The Stonehearst Crew

Medicine / Mission Lead

Dr. Kyle Reece

Origins

Reece grew up in Prime, the capital of Terra, in a family of administrators who did not understand why their son preferred night shifts to an office. He studied medicine on Terra and became an emergency physician.

Career

After his residency he worked for three years as a freelance emergency physician on contracts: on mining stations, ore freighters and in cargo convoys, wherever a doctor aboard was required and nobody wanted to stay. He never again saw as many different emergencies as in those three years, almost all of them far from an operating room. Even later, when he was already working in Orison, he still took such contracts in his weeks off.

In 2943, at 31, he took a post at Orison General on Crusader. Everything that goes wrong on Crusader's moons ends up in Orison: miners from Yela, warehouse workers from Daymar, people from stations that appear on no map. In his first week in the emergency department a paramedic named Myra Voss brought him a badly injured miner from Yela. Reece took him over without her having to repeat anything and asked the man exactly the questions she had not been able to ask during the flight. From then on she brought her most difficult patients in during his shift.

When the news of the Vanduul attack on Vega II arrived in October 2945, he volunteered for the relief missions sent to Aremis from across the Empire. Alice Cordell, who had joined the hospital's trauma surgery a year earlier, volunteered the same day. For four months the two of them worked in field hospitals around New Corvo, in a city of which little was left: she in an operating room made of two containers, he in the receiving area in front of it and at the head end whenever nobody else could run the anesthesia. He says little about that time. That he also treated wounded there who had been brought in from the settlements under Navy escort, he told Craig only in 2956, when the photo from New Corvo fell out of Craig's tool bag aboard the MAX. Whether they had already crossed paths back then, neither of them knows.

Back in Orison he stayed another eight years in the emergency department. The idea for Stonehearst took shape at the beds of the patients who arrived from the moons too late: the rescue had to go to where the people were, not the other way around. In 2954 he and Alice Cordell quit on the same day. Together they bought a decommissioned Endeavor of the Hope class from Navy surplus and kept her name: Goodwill. Half a year before the Yela job the Dauntless was added, a second-hand Idris-P. The name Stonehearst Reece brought with him. He rarely tells the story behind it, and a little differently each time.

At Stonehearst

Reece leads the missions. When a distress call comes in, he decides whether and how they fly, is in the Red when she lifts off, and is the first doctor through the airlock. He brings the patients to Alice Cordell on the Goodwill and handles the anesthesia there when there is nobody who does it better. He also writes the mission reports; Nadia looks after the schedule, Myra the orders. On site he determines who goes aboard, who is treated first and where the patient is taken. He is quick to promise help, sometimes before the planning can catch up. He has been through most situations before as a freelance emergency physician, and that is exactly what makes him so fast on a job.

Trauma Surgery / Chief Physician Goodwill

Dr. Alice Cordell

Origins

Alice Cordell was born in 2914 in New Babbage, the city under the dome on microTech, where it freezes outside all year and inside almost everyone works for microTech. Her parents too. Of the three siblings, only she left the city; the other two still work for microTech today. The Stonehearst Group's address is her parents' house, and her father takes in the mail that arrives there for the Group. That is the whole reason the Group's headquarters is in New Babbage.

Career

She studied medicine in Prime on Terra, two years behind Reece, and completed her residency in trauma surgery there. The two of them never met in Prime. In 2944 she joined Orison General on Crusader as a trauma surgeon, a year after him. The emergency department where he worked was one corridor from her operating room. In Orison, everything that goes wrong on the moons of Crusader ends up, and much of it passed through her hands.

When the news of the Vanduul attack on Vega II arrived in October 2945, she volunteered on the same day as Reece for the relief missions sent to Aremis from across the Empire. For four months she operated in field hospitals around New Corvo, finally in a room made of two containers, with one assistant and an emergency physician at the head end running the anesthesia because nobody else was there. That is where the two of them learned with how few people an operating room can run when every motion is settled beforehand. Back in Orison she stayed eight more years in trauma surgery, finally responsible for running the operating rooms on the night shifts, when the rescue flights from the moons come in.

The idea of taking rescue to where people are was Reece's to say first. That this takes an operating room that is on the spot with the rescue ship came from her. In 2954 both quit on the same day and bought the Goodwill together. In her first week aboard, Alice signed off operating room one, instrument by instrument, and left the second under its covers until a second team exists that can stand in it.

At Stonehearst

Alice is the chief physician aboard the Goodwill. She decides what is done in her operating room and what is not, and she usually has the room running before the Red is back, whether it is needed or not. Together with Myra she has reworked the routine so that an operating room can run with three people. She does not fly in the Red; she stays where the operating room is. While operating she says little, afterward all the more precisely: she discharges her patients herself, with appointments she does not negotiate. On the Goodwill she keeps running only what a patient needs; until the first Dauntless protocol her own cabin was not among those things, and she slept in the recovery room or on the bench in the ready room. She drinks tea, from a cup nobody else touches. The seals on the Dauntless's sick bay stay until Alice breaks them herself.

Fighter Pilot / Rescue Flights

Craig Harker

Origins

Craig was born in 2909 in New Corvo. Everyone simply calls the largest city on Aremis the gateway to Aremis: it lies on a bay between forests and lowland, the military transports launch from here into orbit, and the soldiers come here on shore leave. For generations Aremis was a planet of Navy bases. Craig grew up with the sound of the transports and with a sister, Tessa, four years younger, who to this day considers him the less sensible of the two.

Career

In 2930, at 21, he joined the UEE Navy and became a fighter pilot. Nineteen years of service, two of them on the hangar deck of an Idris: there he learned how many people it takes for a ship of that size to fly at all and for nobody to die doing it. He still counts them off whenever someone sketches an Idris.

On October 5, 2945, the Vanduul attacked Vega II. Craig's unit was in the system but not over New Corvo; he saw the city again only afterward, twice, from above. In the weeks when the 2nd Fleet gathered at the jump point to Virgil and Admiral Bishop demanded war against the Vanduul before the Senate in New York, Craig flew escort for the supply flights to Aremis. Those flights he remembers exactly: which transports, which arrival times, which hospital took the wounded until there was no more room there. That his sister had survived he learned weeks later.

In 2949 he ended his active service. Tessa wanted him to come home. He went to Stanton instead and spent four years flying escort for cargo convoys between Hurston and Crusader, on his own account. In 2953 he brought an injured convoy escort to Orison General and waited three hours in the corridor, although he barely knew the man. The doctor who spoke to him afterward was named Reece.

At Stonehearst

Craig flies the rescue missions, usually in the rented Cutlass Red. He flies precisely under pressure, keeps his distance where others would go closer, and does not like being told what to do in the cockpit. When a stranger comes over the radio, Craig's first reply usually sounds sharper than his second. He drinks other people's coffee. He answers Tessa's messages less quickly than he means to, and he carries a photo from New Corvo on the back of which is an address she sends him again every year.

Care / Patient Contact

Myra Voss

Origins

Myra was born in 2920 in one of the honeycombed housing pods of the Green Imperial Housing Exchange. Everline Structures had built the station into a hollowed asteroid in the belt of Yela, for the miners who were to work the belt. Her parents were two of them. By the time Myra was old enough to understand what was going on, the station was already in decline: the work ran out, the people left, and those who stayed traded in things nobody talked about.

When she was twelve, a residential sector lost pressure. Two neighbors died because a hatch had not been latched. Since then Myra counts fasteners, twice, before every launch. She has never explained to anyone why, and nobody talks to her while she does it.

Career

In 2938 the Housing Exchange officially closed the station, and the few remaining legitimate residents cleared out in a hurry. The Voss family was among them. Myra was eighteen and went to Orison, where she trained as a paramedic. For thirteen years she flew for Orison General's ambulance service in a Cutlass Red, between the platforms of the city and out to the moons. She knows the approaches to every pad on Crusader and the names of the people who open the doors there.

Reece met her in his first week in 2943, when she brought him an injured miner from Yela. After that, her difficult cases ended up with him. When he and Alice Cordell quit eleven years later to found Stonehearst, she was the first the two of them asked, and the only one who set a condition: there are days when she is not around, and those are not up for negotiation. Reece agreed. Alice Cordell had a condition of her own: she wanted Myra in the operating room, not only in the Red.

At Stonehearst

Myra keeps in touch with relatives, asks her questions before the crew plans the route to the injured, and prepares the handover to the Goodwill. In the operating room she scrubs in for Alice Cordell; on evenings without patients the two of them have rebuilt the routine so that Alice, Myra and an anesthetist are enough. After an operation she is the one who keeps an eye on splints, stitches and appointments. She asks those questions even when everyone else believes they already know the answer. She still knows the fan noise and the corridors of Grim HEX; asked which sector she lived in, she gives a number and nothing else.

Engineering / Salvage

Ivo Brenner

Origins

Ivo comes from Lorville, the city of Hurston Dynamics, where the air tastes of metal and the corporation's towers stand over everything. His parents worked for Hurston, like almost everyone in Lorville. Ivo apprenticed in a small independent workshop under the towers that repaired everything the corporation did not want to repair, and stayed there for almost twenty years. He can take a cooling unit apart before others have the panel off.

Career

In 2951 he dismantled a cooling unit whose replacement had already been billed to the owner, found a faulty connection and insisted for two hours that the invoice be corrected. Against his own boss. Reece, then a doctor in Orison General's emergency department, still took contracts as a ship's doctor on freighters in his free weeks; that day his freighter was stuck in Lorville, and he was waiting in the same workshop for a spare part. He listened and remembered the name. Ivo won the argument and lost the job. For the next three years he rode as a ship's technician on freighters between Hurston and Crusader. When Reece and Alice Cordell were looking for a technician for the Goodwill in 2954, Nadia brought along, after a repair on the MAX, the ship's technician who had done the work. Reece recognized him. Since then Nadia lets no one but Ivo near her ship.

At Stonehearst

Ivo assesses damage, plans repairs and agrees salvage with the owners. He can argue convincingly why a repair is still worth it; time and transport usually appear in his estimates only in the second draft. He has little patience with needless wear and checks every lid before he sits on it. A mistake he admits as soon as he has found it himself, in writing and with his name under it, not just the workshop code. The Dauntless lies mostly unpowered in orbit. Ivo keeps only the hangar deck, one corridor and the briefing room behind the bridge supplied with power and uses the deck as a workshop; the sick bay stays sealed. What the previous owners left undone in maintenance he has compiled into a list that is longer than he would like.

Cargo Pilot / Transport Planning

Nadia Serrat

Origins

Nadia grew up in Area18 on ArcCorp, a planet that is city all the way to the horizon. Her family has flown cargo for as long as the freight terminals of Area18 have existed. Nadia sat in the co-pilot's seat of her aunt's freighter for the first time at twenty and flew solo at twenty-two.

Career

From 2946 she flew fixed routes between Area18 and Orison as a subcontractor: spare parts, workshop material, medical supplies for Orison General. In 2948 she bought a used Freelancer MAX on credit; by 2953 it was paid off. Nadia is the only one in the crew who brought a ship of her own, and she lets no one else fly it into the belt. In 2952 a customer failed to pay for a whole month; since then every item in her spreadsheets says what it is for, and before every departure she works out whether a flight covers its costs.

She got to know Reece on her deliveries to Orison General, where he worked in the emergency department. When he and Alice founded Stonehearst in 2954, he brought her and her MAX on board; that became Starlines.

At Stonehearst

Nadia plans the routes, allocates the cargo space and flies the MAX, the only ship of the Group with regular contracts. She keeps the crew's schedule; next to every line stands whom it concerns. Parking fees she does not negotiate; she pays and has the amount receipted. In the belt she talks to anyone who answers, including the salvagers others steer clear of. Word gets around out there, and whoever listens knows sooner where trouble is brewing.