Fusella’s trying her best to get along with the General. Really.
Some quick story reference links: Fusella’s plan to use an automated shuttle to get around the First Contact rules was discussed in Chapter Seven. The signal she refers to was seen at the end of Chapter Nine (I know that scene wasn’t too long ago in terms of page count, but a it was a few months back in post-time…).
I officially love this page. XD
Dar’s thought bubble on the last page made me laugh out loud. Excellent.
Poor Darvin, I know that feeling all too well.
I keep expecting Fu to read Nelson the riot act:
*In a tone full of icicles* “That’s CAPTAIN Mierter, Ms Nelson.”
Honestly, it’s still Fu’s ship, even if Nelson is formally in command. Typically, Fu would be in command of the ship and Nelson in command of the mission, but in this case the operation of the ship kind of /is/ the mission. However, the current situation falls well outside the original mission parameters, and all higher authorities are unreachable, so by rights Fusella should be back in charge of her ship. This is not a pointless excercise in tin-god pedantery: being a captain is a highly specialised job which – while the two have certain points of commonality – is very different from being a general. Even a space general.
And speaking of those commonalities, even if they don’t split the chains of command (Fusella keeps making excuses for Nelson in this comic, so I don’t guess she’s going to throw her in the brig on water and standard rations), general Nelson should know better, /way/ better, than to treat an officer like she did last page, in front of their subordinates.
It reads like a “build them up, knock them down” style of management. Or that the General knows that she should praise subordinates for good work but doesn’t want them to get too big for their boots. Or that the General has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or that the General is using this as an opportunity to remind that Fusella who the boss is. In any case, it’s poor management style and good character development
Or nelson has been mind whammied by the bugs, and this is either bug weakness with human systems or herself slipping out from beneath the mind control to try to sabotage things.
If Fusella threw Nelson in the brig – good luck getting the IP officers present to agree to that – then she’d be court-martialed for mutiny when they’d get back to Earth. Like it or not, Nelson is in command of the mission. Thats how it is.
And if Fusella gets angry from a very slight cold shoulder, then I question her competence as captain. Someone in charge of a ship should be able to take more than that. So far, Nelson has shown herself a proper leader. Fusella has shown herself to be immature.
I think we need to remember that TerSA is decidedly a nonmilitary organization, and that the Galaxion, as a research ship, appears to be run more like a university project than a warship. Up until this mission, the worst Fusella has had to deal with have been rescuing IP pilots, untangling relationship squabbles and keeping the Galaxion running despite the fact that TerSA holds a long-standing grudge against her. This results in a different command style than a military / paramilitary vessel would require.
From her POV, the General has taken over her ship for a project that was politically volatile (which can be interpreted as more TerSA punishment), gotten them lost, commandeered her personnel to check out a crash site and endangered those same people – all of them friends of hers, but two of them in particular being good friends. From her POV alone, she has every reason to hate General Nelson and everything she’s done. If they were magically returned to Earth this instant, Fusella might feel she’s well within her rights, and in her duty to her crew, to bring Nelson up on charges.
That said, Fusella is operating on limited intel – although Aria and Zan were rescued first, I doubt either one of them were able to give Fusella a full briefing on what happened on the surface – they were probably rushed to sickbay and are now in quarantine. They may not even be conscious at the moment. I expect that once Scavina brings everybody up to speed – and especially when Vessa and the two “free” Hiawatha survivors corrobate her story – Fusella will cool down considerably. She’s done it before, when the jump test went wrong and Scavina had to remind Fusella that the experiment was not yet complete. She can do it again, especially given the stakes.
I do agree that Fusella and Scavina need to respect each other more, and Scavina, in her brief note to Fusella, seems to be willing to respect Fusella a bit more due to her rescue of Aria and Zan, but I don’t consider it immature of her to vent out of Scavina’s earshot, simply because she doesn’t yet know the things that Scavina or us readers know.
Well, since General Nelson is officially in charge of the mission, that Fusella, when all’s said and done, agreed to send Nelson and co. down on the surface (she could have put up much more of a fight, being the captain of the ship), then no, she’s not within her rights to bring the General up on charges, as the people back on Earth would then ask why she let the situation devellop to that point. Saying ‘I was following orders’ doesn’t work that well.
I see it as highly immature for any ship captain to vent in the middle of a public space about a superior officer, whether military or civilian. If that very slight snub (I’ve seen worse things from co-workers) gets Fusella going, how does she hold it together running a ship?
Finally, I don’t get why the general is any more at fault than the captain of the ship. As said by others, the circumstances have changed. Fusella could have denied the away party until they could send, say, the unmanned shuttle, or at least probes, or make scans. In the end, Fusella allowed it. She’s every bit as responsible as the general.
I debated about posting this (it’s generally considered bad form to defend your stories, as they should speak for themselves), BUT….
In Fusella’s defense, my original script called for her to be (somewhat quietly) grumbling to Darvin when she complains about Scavina. I changed it on the fly, as I was drawing the page, to make it look more visually dynamic and interesting. I guess I should have thought longer about the consequences of that change!
So don’t look too harshly on her for apparently venting loudly about General Nelson. It was more my fault than hers.
I’m not sure that’s clear at all. The general was taking a very active role commanding the ship, with the captain reduced to wandering around talking to people. It seemed very much like the General wasn’t inserted at the top of the command chain, it seemed more like she replaced the captain. With Fusella allowed to participate as a courtesy. (Recall that the General didn’t even want the Captain on the bridge giving orders, which is where you would want her if she was still acting as captain.)
And how is ranting right in the middle of a cargo bay the sign of someone who should be in charge? Operation leaders don’t blow up at the first sign of a snub (and a very, very slight snub in the worst case).
”We didn’t BEND any rules at all!”
”Our rescue shuttle was deployed unmanned!”
Thats… actually exactly what BENDING the rules are! ^_^
Okay now, everyone on Team Nelson, stand over on the right. Team Mierter to the left. We’ll be handing out signs on a stick and appropriately-emblazoned shirts as soon as you all queue up….
Instead of a sign on a stick, can I get a sandwich board, like I’m a prophet of doom, or a guy advertising a deli?
New merchandising spin-offs! Yay!
B-)
Awesome, I’ll take to team Mierter. Not entirely sure about what the argument is, but Fusella has long held my sympathies. Maybe because the pint-sized firecracker manages to combine authority and leadership with being so darn adorable.