Page 71 of Every Almost

Reyna touched the pen inside her uniform. "Got my trinket. Always." Elena walked into airlock, switching to comms through her suit. Reyna could hear her through the command console.

"Do me a favor, Solas, and try not to reorganize my entire filing system while I'm gone.Again."

"With all due respect, Captain, your filing system is an insult to the concept of organization."

"And yet the ship runs."

Reyna actually looked up from the console and stared at her best friend through the airlock window. "The ship only runsbecauseI reorganize your filing system every time you leave."

Elena laughed, her violet markings pulsing at their steady, warm rhythm. The purple light caught the airlock frame and threw a faint glow across Elena's suit as she turned around in the airlock, ready to board the shuttle.

Reyna watched her and the rest of the team walk toward the shuttle bay. Once on board, she watched the shuttle doors close.

"All aboard, Solas."

"Affirmative, Captain. Waiting for launch from shuttle flight."

"Affirmative."

And minutes later, the shuttle launched, Reyna stationed at her console, ready for the mission ahead.

Elena'smost recent hire was a Tessarae named Tavi Breck, a software engineer from Solmari who had arrived three months prior with more enthusiasm than Reyna knew how to reasonably accommodate. He was a small, bright young man, possessed with the particular Tessarae gift for making every room he entered feel slightly warmer than it had been before he walked in. Reyna hadn't quite figured him out yet, but Elena had been insistent. "Trust me," she'd said. "The engineering departmentneeds what he has." Reyna had asked what, exactly, that was. Elena had said, "Heart," and refused to elaborate.

He was somewhere on Deck 3 when Elena left for the mission, running diagnostics on a subsystem in preparation for the launch. But she would remember him later as one of the people who stayed.

It was four hours into the mission when comms went irregular. They became sparse, whole blackouts lasting for thirty seconds, sometimes more. Reyna was at her station, tension strained between her shoulders, but they were handling it. The crew knew what to do, how to complete the mission, even if comms continued to be erratic or even go out completely.

"I had a feeling that planet's atmosphere would mess with our instruments," the Bridge Engineer stated from his console.

"Is there anything you can do to try and get a clear channel through?"

"Nothing that I haven't already thought to try, Second. But I'll keep doing what I can."

"Affirmative, Cadet. And appreciated."

Garbled transmissions they were used to, nothing unusual about those in the Frontier. Between signal interference from nebular debris, solar interference, and the particular electromagnetic noise that came with operating in deep space, Reyna knew it was sometimes just an adjustment of the comm array that would fix the problem.

But not here.

"Second, I'm getting some weird energy readings transmitting through the comm array."

"What kind of readings?" Reyna asked.Was that even possible?

"I," the Engineer started. "I don't know, Second."

Reyna stood up and walked over to the Engineer's console, looking over the readings herself. She was looking at the same thing he had said to her, but she couldn't make sense of it either.

Then crew members began PERS-ing back, one by one, materializing in their designated return zones on the Bridge. Reyna spun around and saw, as each one arrived, how they were rattled and frightened.

"The equipment," one began. "It was failing. We were losing time?—"

"It was an environmental cascade, Second, right on the surface?—"

"We just?—"

"It was an emergency?—"

"It's okay," Reyna said, approaching them all, touching their arms and turning around as more arrived. "It's okay."