So I’m supposed to write a small bio about myself and my thoughts on Crew A, I can’t say I really want to, I’m not the caring and sharing type. I prefer actions to words, but Shalis thinks that you would like to know more about who we are, not from her perspective, but from mine.
She’s the boss.
There really isn’t much to say about my childhood, it was pleasantly uneventful and gave me a sense of stability that I came to appreciate more in later years when stability became a lot harder to find.
I was born in Canada but we moved South to my Dad’s home state of Louisiana shortly after my sister was born.
I went to school, I grew up and I became a Fed. I married into the FBI, but my wife died on the job. There isn’t a day passes that I don’t miss her.
It was while I was investigating a rather unusual case in Baltimore that I first became fully aware that the world was not all I had always believed it to be. Don’t get me wrong, you can’t do the job I was doing without coming across the weird, odd and just plain creepy, but Baltimore revealed a whole new level of WTF to me. I believe that was where I was first flagged by The DCA (Dimensional Control Authority) as a potential recruit, but ‘Frisco the following year is where I first learned about them.
Within six months, I was working for The DCA in the LATAM Branch and now, here I am, the Captain of QRU Alpha (Quick Response Unit). I’ve been a part QRU-A (nicknamed Crew A) for five years, and took over as Captain, when Jim Bellamy decided it was time to take a desk job in HQ six months ago.
The newest team member is our medic, Dr Cal, he’s only been with us for a couple of months. He’s the oldest on the team and has been with The DCA for longer than any of us. We are a lot alike, we are neither of us the types to put our lives out there for all to see and both of us eat, sleep, breathe and live the job. I can’t say we are friends, but he is a man I admire greatly and trust implicitly. Trust is what this team is built on.
My second in command, Akilina, is the closest thing I have to a best friend. She’s a smart, sassy Russian, and she’s trouble with a capital T for anyone who crosses her. She knows more about what is out there than any of us, she grew up always knowing, as did her family for many generations. She’s the complete package, and I don’t know why she isn’t captain, she should be. She has managed to live this life and sustain an 18 year marriage, I think she may actually be some kind of real life superwoman.
I think Tom, the brains of our operation was actually created for some wacky English television show and made flesh. I swear he is a walking, talking stereotype. From his geeky glasses, to his obsession with role-play games and his over use of the words “bugger” and “wanker”. I honestly believe he has never had a girlfriend who wasn’t made up of a collection of pixels on a screen. But while being so smart he makes Sheldon Cooper look slow, he’s is also one of the nicest people I have ever met. Our team would be empty without the warmth he brings to it.
We have two out and out warrior types on Crew A, Magdalena, who I first met when we worked together in the LATAM office and Treya, who isn’t from around these parts. They are like an old married couple sometimes, they wind each other up, knock seven bells of shit out of each other in the gym, and then can be found giggling together over a protein shake in the canteen all in the space of a day. If Maggie wasn’t gay, and Trey was human, they’d be the perfect couple.
Treya isn’t the only non-human in the group, The Sibs, Nula and Sever, are also from elsewhere. My sweet and crazy red-headed step children. They aren’t actually kids, but they are short and prone to pranks. These two are mechanical geniuses. They just need to look at a gadget to know what it does, how to fix it and how to turn it into a practical joke, usually at Tom’s expense. We often find some pretty strange doohickies in our line of work, these kids make sure we don’t blow ourselves up when we do.
Jack is our transport man, he gets us where ever we need to be, quickly and quietly. He’s a hard drinking, womanising, heavy metal loving bastard, but he’s our hard drinking, womanising, heavy metal loving bastard, he’s also handy in a fight and has saved my skin more than once. They say still waters run deep, there is nothing “still” about Jack, but if you think that makes him shallow, then you’re seeing exactly what he wants you to see. I’ve barely glimpsed the surface of the iceberg that is his heart, mind and soul, and I have no intention of ever diving in to see what lies beneath.
Oh, me? You wanted me to talk about me. I’ll let the others do that. I’ve got too much work to do.
