THE RELIABLE — “Arrive. Deliver. Leave.”

[Rust.Kreissman]

>> INCOMING TRANSMISSION…
>> SOURCE: R. Kreissman // The Reliable
>> ROUTING: Open Forum Drop // Service Board
>> ENCRYPTION: None (…because Linda says I need to “network”)

Hello. This is Professor—ugh… Captain Rust Kreissman.

I’m uploading my CV and the ship’s specs for anyone needing our services. If you want something moved, escorted, found, or delivered without a choir of excuses and a crater where your cargo used to be, you can ping us.

Also attached is our personnel file, compiled by our lovely ship psychologist / morale officer / mother figure, Linda. She insists it “humanizes the crew.” Personally I think the fact we’re still alive does that nicely, but apparently that isn’t “accessible.”

Godspeed—and remember: if you don’t have tentacles, we’ll probably take your job.

Now… how do I turn this damn thi—
…you fu— tschhhh

>> TRANSMISSION ENDED
>> UPLOAD COMPLETE: Rust_Kreissman_CV.dat
>> UPLOAD COMPLETE: Reliable_Specs.dat
>> UPLOAD COMPLETE: Personnel_File_Linda_Approved.dat

>> FILE OPENED: Personnel_File_Linda_Approved.dat
>> AUTHOR: Dr. Linda Hunt, Certified Psychologist & Medical Officer, The Reliable
>> SUBJECT: Kreissman, Rust — Captain (and, regrettably, “Professor”)
>> DISTRIBUTION: External (Client-Facing) // Sanitized (barely)
>> NOTE: The Captain insisted this be “honest, short, and impressive.” I compromised with “honest and survivable.”

I am Dr. Linda Hunt, certified psychologist and medical officer aboard the civilian deep-space explorer The Reliable. The following is an abridged personal biography and behavioral profile of our captain, Rust Kreissman, prepared for clients who prefer to know the temperament of the person they are hiring before placing lives, cargo, or reputations in his hands. Captain Kreissman calls this “overthinking.” I call it “due diligence.” The difference between those two concepts is why he has a ship and why he still has a crew.

Rust Kreissman was born on Planet New London in 787 A.S., to a mother who served as a career diplomat for the Bretonian Foreign Office and a father who was a Libertonian businessman from Planet Manhattan. The Captain does not advertise this in conversation because he dislikes anything that sounds like a pitch, but it is relevant: he was raised at the intersection of two cultures that handle power in different ways. From his mother he learned the discipline of manners, restraint, and the quiet violence of words placed correctly. From his father he learned the blunt arithmetic of risk and the simple rule that promises are only real if they survive contact with reality. This mixed upbringing explains much of what clients experience as his “easy” rapport with almost any faction. It is not charm in the theatrical sense. It is social fluency, paired with the practical refusal to insult people who have guns and authority.

At the age of twenty, he joined the Bretonian Armed Forces. He will describe his service as “useful” and then attempt to change the subject. He served with enough distinction to carry a durable reputation among those who care about competence more than posture. Captain Kreissman is not a romantic about war. He does not tell grand stories. When he does speak about that period, he speaks in routines, failures avoided, small decisions made correctly under stress, and the particular kind of fatigue that accumulates when you spend too many years watching other people’s mistakes become your emergency. In psychological terms, he presents as someone who learned early that survival favors calm logistics over heroic impulses. In practical terms, he is difficult to panic and harder to provoke into impulsive action.

Following military service, he completed his studies at the Imperial Administration and Political Sciences Academy on New London, specializing in political science and administration. He later became faculty and holds tenure to this day. The Captain downplays this as an “accident” and claims tenure is “a legal trap disguised as an honor.” Nonetheless, his academic training is obvious in the way he processes conflict. He reads situations structurally: incentives, constraints, likely escalation ladders, exit ramps. He does not merely ask “who is right,” but “what does each side need to believe to keep shooting.” He does not merely ask “who is winning,” but “who can afford to lose longer.” This makes him a remarkably effective negotiator and, frankly, an irritatingly effective survivor.

At thirty-four he married. The marriage did not last. Captain Kreissman does not speak cruelly about it, which is one of the few things I refuse to tease him for. He expresses loss through humor and deflection rather than confession. If pressed, he frames it in his usual practical terms: incompatible trajectories, incompatible appetites for risk, and a Sirius that was not offering stability even to people who wanted it. He is not emotionally numb. He is emotionally private. Those are not the same thing, and clients who mistake one for the other tend to be surprised when he makes decisions that prioritize lives over profit.

After the divorce he transitioned fully into freelancing. This is the part of his life that most people “know,” usually through second-hand stories with inflated numbers and missing context. The truth is less glamorous and more consistent: he built a reputation by being dependable in a sector where dependability is rare. He pays what he owes. He delivers what he promises. He does not renegotiate after the fact. He does not “accidentally” forget the fine print. He does not treat clients like prey. As a result, he has workable relations with an unusually wide range of factions—not because he belongs anywhere, but because he is predictable, and predictability reduces everyone’s blood pressure. In a Sirius that has suffered systemic shocks, trust collapses faster than hull plating. Captain Kreissman understands this, and he trades in trust the way other freelancers trade in commodities.

His most visible achievement is The Reliable, a custom Corvo-class civilian deep space explorer built on a gunboat frame—an expensive, stubborn vessel designed for long endurance, high survivability, and the kind of travel that assumes the map is lying. He financed it through a series of highly successful trade operations and leveraged old Academy connections to cut through the polite bureaucracy that otherwise prevents civilians from acquiring anything interesting. He named the ship with characteristic dryness. The name is not poetic. It is aspirational. He expects the ship to be reliable. He expects himself to be reliable. He expects others to be unreliable, and he plans accordingly.

Now to the part Captain Kreissman pretends is “just common sense,” even when it is very clearly a worldview: his stance toward non-human threats. The Captain believes, in blunt terms, that humanity and alien intelligences are fundamentally incompatible in the long run. Not because humans are uniquely wicked, and not because aliens are uniquely monstrous, but because the incentives, the methods, and the endgames do not align. Coexistence, in his view, lasts only as long as it is convenient, and convenience is a flimsy foundation for peace. This belief is not a philosophical hobby; it is operational. It informs his risk thresholds, his contract refusals, and his intolerance for anyone who treats “alien contact” like a romance story.

Within that framework, he has a particular hatred for Nomads. I am using the word “hate” precisely and without exaggeration. It is not performative. It is not the kind of hatred that seeks an audience. It is cold, personal, and settled. It is the kind that shows up as immediate refusal, tightened speech, and decisive avoidance. If a contract carries even a hint of Nomad involvement—direct, indirect, rumored, or “just weird”—he will reject it. No bribe has changed this. No threat has changed this. He does not debate it, because to him it is not a moral dilemma; it is contamination control. Clients should understand that attempting to pressure him on this point will not “negotiate him upward.” It will simply end the conversation.

More unsettling is the second half of his belief, the part he rarely says out loud: he does not think the Nomads—or whatever remnants and leftovers the Dom’Kavash conflict scattered across Sirius—are the worst thing that exists. He speaks about this with the cautious tone of a man who knows that saying “there are worse things” invites superstition, panic, and stupidity. But it is a conviction he holds. He has lived through enough systemic anomalies, enough strange silence, enough moments where the sector seemed to twitch like something touched it, to believe that the known horrors are merely the ones we have names for. In psychological terms, he has a stable threat model that includes the possibility of an unknown higher-tier predator. In plain language: he thinks Sirius has not yet met its final nightmare. This does not make him reckless; it makes him careful in a way that looks pessimistic until it keeps you alive.

As for the man himself, outside the myth and the résumé: Captain Kreissman drinks, smokes, and he is not ashamed of either. He also used to be, by his own amused admission, a rake. The difference now is not that he became virtuous; it is that he became selective. He uses humor as a pressure valve and profanity as punctuation. When he is comfortable, he can be charming in a weary, controlled way—never needy, never pleading, never over-invested. When he is not comfortable, he becomes concise and very still. That stillness is the warning sign. It means he is calculating and that the calculation is not in your favor.

In a crew context, he organizes people into two categories he calls “eggheads” and “jarheads,” and he says it like a joke while relying on it like doctrine. He respects intellect and he respects force. He distrusts vanity and he despises incompetence. He is, in his best moments, a fair captain with a strong protective streak that expresses itself through preparation rather than affection. In his worst moments, he can be stubborn to the point of infuriating—especially when he is correct, which is often enough to be a problem. He does not take unnecessary cruelty lightly, and while he is not sentimental, he is not morally hollow. He will choose the option that reduces long-term harm even if it costs him profit, and he will be annoyed with himself about it afterward.

From a client perspective, the practical conclusion is simple. If you hire Rust Kreissman, you are hiring a captain who will treat your job like a contract rather than a personal drama. He will be civil. He will be discreet. He will not betray you for sport. He will not “go heroic” and die for your pride. He will attempt to bring your cargo, your people, and his crew home in one piece, and he will do it with a level of professionalism that sometimes sounds like sarcasm. If your job involves anything Nomad-linked, do not waste his time or yours. If your job involves tentacles of any kind, he will not laugh. He will simply leave.

I have, regrettably, signed off on this biography as accurate.

— Dr. Linda Hunt
Certified Psychologist & Medical Officer, The Reliable
>> END FILE

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Prof. Rust Kreissman
Captain of the Reliable
Tenure optional. Reliability isn’t.