What Greer Knows

Greer knew things. That was the whole deal with Greer. He knew the Verity had a fault in the number-two coupling that maintenance had flagged six times and the bridge had deprioritized six times. He knew which officers actually read their reports and which ones forwarded them. He knew, and this was the part that made Pell's skin go cold, that the next survey rotation was going to take the ship through the Halen drift with a coupling that everyone competent considered a coin flip. Pell asked why he hadn't gone over Astor's head. Greer laughed, not unkindly. Over his head to who, he said. We're the people they don't follow, remember. Nobody up there is going to hear it from us. He looked at her for a long moment. But they might, he said, hear it from an ensign with a clean record who really really wants an away mission. Pell understood that she had just been recruited. She also understood that she did not mind.