The Tartarus Directive

Chapter 6

Commander Lewis Jasper Rowland, like virtually all of his predecessors did before him, seldom left the safety and comfort of his quarters or the bridge except on rare occasions. It would be understandable to believe that the one person with supreme executive power on the ship might want to mingle with his underlings from time-to-time, but to believe that would be to be willfully ignorant of the commander's oath-bound duty not to the residents of the ship, but to the ship and its mission. Not once in the commander's oath does it mention the people aboard the ship. As far as official regulation is concerned, the residents were expendable to a reasonable degree. People--even commanders--could die. The ship, on the other hand, could not be allowed to.

This reality put the commanders of the Atlas in a particularly difficult position. Their official obligations to seeing the ship's mission carry on and their humanistic obligation to their fellow humans were more often than not contradictory. Commander Rowland had no such quandary. He had decided with absolute confidence that his duty to carry out the mission was the only thing that mattered. His frequent and vocal reaffirmation of this fact meant simply that he was perhaps the most hated of all the Atlas' commanders.

His reputation among his own crew, let alone the residents, was not favorable. To them, he was nothing more than a career politician who preached sacrifice for the sake of the mission but who was unremarkably hypocritical. His reclusive lifestyle and the eagerness with which he invoked executive directives did nothing but establish a public persona which inspired residents to want to stick him in an ejection tube.

Despite all of this Commander Rowland was, for better or for worse, the best-suited individual on the ship to hold the position of commander. He was exceptionally calculated and never did anything without running a million simulations and statistical assessments in the ship's computers. He was also especially adept at maintaining and restoring order when the situation on board got out of hand. A small cadre of crew officers on the bridge steadfastly prevented mutiny. A well-regulated and fiercely loyal Security Service ensured his enemies--at least those which were particularly radical or dangerous--were dealt with swiftly. Loyalty was the be-all and end-all. Without it his ship would not survive, and he rewarded unyielding loyalty handsomely. He also punished disloyalty with an iron fist.

Commander Rowland had been well-educated and apprenticed. He had spent most of his life on the bridge in one capacity or the other. Most importantly, perhaps, was that the corporations liked him. No commander could survive more than a year without the corporations' constant concurrence. This is not to say that Commander Rowland and the corporate leadership did not butt heads regularly--indeed they did on nearly every issue--it is merely that Commander Rowland spoke their language. He knew what they wanted and how he could help them get it and because of that he remained in power.

Somehow during his career he had found time to knock-up a nurse and produce a daughter out of the torrid affair. Rowland may have been a father figure to the ship, but Selma never saw an ounce of that fatherly affection directed at her. Whether Rowland had willingly pushed Selma away or his absence was just collateral damage was anyone's guess, but as rough-around-the-edges as Selma was, she had turned out all right in the end. Maybe it was better they each had their own, separate lives.

It is easier to vilify men such as Rowland than to see them in a balanced light, especially when so much suffering occurred on the ship each day and when he did not for a moment share in that suffering. But he was the commander, and the commander's word was law.

The commander's quarters were above the bridge on A level. Like the keep of a medieval castle, in order to reach the commander's quarters one had to pass through a maze of doors and hatches, each of which could be sealed. The quarters were also the least accessible from the shuttle bays in the belly of the ship. Why the designers of the Atlas designed the ship with safeguards against outside invasion is impossible to guess. Disregarding invasion, the commander's position of power and access to classified files and overriding control over the ship from his quarters and the bridge made this section a prime target for those who wished to take over the ship in a coup or mutiny and there were many of those people aboard.