Meredith.

Dr. Meredith Castellan runs the medical service of a ship carrying 84,522 people, and she is twenty-six years old. The fleet has never given the post to anyone younger. Ask anyone who has been through her medbay what she is like and they describe the same two things in either order: how warm she is, and how fast. The hands that take your pulse have already decided what to do about it.

She grew up in a working-class apartment in Marseille that was loud in the best way — family everywhere, food on the stove, never fewer than three cats. Four of them are still there: Caramel, Bouchon, Filou, Madame Tomate. She left them all to come here. A fifth cat, Pixel, lives aboard the Pathfinder. Nobody can say exactly how. The manifest has no opinion on the matter, and neither, officially, does she.

She works in two languages and swears in one. Her ward has learned to translate. They have also learned that if you pass the medbay at the right hour you may catch her dancing at her workstation, clipboard in hand, entirely unbothered. Then someone is wheeled in, and the music stops, and the youngest chief medical officer in the fleet's history goes very quiet and very quick.