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know I have it somewhere in my personal files.”
    He retrieved a tablet from the table and authenticated himself on the system. Then he dug around the Palace computers for a few minutes. “Here we go. This file has the full list of people and their specialties. Well, except for a few last minute decisions by the university heads.”
    Kelsey gave him a curious look. “Last minute decisions? I’d have expected they knew who was going months or years ago. And what do they have to do with making the final selections anyway? Shouldn’t Fleet do that?”
    “The four premiere Imperial Universities are funding the conversion and outfitting of the freighters housing the science labs. They’re also training almost two hundred specialists in any number of scientific fields per mission. Shouldn’t they narrow it down to the best qualified ones?”
    “That’s not the question I asked, Father. It seems to me that the only reason the final choices haven’t already been made must be due to politics or money.”
    He raised an eyebrow and smiled a little. “That’s a bit cynical, but probably true. There’s a lot of prestige on the line. I’m sure a few last minute endowments have been made to alter a few choices, though I’m confident that no one incapable of doing the work would make the final list.”
    “Perhaps I should make a large contribution from my trust fund to one of universities. That puts both money and political interest on the line.”
    “Let’s say you did. What role would you play in the expedition?”
    She scanned the file slowly. The roster covered every possible scientific field: geology, biology, archeology, history, physics, and almost everything else she could name…and more than a few she couldn’t. Most of the people listed had multiple areas of study under their belts.
    Curious, she had the tablet sort the data by discipline. Indeed, every field had a number of people. From an exploratory angle, they seemed to have all the bases covered.
    So, following that logic, what might they be missing? One thing she’d learned early in her Imperial training was that big problems didn’t usually come from contingencies you put in place. The things that often bit you on the backside were the ones you’d never considered in the first place. What had they planned for and what had they missed?
    “Do you have the full mission parameters?” she asked.
    He again took over the tablet long enough to give her the information. She noticed he wasn’t reading over her shoulder. He was watching her.
    She’d seen him do this before. He was seeing how she reacted to a problem and how she approached solving it. Did that mean there was a weakness in the mission planning, or was he just using this as a teaching moment? She’d find out soon enough.
    It took half an hour to read the full mission brief. She knew some of it was in all likelihood classified, but she had the highest-level clearances imaginable. The Spare Apparent needed to have the same skill-set and access to details as the Heir. Her father undoubtedly knew some secrets she didn’t, but he never skimped on sharing classified information with her.
    She almost asked for the crew manifest for Jared’s destroyer, Athena , but she saw her father already had opened it as well. He’d anticipated her thought process. Of course. An Emperor had best be thinking a few moves ahead of everyone else.
    Kelsey leaned back and stared at the ceiling once she finished reading. All the information was buzzing through her head. She knew it would coalesce into an understandable bundle with a little more time, but already there was something nibbling at her consciousness. Something was missing.
    Was it a missing skill or an unconsidered possibility? It seemed as if they’d planned based on the events of the previous exploration. So, what hadn’t happened on that mission?
    They hadn’t found extensive ruins before, but this mission was well equipped in case they did. They