12. She’s Us #2
Reyna took a deep breath. "I'm the captain, Kess.
It's not fair to Charlie that I be the one she turns to for support when I don't know how much time I'd be able to give.
" And Reyna realized she was saddened by that.
If it were up to her, she'd give Charlie as much time as much as she wanted in order to help her.
It was something she'd been thinking about on her own, how much she truly wanted to spend time helping Charlie, more than she thought she could.
"I know," Kess said gently. "But I think you'll find a way." And then, Kess smiled at Reyna. That was something she didn't see often, despite how close they were.
Reyna stood. "Is there anything else regarding the diagnostic itself?" Kess stood up with her, lifting her datapad again.
"No. She's healthy. Remarkably so for someone who just survived a PERS displacement." Kess placed the datapad on the table. "I'll have a full report for the Coalition file by morning."
"Thank you, Kess."
"Of course, Captain."
Reyna walked to the door.
"Rey."
She stopped.
"The Aetherfin timeline. Tavi said he'll have the boundary calculations finalized by tomorrow. Engineering is going to need to prep the shuttle modifications. You should talk to Cael."
Reyna exhaled, her hand reaching up to massage her temple. "I know."
"He's going to be difficult."
"He's always difficult."
"He's going to be more difficult. He hates change, you know that," Kess said. "And with this new... variable aboard."
Reyna didn't ask what variable Kess meant.
"Duly noted. Goodnight, Kess."
"Goodnight, Captain."
One week passed.
Charlie adapted. Not without difficulty, but with a relentlessness that Reyna recognized as something deeper than resilience.
She ate meals with the crew. Borran had begun setting a place for her at the main table without being asked, which was Borran's version of forgiveness and acceptance, and roughly equivalent to a formal declaration of friendship.
Charlie had complimented his spiced grain dish on her third night aboard, and Borran had grunted in a way that Reyna understood to be profound emotional satisfaction.
Reyna had been checking in with the crew about Charlie's integration.
She'd asked Torvax about security concerns, but there were none.
He noted that Charlie was cooperative, curious, and had demonstrated no hostile intent.
Torvax had paused before adding, "She asked me to walk her through the bridge navigation systems yesterday.
Her questions were... surprisingly well-informed.
" Coming from Torvax, this was practically a love letter.
She'd asked Selowen how Charlie's visit to the animal habitats had gone.
"Well," Selowen had said. "She has gentle hands, that girl.
The creatures responded to her instinctively and immediately.
" A pause. "She asked me how I'm both Kaelari and Brontari again.
She is curious. But she said she'd like to know, to understand better. I believe her."
"I would, too," Reyna added.
"We have a tea date tomorrow where I'm going to tell her the whole story, and she's going to tell me about how she's half Midwestern and half Californian."
"What does that mean?"
"I haven't the foggiest idea." Reyna laughed, and Selowen joined her.
"It sounds like fun."
"I am sure it will be."
She'd asked Tavi if he'd had any interaction with Charlie yet. Tavi had looked at her with wide eyes and said, "She asked me fourteen questions about the zero-G field yesterday, Captain. Fourteen. Most of them were ones I hadn't even thought of yet!"
Reyna had raised an eyebrow at that. Fourteen questions? In one conversation?
But the one thing Reyna noticed, outside of the feedback she'd received from the crew, was that Charlie Wickett was obviously dying of boredom.
It was visible in everything she did. Reyna would see her walking the corridors with purpose but no destination.
Her hands trailed along walls with the focused attention of someone taking note through her fingertips.
She tilted her head when the engine pitch changed, tracking frequencies Reyna herself had stopped hearing years ago.
Borran had told her that Charlie asked how the galley ventilation system worked.
She suggested a fix for the condensation problem before Borran even finished his explanation.
Reyna recalled the conversation Charlie had with Maren when she first landed on the ship, talking about closed-cycle nuclear rockets and three hundred pressure regulation points.
She remembered Charlie's story about the PERS displacement accident, how she'd been 'assigned' to the debris because she was one of the only people on her team willing to look at it.
Or, what was it Charlie had said? That she was 'stubborn' enough to figure it out.
The way Charlie talked about mechanics, the knowledge she displayed in her explanation of what happened, and the way Reyna watched her walk around the ship. She realized it was obvious.
Charlie must be an engineer. Perhaps as a profession. Most especially as an orientation.
And she had nothing to do.
Reyna knew just how to fix that.
Reyna found her in a corridor at the end of the first week. Though she was on her rounds and should probably keep walking, the image before her caught her attention.
Charlie was standing with one hand flat against the wall and the other holding a small device to her ear. Her eyes were half-closed, her head tilted, her expression one of concentration and curiosity simultaneously. She hadn't noticed Reyna approaching.
Reyna stopped. She'd seen Charlie do this often, stand in a corridor, palm pressed to the wall of Reyna's ship, listening to it.
It had been on Reyna's list to seek Charlie out for this exact reason, but watching it in real time was fascinating in its own way.
No one had ever listened to the Emberkind the way Charlie listened to it.
At least, no one under Reyna's leadership.
Reyna stepped forward, and the sound of her boot on the floor broke whatever spell Charlie was under.
Charlie startled and yanked the device from her ear, its cord trailing to a rectangular machine clipped to her belt. Her eyes went wide before she was able to relax, one hand going to her chest.
"Jesus, Captain, you scared the shit out of me!" Reyna chuckled. She watched as Charlie's chest rose and fell in a quick rhythm.
"Apologies," she responded. "The last thing I'd want is to 'scare the shit' out of you."
"Ha ha," Charlie retorted, turning to face Reyna fully. "Somehow I feel like you do it more often than you think."
"I don't think so," Reyna scoffed.
"Hmm, I may need to get a consensus from the crew."
"Okay, that's not fair."
"In this particular situation, Captain, where said crew may be experiencing mental instability due to an mismanaged leader—"
"Mismanaged leader?!" Reyna interrupted. "I'll have you know, Ms. I Think I Know Fucking Everything Because I'm From Earth—"
"What did you just call me?" Charlie interrupted with a laugh, the lights above dancing in her eyes as they came alive on top her gorgeous smile.
Reyna stopped dead in her words. Gorgeous smile? Where had that come from?
But as Reyna looked more closely at Charlie, she had to admit...
"What is that?" Reyna's gaze fell to the rectangle on Charlie's waist.
Charlie stared at Reyna, seeming to try and understand the change in subject. But, she went along with it, looking down at her waist and pulled the rectangle off her belt. She held up the device and the cord attached to it.
"This," she stated proudly. "Is a Walkman.
It plays music. Well, it plays cassettes, which are these things that have musical tracks burned into some tape, that is read by this machine here and plays through this," she said, holding up the cord with what looked like a small bolt connected to wires attached to the end of it.
Charlie pressed a button or activator on the device, and Reyna could hear a faint sound from the small bolt, tinny and distant but undeniably rhythmic.
"This isn't the first time you've mentioned music," Reyna said. "It was... Fleetwood Mac, wasn't it? On your shirt when you landed?"
"Yeah." Charlie's face changed when she talked about it. "I was lucky enough to have transported here with my bag as it brought nineteen cassettes with me. From Earth. When I..." She gestured vaguely at the universe. "Arrived."
"Nineteen."
Charlie actually looked slightly embarrassed at Reyna calling her out.
"It's my whole collection. Well, the portable part, at least. I had more at home.
" Charlie looked down at the Walkman in her hands.
"Music is... a way for me to process things.
It always has been, at least since I was very young.
When I've been happy, or sad, or when I can't figure out how to say what I need to say," Charlie looked up at Reyna and smiled.
"I've found there's always a song that can help me figure out the words or, just, say it for me.
My Dad, Frank, was the one that 'ignited my passion,' as he used to say, for music.
" Reyna watched as Charlie's face softened at the mention of her father.
"He was the one who showed me that a song could do what words couldn't."
Reyna was listening so intently, finding herself genuinely curious about the concept. The idea of carrying a huge emotional part of your life in a small machine, ready to access whenever you needed it.
The Coalition had music, of course, but she'd never heard anyone describe their relationship to it the way Charlie did, almost as though music were a language she spoke more fluently than her own.
"And you have all of that in this machine," Reyna said.