Picking the crew

Early on the first day, an ensign found me and told me that the admiral wanted to talk to me about assignment of senior crew to the Rover, so I headed off immediately to her office in the senior quarter of the station, and presented myself to some staffer working in the outer office.

"She's a bit tied up this morning, but..."

I interrupted, with "I've just been notified she wanted to discuss crew manifests for the Rover, so I'm assuming she wants me now."

"Ah, you're working on the Rover? Yes, of course."

She buzzed through to what I guessed what was the admiral herself, and announced me, then waved me towards the most impressive door, not giving me any chance to hear the admiral's response.

"Lieutenant, thanks for coming so quickly. As you'll understand, we're rushing a bit with assigning crew to the Rover to make sure we can get her launched before some kind of disturbance. Exoclimatology not really my area, so I tend to ignore the details, but we have around 40 hours to select and assign staff, so we're going to need all expertise pretty swiftly"

"Understood, Admiral. How can I help?"

"I'd like to run through this draft list of bridge staff, and I'm led to believe that you drew it up, so I'm hoping you'll have a decent knowledge of any reasons to call any of them into question; you're aware that this list doesn't really give us much leeway?"

"I'm afraid that's true, Ma'am. The timing of the mission and the skillsets didn't really give us much scope."

"Yes, understood. Nature of the beast, unfortunately. But I do just need to run through the list, even if just for the appearance of due diligence. Firstly, McGee is one that I do in fact already have some experience of."

"Ma'am?" I was genuinely surprised enough that I failed to hide the fact.

"East London, near the river. My mother was from there, and she and his mother knew each other somehow. The name came up during my first command, so I checked him out, and it turned out to be the same guy. Small world, eh?"

"Erm, yes, Ma'am! Well, especially since..." I trailed off, not really wanting to directly mention the reason why there were so few astronauts left, and in fact so few people.

"What do we know abut Hogan, though? Not really much to see in his profile except for his place of birth - Tyrone is all I can get. Why such little information? Special forces?"

That was a natural assumption, but it must have been some very special work to redact basically all of his career history from a profile viewed by an admiral.

"I assumed so, Ma'am, but I'm sure you will have seen more detail then I have?" My question tone was really trying to get some hidden information back, but I didn't know her well enough to read anything from her response.

"Hmmm, yes, at least as much anyway. Well, so I hope!" She didn't seem put out by the fact that I might know more than her, so at least I hadn't annoyed the admiral I'd already had the longest conversation of my life with.

"McGurk is an odd choice, though - I'm not entirely convinced by his inclusion here. Quite a lot of previous detail on... well, 'workshy' is probably a decent word to use."

"Yes, Ma'am, but with his skills, ..."

"Ah, yes, undoubtedly in short supply there. I see. Very limited group to choose from. We're going to have to keep an eye on him, though. Or at least the Captain is. Speaking of whom, ..."

She swiped a finger across a screen, flipping a couple of pages through her list, and came to the right page.

"Ah, McCann. Yes, strong choice there, I think. Plenty of experience as captain already? Good to see. Some of this crew will be inexperienced, and while the mission itself is simple enough..."

"It's a basic cargo haul, Ma'am, isn't it?" I tried again to get some hidden detail from her response, but again got nothing.

"Yes, of course. But the territory is renowned for... 'oddities', I suppose."

The hesitation was clear - she didn't know what else to call the illness and loss of vessels that had been seen a bit too often to be written off, but that had never been fully explained.

My silence seemed to work. She hesitated for a second, and moved on. I didn't know any more than she did, but maybe she now believed that I might, and she might be a bit more willing to swap information. It would never hurt to know a bit more, or at least to have an admiral think that you could help them out.

She flipped back a few pages to get back to her original list.

"Malone same as McGee, really - not a lot to go on there either. Anything to worry about?"

"Nothing I know of, Ma'am. Just very junior, so no real history. No redactions that I know of."

Information was very rarely redacted at all, and then only for special forces. Well, that was true as far as I knew, anyway. This one was really just a junior officer - so junior in fact that there was precious little information in his profile at all. That probably spoke a lot about how swiftly somebody had had to put together the long list that I'd used to draw up this list.

"Unfortunately, O'Toole is the one I'm actually concerned about. Dangerously close to being discharged for drunkenness!"

"That one I do know about, Ma'am. He is... " - I struggled to find some sensible wording, even though I'd been preparing for this since I'd picked him - "... he is very, very skilled in some navigation areas that we are likely to need. Seems to have a real knack for swift, live course corrections that not even our research people can do. He's got vessels out of some very tight spots in the past, and even post-mission analysis has failed to work out how he does it. He just calls it a 'knack', and seems to think very little of it. The... issue with drinking is something previous captains haven't really had a problem with."

That was a stretch - captains had often had huge problems with it, but had been forced to live with it because of the undoubtedly useful - and definitely either brilliant or outrageously lucky - navigational changes that had saved easily a dozen vessels from catastrophe in the past twenty years.

She thought silently for long enough to worry me. If I had to find a replacement for O'Toole, I had no idea what I was going to do.

"Fighter, is he?"

This was a surprise. I'd seen no record of any trouble of that kind in any records I'd seen, not even the ones I'd felt the need to 'redact' of my own accord.

"No, Ma'am, not as far I know. If I may,... why do you ask?"

"His name is all. 'Slugger', I've heard."

This was a relief - a simple misunderstanding.

"Ah, I see. No, Ma'am, 'Slugger' refers to the drinking. He drinks 'slugs'. Shots, Ma'am. It's that. Tracey is the fighter."

She looked up from the list suddenly.

"I mean, used to be a fighter, Ma'am. Professionally. Semi-pro, anyway. Mixed Martial Arts, I think. Useful to have around."

"I''d like to think all of our people can hold their own in combat, Lieutenant."

"Yes, Ma'am, of course, but Tracey especially so."