A new kind of ISCA hull for a harder era: small, fast, landing-capable — she makes planetfall whole, not by dropship. Complement roughly forty-five; the eight below stand the senior watches. The Nhál-assisted drive and shielding are what let the fleet trade the old explorers’ self-sufficient bulk for reach. What follows is the ship’s-papers version of the eight — rank, station, and the one line the form allows.
Command
| Rank | Officer | Station | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Captain | D. Cross | Commanding Officer | San Diego, California |
| Commander | R. Ackerman | Executive Officer | Cleveland, Ohio |
Cross commands by warmth and certainty both; Ackerman is the brake the chair requires — she runs the ship by doctrine and contingency precisely because she does not trust the dream to catch them when it fails. The captain opens a room outward; the XO closes it down and tests it. Between them the Lodestar is steered.
Senior watch
| Rank | Officer | Station | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lt. Cmdr. | Imeth | Operations & Liaison | Nhál officer serving in the crew — a real commission, a real watch. The alliance made lived. |
| Lt. Cmdr. | S. Delgado | Chief Science Officer | Tracks the instrument residual he will not round away. Houston, Texas. |
| Lieutenant | M. Salazar | Tactical & Flight | Flies the landings; runs the guns when the cold war turns hot. Tampa, Florida. |
| Lieutenant | E. Hartley | Chief Engineer | Keeps a Nhál-assisted drive running that no one fully understands. Lagos → Manchester. |
| Doctor | N. Petrov | Chief Medical Officer | The ship’s body-count conscience and the captain’s off-duty mirror. Toronto. |
| Ensign | J. Vinter | Junior Operations / Helm relief | The youngest on the bridge, and the last still able to see the frontier fresh. Bergen. |
Standing note
The Aurora-class is small by design. There is no redundancy of people the way there is on a Meridian — each of the eight holds a function the ship cannot do without, which is the strength of the design and its cruelty. The frontier is not a safe posting. The complement is carried here in full because, in the books that follow, the reader will want to have known their names first.
Ship’s-papers note: Lt. Cmdr. Imeth’s species and lineage are recorded in the alliance register, not here. Aboard the Lodestar she is an operations officer who stands the second watch, and that is the only entry this form requires.