Every Almost

What happens when a stranded engineer from 1990 gets six months of free passage on a starship full of rescued space animals?

Charlie Wickett has a knack for fixing anything you put in front of her. She's got the job she's wanted since she was nine years old, her sister sharing her apartment, and a life in California she built herself, out of nothing, on purpose. It's a good life.

Captain Reyna Solas of the Emberkind CV-0417 is just trying to get through her day, thank you very much. Between an unconventional animal rescue, an angry ship chef, and an Admiral who won't take no for an answer, the last thing Reyna needs is an alien from a non-contact planet crash-landing in her ship's kitchen.

When Charlie accidentally touches a piece of space debris that, technically, shouldn't exist, she wakes up forty light-years from home on an alien animal rescue vessel, looking up at a captain who somehow makes everything a little less terrifying.

Now Charlie has six months aboard the Emberkind as it carries her home. Six months of impossible rescues, alien corridors, and the best engineering problems she's ever been handed. Six months to learn the people who run this ship, who are strange and loud and kind and, somehow, her kind of people.

The Captain is a different problem entirely.

But Charlie will return to Earth... just so long as nobody does anything drastic.

Like find a reason to stay.