Gaunt from the ordeal, biochemist Sudyam van Altricht signs on as RCE's new field research lead — dryly bracing for a thankless job and a seven-month wait for replacement equipment.
Sudyam (Doctor Sudyam van Altricht), the RCE science-team biochemist who worked the lab through the blindness with Elvi and Fayez, emerges from the disaster gaunt but game. With the crisis past and First Landing being rebuilt, she formally signs on with Havelock as the official field lead for the RCE research team — 'a worse job, I can't imagine,' she says, smiling. Practical and dry, she immediately presses for replacement equipment and hears the odds: an unmanned supply pod is under heavy burn from Medina, six or seven months out, with maybe a three-in-ten chance the OPA impounds it as salvage.
She accepts it with mild disgust — 'it'll have to do' — one of the many scientists who, having come this far, elect to stay and study the ruined new world rather than go home.
A dark-skinned woman with long black hair; here gaunt and hollow-cheeked from the ordeal, the padding gone from her face, brisk and wry.
RCE science-team biochemist; the newly-appointed field research lead staying to study New Terra.