Page 8 of Every Almost

"It's Borran."

"Yes, Borran, I know. Go ahead."

"Captain, the Vryx are still in my vent."

Reyna closed her eyes. "I'm aware, Borran."

"My bread is suffering."

"I understand."

"The bread did nothing wrong, Captain."

Tavi pressed his lips together very hard and studied the ceiling with sudden intense interest.

"Did you call Cael?" Reyna asked.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He would fix it."

"And did he? Is this a new problem?"

"No."

"Then what happened when Cael said he would fix it?"

"Nothing."

Reyna pinched the bridge of her nose in silent frustration. Brontari were incredible cooks, but their communication skills left something to be desired. Consistently. "When you asked Cael to fix it, did you ask himwhenhe was going to do so?"

"He said 'soon.'"

Reyna blew out a breath. "Okay, Borran. I'll follow up with him. I promise."

"Thank you, Captain." Seconds ticked by. "The bread wanted me to tell you it is losing structural integrity."

"Noted."

The comms went quiet. Tavi was vibrating with the task of trying not to laugh. His larger-than-expected hands were gripping the armrests of the chair.

"Not a word," Reyna said.

"I didn't say anything."

"Mmhmm," Reyna muttered, raising an eyebrow at Tavi.

"I was going to say that the bread has an excellent advocate." And it was then that Tavi couldn't contain the laughter any longer. He let out a guffaw, big enough that even Reyna smiled.

"Tavi, just continue, please."

"Continuing." He cleared his throat and pulled his datapad back up. "As I was saying. The boundary problem. When you push the zero-G field outward, the edge is a hard line. Step past it and gravity drops to zero instantly. Step back and it snaps to full. That transition creates what we call gravitational shear at the boundary, and anything biological that passes through it?—"

"Gets flattened."

"Splat. Yes." He swiped through simulation results. "I've tried generating the field in different areas of the ship, pushing it down the corridor from the chamber toward the shuttle bay. But the ship's gravity systems aren't designed for localized manipulation at that scale. Every time I run the simulation, the field destabilizes at the edges." He turned the datapad towardher. "See these spikes? Each one of those is a boundary failure. The field holds for about eleven seconds and then collapses. If an Aetherfin was in transit when that happened?—"