32. She’s Nice
THIRTY-TWO
SHE’S NICE
Kess found her in the Observation Room.
Reyna had not made the decision to come here. She just found her way somehow, because the only other place to be was her quarters, and there was nothing but to lie there in the dark and feel three inches of air shrinking over and over again.
With the door open the way it always was, Kess walked in and crossed to where Reyna sat, taking a place at the far end of the same bench. Reyna was grateful but said nothing, just as she and Kess had said most of the important things for thirteen years.
For a while the only sound was the ship. Reyna held her gold and made it look effortless. But she knew, even as she did it, that she was wasting the effort. The performance had never once worked on Kess, and Reyna was certain it wasn’t going to start now.
"Your heart rate stayed elevated for forty-seven minutes after the incident in Engineering," Kess said quietly, breaking the silence. "Yet the cascade was resolved in twelve."
And there it was.
Reyna did the math before she could stop herself.
Thirty-five minutes.
Thirty-five minutes her body had spent in a state no manifold failure would explain. Kess had done the same math an hour ago and come all the way up here to sit with the answer beside her. She wouldn't ask for a thing from Reyna. She'd simply leave space open for her.
“You know,” Reyna started. “Sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass for you to see everything that goes on with me.”
Kess said nothing.
Yet one of the most wonderful things about Kess was, in moments like this, she knew the nothing was answer enough. She stayed exactly where she was, her silver-blue markings steady, and let the quiet stretch out between them without trying to fill it.
After a while, she stood.
"Your markers are within acceptable parameters," she said softly before walking to the door, stopping before heading through. "At least for now," she said without turning around.
And then she was gone.
Reyna stayed on the bench, watching the stars keep going by. Yet no matter how many times she attempted to press the memory flat, it rose again.
Her own hands, the weight of Charlie's waist beneath her fingers, warm and solid and real. And how she'd held Charlie through the catch and everything that came after, her hands holding on while everything else came undone.
Cael came to her office. She didn’t want an audience for this conversation.
"Captain," Cael said as he stepped through her office door.
"Sit," Reyna said. Cael walked toward her desk and sat in the chair opposite her. She pressed a button on her datapad that closed her door, then clasped her hands together on the surface of the tabletop.
Reyna looked at the man before her, his markings already moving, amber sliding toward violet and back, showcasing the control he had never fully mastered like the majority of his species, coming apart now that it mattered.
Reyna watched it and began to steel herself for how this conversation was likely to go.
She was prepared for Cael to give excuses, to reframe the entire event in Engineering, providing a version of events in which none of this was quite his fault.
She had a decade of those from Cael Rask already, even in smaller forms. But here, she expected the largest one yet.
She laid the complete record out first. She mentioned the maintenance logs Torvax had kept for three years, the inspections signed off by him but never run, the tagged shortcuts.
And then she mentioned the cascade that very morning, how he had triggered it alone, off-protocol, and pushed it past every threshold the system had asked him to hold.
She kept her voice level through it all, until she reached the one that required her to take a deep breath before she moved through it.
"You stood in front of a Fleet Admiral," she said, "and gave her Wickett's work as your own. And it seemed you had no remorse for it whatsoever. For lying to a Coalition leader. For putting the entire ship in jeopardy."
Her voice had an edge that the rest of her speech hadn’t carried. She heard it half-a-second after it landed. But she didn't take it back. Everything else had been data findings, evidential documented incidents.
But for Reyna, the truth was this one was personal, and she was long past pretending otherwise.
"The Emberkind is not just a ship, Cael. It is a family." She held his eyes. "And you put every person in that family at risk because your pride mattered more to you than their lives."
She stopped there and let it sit, braced for the argument, the fight and deflection.
But it didn't happen.
Cael was quiet for a moment. Reyna watched him sit there, his eyes not moving, his gaze fixated on the floor.
Then, he stood, and he reached into his jacket, took out his Emberkind-issued datapad, and set it down on her desk carefully, squared to the edge.
Reyna stared at the device, then looked back up at Cael, who was now looking at her.
"May I speak, Captain?"
She had not expected it to be a question. Truth was, she had expected him to speak without asking.
"Of course," she said softly.
He looked at the datapad instead of at her.
"I was proud," he began. "That is plain and simple.
I ran that diagnostic to prove something to myself, mostly.
I wanted to prove that I could still do the work required of this position, and at capacity, if not exceeding it.
" He paused, and Reyna watched his jaw tighten.
"I wanted to prove that I didn't need Wickett to do it for me.
" His eyes closed and he took a deep breath before continuing.
"I should have gone and gotten her, Captain.
I know that now. When the second junction drifted, I should have gone and gotten her.
" He looked up at her. "But I didn't, because I could not stand the idea of needing a human to fix what I had broken. "
Reyna bristled at the word 'human,' but she saw that Cael didn’t mean any harm by it. Not like he did with the Gliders. So, she said nothing. Part of her was still listening for an angle. She hadn't spent thirteen years learning where Cael Rask hid his angles for nothing.
"I do want to say that when it cascaded, I did run for help.
That is the truth. I know the logs show I disappeared, but I swear I was not running away from the cascade.
" He shook his head slowly. "I didn't understand then how bad it truly was.
I... I thought there was time. But by the time I understood there was not, I was already far from the corridor, and it was past anything I could have done.
" Cael's markings dimmed. "I did come back, Captain," he admitted, owning the mistake.
"I stood at the junction and watched Wickett through the hatch with her hands in the manifold, and I could not make myself walk through that door.
" He drew a deep breath. "That is the part I am most ashamed of, Captain. Not the diagnostic. My pride."
He was quiet a moment.
"I never meant for any of it, Captain," he said, his voice low.
"I never meant for anyone to be in danger.
The crew, the forward habitats, any of it.
" His gaze dropped to the datapad again.
"Captain, I would never... I just didn't think.
" He took a deep breath. "I told myself I could handle it on my own. "
Reyna noticed his markings had gone dim, the fight removed from him entirely.
"And I know this information changes nothing.
I know that, even if I didn't mean any of it, it still happened.
" Cael raised a hand to his forehead. "I nearly drowned people, people I have served with for years, just because I couldn't bear to ask for help.
" His gaze returned to hers. "Not meaning to does not give any of that back. "
And that was the moment Reyna stopped listening for the angle, because she realized there just wasn't one.
She had braced the Cael Rask who filed every failure as someone else's and every rejection as only a temporary setback.
But this was not that man. This man was not asking for anything, he was not building toward a request, or a second chance, or a softer landing.
He had nothing to gain by the words he'd said, yet he was saying them anyway.
It was the first genuinely honest thing she had ever watched him do.
"While I appreciate your words, Cael, it does not change anything.
Just as you said, not meaning for what happened does not make it go away.
" Reyna continued to look at him as he nodded.
"You are dismissed from your position as Chief Engineer on the Emberkind, Cael.
You are being removed from the ship, today.
" Cael turned around to look at the door over his shoulder.
"Torvax is waiting outside to take you to your quarters and Engineering to retrieve any personal items." She let that stand, then continued.
"Torvax will then bring you to the shuttle that will take you to the nearest Coalition station.
Kess is currently preparing your medical clearance for safe passage through Coalition space to where you request to go. "
Cael nodded, no arguments, no push back. Reyna realized he truly seemed to have known, coming in, exactly what he was walking into. And he told the truth anyway, which was the closest thing to dignity Reyna had ever seen from him.
"Understood, Captain," he said. "Thank you, for the discretion from you and the rest of the leadership team, in my release."
He crossed to the door, but then stopped. He had one hand on the frame, deciding not to turn around.