the whole of the Emberkind in specific locations for crew members to be transported back.
As the new standard safety protocol for any major structural build or modification, every crew member's biological retrieval signature would have to be calibrated into the Emberkind's on-board PERS console to account for the entirety of the ship's structural configurations.
Essentially, it was to ensure that anyone who used their PERS device to return to the Emberkind didn't end up in the middle of a vent shaft or, worse, smack dab in the middle of Borran's crew dinner.
Reyna oversaw every stage of the rebuild.
She was there when the old cargo systems were ripped out and when the first habitat frame went in.
Reyna also handled the logistics herself to calibrate the PERS system for the Emberkind.
It was tedious and detail-oriented but was the basis of the safety promises she, Elena, and Jere had made to the Admiral.
Not to mention, it was a literal lifeline to anyone on the Emberkind crew. She did not take that lightly.
During the third week of construction, a conduit installer lost her footing on the scaffolding in the cargo hold.
She fell eight feet onto the reinforced decking, still attached to her restraint harness.
However, she smacked into the scaffolding so hard it snapped her harness cable, sending her plummeting to the deck below.
That sound she made when she hit the deck carried across the entire space, every worker freezing where they stood, worried the worst had happened.