The crew

Abigail's the only human on the team, in her late twenties, with dark curls in a messy bun and a Stack jacket two sizes too big. She works as a Targeting Officer, which means she figures out who somebody is and what they'll do next. Everybody else out here follows the instincts of their species. Humans don't have that script, so other profilers can't read her, and she can read the fugitives who tore up their own.

She got that way in nine alien foster homes, where she learned each house's rules fast because a wrong guess hurt. The Compact calls her people the Brief, and most species find tears alarming. She's stopped apologizing for hers.

She loves bean soup, lists, and three plants that are all alive. She grades criminals' poetry with a red pencil and taps it twice before asking the question she's scared of. One stray hit would finish her.

As a rookie she signed a paper her mentor had altered, and an innocent family died. She wants a galaxy where the right call and the safe call are the same call. She hasn't found it, and she's still at her desk at two in the morning looking.

Tukkar's the leader, a Brakkan ex-marine in his forties, two point three meters of plated shoulders with a voice that rattles the cups. Brakkans grow a new armor ridge for every war they live through, so you can read his whole career off his body. One ridge on the left shoulder has been sanded smooth.

Brakkan children go soft in their teens, when the armor comes off and takes a year to grow back, and a parent is supposed to stand guard the whole time. The oath for that year means "I hold the soft one," and it's the root of his name. His daughter Brin went through hers alone while he was deployed. She wears no armor now, on purpose, and she still asks if he's eating.

An inquiry cleared him of what went wrong in the marines, and his people didn't care. He took the loneliest job in the Compact as a penance, and then ninety-nine prisoners walked out on his first day.

He gives orders that come out funnier than he knows, such as "Nobody lick the kaiju." He carves small animals out of ship scrap and gives them away. He owns exactly one red marker, and if you borrow it you'd better have a very good reason.

Doctor Nym has the best manners on the ship, and he's the most famous serial killer in the galaxy. He's a Vael, tall and pale enough that you can watch the pulse in his throat, with long six-fingered hands and a surgical coat buttoned to the top.

Vael treat death as an art. At a funeral a trained composer arranges the body into a last tableau and the family hums the dead to rest. Nym was the finest composer of his generation, then a great surgeon, and then the Compact's newspapers were reviewing his crime scenes like gallery openings.

Vael have two thinking halves running side by side. His are called the Quiet, who's calm and exact, and the Hand, who wants to cut. Nym can't tell you which one is him, and it frightens him more than it frightens you, though not by much.

He sleeps in the ship's brig with the door open. He pays you a compliment right before he reads you, he says "if I may" and then does, and his notes on the board are the first thing anybody checks. "Overrates himself. Underrates stairs." When he's afraid he plays the pipe, and the translator renders the tune as "Pull the Knife and Stick It Again."

Vesk is an Ossari, small and slim, from a silent empire called the Quiet Dominion. Ossari skin changes color with every feeling, so the Dominion trains its children to hold it flat gray, and it turned her into one of the best assassins alive. She can make a weapon out of whatever's in the room.

She also watches soap operas, and they've wrecked her. Her skin flushes pink at the love scenes, goes rust orange when she's angry, and turns a soft green when she trusts you. She doesn't pause an episode for a fight. Her registry name comes from a soap heroine, and you shouldn't speak to her while Two Ovens is on.

The regime killed her family, so she walked out, and she's looking for a new one without admitting it. She's got a narrow cabin she keeps gray, a plain bed she never uses, and a ceiling vent she sleeps in. Mostly she says one word and leaves. She'll bring you soup after a bad day, and if you mention it she'll deny it.

She's afraid the family will see the soldier first, and on most days she makes sure they do.

Lio flies the ship and runs the cons. He's a Phaedrae, and his people are born as a brood of selves in one body who merge into a single person when they grow up. The Twils, a family of professional crooks, stopped that on purpose, since a brood that never merges is a toolbox with a different face for every job.

So there are five of him, and he never knows who's waking up. Dash is the Charmer, tall and golden and loud. Ledger is the Planner, small and gray, and he's already counted your exits. Pip is a frightened child who's funny by accident. Vane is the traitor, sleek and dark, and nobody enjoys Vane. Lio's the tired one trying to keep all of them in the same pair of pants.

They bet against each other constantly and none of them will bet together. Ask about the route and you'll get four opinions and a card trick. His cabin has five alcoves that rotate, and he talks to the empty chair.

Friendship's hard for him, because the self who made a promise last night might not be the one at breakfast. Kellen loves him and Tukkar checks his pockets. Whoever turns up, the ship gets there.

Kellen's a Cultivar, grown in a lab from blended genomes and trained for one job before he could have told you what a job was. He's in his late twenties, as far as anybody can count, with gold flecks in his eyes and faint seams on his skin. There's no navel and not a single scar on him, and he's never been sick.

Personal shields in this galaxy take a moment to spin up, so a shot fired from right up close gets through. He works inside arm's reach, with two pistols that only function within a hand's span of the target, and it's called Gun Fu.

He spent his whole life in a sterile facility, so everything since has been news. He's asked what a lunch is, what a hug's for, and whether the big light is up there all the time and why nobody told him it was this big. He says thank you and he means it. He has a bare white room with a skylight, and he still doesn't know what to put on the walls.

Abigail's teaching him feelings and Nym's teaching him killing, and he's a very good student. He hums a lullaby with no words.