Crew Manifest — the Curiosity

01 / 08

Jennifer Starzek

Designation: Starzek, Jennifer
Posting: Commanding Officer
Origin: Lunar Colony One
Status: Reactivated — UEA commission
Clearance: Mission · Tier 2
File opened: 11 JAN 2256

Summary

Thirty-eight. Formerly commanding officer of the United Earth Ship Destiny. Two years a civilian, working passage and taking what came. Returns to service at the Agency's request to command a twenty-five-year-old Class Two research vessel to WR 104 — a fifty-three-day crossing to the far side of the galaxy, with a crew assembled from whoever could be found at the edge of explored space. She has been given a ship the Agency was prepared to lose and a mission it has not fully explained.

Prior service

2249–2254 · Commanding Officer, UES Destiny.
2254 · Destiny lost with 253 of her crew during a Vok'Chim engagement. Subject remained aboard the primary hull as a decoy. Sole survivor.
2254–2256 · No commission held.

Assessment

Cleared by board of inquiry. The Agency considers the matter closed and does not propose to revisit it. Subject's judgement under sustained pressure is not in question; her willingness to accept Agency guidance is less established. Recommended.

Remarks

Medical review waived at subject's request.

“I think I like your style.”

02 / 08

Liborio Romero

Designation: Romero, Liborio
Posting: Agency Representative
Origin: Earth
Status: UEA staff — seconded
Clearance: Agency · Tier 1
File opened: 04 DEC 2255

Summary

Thirty-three. A career civil servant of eleven years' standing, posted to Outpost Kappa-5 with his wife and daughter and counting down to a transfer home. Instructed by Wellington to crew a derelict research vessel, sail in two months, and represent the Agency's interests at the source of a structured deep-space transmission. He has never served aboard a starship. He has never wanted to. He accepts because refusing was not offered.

Prior service

2245–2252 · Administrative grades, UEA Earth directorates.
2252–2256 · Agency liaison, Outpost Kappa-5.
No shipboard service. No emergency qualification of any kind.

Assessment

An exemplary officer. Diligent, procedurally sound, unfailingly diplomatic, and thoroughly familiar with Agency priorities. The Directorate has every confidence in him and recommends him without reservation for this posting.

Remarks

Family remains at Kappa-5 for the duration.

“They don't pay me enough for this.”

03 / 08

Colin Truman

Designation: Truman, Colin
Posting: Ship's Engineer
Origin: Luther Island, Georgia, Earth
Status: Contracted — commissioned specialist
Clearance: Contractor · Tier 3 (limited)
File opened: 02 MAR 2256

Summary

Twenty-four. Built starships for the Agency until the Agency stopped building them to find things and started building them to hit things, at which point he stopped. Worked his passage out to Kappa-5 — nine months, one engineering shift a day in exchange for a bunk. Contracted three weeks before departure to refit the Curiosity and sail as her engineer. He took the work for the money, and because a twenty-five-year-old ship in that condition is a problem worth solving.

Prior service

UEA shipyards — construction and systems. Resigned.
Working passage, commercial freighter, 2255–2256.
One reactor containment breach survived; failsafes restored manually.

Assessment

Technically excellent and available at short notice, which is the greater part of why he is aboard. Not Agency-trained and unlikely to become so. Deference to command structure untested.

Remarks

Circumstances of the freighter breach not investigated. Contractor incident; outside Agency scope.

“Nobody ever asks me, 'cause I'm just the grease monkey. And you know what? That suits me just fine.”

04 / 08

Monique Levine

Designation: Levine, Monique
Posting: Pilot
Origin: Québec, Earth
Status: Contracted — freelance mission specialist
Clearance: Contractor · Tier 3 (limited)
File opened: 26 FEB 2256

Summary

Thirty. Senior pilot, commercial charter, until her employer left a yacht full of its own passengers to the pirates rather than lose the hull. She flew a mining vessel through an asteroid field under fire to get them out, and resigned by return of message. Recruited at Kappa-5 twelve days before departure. Told the mission timetable was insane, said so, walked out, and came back.

Prior service

Trade Emporium charter service — senior pilot, ten years.
Commended, Kappa-4 incident. Commendation declined.
No disciplinary record.

Assessment

The finest pilot available at this range, and she knows it. Confrontational, resistant to authority, and entirely unbothered by rank. The Agency notes that these are not disqualifying traits in a pilot and may be the opposite.

Remarks

Medical clean. Nothing further of note.

“Just call me Monique. Or Levine. I'm not married and I'm no Miss.”

05 / 08

Yori Kita

Designation: Kita, Yori
Posting: Medical Officer
Origin: New Japan settlement, Mars
Status: Contracted — freelance mission specialist
Clearance: Contractor · Tier 3 (limited)
File opened: 26 FEB 2256

Summary

Twenty-six. Daughter of Hiro Kita, born into an isolationist Shinto colony on Mars that rejects modern technology, and left it for Earth to study medicine against the wishes of her parents and her community. Was aboard the Kappa-4 charter when it was boarded, and held the medical bay through the breach with a sidearm she had adjusted herself. Signed for the Curiosity without being told where it was going.

Prior service

Qualified in medicine, Earth. Details of primary schooling unobtainable.
Trade Emporium charter service — ship's physician.
Kappa-4 incident: treated haemorrhagic shock under fire.

Assessment

Young for a sole medical officer on a fifty-three-day crossing with no relief and no second opinion. Calm under fire, which counts for more. Recommended.

Remarks

Colony of birth maintains no civil register. Early record cannot be verified and has been accepted on the subject's account.

“Don't make me break out the syringe and needle and do this old style.”

06 / 08

Travis Harrison

Designation: Harrison, Travis
Posting: —
Origin: United Kingdom, Earth
Status: NOT ON MANIFEST
Clearance: None — subject of active warrant
File opened: 19 NOV 2255

Summary

Fifty-three. Professor of linguistics, University of Great Britain, and the author of a translation device that allows humans to talk to the Vok'Chim — which the Agency moved to seize, along with its plans and its prototype, on grounds of global security. He fled Earth rather than surrender the work. He is currently believed to be somewhere in the outer stations. He is, in fact, aboard the Curiosity, at the invitation of people who did not ask Wellington first.

Prior service

None. No shipboard service of any kind. Civilian throughout.
Warrant issued 2255 — civil defence matter, classified.
Last confirmed location: Northern Space Transport Station, Greenland.

Assessment

The foremost living authority in his field, and a fugitive from it. Autistic; direct, literal, and without any of the social machinery the Agency is used to reading, which those handling the case have consistently mistaken for evasion. Detain on sight and return to Earth.

Remarks

Not to be granted access to classified transmission material under any circumstances.

“If there's one thing I find it difficult to resist, it's a linguistic puzzle.”

07 / 08

Jane Romero

Designation: Romero, Jane
Posting: Astrophysics — signal analysis
Origin: Earth
Status: Attached specialist — not embarked
Clearance: Mission · Tier 2
File opened: 08 DEC 2255

Summary

Astrophysicist at the Kappa-5 observatory, six weeks into an extension of a telescope project she did not ask to have extended. Assigned to image WR 104 and analyse the transmission — the only person at this range qualified to do it. Better suited to the crossing than her husband and more willing to go, and remaining behind for their daughter. She will run the analysis from the observatory tower and pass it up the line.

Prior service

Doctorate in astrophysics, Earth.
Kappa-5 observatory — WR 104 imaging programme.
No shipboard posting sought or offered.

Assessment

Technically the strongest analyst attached to this mission at any location. Regrettably not available for the crossing. Cooperative within limits; the Directorate notes she has read the mission brief more closely than most of the people who wrote it.

Remarks

One dependent at Kappa-5, age nine.

“You'll look at that and see a pinwheel. I'd look at it and see a rotation period.”

08 / 08

Gryx-OLik

Designation: Gryx-OLik
Posting: —
Origin: Sub-crustal. Approx. 5,000 km below surface, Earth
Status: Non-human · Vok'Chim
Clearance: Not assessed
File opened: —

Summary

An exonaut — the nearest translation available — from a species that lives close enough to the Earth's core to be warmed by it, and which alternates eleven thousand years of consciousness with eleven thousand years of sleep. He left as his people were entering the Great Slumber, and travelled upward alone, because the stories that reached him about the surface were not enough. He is an astrophysicist and a geologist. He has been to the surface before. He has met human beings before, long before humanity had any idea.

Physiology

Cold-blooded. Tolerant of extreme heat, and of radiation levels far beyond human limits.
Hermaphroditic; the masculine pronoun is a convenience of translation and not a fact about him.
Cannot survive surface temperatures unprotected.

The suit

He has never been seen without the suit. It is a nanoparticle environmental garment that heats the wearer, and he built its exterior in the shape of a human being on purpose — from second-hand descriptions of "quasi-intelligent bipedal apes" related by earlier exonauts, none of whom had described one accurately. One does not walk into an ecosystem in an unfamiliar shape. It is the first thing an exonaut is taught.

Remarks

Language contains sounds the human larynx cannot produce. Communication is possible only through a translation matrix. Everything in this file is inference.

“I built the suit to look like them.”