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"They're running within spec, I can tell that much. But within spec and optimal aren't the same thing." She walked over to part of the housing she had been only a minute or so ago. "You've got a harmonic imbalance in the secondary coupling array, here, that's bleeding about twenty percent of your potential output into vibration waste." Then Charlie turned to Reyna. "Did you know that?"

"Charlie, to be honest, I'm not entirely following what you just said," Reyna confessed.

"She's speaking in conjecture is what she's doing," Cael said. Reyna turned to him. "What she's saying is impossible. The data shows everything runs smoothly on this ship. Never better."

Charlie didn't say anything, but instead returned to Reyna's side, reached for her hand, and led her over to where she'd just been standing. She raised Reyna's hand to the housing, placing her palm flat on the metal.

"You can feel it." She put her own hand on the housing next to Reyna's. "Right there, do you feel that? That pulse?"

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 wassure 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, effectivelymoving 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, ahumanwoman at that, fromEarthof all places, tofeelthe 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."

"Considerthisyour time and place," Reyna said. She looked at Cael. "Charlie will be joining the engineering division. Effective immediately."