Page 282 of Every Almost

Two minutes later, Torvax was handing Reyna the headset for the second time that night. She was going to need tomake sure Borran set aside some Gula Cakes especially for him tomorrow.

"Go for Breck."

"Tavi." Reyna heard herself use his first name and not care.

"Captain?"It seemed her voice made him snap to attention, instantly.

"Can you send music to a specific datapad through your software?"

A short stretch of silence pulled at her patience.

"Yeah, Captain. Absolutely."

"How?"

He walked her through it.

Tavi was always efficient, especially about his own systems. As he walked Reyna through the steps, he did it in a voice that gave her hope.

"Open the library. It's the icon that looks like a stack. You'll see the whole music collection there. Don't panic, it's alphabetical."

Reyna's hands were shaking. She opened the library.

"Find your track. When you do, hold on it. Don't tap! Hold. A menu should pop up. Last one on the bottom is 'Send.'"

"There is a list of devices."

"Yep, but she's on there. She'll be WICKETT, C."

Reyna scrolled through, then stopped.

“How did you know I wanted to send a song to Charlie?”

The line was quiet.

“Come on, Cap. Don’t insult me.”

Reyna half laughed before continuing to look for the track.

"Jesus, Tavi. This is a lot of music."

"What can I say? The girl knows her stuff,"Tavi replied, his voice warm.

Then she saw it, right in the middle of the screen.

"Heroes." David Bowie.

If that's not love, I don't know what is.Charlie had said that on a library floor to her about a song.Thissong.

She'd spent months teaching this ship a language, one song at a time.

So, Reyna was going to use Charlie's language to say it back to her.

Reyna held her thumb on the track.

The menu came up. She found WICKETT, C. in a list of over fifty crew names.

She pressed SEND.