39. Saying It Out Loud #3
"You understand," Vondra said slowly, "that the objection to her appointment was not mine, Captain.
It was filed under Protected World protocol, completely procedural, not personal.
I hear what you are telling me, and I will admit that is an incredibly persuading story in Ms. Wickett's favor.
But it is not strictly within my power to simply—"
"I understand exactly what it is." Reyna leaned forward.
"And I am telling you what she is. She has been aboard this vessel mere months.
Yet in that time she has rebuilt half my engine systems without being asked, integrated into this crew so completely that I could not extract her from it if I tried, and yesterday she gave her own life expectancy to save three colonists this ship was not even sent to find.
That is not a security risk from a non-contact world, Admiral.
That is the best officer on my ship. And the Coalition wants me to hand her back through the same channel that told me she doesn't belong here? "
"Reyna—"
"If she goes, I go."
The words came out flat and even, but Reyna knew what she was doing and didn't take them back. Because Reyna Solas had decided on those words somewhere over Korallis Minor with a headset crushed in her fist and had only been waiting for this call to deliver them.
The water did not move at all.
"You would resign your command," Vondra said, not as a question.
"I would," Reyna confirmed. "The day she is removed.
I have given this ship years, Admiral, and I would give it up before I'd captain it as the vessel that delivered Charlie Wickett to a cell for the crime of being from the wrong planet and an accident a Coalition device caused.
" Reyna sat back. "You helped build the Emberkind into what it is so it could go where nothing else would and save what nothing else could.
That is exactly what it did on Korallis Minor, but it only did so because of her.
I am asking you, Admiral, to let me keep the only reason that mission didn't end in three dead colonists. "
For a long moment, the Admiral said nothing. The water settled around her, the geode eyes turned slowly, considering, and Reyna made herself wait in silence.
"You have always been my most difficult captain," Vondra said at last.
"I'm aware."
"It was not a complaint." Something moved through the water, and the Voxlink caught it. It came back rendered as warmth. "It is why I have never let them take this ship from you. Difficult captains are the ones who go back for the three they were not sent to find."
Reyna said nothing.
"Send me the full account," Vondra said.
"The mission log, the medical record, the engineer's conduct, all of it.
Unedited. The clean version does me no good.
I need the true account with the disobedience in it, because the disobedience is the argument.
" The water stilled. "A commendable rescue conducted by an officer whose removal is pending looks very foolish in a record, Captain.
Foolish enough, I think, to reopen a procedural objection.
Especially with her captain's resignation attached to the outcome. "
Reyna's heart sped up. "You'll make it happen?”
"I'll do my best." The geode eyes caught the light one last time. "You will hear from me before the start of the next morning shift."
"Understood, Admiral."
"It seems congratulations are also in order, Captain," Vondra said, the warmth returning deep in the dark water. "The color suits you."
And the display went dark before Reyna could say another word.
CHARLIE
She was walking a coil assembly down to the secondary junction, Tavi walking beside her, mostly so he could keep talking, when she saw Reyna coming from the other end of the corridor.
She had about six seconds to decide how to play it because, technically, they were both working. Reyna had the Bridge and Charlie had a coil assembly under her arm. Not to mention all the crew in the corridor.
So Charlie decided to be professional about it.
"—and so I told Borran, respectfully, that if he reprograms the galley playback one more time to skip my Zeppelin, I will reprogram him—"
"Tavi."
"—and he said, and I'm quoting, 'Short Stack threatens Borran again'—"
"Tavi."
"What?" Tavi asked, clearly upset he couldn't finish his story.
Charlie lifted her chin to the end of the corridor, and she watched him follow her eyeline.
He obviously saw the Captain approaching and, presumably, whatever was happening on Charlie's face, because he lit up with the specific joy of a man being handed a gift.
"Oh, this is going to be good," he said, absolutely delighted, and dropped his voice to a stage whisper. "Are you going to be normal? You're not going to be normal, are you? You've got the look. You had that look right before you sang."
"Shut up."
"You absolutely have the look—"
They drew even with Reyna. Her eyes found Charlie's, and the corner of the Captain's mouth quirked up, so subtle that anyone other than Charlie would probably miss it.
"Captain," Charlie said.
"Chief Wickett."
And they passed each other.
As soon as she felt the breeze pass by her of Reyna's retreating form, she thought about every single time they'd done exactly this.
Passed in a corridor, said the careful words, or kept the space between them.
All of them, all those months of walking away from the one person she couldn't stop wanting.
What the fuck am I doing?
Not this time.
"Are you serious?" Tavi whispered. "What the fu—?!"
She turned around, shoved the coil assembly into Tavi's arms without warning—
"Hey!"
—caught Reyna's wrist before she'd gotten out of reach, and pulled.
Reyna came, surprised and slightly off-balance, right into her, and Charlie got an arm around her waist before kissing her, right in the middle of the corridor, in the middle of a shift, in front of Tavi and the crew and whoever else wanted to look.
Reyna startled at first but melted into the kiss in seconds before her hand came up to Charlie's jaw, no longer surprised, and kissed her right back. Then she made the smallest sound against Charlie's mouth that made Charlie go slightly weak at the knees.
When Charlie pulled away, Reyna's eyes stayed closed a half second longer, and the rose had come up warm along her throat. Charlie put her mouth close to her ear.
"I love you," she said. "That's all. Carry on, Captain."
She let go and Reyna, to her enormous credit, remained standing.
Charlie turned back to Tavi, took her coil assembly out of his arms, and said quietly, "Sorry."
Tavi was staring at her as though she'd hung the stars personally.
"Spark Plug," he breathed with tremendous feeling.
"You are forgiven for every crime, past and future, for the next hundred years, no matter how big or small.
I don't care what you do. Reprogram my Zeppelin.
Insult my braid. I don't care." He clutched his chest. "That was the greatest thing I have ever witnessed, and I have seen a supernova. "
Behind them, Charlie heard Reyna say to nobody in particular, a little unsteadily, "As you were."
Charlie hoisted the coil back onto her shoulder and kept walking toward the junction, grinning like an idiot, because for once in her life, she'd made the better choice.
"I have seen a supernova, Charlie," Tavi called after her, still recovering.
"I know you have, buddy."
"It was less impressive!"
Dinner that night in the galley was loud, and Charlie sat in the middle of it, completely enjoying every second.
Tavi and Maren were arguing two tables over, with Tavi up on his knees on the bench to make a point and Maren's shimmer flaring every time she cut him off.
Borran moved behind the counter in a cloud of steam, throwing insults over his shoulder without turning around.
The galley playback was running what Charlie had put there herself, months ago, and two crew from the habitat wing were murdering the harmony on it.
Charlie stopped eating for a second, just to sit in it.
She'd landed here over six months ago. On this exact floor even, forty feet from where she was sitting. At the time, she was pretty certain she was going to die a long way from anyone who loved her.
And now she had a seat at a table with her people. Just a roomful of aliens from a dozen worlds who'd quietly decided she was one of them.
She realized, in earnest, that home wasn't a coordinate. Frank had told her that once, but she'd been too young to hear it. She heard it now.
Down the table, Reyna was on her feet saying something that made Kess roll her eyes, the rose from the markings soft along her arms in front of everyone, easy now.
Charlie had everything. A crazy bunch of people she saw as family, a place to hang her tools and her coveralls at the end of the day, work that mattered in more ways than one, and a woman she loved lit in the color that meant she loved her back.
And a hole in the middle of it, exactly the shape of one person.
Katie.
Charlie let the thought come and didn't push it away. She'd stopped doing that. The hole was going to be there for the rest of her life, but it didn't make the rest of it any less true. You could be home and still miss someone. Both could sit with her in her same heart and, mostly, now they did.
Reyna looked up then, finding Charlie already watching her, and her expression turned warm. She said a last word to Kess before moving down toward the seat everyone somehow knew to leave open next to Charlie.
She sat down, put her knee against Charlie's under the table, and stole a piece of cake off her tray without asking.
"Hey," Charlie said. "You have to pay for that."
"I don't have to pay for anything. I'm the Captain of this ship," Reyna said, almost in a challenge.
Charlie raised an eyebrow, then scoffed.
"That's what you think."
Charlie reached up, holding Reyna's jaw, and kissed her. Reyna laughed softly into it before relenting.