Illiya - Taylor Neeran Chronicles #1

Chapter 4 - Full house

Debrief

The crew gathered on the bridge half an hour after waking. After reprimanding Leigh for his foolhardiness, Susan had left the rest of the crew to wake themselves up and follow their personal post-hibernation rituals. Most of them had consumed a quick breakfast of prepackaged food. Calling it 'slop' was a disservice - the food was tasty, and they had a wide range of options to choose from - at least at the start of the mission. By the end of the trip they would be down to the baked beans and lentil paste, which had their own atmospheric quality issues in confined spaces. By the time they got home, they would all be looking for a solid meal on real plates - and time away from each other. But for now, the mission was fresh, they weren't getting on each other's nerves - yet - and they all had a job to do.

Susan Foster, pilot and captain of the survey ship Zanzibar stood at the back of the room, taking in the small bridge with a quick visual sweep. The three command stations were evenly spaced across the front of the bridge, navigation, science and engineering. The captain's chair sat just behind the gap between the navigation and science stations. Each of the stations could be switched to cover any of the other functions in case of damage or an emergency, and the captain's chair could slave all of the ship's functions when needed. The chairs were now full, leaving two of her crew standing at the edges of the room waiting for their captain to brief them. Taylor sat in her mother's chair, one knee up and picking away at the edge of a fingernail, which was attracting sullen glances from Carla and Trent. Trent didn't appreciate the change of routine and had been pretty clear about that when Taylor first came on board.

"Up, you, out of my chair!" said Susan with a firmer tone than was strictly necessary.

Taylor jumped out of the chair and tripped on one of the science console footings. Susan noticed the two sullen faces turn to snickers. I could have handled that better, she thought. The rest of the crew seemed to be willing to put up with the captain's daughter - as long as she behaved.

And behaving started with following a good example. Daughter or not, she couldn't interfere with the running of the ship, and that meant not annoying the crew right after they woke up. Cryo pods had a tendency to make a person wake up cranky.

Susan passed beside her chair, pressed a button on the armrest and the collection of images on the view screen switched to a large close-up of the target planet. She walked over to stand in front of the main view screen, and turned to face the crew. The green planet turned behind her, filling up most of the wall.

Taylor moved over to the side of the view screen, stopping beside the team's Xenobiologist, Carla Santos. She had short-clipped black hair and medium olive skin, but the epicanthal fold of her eyes hinted at a blended Asian heritage. At 160 cm the top of her head just cleared Taylor's shoulder. Carla briefly inspected Taylor from head to toe with a sweep of her cold grey eyes, then pressed her lips together into a disapproving line. Not a motherly face, Taylor shuddered.

Carla gave Taylor another quick glance before returning her attention to the captain. She was the epitome of professionalism - to a fault, some would say. She was precise, accurate, controlled and generally lacking in human warmth, but she had a fiery temper to make up for it.

On the far side of the room Angus McLaren gave Taylor a wink. He was the mission hydrologist, and also served as the medic and Xeno-psychologist, though how you could ever hope to get inside the head (or heads) of a race you had just met was a mystery to her. Angus had been with the crew the longest, and acted like the grandfather of the team, always looking out for the well-being of the crew. His personal goal was to survey a hundred planets. At seventy-three, this would be the ninety-third planet under his belt.