Page 245 of Every Almost

Charlie felt the plan arrive fully formed and ready to build.

Tavi was already grinning. "Oh, I know that look. We aresodoing something."

"Let's hide it in an Earth Night," Charlie said, talking fast as everything filled in. "The biggest one we've ever thrown. Food and music and the whole crew, the works. A real, bona fide birthday party. It can be like the kinds we'd throw back on Earth, with streamers and too much cake and somebody probably crying in the punch by the end."

"It'll be Borran," Tavi said.

"What are streamers?" Maren asked with the biggest grin on her face.

"The party is happening," Charlie said, making it final. "For her."

A hush fell over them.

"But Charlie," Maren said as her shimmer went bright. "She does not permit fuss." Yet despite Maren's words, Charlie saw the smile fighting against Maren's face.

"Yeah, but see? That's the beauty of a surprise, Maren. She doesn't get a vote." Charlie winked at Maren, who laughed softly, before turning to Orion. "She can't know, though. About any of it, Orion."

"I understand, and I agree," Orion replied.

Charlie thought about the facts she had before whipping around to Tavi. "Does she know we know it's her birthday?"

"I doubt it, she doesn't tell anyone," Tavi answered. "No one in Engineering knows."

"I don't believe it has come up," Orion said.

"Good. We're going to keep it that way."

Charlie began cataloguing the whole event, handing out jobs in her head before she'd even finished a thought.

She looked up at the surrounding group, meeting each set of eyes. "Not a single word, friends. Not one tiny flicker of a mention, not one step out of place. Got it?

Everyone nodded. Then Charlie watched something move across Orion's face. "I have kept larger secrets on this ship," he said, "for far less worthy reasons."

Charlie smiled as Orion set down his datapad. Then she noticed Tavi beaming at her.

"Okay, Spark Plug, almighty Earth party goddess. Where do we begin?"

As it turned out,the ship had just been waiting for permission to get involved in a celebration for its captain.

She'd walked into Borran's kitchen with a whole speech ready, ready to go on about how it was Reyna's seventy-fifth birthday and how nobody ever did anything but that this year they were going to.

She'd gotten about six words in. "So, it's the captain's birthday. I was thinking?—"

Then Borran set down his knife, looked at her with those small, warm eyes, and said, "Finally." As if he'd been standing in that kitchen for years with a feast already ready.

"You'll want Earth food, yes?" he asked, already pulling things off shelves.

"I mean, if you can. I could write down some of the—" Charlie stopped. "You know, I don't actually know how to explain a casserole to a Brontari?—"

"You explain it. I make it better." Borran said simply. "Write it all down, Spark Plug. Everything food you miss. I will do the rest."

And that was it, the whole negotiation. Charlie left the kitchen with the distinct sense that she'd just handed Borran something he'd wanted most in the world. By that evening, there were smells coming out of the food hall that Charlie couldn't identify yet desperately wanted to. But it could wait until next week.

What's funny is that it went like that everywhere Charlie went.

Maren tooklightingas a personal engineering challenge, disappearing into the library's environmental systems with a look Charlie recognized as Maren's most devoted form of determination. Two days later, Maren pulled her in to show her how the overheads dimmed to something warm and low and gold instead of the ship's clean white. "String lights," Charlie said it as a half joke, describing the way people back home hung little illuminated bulbs across a backyard. But Marenhad listened so intently and thenbuilt it, producing filaments threaded along the shelves so the entire library glowed like somebody's string-lit porch on a summer night. Charlie let Maren see just how astounded she was by the work, her eyes shining in the amber glow.

Orion handled the room itself, as well as the Kaelari side of things. Birthdays had their own quiet traditions among Reyna's people, and he wove a few of them in where Reyna would notice. Torvax appointed himself to what he called "operational security," which, as far as Charlie could tell, meant he stood at the door and made sure the surprise stayed a surprise before proceeding to document the entire planning effort in a log nobody had asked him to keep.