12. She’s Us #4
Reyna focused on her palm, cool against the housing metal.
She wasn't going to lie and say she felt something if it wasn't there, but after a moment, she did feel a small push of energy against her palm.
She looked up at Charlie with what she was sure was a look of amazement, and watched as a smile spread across Charlie's face.
"That shouldn't be there," she explained, still looking down at Reyna. "It means something downstream is misaligned."
"The engines are performing within standard parameters," Cael stated from where he stood, again looking to prove Charlie didn't know what she was saying. Reyna dropped her hand from the engine's housing and turned to face him, but not before Charlie started speaking again.
"They are," Charlie agreed. "But 'standard parameters' means you've set the bar below what it is capable of achieving. These engines you have in this ship are capable of significantly more than what you're getting out of them."
The air in the room shifted. Reyna's eyes found Maren as she looked between Charlie and Cael rapidly.
Reyna's gaze returned to her Chief Engineer and the woman from Earth. Why was it she wasn't surprised that Cael may be running her entire ship at low efficiency?
"Show me," Reyna said, hearing her own voice tilt with a challenging inflection.
Charlie looked over at her, and watched as a determined expression settled into Charlie's features.
She watched as she turned to the console and started pulling up data.
Her hands moved across the interface with an ease that shouldn't have been possible for someone who'd never used Coalition technology before.
Reyna could only assume the fundamentals of engineering transcended species and planet of origin.
Or, perhaps Charlie was just extraordinary.
"Here," Charlie said, pointing. "And here.
The secondary coupling is pulling .03 degrees off true.
On Earth, that's a rounding error. On a ship this size, with an engine this powerful, it cascades through every downstream system.
" Cael walked over to look at the screen of the console, effectively moving Charlie away with his presence.
"Your power output reads nominal because the tolerances are generous, but the actual efficiency is...
" She ran a quick calculation. "Seventy-eight percent. Maybe eighty on a good day."
"That's within parameters," Cael said, easily dismissing Charlie's findings.
"It is," Charlie said. "It's also twenty percent less than what this engine can do. And I'm pretty sure the engine knows it."
Reyna walked over to the console herself.
"Excuse me, Cael," she said, standing next to him.
He looked down at her, then made a sound like a low grumble and moved to the side.
Reyna approached the console and looked at the clear data in front of her.
She looked over at Cael, whose jaw was set in a way that told her everything Charlie was saying was actually true.
Reyna mentally laughed at the fact that it took this woman, a human woman at that, from Earth of all places, to feel the missing twenty percent through her own fingers.
Reyna marveled at that for a beat as her gaze shifted to Charlie, whose hands were still on the side of the console, her eyes bright.
"These numbers are accurate, Cael?" Reyna asked, turning her gaze back to the console display.
"The engines are within spec, Captain." His voice was clipped.
Reyna straightened and turned towards Cael, her eyes holding his captive. "That wasn't my question."
Cael's chest rose and fell as he took several seconds before answering. "The numbers appear to be accurate," Cael said, each word straining from his lips.
Reyna nodded. This time, she turned towards Charlie, who was looking at her with an expectant expression.
"You're quite confident in your assessment," Reyna said.
"I'm always confident about engines," Charlie replied.
"Confident enough to back it up?"
Charlie smirked. "Name the time and place."
"Consider this your time and place," Reyna said. She looked at Cael. "Charlie will be joining the engineering division. Effective immediately."
Cael straightened. "Captain, with all due respect, she's a civilian. From a pre-spaceflight—"
"She just diagnosed a twenty percent efficiency loss that's been present on my ship for twelve years, Rask," Reyna interrupted, her disappointment loud and indignant in her response.
"I'd say she's proven her qualifications.
" Reyna held his gaze. "Unless you'd like to explain to me why it took someone from a 'pre-spaceflight planet' to notice this efficiency drain occurring? "
Cael said nothing, but she noticed his jaw tighten.
"I thought not," Reyna said. She turned back to Charlie. "You'll report to Chief Engineer Rask. Standard shifts. Tavi and Maren can show you anything you need."
Charlie beamed at her, and Reyna knew immediately this was the right decision.
"You start now."
A few days later, Reyna was a few corridors away from Engineering at the end of beta shift.
The decks were quieter than usual, most of the crew cycling toward meals or quarters.
Reyna was coming from her evening rounds walking the ship because doing so at the end of the day was the only meditation she'd ever successfully practiced.
Her mind wandered to her continuing tasks on the ship.
The Aetherfin mission was now just over a week away.
Tavi had finalized the boundary calculations and the shuttle modifications were underway.
Cael on the other hand had been managing.
Barely. Charlie's presence in his Engineering Bay had introduced a variable that his comfortable mediocrity wasn't equipped to handle.
She turned the corner toward Engineering and stopped.
Something coming from inside the bay, muffled by the bulkhead.
Music.
A bright, energetic sound with a driving rhythm and a woman's voice singing about girls, wanting to have fun.
Reyna moved closer. The bay door was open allowing for the amplification of the sounds.
Reyna saw Charlie inside, alone. Cael must already be gone for the day. The music was louder here, filling the Engineering Bay with something the space had never contained before.
And Charlie was singing along.
She wasn't performing or even aware of an audience.
She was just singing, moving between consoles, hands busy with something on a diagnostic panel, then moving to the next console to consult a read-out.
Her body was swaying with the rhythm in an unconscious way, a way she'd probably been moving to music her entire life.
Her voice caught Reyna by surprise. It was full and unguarded, and the Engineering Bay hummed differently with her in it, as though the space itself had been waiting for someone like Charlie who would care for it with this kind of attention.
Reyna stood in the corridor, leaning against the bay door arch, and listened. But she did not go in.
Interrupting would be rude, she told herself. Charlie deserved a moment of privacy after a week of being watched by an entire crew of aliens while she was forty light years from home.
Reyna couldn't argue with herself. The gold held. Reyna's markings stayed at their steady, practiced baseline, the warm gold they'd been for thirteen years.
But for the first time, standing in that corridor, listening to Charlie sing, Reyna noticed she was holding it.
She turned and walked away, her boots quiet on the floor, the music fading behind her with each step.