The Maintenance Crowd

Turns out the people the show never follows have their own ship inside the ship. Deck nine at oh-two-hundred, the maintenance crowd, the ones who keep the Verity actually flying while the bridge officers get the holos taken of them. There was Okonkwo from environmental, who could fix anything and explain nothing. There was a Tarsan tech named Viil who Pell had genuinely never heard speak. And there was Greer, who ran the deck-nine card game and who looked at Pell standing in the hatchway at oh-two-hundred and said, without surprise, took you long enough. Pell did not know what that meant. She found out it meant Greer had been watching the roster too. Greer had been watching it for three years. Greer slid a chair out with his boot and said, sit down ensign, we've got a lot to catch you up on, and Pell sat down, and that was the first night she felt like she was actually on a starship.