Page 220 of Every Almost

“You found AC/DC.”

“I did.”

“And you...?”

“I found inspiration,” Tavi said, his chin coming up, and a look in his face Charlie had never seen on him before. She realized it was pride, and it may have been the first time that it wasn’t about a system he’d fixed.

“You told me there was a difference, Spark Plug. That there’s music for pushing through the problem and music for letting the problem come to you.” He shrugged with his whole small body. “This is my push for the first kind.”

Charlie stared at her friend, in a corridor on a spaceship forty light-years from the basement where she’d first heard this song and understood that her music had gotten out into the universe and gone completely feral, belonging not just to her, but now to so many other beings, species from all over the galaxy.

“Shall we?” Tavi asked, his grin staying where it was as he began walking to the shuttle.

Charlie turned on her heel to watch him walk, his stride definitely moving to the beat. And so she started to walk, falling into step beside him. She looked around at her team as they moved down the corridor. Tavi beside her, all three feet ten inches of absolute confidence displayed, Maren on her other side, shimmer blazing, seeming to match the energy of the moment. And even the two Engineering assistants flanking them. The group of five people walking down a corridor on an alien rescue vessel toward a shuttle that would take them to a jungle world, cutting forty flying squirrels out of a net, and here was AC/DC, a rock band from Earth, scoring the walk like the universe had sent Charlie Wickett into the void to find the equivalent of her people in the vastness of space.

Charlie grinned, her smile spreading across her face as she looked over a Tavi. “Nice.”

“I know,” Tavi said.

And then they walked, five people going to work. Except every person in that corridor turned to watch them go, looking over the group with expressions ranging from pride to awe to jealousy. It was in that moment that Charlie realized this washerteam, not Cael’s. These were her people, her equals, her mentors and friends and colleagues. Whatever Cael’s title may say he is, whatever the official hierarchy of the Emberkind claimed, these people walked alongside Charlie Wickett because they chose to do so, because they believed in her and welcomed her into their group. And Charlie knew she was exactly where she needed to be.

They landedon the planet canopy without issue. The thing was, with her newfound confidence from the walk to the shuttle, the feeling of having her friends supporting her around all the Engineering tasks, and the trust she felt humming through her veins that she could do this, Charlie knew she was doing the best job she had done yet for the Emberkind.

Which was why Charlie saw the solution before Cael even finished reviewing the problem.

Not only had the netting come down across four hundred meters of canopy, but it had also fused to itself under atmospheric entry. Charlie took notice of them from the shuttle ramp. Their twelve chirp patterns, Selowen had told her in the mission debrief while aboard the shuttle, would indicate how they were doing as a collective species. Charlie could hear all of them at once now, and none of them sounded like joy.

Cael's approach was textbook. Not wrong, but no wiggle room. His plan was to cut the netting section by sectionwith standard plasma tools, working from the outside in. This would take three hours, and every cut point sat within a few centimeters of a Glider's membrane, thin enough to see right through.

"You'll burn their membranes," Charlie said sternly.

"The margin is acceptable. They'll be fine," Cael said, not even bothering to look at Charlie as he gathered the tools.

"The margin is a mere millimeter of membrane tissue that they use to get around and live," Charlie insisted, already pulling the scan data up on her datapad. "The netting's composite matrix is thermally bonded," she said, showing her datapad to Cael, who finally glanced over. "If we instead pulse the containment field at the resonant frequency of the composite, the bonds will destabilize uniformly. Which means the whole net will let go at once, freeing the Gliders and keeping their membranes in tact."

Cael stared at the datapad, then at her. "That's not standard protocol."

"No, it's not. It's faster. And safer."

"The resonant approach is unvalidated," Cael argued, staring at Charlie. "If your frequency is off, if any of your data is off, you destabilize the field wholly and every animal in that net drops four hundred meters. I'm not authorizing an untested procedure on a protected species because you have a 'theory.' A completely unfounded one at that."

"It's not a theory, Chief," Charlie said, attempting to level with him by allowing his rank to overstep her. "It's the resonant frequency of the composite. It's a straight-up number. In fact, I can show you the exact number in fully confirmed data."

"The answer is no," Cael said, unmoved. "We cut sectionally. That'll be all, human."

Human.

Not Wickett, or engineer, or even the flat "you" he'd been managing lately. Months aboard and a rescue running on her math, and when it came down to it, Cael reached past all of it for the one word that put her back where he needed her. A non-contact alien that had wandered onto his ship from a backward little planet having forgotten its place. Charlie felt it land exactly where he wanted it to, but she kept her face unchanged, because she'd be damned if he'd see it work.

"Whoa, Chief, that's not cool," Tavi said, pushing up against Charlie.

"Tav," Charlie started.

"Nuh uh, Spark Plug, I'm done with the whole 'bit' this guy seems to think is acceptable," Tavi said. "With all due respect, Chief, Charlie is a phenomenal engineer. You don't need to reduce her to a level that makes you feel better."

Charlie watched as Cael's breathing increased, his markings shifting colors like a kaleidoscope.

"I've got this, Tavi," Reyna said, her voice coming through the shuttle comm, and the whole team went rigid. Cael's head snapped toward the console.