Page 268 of Every Almost

Two words and then an alarm. And then the moment disappeared when Reyna walked out of the room.

Charlie sat in the light of the nebula rolling over her. She wanted to get that moment back so much that it was making her sick. Because underneath the wanting was the part she couldn't look straight at, because whatever Reyna had been about to say, she hadn't gotten to say it, and there was no rule anywhere that said she'd ever try again.

She picked her datapad up off the bench.

She opened the music program and scrolled, just as she'd done after every night that left something gnawing in her chest. Her thumb stopped when she saw the song's title.

"Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx. One of the songs on the last mixtape Katie made for her. One of the last songs Earth ever gave her.

Charlie knew exactly what it was about. That was the whole reason. A person going wherever they needed to go, and the other staying put, waiting for them, however long they needed to.

She added it to her playlist and set the datapad down.

Then she stayed right where she was. And she would stay as long as Reyna needed her to wait.

PART FIVE

CHARLIE’S PLAYLIST

THIRTY-SIX

I’M SORRY, CAPTAIN

REYNA

Captain Reyna Solaswalked onto the Bridge, and the woman who had been swaying in nebula light four minutes ago stopped existing.

"Report."

"Distress beacon, Captain." Torvax didn’t look up from his console. "Automated. Coalition relay, third bounce. Origin is Korallis Minor."

"Population?"

"Zero."

Reyna stopped halfway to her chair.

"Say that again?"

"Zero, Captain. The colony began evacuations nine hours ago. Seismic instability across the southern shelf. They got everyone off planet." Torvax finally looked up. "The beacon is not for them."

He put it up on the main display.

Korallis Minor came up, a squat brown world under a heavy sky, and Reyna knew what it was before Torvax said it. She had spent her professional life reading places like this with high gravity, flat landscape, and everything on it built low and dense and wide, because the alternative was being crushed.

"They took most of the animals," Torvax said. "Every enclosure on that colony they could transport."

"Except?" Reyna asked.

"Except two," Torvax answered. "A breeding pair of Gravhorn Palu," Torvax said. "Eleven thousand kilos apiece. The colony had no lift capacity for them, no reinforced hold, nothing rated to carry that mass at that gravity differential." A pause. "They left the beacon running so somebody would come."

The Bridge was quiet.

"Structure of the enclosure?"

"Holding. For now. The southern shelf is where the activity is. The enclosure is nineteen kilometers north of it."

"Time?"