The Captain and Doyle

During the two-hour downtime before the crew convenes to discuss Isely's equipment, the Captain touches the button on her comm link. "Doyle...Mr. Marshal, could I see you in my quarters, please? At your convenience."

"I'll be there shortly Cap."

Doyle lets out a heavy sigh, and slowly meanders his way to the Captains Quarters.

Once he arrives, he knocks twice on the door.

"You wanted to see me Captain?"

"Come in." The answer is immediate.

Captain Alon's quarters are almost a caricature in British Naval Motif, down to the sepia-hued globe and the antique sextant. Everything in a dark blue with brass trim, everything neat and a little crowded. Books, tea set, velour throw draped over a wing-backed, leather chair, in which she is currently seated. She had obviously taken time to decorate the cabin beforehand, but it's not clear if she did so for comfort's sake, or a sense of propriety toward Queen and Country.

"Doyle...Marshal...ah, doesn't matter which, we need to talk." Taking a steadying breath, she matches her fingertips. "I won't pretend this crew is straight-headed. I think we may have been chosen specifically because we're not. I don't particularly care about that, any more than I care if it's just the two of you in there, or an entire circus. What I do care about is function and dependability. I need an engineer I can converse with, free from insensible raving, and one with whom I can trust this ship and her inner workings.

"If you tell me that's not possible, for either of you, I won't harangue. I'll understand. And I'll contact Isely, tell them I need a new engineer, and drop you off wherever you'd like. If, however, you guarantee me function and dependability, I'll trust you for both, and we'll see where this mission takes us, together. If I sound cold, I apologize. Before my own fall from grace, I was RAF -..." She pauses, stiffens, looks away, and amends - "...GAF, through and through. The military has rigid expectations of their ships' crews."

Righting her gaze back to him, she takes his measure unsmiling. "What I want to know is - can you do this? Without being a risk, a burden, or too unpredictable to trust?"

"The job needs to get done, the job gets done."

Doyle pauses for a second.

"First time Marshal has taken the reigns in a few years now."

Doyle takes a deep breath.

"He makes sure the job gets done. I've been in Misery for the past decade with simple and repetitive routine that had no eyes and no pressure on me. Fixing the tech and providing a little bit of humanity for the patients still locked in. Little stress, no fear of your actions affecting the life or death of millions, no more absurd standards to be upheld to."

"I'm starting to ramble, I'll get to the point. When I get too stressed/worried/anxious I'm prone to, not so much fainting, but blacking out. Pressure and I haven't exactly gotten along. Marshal takes over and pushes us through the obstacle. I don't always know how he gets us through it but he's never done anything to intentionally harm us. I'm content to just exist and be a cog, let me work and the work gets done. Marshal won't accept failure or leaving a task unfinished. Some of the better work I've been credited with was actually Marshal when I would hit a brick wall, panic and have an anxiety attack."

Doyle heads to the doorway as he finishes up.

"I had a sensory overload. New people, new environment, new job, new boss. I do a few routine tasks, we pick up Isely probes and suddenly I'm in the spotlight trying to decipher schematics showing something different from the device. I started to freeze up on how we've barely started anything and how this isn't going to be as simple as it looks. The overwhelming feeling of everything new plus the anxiety of things already not being normal on this excursion caused Marshal to take over and focus on the task at hand. After all, we got the diagnostic done didn't we?

The job always gets done Captain, one way or another. Is there anything else or can I go back to trying to get a little shut eye in the remaining downtime?"