6. The Chair #6
The truth hit her as all the air left her lungs.
Elena didn't PERS back.
Reyna launched herself off the floor and ran to the data console, her hands aching to track her signal.
The engineer commanding the console didn't even put up a fight, moving out of the way before Reyna even reached the station.
She loaded the PERS tracking system, and pulled up the signal map.
She had programmed the trackers to flash green when PERS signals were active but unused, yellow when certain ones were off-ship, orange when signals were in use, and red when their signatures were missing or unable to locate.
This could be due to anything, a lack of power, a communication array disturbance, even something as simple as someone sitting on their device wrong and it trapped without being able to broadcast its location.
She had calibrated the system this way herself during the refit, and personally recalibrated every cycle, because the safety of her crew was not something she trusted to full automation.
As she scanned the tracking system, she saw many green lights flashing, a few yellow, none that were orange...
And one red.
Elena's PERS signal was missing.
Before another second could go by, Reyna ordered the sweep. She ordered it calmly, using the voice she had learned from Elena herself that carried the authority of certainty, even when she was barely holding it together on the inside.
The scouting crew took the shuttle back to the area of assignment where the incident had happened. Reyna sat in the bridge, the comms active for everyone there to hear the scouting crew's updates.
They swept the area for hours.
A day.
Two days.
Crew members came and went. Shifts changed over four times. But Reyna stayed. She never left the bridge, never walked far enough away that she couldn't hear the scouting crew. Jere was with her for most of it, but occasionally left, bringing Reyna back food and nourishment.
"Borran orders you to eat," Jere said as evening approached on the second day. "He's been tracking your food intake and is very worried."
"He told you that?" Reyna asked.
"His grunt did," Jere replied. Reyna looked over at him and he gave her a lopsided smile. Reyna didn't respond, and only turned her gaze back to her console.
"Please, Rey. Just some food. Even just a few bites."
Reyna didn't respond to him, but she patted the side of her console table. He understood, leaving the plate of food there for her. She didn't know if she'd eat it, but Jere, and Borran, were right. She'd be no good without keeping herself in peak shape. And that included eating and drinking.
Another day passed, and the Frontier gave them nothing.
Space was already massive, and a single person in it was very small.
And as time ticked on, Reyna began to seriously worry that the technology that should have brought Elena home was scattered across a planet surface in pieces too damaged to function.
On the fourth day, Jere approached her again. But this time, it wasn't about food.
"Rey," he began, his voice soft but strained and raspy. "Reyna."
Reyna pulled her eyes away from her console screen.
She knew she must look a sight. She hadn't slept properly since Elena's disappearance, grabbing little bits of time here and there on the surface of her console table.
She hadn't showered, or changed her clothes.
She knew that was probably what Jere was coming to tell her.
To clean herself up, and that he'd watch the console and listen to the scouting crew on comms. She didn't know if she could do it.
"I know, Jere," she started, attempting to catch him before he said something about the way she must smell. "I need to get cleaned up. But you must promise me that you won't leave this desk, and if anything comes through comms while I'm away, you come and get me as soon as—"
"That's not why I'm here, Rey," Jere interrupted, the words almost sounding wrong the way they escaped his mouth.
Reyna looked at him in confusion. "Then, why?"
And then Jere began to cry. Softly, tears slipping down his cheeks slowly. And Reyna sucked in a staggered breath.
"Rey..." he pleaded to her. "It's been four days, Rey. The scouting crew has turned that planet and its surrounding area over more times than I can count in my current state." He took a deep breath. "Rey... we need to call it."
"No."
"Reyna—"
"No, Jerel!" Reyna screamed, her voice echoing off the walls of the bridge. Her heart was pounding. The bridge was getting smaller. She knew it wasn't, and it kept happening anyway.
She turned away from Jere and sat back down at her console. She felt the sting of tears threatening to fall behind her eyes, but she tamped that down, securing it under a layer of solid rock deep in her chest.
The bridge was eerily silent around her. She could hear herself breathing, jagged inhales and exhales that seemed to only get faster.
The next thing she knew, Jere's arms wrapped around her from behind, his head falling against her shoulder.
His embrace was tight, contained, but warm.
He held her as though she were the most fragile specimen he'd ever taken care of, and his calming energy seeped through him and straight into Reyna's body, of which she only realized was shaking.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, the tears spilling in rivulets, because she knew he was right.
"She can't be gone," Reyna whispered.
A few moments passed before Jere responded. "Hopefully, she's not. Hopefully, she's somewhere else, in the wrong place, and we will get a call in a few weeks from Vondra saying they found her on a planet made entirely of fluffy pink champagne clouds."
Reyna laughed, a laugh that broke through her tears, but they didn't cease. She felt Jere's smile against her shoulder but also the cold of his own tears against her uniform.
"It's time, Rey."
And then Reyna cried. Not a sob, but steady tears that didn't stop, tears that led to shaky breaths and stained cheeks. Tears that fell onto Jere's arms still wrapped around her shoulders.
A few minutes later, Reyna stood on the bridge, facing the crew before her and connected to comms with the scouts, and gave the formal order to stop searching for the Emberkind's captain.
She said the words, even heard them inside her own head.
She was aware she said them clearly, because that was the one thing above all that the crew deserved: clarity.
Elena would have demanded clarity, because she would uphold that a captain does not mumble, even in a moment where the cost of the decision being communicated is letting go of someone she loves.
"The search is concluded," she finished. "Chief, log the mission as a failure, that we were not able to complete the task. Note that Elena Voss, Captain of the CMS Emberkind, is now classified as missing in action. It needs to be stated that her status is unknown, despite the search."
"Yes, Second," the Chief Navigator said, communicating with the Chief Mission Specialist next to him to coordinate the report.
"Captain," Jere said from against the wall next to Reyna' console. The Chief Navigator looked up at Jere, and then rounded on Reyna with wide eyes.
"Of course, my apologies. Captain."
The bridge was suddenly quiet in a way Reyna believed it had never been before. But inside, she was screaming.
After the crew cleared the bridge, Reyna walked towards Elena's office.
She touched the handle and pushed the door opened.
She saw Elena's chair was there, the star maps she worked with lining the walls.
Her handwriting was left on the datapads she had stacked at the edge of the desk.
This room held that faint, residual presence of someone who had made it theirs, who had sat in that chair and reviewed those maps and left her coffee on the edge of the console where she always did.
Reyna stood in the doorway, staring at the chair behind Elena's desk.
She couldn't walk towards it. It felt as though, with no disturbance to it, that Elena would be back in no time, sitting there, completing her missions and tasks, yelling at Jere for prioritizing a special habitat add-on, or discussing with Reyna the reasons why it was important to change the filter more often than was recommended in Habitat 9A because the smell was driving the Engineering crew to tears.
But her heart couldn't wrap around the idea completely. Even her imagination couldn't lie to her about Elena.
She looked at the chair, but she did not sit in it.
The lights in the office dimmed, only slightly, but then continued darker and darker, that Reyna almost didn't notice, the environmental system adjusting by just a fraction of a lumen each time, until she realized that the ship had registered Elena's absence before Reyna had even finished standing in it.
? 1977 / CYCLE 487 | EMBERKIND CV-0417, SECTOR LYRA ?
10 MONTHS LATER
This time, a mission didn't go wrong. Instruments didn't fail. Return was always possible.
But still, the shuttle came back without him.
Ten months after Elena's disappearance, the Emberkind was running smoothly.
The crew were laughing in corridors again, there was enjoyment and camaraderie in the mess hall every night.
And to top it all off, the crew members who had been on that fateful mission had all been cleared to return to their positions, and every single one of them requested to rejoin the Emberkind.
They'd continued missions, rescued animals, and were a safe space for rehabilitation as best as they ever had been.
Reyna was a good captain. Jere had told her so, many times.
Her bridge team never came right out and said it, but they trusted her, following her orders, believing in her judgement and decisions.
They had taken to her easily. Elena's presence was still felt on the ship, but in remembrance, not as a ghost.
The crew had adjusted. Their mission remained completely intact.
The ship had moved on.