Dark and Troubled Past: She was a rising star in the Terran Space Force's counterinsurgency units and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, but then a mission against a cult on Toro went pear-shaped and she was demoted as part of the cover-up, ruining both her career and her first marriage. This proved to be the Cynicism Catalyst that prompted her to apply for the security chief job on Intrepid, kicking off the whole franchise.
Sexy Scandinavian: Tanis is of Scandinavian ancestry and is a tall blonde who is regarded as quite attractive by other characters.
Summon Bigger Fish: Tanis wins the Battle of New Canaan through the realization that the Eldritch Abominations that live in the dark layer were created by the ascended AIs as a buffer between themselves and humanity, and Bob can control them. She summons them into realspace and they eat most of the attacking fleet. The survivors surrender.
Trademark Favorite Food: Tanis loves a good BLT sandwich, the ingredients for which Intrepid can supply from on-board farms.
We Will Not Use Stage Makeup In The Future: In one chapter of Outsystem Tanis has a bunch of her leg muscle scooped out and her legs and feet reshaped to imitate a monastic order, and in Destiny Lost she uses nano to change her jawline as a disguise—which she remarks is a lot more painful than she remembers it being.
Worthy Opponent: After observing her commanding the Intrepid Space Force during the Battle of Five Fleets, AST Rear Admiral Chan comes to see Tanis Richards as this, even asking his Space Marine commander to try to take her alive because he wants to shake her hand.
Serafina "Sera" Tomlinson
Amazing Technicolor Population: Sera's morphable artificial skin enables her to change her flesh into a variety of colors from black to light pink. Her default form shows her with deep red skin.
Barbie Doll Anatomy: After Sera gains a morphable polymer skin, she ceases to wear clothes in favor of making use of her newly gained flesh to conceal her bits.
Breast Expansion: Sera's breasts get an increase in size during her body makeover from Danny when he has a-grav units installed in them.
Deliberately Painful Clothing: A wounded Sera dons one of Rebecca's skinsuits, but it was designed to kill whoever is not the owner, leading to Sera getting tortured nearly to death by it as it tightened itself around her and subjected her to the agonizing pain of it trying to eat her skin from beneath her neck. Helen saved her by reprogramming the suit to bond with her instead, leading to it bonding to what was left of her skin and eventually, with the help of nanobots programed by Bob, the polymer of the suit became her new morphable artificial skin.
Dining in the Buff: When she drinks coffee with Jason Andrews in a small dining cabin, she fails to realize that her morphable skin reverted to her being in her default "naked" form with red skin until Jason tells her he is glad her "mode of dress" is the same as it was before she became president. She does not bother fixing it for the duration of their time at the cabin.
Draconic Humanoid: Her makeover from Danny makes her closely resemble a demonic one when she gains red scales over most of her body when she morphed her skin at his suggestion, draconic fangs in place of her canines, two thick curled horns sprouting from her forehead, hooved feet, wings, and a tail.
Horned Humanoid: After acquiring her morphable skin, she, in addition to being able to grow heels from her feet and recolor and retexture her skin, can grow horns out of her head. When Danny gives her a makeover, her horns are curled.
Naked People Are Funny: She normally has her artificial skin set to provide her with Barbie Doll Anatomy unless otherwise specified. However, her clone sisters Fina and Serafina take to messing with the settings as a prank, causing her to sometimes reacquire external genitalia in public—including once in front of Jason Andrews, whom she's become attracted to.
Please Put Some Clothes On: Tanis tries to get her to dress up after the latter had the Mark X FlowArmor merged into her morphable artificial skin against her (Tanis's) wishes. Sera refutes these attempts, insisting she never wears actual clothing again, as well as pointing out to Tanis that she encouraged her to be herself.
Posthuman Nudism: Due to a mishap involving a booby-trapped bodysuit in Destiny Lost, Sera ends up with a full-body artificial skin, which is morphable. She normally has it set to give her Barbie Doll Anatomy below the neck, letting her skip wearing clothes. But in later books of the Orion War series her clone "sisters" Fina and Serafina take to pranking her by messing with the settings, causing her to occasionally reacquire external genitalia in public. (Much to her embarrassment, one of the times it happens is in front of New Canaan Governor Jason Andrews, whom she's developed a crush on.)
Shapeshifter Default Form: Sera's default form after gaining her morphable artificial skin shows her unclothed with deep red flesh.
Technically Naked Shapeshifter: After she uses nanotechnology to repair wounds inflicted when she wore a booby-trapped skinsuit, she gains a morphable artificial skin that allows her to generate her own clothes, with her default form being a clothless red-skinned woman.
Trademark Favorite Food: Due to the FTL Wars, Intrepid now has the only strawberries in the galaxy. After trying some, Sera declares she will eat a bowl every day for the rest of her life.
Cheeky
Amazing Technicolor Population: Later on, Cheeky attains the ability to change the color of her skin such as she and Nance changing it to purple on Misha's cue which Sera noting her to now have the same "epidermis" as her as well.
Only Mostly Dead: Cheeky makes a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the first season of Perseus Gate, blowing herself up to delay Orion Guard pursuit of the others. However, her personality was imprinted on a robot that was designed to Kill and Replace people, which Finaeus and Earnest Redding use to build an AI with Cheeky's personality and memories and implant it in a clone body.
Shameless Fanservice Girl: Cheeky is an attractive and buxom woman who usually wears the bare minimum amount of clothes the law or customs would allow. For a while after she becomes captain of Sabrina, she had a period of being fully nude and was topless when she wore a sarong on the bridge.
Joseph "Joe" Evans
Two-Person Pool Party: In A Path in the Darkness Joe has the tugboat Excelsior fitted with a hot tub when he brings Tanis along to grab a planetoid for raw materials to repair the Intrepid. The two of them use it to consummate their relationship.
Back for the Finale: Sini resigns her commission at the end of "Know Thy Enemy" rather than lead AST military forces against Tanis Richards again, after witnessing the hell she wreaked on the Bollam's World Federation. She reappears back in uniform in Return to Sol Part II: Star Rise leading Earth's defense fleet, and orders them to hold their fire while the Scipio Alliance forces deal with a fleet of Core AI ships that attacked Earth.
Theme Naming: Sini's flagship in "Know Thy Enemy" is the HWS Imperatrix, after the Latin for "empress". The two (named) AIs aboard are Theodora and Matilda.
General Garza
The Starscream: General Garza of the Orion Guard is plotting to overthrow Praetor Kirkland, but in the meantime is pressing the offensive against the Transcend.
and Matilda