CHAPTER 6

Of all the jobs to get stuck with, this is the one that Pete would have rather sluffed off on someone else. Unfortunately General Lubowski had other ideas and ultimately security was Pete’s bread and butter. That naturally left personnel selection almost completely in his hands. That would have all been simple had all of the various mandates not been dropped in his lap.

When Pete had chosen his initial team, for the project, everything was different. Pete was essentially a trouble shooter and it was a niche he was fairly comfortable with. His original team had been specifically for that purpose. Now things were no longer damage control. The project was very real and the people he hired were for the purposes of fulfilling objectives that were nothing less than monumental. Finding the right kind of person for this was an equally monumental task.

The considerations for who would go, on a journey that would make the Columbus expedition look like a drive around the block, were infinite. If one were to stick exactly by the set guidelines for who qualified then it was very possible no one would ever go at all! It did not help that a multitude of entities involved in this project had their own ideas about what the qualifications should be. Naturally these different entities expected theirs orders to be followed above all else.

Pete had his own agenda too. When he was first asked to sign on to this project he had been told in no uncertain terms that this trip would be military from top to bottom. The only civilian involvement would be strictly NASA and mostly limited to technical advisors and mission specialists. Unfortunately that was impossible now. Just the involvement with OK was enough to end that policy. Then the White House had to open the door to general recruitment, of what amounted too, just any guy off the street! That was insane!

It was a publicity stunt. Pete recognized that from the start. He could also see the value in it but, in his way of thinking, the dog and pony show took a back seat to real concerns. After all, Pete was going on this trip and when they got out there the only people they were going to be able to rely on were each other. Pete was not about to trust his own personal safety to someone who’s only real attribute was how photogenic he was.

From the start, Pete Winston had understood what his involvement had meant. It bought him a ticket on that ship. He was a Marine Aviator, he was a trained shuttle pilot with three missions under his belt, and most of all he was considered politically reliable. All of that had combined to put Pete in the right place and time. It was a subtle mix of skills and virtues that made him a needed commodity. This was the formula he was starting to develop in order to select the crewmen he would submit to his bosses for final approval.

It seemed simple enough until all of Pete’s various masters began constantly interfering in every little thing he did. Micromanagement was bad enough but when you were getting that from twenty different people it was a living nightmare. That was not even taking into account the various people who constituted the department heads of their would be, hopefully soon to come, starship. They had their own demands.

Mike Lesko was one that Pete could not ignore either. Everybody collectively called him Doctor Mike. He was a former military physician who had been working at NASA for over twenty years now. The guy was considered one of the top medical professionals in the world when it came to doing his trade in space. To date he was still the only man who had ever performed surgery in zero gee conditions. Naturally he was the only choice for ship doctor and he also had the final say in approving a candidates medical viability for the mission.

Mike also had his own ideas about who was going to fill out his department. Pete found he had very little say in the matter. Mike had a lot of weight around NASA and that was the reason Pete did not even bother looking at the three new files that got dropped on his desk.

“You’re not even going to see who they are?” Mike asked Pete when he realized that the Marine was going to keep right on reading his latest reports from the FBI.

Pete mumbled along as he read but, did manage, “in a little while Doc.” His eyes never looked away from the background report as he picked up his phone and said, “Gina, get me Joanne Dole on the phone, will ya?”

As Pete hung up the phone, Mike rapped his knuckles lightly on Pete’s desk, “Pete, I don’t think you see what I’m saying.”

Finally, Pete looked up from the report, “they’re who you want. OK Doc, I get it.” Pete waved the guy off, “you know you’re going to get whoever you ask for. Happy now?”

“Not what I’m saying Pete,” Mike crossed his arms and sighed. “I need them ASAP. I need you to walk them through, today if possible.”

The ‘walk them through’ part meant hand delivering their paperwork to every single desk that needed to sign off on it. That was more than a handful of desks too! The phone rang and as Pete picked it up he smiled at Mike, “I’ll get it done, good enough?”

With Mike gone Pete got to his phone call. Joanne Dole was one of the deputy directors of the FBI and had been specifically ordered by the White House to make a priority out of background checks needed for Operation Hermes. That meant Joanne was overseeing it personally and it was quite clear the woman felt that such things were beneath her. She did it anyway. When a President told you too, what choice was there?

That didn’t mean she was always cooperative on the matter though. It seemed to Pete that the woman loved to get on the phone with him and put him on hold. She probably did it for no other reason than she got a kick out of demonstrating that she could. This time was no exception.

Pete cut his speaker phone on and then tuned out the elevator music that came from it. He took the moment to glance over the folders that Mike had dropped on him. The first one was a pleasant enough surprise. Mike had the good sense to look for people with military backgrounds. This Carl Lopez guy was an EMT from San Diego, California. He was a former Navy Corpsman. Pete grunted, “I can live with that.”

The picture in the second folder quickly caught his eye but for different reasons. Pete whistled as he studied the mug shot, “oh and I could definitely live with that.” He checked out the name and summary information, “Pamela Short, huh? Trauma specialist from Detroit, Michigan.”

The music stopped and Pete picked up the phone, “Joanne I got to ask you about one of your backgrounds I got here. This guy, Jerry Gardner Pullman.”

There was a short pause and then Joanne came back, “what about him Pete? Um, sorry I had to find it. You know we’ve had to run more than a few.”

“Well I think,” Pete had to find the folder on his own cluttered desk, “I… here it is. I’m not getting everything with this guy.”

“It’s all there Pete,” Joanne said in a very condescending way. “He’s applying for what, Chaplain?”

Reading over the information in the folder, Pete confirmed that. Up till now he had not even been sure who Jerry Pullman was. It had been Sergeant Major McCandles who brought the folder to Pete’s attention. Even then it only got shoved into an In Box until Pullman wound up blowing away all of the screening tests. It made the guy a top applicant and put him light years ahead of everyone else applying to be the Mission Chaplain.

As Pete glanced over the background check he started to see a pattern and now fully understood what McCandles had been talking about, “well you didn’t dig up a lot on this guy.”

“Well what do you expect Pete?” Joanne was extra indignant today it seemed. “The guy’s a Baptist Minister from Tennessee. What did you expect to find, one of Elias Granger’s missing henchmen or something? You know Pete, not everybody is dirty. You do realize that I hope?”

“Whatever Joanne,” Pete was in no mood to be arguing with this bitch today. “Thanks for the time.”

As he hung up, Pete found McCandles walking in with a fresh pile of work in his arms. The Sergeant Major dumped the files on Pete’s desk and that only drew a sigh from the Marine Colonel, “who is it this time?”

McCandles was a man of infinite military bearing. He even stood at the position of parade rest when he was being informal, “those came in from Colonel Kelly, sir. He asked them to be made a…”

“Priority,” Pete rolled his eyes, “yeah along with everybody else and their brother. Any one I should specifically be on the look out for Sergeant Major?”

“Well sir,” McCandles went on, “the good Colonel Kelly thinks he has located about everyone he needs but…”

Pete groaned, “always a but.”

“He did request that you locate him a software expert. Apparently he is not at all satisfied with his current people.”

That somehow struck Pete as rather odd, “what do you mean not satisfied? NASA has some of the best computer experts in the world.”

The harsh nature of the response left McCandles with the impression that pursuing the matter right now was not a desirable move. He simply stated, “his words sir.”

“All right,” Pete waved it all off as he stood up. He had plenty to do and he alternated the headaches so that any one in particular would not become chronic. It was time to deal with the ‘out of the office’ disasters now.

On the way out the door he did ask his top enlisted man, “so did you make any suggestions to Colonel Kelly?”

“Well sir,” McCandles thought about it and then replied. “I thought it an interesting query. Where do you find a computer nerd that has experience with building interstellar spaceships?”

Pete stopped at the door and looked back, “what did you tell him Sergeant Major?”

In his normal dead serious way the Sergeant Major replied, “I told him a Sci-fi Convention might be just the ideal kind of place.”

As Pete walked out he yelled back, “and if Jack shows up with some geek with pointed ears, I quit!”