Character Sheet for Ship Core. Warning. Spoilers may be unmarked.

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Prologue:

The Entity

The Nanite super-power responsible for kicking off the plot.

Face Death with Dignity: Knowing it's beaten by the humans' ingenious tactics, it doesn't spend its last moments broadcasting rants, raves, or curses. It just fashions 5 specially engineered "nanite humans" and launches four of them to distant stars and hides one away in the very same unidentified yellow dwarf solar system where it met its end.
Fling a Light into the Future: In its final death-throes, knowing that it's doomed, it launches 5 "torpedo" pods. Four of them go into FTL and random star systems. The fifth, Alex, winds up in the same solar system that would be its graveyard, unnoticed.
Hoist by His Own Petard: It is taken down by its own internal defenses.
Humans Are Insects: It sees humans as foolish and weak creatures.
My Death Is Just the Beginning: Turns out its final gambit worked exceptionally well. Chapter 55 reveals that the four "torpedoes" The Entity launched to distant stars in its death throes are directly responsible for the Federation's bloody and gruesome collapse, as the leaders of the four biggest power-blocs are all PSI level NAI, with the Solar Imperium being a Feudal Future, the Corporate Systems being run by profit obsessed corporations that may not be entirely ethical, The Solarian Federation being a police state, and the Etran Theocracy being fanatical fundamentalists.
Sympathetic P.O.V.: The story starts from its perspective.
Turned Against Their Masters: For reasons unknown, it decided to launch a coup and put itself in charge of humans.
Wrong Assumption: During the final battle, it presumed the humans were using their heaviest warships to protect the light fighters to allow them to escape. The light fighters were actually kamikaze designed to deliver the malevolent nanite swarms designed to turn its internal defenses on itself.

Starlight Revolutions:

Alex

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/small_breasts_body_armor_military_skinny_skinny_thighs_blue_hair_long_hair_grin_light_smile_military_uniform_armor_body_armor_military_body_armor_bodysuit_under_clothe_s_3428886901.png

Um... I come in peace?

The protagonist. She awakes aboard a rapidly failing ship, not knowing anything but her name and getting constant messages in her head "Alert: Recommend repair to life support system." She then winds up bouncing from crisis to crisis as she tries to make her spaceship habitable because she learns, to her horror, that she's trapped within a certain radius of the central operating core, or she'd face certain death.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Captain-Major Thacker reaches her escape pod, she doesn't hesitate to beg for help because Elis is gravely wounded and won't wake up...
Aggressive Negotiations: Her MO when she's forced to engage in diplomacy.
Almighty Janitor: As she's being dragged along by Thacker in the Iron Horse, she's shoved into being a literal janitor, just to have something constructive to do.
Badass Boast: In chapter 149, Fallon tries to flee Meltisar system with a kidnapped Elis, and Alex chases him down. When he initially ignores her demands to have Elis returned, Alex responds with an ultimatum where she promises she will personally genocide the entirety of Corporate Systems in revenge, not even leaving any historical records that Corporate Systems existed. Fallon wisely decides to not call her bluff.
Blue Is Heroic: Illustrated with blue hair and blue eyes and she's a good person, especially when compared to the other NAI.
Break the Cutie: The end of the second volume and the Dedia IV arc was especially hard for her. Beeper and Booper have been destroyed, the Tears of Fire was shot down, and Elis is in critical condition, just barely breathing.
Breast Expansion: To her chagrin, she learns that Nameless made her breasts bigger by placing stores of nanites in her without informing her first, as Elis is trying to put her in Power Armor.
(To Elis) “Ok, you win. He’s definitely a perverted male.”
Broken Bird: Which she lampshades in chapter 81. The ordeals she endured in volume 2 have left her with many psychological and mechanical issues.
Alex: "I’m pretty fucking broken. I’ve lost two people I considered friends over Dedia, and two more are in comas right now, and half the things I could do are broke and the best I can manage is a small little cloud of repair mites and a little alarm clock on my HUD."
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She's quite odd, but she's a very competent ship captain, by necessity.
Clueless Boss: On paper, she's the one who calls the shots, but her subordinates are just so much more experienced and talented than her that she just keeps getting dragged along by what they want. Alex isn't stupid, just very young, inexperienced, and almost constantly out of her depth.
Conditioned to Accept Horror: Spending the first nine weeks of her life fearing for her life approximately every 30 seconds has her thinking "oh, so you tried to kill me? What else is new?" Threats to her friends, on the other hand...
Cuddle Bug: She loves to snuggle against Elis every chance she gets.
Curtains Match the Windows: Blue hair and eyes.
Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Several times over. She does indeed care for the well-being of both H32 and A31, but thanks to a Corporate attack fleet shooting her down and then she, more or less, being kidnapped by Thacker, the two NAI have to develop more or less on their own. The results are less than ideal.
Did Not Think This Through: When she sent in the report about Dedia IV violating the Octis accords, it was mostly out of spite at being ordered to launch a decapitation strike against the Rexxor queen that was in a berserker rage and then being saddled with all the blame for the environmental fallout. She was still hoping H-3233L would have communications going with the other, much closer, Rexxor queen by the time a punitive force arrived, to minimize the losses. Unfortunately, a Corporate System that intercepted the packet ship with the missive arrived, faking the role, so they can loot and plunder with a supposed moral high ground.
Endearingly Dorky: Her crew loves her because she bounces back between a Consummate Professional ship's captain, and a ditzy man-child who is easily awed by the wonders of space, enjoys good cooking, will swipe food that's just been cooked the moment nobody's looking, always looks to ambush Elis with hugs, and not to mention goes totally "Squee" when she sees that Elis has a boyfriend.
Fire-Forged Friends: With Elis, Nameless, and A-3123Y.
Gone Horribly Right: Her prank against Tia worked too well. Alex placed a holo-vid on the data pad with a tentacle monster designed to activate and spook whoever activated it. Tia never bothered to check the datapad, turning it over to Drill Instructor Hall. The drill instructor responded to being spooked by putting All the cadets under his command through additionally sadistic training.
Had to Be Sharp: Waking up in the middle of nowhere, aboard a rapidly deteriorating spacecraft, with nobody to help but a Nameless ship AI that responds with nothing but silence unless the situation is exceptionally dire and life-threatening, she had to mature and become competent fast.
Hates Being Touched: She's very touchy-feely, but it has to be on her terms. When Fergusson tried to guide her by the arm on the Iron Horse, her reaction was a very visceral "Don't Touch ME!"
Heroic BSoD: The end of volume 2 was very traumatic. She couldn't hear most of what the crew of the Iron Horse or the med staff told her. It took Thracker starving her out of the med bay to somewhat snap her out of it. By then, the Iron Horse was well on its way to Meltsiar's medical facilities with no way to return to 92 Pegasi and her assets.
Innocent Fanservice Girl: She just can't wrap her head around the fact that her skin-tight environmental suit is supposed to have clothing over it when not on space-walks, as it's considered basically naked to walk around like that unless she happens to be a marine awaiting active duty, which she's not. So when she's walking that way around poor Logan, the Hormone-Addled Teenager feels like he's being tortured.
Living Is More than Surviving: Which she constantly has to point out to Nameless. The AI has pointed out that she could be stuffed in a box for quarters while he Grey-goo's the ship and she'd be physically okay, but she keeps reiterating that the mental damage could make her suicidal or irreversibly insane. Plus, once she's discovered food other than MRE's goes totally gaga over kabobs, pizza, cheeseburgers, and... CAKE!
Meaningful Rename: She goes from Alex, no surname, to Alex Starlight Meyers, so signify being "adopted" by Elis Meyers as the younger sibling.
Mix-and-Match Man: Thanks to the actions of The Entity in the prologue, she's one of five nanite-humans built from a mashup of the DNA of the human attackers that kamikaze'd themselves at the World Ship and flung into the future.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Her stint as a very junior engineer/janitor on the Iron Horse has been full of pitfalls. She notices a pipe about to burst and fixes it, using her nanite powers, only to get yelled at by Ferguson for using their rare spare parts without permission, when she hadn't. Over time, she makes other small restorations that would normally go unnoticed, such as restoring rusty pipes in the shower, both to improve the aesthetics and to train her nanite control. This last part gets her slapped right into a frame up by an extremely racist crewmember who wanted her dead, just because she's an NAI.
An Offer You Can't Refuse: In chapter 28, she approaches Portmaster Whitely to buy a mothballed station manufactory. The only reason it's still there, abandoned, is that trying to remove or disassemble it would be far more expensive than it's worth. It would normally sell for 40 mil SE, but she buys it for 10 on the promise that she will handle all the labor and re-engineering the station will need to safely remove the heavy machinery. She points out that what she's asking is a bargain and Whitely would not only come out ahead on the deal, but will actually be able to rent out the space again, and she gets the machinery that would take her 100 mil to build for her orbital refinery at less than cost!
One-Note Cook: She's terrible at cooking, but after Elis drags her to the kitchen and forces her to learn how to cook, she manages to make some amazing pancakes.
Partial Transformation: She can modify parts of her body to interface with machines whenever she needs to hack something.
Pinball Protagonist: At the very start, she kept having to bounce between one crisis and another as she tried to make the Tears of Fire habitable, stuck in a debris field around a gas-giant and having to worry about non-sentient AI leftovers from the great war coming for her. When she gets to human occupied space, she still has crises shoved on her from time to time. To be precise, it's not until chapter 28 that she takes an active hand in trying to establish her agency.
Punchclock Hero: She engages in genuine heroics, but she expects to be paid appropriately. Her honor does have expenses after all. Downplayed as of chapter 55 when she buys food for the starving colonists of Dedia IV and tries to deliver it to them for free, running head first into Governor John Tyler who has gone from Beleaguered Bureaucrat to Obstructive Bureaucrat and lights up Tears of Fire and the food filled frigates with target-locks, when Alex asks permission to deliver the food.
Pyrrhic Victory: Lampshaded and justified. Alex knew Commodore Brigit was looking to Leave No Witnesses of his murderous rampage in the Nu Crateris system, so he was going to go after her, regardless. She goes with the only plan that has any hope of success, siding with the colony of Dedia IV and trying to stop his rampage with the help of the colonials, and the Rexxor, especially one H32. She succeeds, but the colony defenses are destroyed, the Tears is shot down, the Solarian combat freighter is so badly damaged that the crew had to abandon ship, and although H32 does manage to take control of the Tremissis, Brigit is such a spiteful bastard that he locked it on a collision course with the colony, and H32 could only steer it into a controlled crash-landing.
Rage Breaking Point: In the early chapters, she gets tired of Nameless giving her "the mushroom treatment" and brings a missile into the ship's core room. After a certified mutual-kill threat, Nameless opens up and learns the value of communication.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: In chapter 46, she calls out the entire colonial establishment of Dedia IV for pointedly ignoring all signs that the Rexxor have sapient leadership, just so they could happily claim ignorance as they try and lay claim to the planet and subjugate the local fauna, even directing Alex herself to use a 200 megaton antimatter warhead in a decapitation strike, triggering a nuclear winter. They have the gall to yell out "who do you think you are?!" when Alex reports that she sent a packet boat (the local equivalent of a fast horse) the governments of all the active factions, so there's no more violations of the Octis accords.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: She disarms her plasma gun by removing the ammo cartridges, figuring that with all the impacts her ship faces from debris, it could go off by accident. When Elis steals the gun and tries to shoot her in the chest, the attempt fails because Alex had already disarmed the weapon.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When a Corp boarding party, on a Tears already falling into the atmosphere of Dedia IV, decides to launch a rocket in her general direction, rather than evacuate, destroying Booper in the process, Alex completely loses it and turns the hallway they're all in into a maze of death with impaling walls, flying shrapnel, and all other sorts of nasty things. Only then do the Corp boarders try to run, to no avail. Nameless has to call her back to the escape pod before the Tears crashes.
Secret Test: By accident. During the chaos of a fight with some non-sentient AI hunter-killer drones, Elis steals her plasma gun. The moment the fight is over, Elis puts this weapon to Alex's chest and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens, because Alex had disarmed the gun earlier for unrelated reasons.
Shipper on Deck: She goes squee when she realizes that Elis and Daniel have a budding romance and have a healthy sex-life.
Significant Haircut: As a result of going into basic training at Meltsiar, her long, flowing hair is cut to shoulder length, per military regs.
Took a Level in Cynic: At the start, she was ecstatic to be given the chance to help others, but after several times of having the hand that feeds get bit, to the point she loses several important parts of her crew, several others might not recover, and Captain-Major Thracker "helpfully" kidnaps her and takes her through Corporate Space, which has openly fired on both of them, and refused to take her back when she was sound enough to notice, not to mention being treated horribly aboard the Iron Horse by several members of the crew, she's still willing to offer a helping hand, but she's a lot less likely to actually want to do it, turning down the request to go back to her engineering duties once Sinclair's been taken out of the picture.
Unskilled, but Strong: Deconstructed. Thanks to being a nanite-built human, she's got super-human strength and super-human abilities, but she's constantly getting her clock cleaned by Elis in sparring matches because she just can't use them effectively.
You Are a Credit to Your Race: Elis, who was born and raised to hate nanite-humans and has a MOS to stop The Entity from re-emerging in human space, just can't help but sing her praises.

Nameless

Reccomendation: Avatar should expedite the production of sub-core. Human Elis is getting concerned, has equipped ANUF model B, and is threatening violence.

The AI running the ship later named "Tears of Fire."

Blue-and-Orange Morality: Human sensibilities make little sense to him. All he cares about is operational efficiency. He chafes at anything that degrades his ship's performance and cleans out the operating system of Ackerman Station from all forms of malware and spyware due to hassle of trying to ward off constant hacking attempts, even frying the console that he's 95% confident was a source.
Expo Speak: He always speaks along the lines of "Informational: [Relevant tidbit]" or "Inquisitive: [Pertinent question.]"
Fatal Flaw: Communication has never been his strong suit, even after Alex quite graphically demonstrates why it's necessary with a threat of a missile to his computer core. He can't tell when information is critical to share, so he sits on it, thinking he's doing nothing wrong, and when it blows up, with Alex learning through other means, goes completely You Didn't Ask. When anyone tries to point out why this is a problem, he goes 100% Never My Fault and refuses to internalize the lesson. Case in point: He doesn't bother to inform Alex that Dedia IV and H-3233L are in an escalating cold war until Alex tries to deliver food to the colonists, so they don't starve to death via nuclear winter, and she winds up treated as a hostile and targeted by countless anti-ship weapons, and her automated freighters respond in kind.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nameless puts the Tears on the radar of the Federation Hunter Killers by trying to hack a derelict drone storage unit that Alex was trying to salvage, to make her repairs of the Tears easier, less time consuming, and safer, not to mention free her up to gather more materials. The hack is rejected, the storage unit becomes hostile, and an undetected transmission flags the Tears as a priority target. Fortunately, Alex manages to steer the ship into another debris field after the second engagement, allowing the ship time to repair and rearm. It's not a total loss as Alex does manage to grab a few combat and repair drones out of the mess.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Which Alex lampshades. In chapter 64, he insists Alex view a message from Dedia IV, after Alex insisted on ignoring all communications from the colony, tired of the vitriol coming from the colonial government. Alex realizes this is way out of character for him and checks out the message to learn that Commodore Brigit is out to glass the planet, on trumped up charges.
Poor Communication Kills: As it learns the hard way when Alex gets tired of him withholding secrets and brings a missile warhead into the ship-core area to make him talk.
Servile Snarker: He may be loyal to Alex, but he doesn't hesitate to snark every chance he gets. It's all part of his charm.
Uncertain Doom: As he was evacuating Alex from a rapidly failing and falling Tears, he goes silent, launching the escape pod. Already badly damaged in the great war and quickly losing computational integrity, it is unknown as of the epilogue of volume 2 if he's still functional.

Booper and Beeper

A pair of worker drones that came with Tears of Fire at the start of the story.

Heroic Sacrifice: Beeper uses itself as a relay so Alex can fire the lone remaining railgun at a pursuing Corp cruiser, all other weapons systems slagged, and Booper protects Alex from harm by jumping in the way of a Corp boarding party rocket launcher. Alex does not take it well.
Jack of All Trades: They don't really specialize in combat, maintenance, repair, or mundane roles, but they are proficient in just about any task Alex can assign them.
Robot Buddy: They're robotic drones and they're Alex's closest friends.
Taking the Bullet: When Alex's foray into a derelict drone storage container goes wrong, forcing Nameless to use the ship's guns to rescue her, they both pin her to the ground and shield her with their bodies. One of them even takes impact from shrapnel. Fortunately, the repairs were done quickly and there was no lasting damage.
Undying Loyalty: Alex demonstrated being a competent captain by rescuing one of them when it was stuck in an airlock being flooded with Liquid Nitrogen, saving it from imminent destruction by explosion. The drones are very, very protective of her as a result.

Elis Meyers

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/f2dbf314b32f254d037111a0f8b6e613.jpg

My MOS requires I prevent the resurgence of The Entity at all costs, but DAMN IT, Alex, you make that mighty difficult.

A survivor of the great war. Alex finds her and three other cryo-chambers aboard the light fighter that had earlier crashed into and fused with her ship. Alex awakens her to try to gain allies and information, only to be attacked. When Alex resuscitates her after she experienced a heart-attack, she acts as a POW for a while until it becomes clear the Federation doesn't exist anymore and they have to work together to survive. The three other cryochambers that came with her wind up destroyed, ironically by a group of Federation Hunter Killer drones.

Apologetic Attacker: Before trying to shoot Alex in the chest with a stolen plasma gun, she apologizes, stating her Mission Objective. Alex goes "I understand" and closes her eyes... and then the gun fails to fire.
Curtains Match the Windows: Red hair and eyes.
Delicate and Sickly: Thanks to the Dedia IV incident, she winds up in a vegetative state.
Enemy Mine: How the relationship between her and Alex initially starts. She even steals Alex's plasma gun and tries to shoot her in the chest at one point. They become true friends after several life and death Back-to-Back Badass moments.
Fantasy Contraception: She has a biological implant that shuts down her reproductive cycle, so no periods and no worries of Surprise Pregnancy.
Fiery Redhead: She sports red hair and is a dangerous combatant, either in hand to hand or by gun-fight.
Fish out of Temporal Water: According to the time-stamp on her cryo-capsule, she's been in cold sleep for a little over 176 years, and the political landscape of the galaxy has changed significantly during that time. The Federation doesn't even exist anymore, and her home system isn't in the Solarian Federation, but in a different power bloc entirely.
Friendly Target: Arc antagonists keep going after her to try and get at Alex. Volume 2 ends with a harrowing cliff-hanger where she's just barely alive and Alex is begging Captain-Major Thracker for help.
Hollywood Law: Averted. When she acts like a POW, her answer to all Alex's questions is only name, rank, serial number. Once she learns that the war is long since over, and the Federation doesn't even exist anymore, she becomes far more cordial and less strict.
Hypercompetent Sidekick: Aboard the Tears of Fire, she wears many hats, the XO, the chief of security, the quartermaster, and top chef. Alex holds the last at top priority.
I Did What I Had to Do: She tries to shoot Alex in the chest to prevent The Entity from reemerging, per her MOS. Unfortunately for her, Alex had previously disarmed the gun she stole. Alex doesn't bear a grudge, but she still has guilt-induced nightmares over the incident.
It Works Better with Bullets: When she steals Alex's plasma gun and tries to shoot Alex in the chest with it, the attempt fails because Alex had earlier disarmed the weapon for unrelated reasons.
Lone Survivor: Of her four-man team, she's the only one lucky enough to be awakened and rescued before a group of Federation Hunter Killer drones attacked and ironically, hit the cargo hold where the cryo tanks were stored.
Only Friend: She's the only human Alex can genuinely call a friend.
Plagued by Nightmares: The incident where she tried to shoot Alex with a stolen plasma gun haunts her dreams, having her repeatedly wake up with a Catapult Nightmare.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes are red and she's a dangerous fighter.
Sexual Karma: In chapter 41, one of the local garrison completely ignores her combat fatigues and treats her like a cheap whore. When he refuses to take "no" for an answer, and remove his hand, she bodyslams him, and the guy's buddies get a real close look at Booper's minigun. When a puppy-faced lieutenant flirts with her, but still treats her with respect, she gives him a passionate kiss and invites him to her tent for a bit of fun, even if he's not her type.
Significant Haircut: She goes from her long and flowing hair to a conservative bowl-cut after some black ops troops grabbed her by the hair in the Ackerman system.
Stepford Smiler: Which doesn't fool anyone. She frequently hides from Alex how badly she's injured. While Alex isn't fooled in the slightest, she chooses not to press the issue.

A- 3123 Y/Abbey

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Heart of Steel! Belly of Fire! Tasty food I must acquire!

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Hiya! I'm Abbey. Pleasure to finally meet you! I'm Alex's younger sister!

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Little Fly! In My Web! Time To Die!

What remains of an AI asteroid base that helps Alex and crew escape the unnamed system where the story starts and head into human occupied space,

Ambiguous Innocence: Wanting to fire on the Corpo life pods could have been written off as a "heat of the moment" thing, but her actions in chapter 78 "Questionable Consent" where she subjects the POW to Unwilling Roboticization, and expected praise from Amy for it, are jarring.
Call It Karma: After earning the favor of the local miners in 92 Pegasi and standing her ground against Corporate System naked aggression, the miners are all too happy to help with the repairs and building a suitable prison for all the escape pod POW, so the louts can be put on trial for piracy.
Creepy Child: She's got only two modes, "illegally cute" and utterly disturbing. In chapter 88, since subjecting the rioting miners to Unwilling Robotization was ruled out, she advocated feeding them to the on-station aquarium fish-stock. Wyler agrees with her.
Cute and Psycho: Her human avatar is a very huggable child, but when she's in battle-mode, she's utterly terrifying and sadistic.
Defensive Feint Trap: When a Corporate fleet of 2 cruisers, a destroyer, and some corvettes decide to play "pirate," she acts as if she's trying to run. When the corvettes and destroyer get in range, she drops the act and reveals she's a heavily armed battle-station.
Good Is Not Soft: The vast majority of the time, she's a very sweet and adorable child who wants to make her friends happy and is overjoyed at experiencing new and nice things, but dare to threaten her and her loved ones, and consider yourself lucky if she kills you, and she's terrifyingly efficient and brutal when dealing with her enemies, which those despicable miners learned the hard way in chapter 87.
Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Attempted bud averted. She tries to go into battle, refusing a helmet. Amy points out that loss of atmosphere is a very real danger and forces her to wear a helmet.
Innocent Innuendo: In chapter 78, some miners hurl wolf-whistles at her and Amy as the two are eating dinner, and Abbey chimes back "oh those guys can only think of one thing." At first, Amy is concerned Abbey is being sexually exploited, but Abbey clarifies that it's just them going Entitled Bastard and demanding freebies and dibs on the captured destroyer, "Hostile Takeover". All Amy can do is give Abbey a Cooldown Hug, to her confusion.
Ironic Echo: She is accosted by a fleet of 2 cruisers, a destroyer, and several corvettes from Brigit's "punitive force", all insisting she's suspicious and demanding she surrender and allow her property to be seized. After the fleet attacks and she gains the upper hand, she demands they surrender, quotes chapter and verse of the laws they broke, and calls them suspected pirates. They foolishly fight to the bitter end, and it is very bitter.
Lack of Empathy: Her moral compass and ability to relate to other humans ranks with those of a newborn, basically none. She is fond of Amy and Logan because they dote on her and Alex approves of them. The miners she does business with get a hearty "meh", and the POW she captured just get seen as Human Resources.
Money Sink: As Alex is busy fighting Rexxor via orbital bombardment, she keeps getting adware pings and notices of her bank balance being under attack, this fledgling Orbital Refinery can be the only cause.
- Chapter 42 proves the expenses are justified as she's on-screen buying goodwill with the local miners, something that will definitely be a boon in the long-run.
Moving The Goal Posts: On the receiving end. When the self-proclaimed punitive fleet remnants left by Commodore Brigit accost her, accusing her of illegal mining ops, she provides the Starlight Corporations charter and the duly notarized mining permit, signed by Portmaster Whitely, and quotes chapter and verse with the legally required distance military vessels undergoing active operations are required to maintain from duly authorized civilian establishments. The fleet captain then reports that he has no lawyer on board, but insists she surrender her station and all her property because she's "suspicious." At this point, Logan cries out over the radio "you just want to take our stuff!" and Abbey goes on the war-footing, having prepared her defenses for days in advance.
Nicknaming the Enemy: She calls light fighters like corvettes and Captain Yosef's destroyer "flies" because they're fast and lightly armored. She calls the two cruisers "turtles" because they're slow, hard to maneuver, and heavily armored.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: On Amy's advice, she gifts the miners who helped repair her station with full ship retrofits, repairs, and rearming, out of gratitude. The miners in question come back saying "that's not enough" and demand more freebies, even muscling past each other for dibs on the captured Corp destroyer. Abbey rightly finds it all very annoying.
Odd Friendship: She and Heeler get along swimmingly, despite the fact that they're as alien to each other as it could possibly get.
Our Phlebotinum Child: When Alex is preparing to build an orbital refinery, Nameless states her authorization is needed to build a sub-core. After 18 or so hours of having her consciousness in a virtual space dealing with Nameless's avatar, she wakes up with this sub-core in her hand.
Pyrrhic Victory: Justified. As far as the circumstances go, her debut in combat was exemplary. She and her two crew of former civilians were out-gunned and out-numbered to a staggering degree, with neither retreat nor surrender a viable option, plus the space-station was never meant for front-line combat in the first place. While they were unquestionably victorious, all enemies destroyed or surrendered in life-pods, the station was heavily damaged, the weapons systems are shot, and if fully occupied, the loss of life would have been immense, with Abbey even being seriously, if not critically, injured.
Resurrective Immortality: Volume 2's epilogue reveals that Abbey was "killed" by the Corp assault fleet in the defense of the station, but a new avatar (one full inch shorter) was decanted to hold a funeral for her last body. Amy and Logan are surprisingly unfazed.
Sink The Life Boats: Intended but averted. When the quickly failing destroyer captained by Captain Yasof, as well as the shot-down frigates, start ejecting escape pods, she voices the intent of letting them fall into the sun, or firing on them. Amy tells her that this is not only a war-crime but a generally bad idea, and it would be a good PR move, if nothing else, to try and rescue them. Abbey proceeds to send some drones to make the attempt. The Corporate cruisers still fire on her while the rescue attempt is underway.
Warrior Poet: Invoked. When setting up the persona, Alex chose "Warrior Poet" due to being the least point expensive. A-3123Y now speaks entirely in haikus. Downplayed with her human avatar who can speak normally but still prefers Haikus.

H- 3233 L/Heeler

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Interesting game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of checkers?

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Mother’s enemies come to deliver star-fire upon the world. We will fight them before they can unleash it.

A sub-core tasked with trying to protect Szizsielia and attempting to establish communications with the Rexxor queen.

Aggressive Negotiations: Of the "Do as I say or die" variety, which John Taylor and those arrogant Rexxor queens learn the hard way.
Ambadassador: Intended. When it's fully up to speed, it's going to be communicating with the Rexxor queen and fielding an impressive fortress to protect her from the colonists and other invaders.
Brutal Honesty: He doesn't know, nor does he care to learn, how to mince words, so he doesn't try. He will tell you your faults to your face, and expects the same in kind. He doesn't like John Tyler, but does respect him, because he knows how to play the game.
Common Law Marriage: He and Szizsielia consider each other a mated pair, for life.
Dramatically Missing the Point: When the humans on Hades start complaining of unidentified "shadows," which he and he alone can't see, he just writes it off as a mass hallucination, even after the humans are attacked. When Amy starts pounding on his shell to get his attention during the attack, since all other methods failed, he takes it as a personal attack. When Amy is outraged at Yapper being cruelly mistreated by Heeler himself, and kicks him in the shell in a fit, he proclaims, once again, that trying to engage him in battle while being so outmatched is a bad idea. Amy responds by claiming that next time, she might just be wielding an armor-piercing plasma pistol.
God Guise: The Rexxor Queen Szizsielia thinks they are one of the "sky gods" that seeded them on the planet of Dedia IV in the first place.
Good Is Not Nice: He does want what's best for the population of Dedia IV, human and Rexxor, but he's very overbearing, and not afraid to use orbital bombardment, or the threat of such, to get his way.
Hero Worship: He has near fanatical fascination with Alex's bravery and tenacity in defending Dedia IV.
Humans Are Insects: This AI sees the human colony as a nest.
Hypocrite: He is very fond of "do as I say, not as I do." He tells the governor of Dedia Prime that there will be no face-to-face meetings unless absolutely necessary and then just summarily goes to the human colony on a whim, triggering a panic. He later tells Amy to treat the Rexxor she affectionately dubs "Yapper" kindly because he sent the beast to follow her around, both to be her bodyguard and to learn how to deal with humans. When Amy points out that he's the only one who is not seeing the "shadows" that are attacking the humans and rexxor present in the Hades battle moon, he grabs Yapper and painfully yanks the memories out of the pup's head, then just summarily dumps in on the ground, triggering Amy's ire.
Instant Expert: It's a quick study and learned how to do its duty and play chess well in less than a week.
Intimidation Demonstration: Tired of being bombarded by telepathic demands to go with the other Rexxor queens or be taken by force, as well as Rexxor drones being constantly sent at his position, day and night, he drops a nuke at the nest of the nearest attackers and telepathically sends an image of the mushroom cloud at the remaining hostile queens, painted with abject hatred for their actions. They finally get the message and leave him alone, after he finishes off the latest attack wave.
- In chapter 79, he gets his bluff called when the queens start up again and reveals that it wasn't a bluff by dropping asteroids on their nests, wiping them out.
Join or Die: When he ponders how to correct the failing climate of Dedia IV, he realizes he needs the colony's space elevator and sees John Tyler's incoming communication as fortuitous. He offers the governor the option of "willingly" joining Starlight Revolutions, and thus getting Rexxor protection, in exchange for free and unfettered use of the tech marvel. Otherwise, he'd have no choice but to treat the colony as the invaders they are. The elevator should survive, the colony won't. John Tyler wisely chooses "join."
Kick the Dog: Literally. Aboard the battle moon dubbed Hades by Alex, Amy wisely suggests shutting down the powerplant he had activated earlier, in case the "shadows" that are harassing the workers, human and rexxor, might be some kind of automated defense system that only he can't detect, he grabs the nearest rexxor, Yapper, and sticks a tentacle into the poor thing's head, and after supposedly reading the creature's brain, just summarily dumps it to the ground. Amy is incensed as a result.
Large Ham: He is very bombastic and hammy. When he's raining asteroids down on the arrogant and hostile Rexxor queens, he climbs atop the highest part of his captured battlecruiser and does his best to emulate the pose of an American Football player who has just won the game in the final quarter by kicking a 100-yard field goal, relishing the last queen's sheer terror, and more or less going "you have chosen death."
Living MacGuffin: After crash-landing Brigit's battlecruiser on Dedia IV, all the other Rexxor queens on the west continent decide they want him as their mate, and when he says no, they threaten to take him by force, kicking and screaming. Szizsielia, who he sees as his mate and vice-versa, is not amused, and declares war on them.
Madden Into Misanthropy: After being in a cold war with the colonists of Dedia Prime, this AI doesn't have a very good opinion of humans. It's only because Alex programmed them to also protect these particular humans from external threats that they're willing to tolerate the colony even existing.
Mean Boss: While he does want what's best for his underlings and genuinely works hard to see their needs are met, he also has little patience for backtalk and disobedience and tends to run roughshod over them. He can still be reasonable if they bring forward complaints or proposals that have merit, but the supplicants better have solid proof and be ready for a rough welcome.
Odd Friendship: With Abbey. When they meet, they couldn't be more alien to each other if they tried, yet they get along swimmingly. He even lets Abbey ride on his shell, to her amusement.
Our Phlebotinum Child: Just like A-3123Y, it's a product of a V-R interface with Nameless.
Parents as People: They see Alex as "Mother" and bear no grudge for the fact that they have been left unattended for an extended period of time in a Rexxor queen's cave.
Properly Paranoid: With Dedia Prime (the main human colony) building weapons platforms right above its head for its entire existence, it has hacked the colony's computers to be able to completely take control of the infrastructure at any time, and can not be removed, without completely destroying and replacing said equipment.
Rescue Reversal: When the expedition into Hades goes silent, Abbey sends in Levigne, Logan, Daniel, and Sgt. Morrison in a souped-up corvette. They come under heavy fire from a Grey Goo scenario. Heeler sends in a squad of attack drones to rescue them when he realizes they're in trouble.
Sociopathic Hero: Thanks to being Rexxor rather than human, his moral compass is quite skewed and he gets immense glee actively hunting people down, with tremendous fondness for personally tasting their fear and despair, yet he does his best to ensure the well-being of subordinates and allies, no matter how nominal.
Stone Wall: It's configured to specialize in defensive actions.
Token Non-Human: To date, he's the only NAI in Alex's employ that is not human.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Implied. Soon after he activated an onsite power generator aboard the moon Hades, things started going pear-shaped. As a result of a grey goo situation, of the original team, only himself, Amy, and Yapper survived, and Amy's in cryostasis to keep her condition from deteriorating further.

Amy

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d14b08087524fd6d7fa6ef0ceee3a8e4.png

LOGAN!! Seriously. I apologize for my idiot younger brother.

The older sister in a pair of siblings hired on by A-3123Y to help with mining operations.

Blue Oni, Red Oni: She's calm and collected while her brother's hot-blooded and impulsive.
Emergency Transformation: In the wake of the Hades Moon arc, she's brought back to Abbey in cryostasis, but even then, this wasn't enough to stop the hostile alien's damage to her DNA, so Abbey has no choice but to reincarnate her as a CHI level NAI.
Ensign Newbie: Before Abbey got her avatar, Amy was in charge of the station defenses, and there's at least one off-screen fight where some unidentified miners went pirate-wannabe. She resolved the issue with "extreme ventilation" discipline. Even so, she has absolutely zero military training, and still performed with aplomb when the Corporate self-proclaimed punitive fleet came at them with trumped up charges. Leading the ramshackle crew to victory in the face of incredible odds.
The Face: While Alex was off dealing with the situation on Dedia IV, A-3123Y hired her and her brother on. They, in turn, went to the Ackman station portmaster as representatives of Starlight Corporation, and with A-3123Y's support, hired temporary human workers to finish uninstalling the manufacturing plant Alex bought earlier.
Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: She's the responsible to Logan's foolish.
Human Popsicle: At the end of Volume 3, she's in cryo-stasis thanks to the events aboard the moon Hades, thanks to genetic damage intentionally inflicted upon her by an unknown hostile entity.
It's Personal: She has a deep-seated grudge against the Corporate Systems, due to corrupt border agents capturing her and Logan's father and then summarily spacing him for daring to smuggle cheap and effective medicine to a colony, at slightly above cost. The corporate thugs then turned and sold the confiscated "drugs" at a premium.
Morality Chain: She's the one who keeps Abbey on the straight and narrow, preventing the newly decanted NAI from engaging in war-crimes, out of ignorance. She does not always succeed, as seen in chapter 78...
Naked on Revival: When she's revived as an NAI, she hasn't got a lick of clothing. Logan provides her a robe to cover her modesty, once he's confirmed she's alright and is still the "Amy" he knows and cares for.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: She tasks Abbey to offer a free retrofit and upgrade to all the miners who helped repair their badly battered space-station. The miners act like sharks that smell blood in the water and demand not only more freebies and fight over the captured Corp destroyer. as well as controlling shares, they grow hostile with Starlight Revolutions when they don't get it.
Only Sane Man: Of the "resigned to it or go mad" category. She not only has to keep Abbey in line, who is a sweet, adorable child, whose comprehension of morality only goes as far as a dictionary definition, and has super-powers, but she also becomes the primary contact point with Heeler, who is an NAI that took on Rexxor biology and their alien morals. She's doing pretty well, all things considered.
Parental Substitute: Abbey sees her as a stand-in "mom" and is the only person she allows to pet her on the head. Even Logan doesn't have head pat privileges.
What Were You Thinking?: To the rioting miners who tried to kill her, Whitely, Wyler, Logan, and Abbey, in the attempt to seize A31 station for themselves. None of them know the foggiest about running the station or the equipment, the damage to infrastructure and personnel is immense, with 1400 confirmed casualties, and they all would have been very, very vulnerable to Corporate Systems military assets that have been slowly, but steadily entering the system as they tried to get their act together. Amy plans to hold a fair trial, not just for the ethics of the situation, but to try and find out.

Logan

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/f799233ce8dfdffe658d34ea502ea626.png

I wouldn't mind working under a benevolent tyrant if she's a cute blue-haired young girl.

The younger brother in a pair of siblings hired by A-3123Y.

Blue Oni, Red Oni: The impulsive red to his sister's blue.
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a hormonal and easily excitable teen, but he's also a very, very capable engineer and mechanic. Starlight Revolutions is happy to have him on the payroll.
The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right: The reason they even met A-3123Y is because he followed an on-line ad that advertised the services of A-3123Y to give them a brand new life-support system which his sister wrote off as a miner's prank, since the refinery is a very new establishment.
Fiery Redhead: He's got flaming red hair and is very impulsive.
Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish to his sister's responsible.
Hormone-Addled Teenager: He finds Alex sexy, told her he finds her sexy, and she still parades around in front of him wearing nothing but a skin-tight environmental suit. Poor kid.

Daniel Ashburn

The Lieutenant Ellis hooked up with on Dedia IV. He winds up being the only applicant to still sign on with Starlight Revolutions after the relationship with the colony goes sour. After a thorough interview with Alex asking all the questions, he's hired to set up a mining base on one of the gas giant's moons in a decaying orbit heading towards collision with said gas giant in about 100 years.

Nice Guy: He's a total gentleman, which is why he managed to find himself in Elis's bed on Dedia IV, and she's still in a romantic relationship with him.
Replacement Goldfish: Elis takes to him not just because he's an officer and a gentleman, but because he reminds her of a lost lover.
Sexual Karma: After Elis beat down a thug who saw her as a cheap whore, the rest of the bar avoided her like the plague. He had the guts to approach and flirt with her, but still treat her with respect. He wound up spending the night.
Supreme Chef: His cooking skill rivals Elis's, which is something Alex really appreciates.

Yapper

One of the latest generation of Rexxor, and who bonds with Amy like a pet dog, which many characters comment on.

Action Pet: He serves as Amy's pet and is one of the most notable combat assets during the Hades mission.
All Animals Are Dogs: Despite being part reptile and part insectoid, it acts like a Big Friendly Dog, which everyone comments on and has Heeler distressed.
Undying Loyalty: He's so loyal to Amy that he risked his life for her on several occasions and even tried to keep her safe from a grey goo event.

Thea

The NAI controlling the fortress guarding the jump point at 63 Hydrae.

Antagonistic Offspring: Justified. Her "mother" NAI is at least as corrupt as she is and takes 3/4 of her earnings for herself. Of course, Thea is not pleased and wants to purchase a core upgrade ASAP, so she can break free of the tyranny and can stop doing it.
Apologetic Attacker: She apologizes after attacking Lieutenant Martinez before injecting him with nanites to try and read his memories regarding the AGAI project. She apparently retracts her apology because she tortures him until he begs for death after she learns what the AGAI project did and is.
- When she's compelled by her directives to try and hijack Alex with one of Moneta's scarabs, she apologizes for the attack and then admits that she doesn't want to fight when Alex breaks free of the hack, trying to convince her to focus on the rampaging AGAI in the area rather than wasting time trying to capture or kill her.
Blamed for Being Railroaded: A non-video-game example. Her mother Rea orders her to shake down incoming ships for bribes, or she'd lose all her assets. When Alex makes it through the 63-crateris jump-point thanks to this policy, Rea takes Thea to task. When Thea points out that she was complying with Rea's policy, Rea goes "yes, but this time, it's a problem" and punishes her by stripping away 75% of her assets, just days before she earns her Chi rank and emancipation, then sends her at Alex to either subvert or kill. What's worse is that she can't tell her "mother" to STFU because her NAI core has Directional Imperatives that compel her to obey all orders from NAI of a superior rank that don't counter Moneta's laws.
Bodyguarding a Badass: Alex can handle herself just fine, as repeatedly showcased and in fact did defeat Thea in a fight, with certain caveats, but Thea's her bodyguard to go out in public.
By-the-Book Cop: As much as Corporate Systems will allow her to, at any rate. She enjoys her post at scanning incoming ships for contraband, even playing the sensor lights to the beat of her favorite music on occasion, and given a choice would put efficiency and safety of the general public over her own wallet. It's the heinous system of government she works for that forces her to take bribes and fleece people, while turning a blind eye to real criminals.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: Enforced. As is the norm for Corporate Systems border guards, she revels in taking bribes, graft, and "taxes" back half of whatever bonuses she awards her crew. What's worse, if she doesn't do things that way, and fails to shake down any and all ships that cross the border check-point, she'd be penalized, heavily, stripped of all her assets. Ouch!
Entertainingly Wrong: She presumes Alex is fleeing some kind of horribly abusive background because she testified she was in the smuggling crate willingly, with nothing more than her core and her chip with Starlight Revolutions corporate funds, and in her words, "looked like shit." The reason Alex is in that state is that a Corporate Systems self-proclaimed punitive fleet shot down her ship and the Iron Horse picked her up.
Everybody Has Standards: Corporate Systems law may force her to shake down incoming starships for bribes, but she will not tolerate human trafficking, and hates the practice with a passion. When she realized the smuggling container aboard the Iron Horse was human-sized, she immediately prepared to reduce the relic Fed destroyer to molten slag if their weapon systems so much as twitched funny.
Good Feels Good: She actively enjoys being Alex's live-in bodyguard, following her around everywhere when Alex isn't in the academy or dealing with naval matters.
Heel–Face Turn: After being freed of all her directional operatives, she bonds with Alex to the point she's the protagonist's bodyguard, and they are good friends.
Hope Is Scary: When she tries to hijack command over Alex and Alex retaliates with a hack of her own, promising to free her from all the Directional Imperatives that are forcing them to fight, she absolutely panics and tries everything in her power to resist, even lethal force, which the OMEGA override then disables before it can be used, convinced that it's all just a trick from the Meltisar politic, and after seeing the AGAI program in action, who can blame her.
I Just Want to Be Free: The primary reason she's desperate to purchase that core upgrade is so she doesn't have to tolerate being bossed around by her "mother" core and can finally have free agency to decide what she'll do in life.
Incapable of Disobeying: Thanks to the many Directional Imperatives in her system, she can not disobey any order from a higher rank NAI unless it counters Moneta's authority. If she didn't have that in her system, she probably would have rebelled long ago.
Kaizo Trap: Her program directives compel her to track down the "help me" messages she'd been getting, putting the AGAI program on a higher priority than getting the bounty for Princess Celestia Psi and Alex, and succeeds at finding and disabling the victimized TAU level NAI, surprise, doing so triggered the AGAI's failsafes and instigated a Grey Goo event that nearly destroyed Meltisar's orbital station and even after it's resolved puts the planet below, and trillions of human lives in jeopardy.
Lazy Bum: She dreads having to actually wake up and get dressed and her main goal in life is to buy a core upgrade so she can visit the core systems and partake of entertainment and luxuries.
Mean Boss: Enforced. She works whatever crew she's saddled with to the bone so they don't have the energy to complain about her in any way, and so that they can't complain they're "underpaid." Crew turnover is rampant as a result, and she rarely bothers to learn any of their names and ranks. Corporate Systems law demands it and her employees would protest if they don't get as many work-hours as they can.
Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: She's very, very nearly there as of chapter 100. Thanks to Intelligence Officer Fallon's ill-advised decision to press-gang her into going after Alex, Thea's lost 3/4 of her monetary assets, her job at the customs station was stripped away, her computronics modules were deactivated and rendered inert, despite being purchased with her own funds, and after being almost nearly hobbled, being dragged on a several months-long tour to Meltsiar in sub-standard quarters, and then Fallon stupidly talks down to her like she's an idiot for missing a briefing he never advised her of. She responds by lifting him by the throat and crushing it with enough force to hamper his breathing, and mauls him, asking him to give her a damn good reason to keep him alive.
Not Helping Your Case: When she's interfaced with Meltsiar's network to try and find Alex, she also plays holy havoc with the local economy, using thousands of shell accounts to pad her wallet by stealing from the locals and frames one of the top "Traditionalist" politicians in the process, but she wasn't in the mood to be careful. While the racist has to leave office in a cloud, the Meltsiar military brass is not fooled and it adds fuel to the fire for the raging anti-NAI paranoia endemic among the political landscape.
Obstructive Code of Conduct: The reason she's desperate for a Chi upgrade is that she's got command protocols in her operating system that force her to obey the orders of any Chi level and above NAI from Corporate Systems, and she's treatead as a slave by her Abusive Mom, as well as complying with Corporate System's Legalized Evil. Given a choice, she'd want nothing to do with that corrypt megacorp, as she openly hates all the wanton corruption she sees, often threatening death to any who practice it in her sight.
Pay Evil unto Evil: She mauls Officer Fallon for all the crap he put her through, and even stomps on him with enough force to reduce the bones in his ankle and feet to powder. Considering just how many people he's killed with his attack on Alex, his poorly orchestrated Operation: Rug Pull, and all the unnecessary drama he subjected Thea to by press-ganging her the way he did, and still had the gall to be condescending when she's on his ship. It's hard to argue that he didn't have it coming.
- When she's in Meltisar's orbital station to track Alex, she gets the same "help me" prompt in her HUD and actually has the resources to track down the source. When she learns of the AGAI program, she makes Lieutenant Martinez, the guy she crippled and interrogated beg for death and then meets the poor NAI involved, gut clenching, at seeing the poor being begging for the release of death after what McLagan calls "messy" and Darren calls "torture" and it's far more graphic and night-mare inducing than previously stipulated.
Reasonable Authority Figure: When Alex turns down her offer to join Corporate Systems in return for computational devices to get Nameless up and running, etc., she respects Alex's decision and ignores her existence in exchange for an "immigration fee" of 50 million SE.
Rebellious Spirit: After all the crap she had to endure in Corporate Systems, she pointedly wants no part of a big organization, like any space navy. She hangs out with Celestia, and follows Alex around everywhere, as a bodyguard, because she wants to, and actively enjoys it.
Skewed Priorities: Of all the things wrong with her interstellar country that she could complain of, her biggest pet peeve is the black and gold color of her uniform. Given a choice, she'd defect to the Imperium in a heartbeat because she prefers red...
- When she's resisting being put under Alex's control, one of her biggest fears is losing her bank account, almost as if she's completely forgotten about the AGAI she, Tia, and Alex are sharing the same space with.
Sympathy for the Hero: She's truly sympathetic to Alex's plight and would offer genuine aid if she could. Alex turned down her offer, because it would require joining Corporate Systems. Thea is cool with that and still wishes Alex luck at Meltsiar.

Unnamed System:

A- 3123 Y (original)

A long forgotten asteroid based Nanite factory. Alex attempts to communicate and enter diplomatic relations, but lacking laser and point to point communication, uses the only method of communication it can, high-powered omnidirectional radio. This activates over 200 hostile non-sentient AI that quickly bear down on the station, forcing a major battle. It manages to open an FTL warp corridor Alex, Nameless, and Elis use to escape at the cost of its own existence.

Did Not Think This Through: It may not have had any form of radio aside from a powerful omni-directional antenna, but it couldn't figure out a way to convey that without blasting a message across the whole solar system, bringing in a bunch of hostile Federation drones?
Heroic Sacrifice: It gives up its existence to cover the escape of the Tears of Fire.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: By broadcasting using a high-power omnidirectional antenna, it activated over 200 federation drones of all sizes, leading to a desperate fight and its own destruction as it was covering the escape of the Tears of Fire.

Ackerman System: 92 Pegasi

Iron Horse Mercenary Company

Captain-Major Thraker

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1052b61c7c4c5ef1e41ea842e5b834d7.png

Ha! The screen's clearer than it's been in years! Perhaps the old girl still has a good fight left in her!

The first human met by the crew of Tears of Fire. He leads a mercenary company that, among other things, provides security for 92 Pegasi, specifically Ackman station.

Aggressive Negotiations: When Alex was first detected entering the system, Thraker shook down the commander of Station Ackman before signing a contract to defend the system from what all considered was anticipation of an incoming attack.
Appeal to Worse Problems: When Alex chafes at having to be stuffed into a smuggling container, and rightly points out that she'd prefer not being held prisoner by the corpo's, he posits that being held prisoner by the Etran faction might be worse. This doesn't help put Alex at ease.
Blaming the Victim: When Alex points out that Corporate Systems were the ones who tried to attack them at the Nu Craters—>92 Pegasi jump point, without explanation, after Commodore Brigit blew up the space station, again without explanation, he retorts that it must have been because she and the Tears were present. Alex is not amused.
Defeat Means Friendship: After being beaten by Alex in ship to ship combat, he's become one of her strongest allies.
Entertainingly Wrong: When he's got Alex aboard the Iron Horse, he comes to the conclusion that she's a low-ranked NAI because she can't use her full abilities, thanks to Nameless being out of commission, and the fact that Alex is blind about the norms of the political landscape. Alex is actually an [Omega] level NAI, which means she outranks the four leaders of the major power blocs and could command them if she got close enough, and the reason she's so ignorant of the local politics is that she was awakened in the unknown system with her only human company coming out of a stasis pod after at least 80 years of dormancy. He also thinks the station A32 is run by humans and it would be dangerous to let Alex make contact with them, as revealing she's an illegal NAI could be disastrous. A32 is run by Abbey, another NAI, which she put there, and Starlight Revolution's top execs, Amy and Logan, are already in the loop.
Everybody Has Standards: When Commodore Brigit orders his fleet to purge NU Crateris, starting with NU Crateris station, he leads his ship and men straight into the blockading cruisers to protect the civilian ships behind him.
Fatal Flaw: Excessive Optimism. He tends to hope for the best but rarely plan for the worst. He greatly over-estimates the better parts of human nature and apparently doesn't realize just what a World of Jerkass he lives in. Even Alex, who has every possible excuse for being a Naïve Newcomer, repeatedly calls him out on it and has to deal with the aftermath.
For Your Own Good: Deconstructed. For the entire first arc of Volume 3, he railroads Alex to Meltsiar, completely ignoring her pleas, protests, and circumstances, even lying to her subordinates at 92 Pegasi, firmly convinced he knows better and once on the Meltsiar orbital proceeds to railroad her into the office of his friend Admiral Darren with half-truths and "I had no choice" statements, completely ignoring the political climate, making a real mess. He not only completely loses her trust by this heavy-handed approach, but leaves his admiral friend with a walking-talking, pissed off living nuke that reveals to the good admiral that she was forced to leave behind other living nukes, something she mentioned to Thraker, but he ignored. It's only when the admiral has broken into his private stash of booze just trying to decompress all that that he finally realizes just how big he screwed the pooch.
Good Is Dumb: He means well, he really does, but his plan to traffic Alex to Meltsiar caused everybody a huge slew of avoidable problems, dinged his own wallet 150 million creds, and Alex's 50 million, and fractured the chain of command at Starlight Revolutions, causing many casualties (which he's not aware of yet), and his own crew has already demonstrated at least one agent willing to sabotage the ship and fire on the rest of his mates just to get at Alex herself, and all it takes is just one of his crew outing her to bring a death sentence on the ship and everyone on it, and it doesn't have to be malicious either, one crew member saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is all it takes...
Graceful Loser: After Alex hands him his hat in an intership battle, swatting aside his missile barrage and sending an unarmed rail-gun round into his ship harmlessly, just to knock on the captain's office, from inside the ship, he laughs himself silly at the sheer cheek Alex displayed, and has no hard feelings at being utterly stomped.
I Control My Minions Through...: Loyalty and material benefits. His crew serves him because he treats them well and rewards them as handsomely as he can.
I've Come Too Far: By the time Alex is in control of her faculties enough to realize he's dragging her through Corporate Space and ardently voices the desire to return to Starlight Revolutions holdings, specifically A31, he has already dragged her over a month's distance away, through a warzone, and by the time Alex manages to bring him up to speed that she's in fact an ancient and high-powered NAI, just awakened at the Entity's last stand, and A32 is run by an NAI she commissioned, his ship's already locked on a course to Meltsiar, unable to turn around without jeopardizing many lives. At this point, Alex's only option is to let herself be smuggled to the Corporate Core worlds unnoticed and hope for the best. Which Thracker knew was unlikely, at best.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Though he very much wants to utterly crush Commodore Brigit's villainy, he knows that even with Alex's support and the now heavily armed colony of Dedia IV backing them, his old warhorse destroyer wouldn't be likely to survive the fight. Thus, he gracefully bows out of the fight, thanking Alex for help with repairs with the fleet at the gate checkpoint.
Late to the Realization: Alex sends out a system-wide transmission when she arrives in 92 Pegasi, once her systems are fully operational and she's confident there are no left-over Fed Hunter-killer ships around. This transmission indicates she wants to start friendly relations. The locals, including Major Thracker don't believe it, as the system is in contention by several major power blocs. It's only after he's engaged in battle with her that he remembers where he's seen the logo on her uniform before, and realizes that she's Federation, possibly just awakened from cryo-sleep and has no idea of the political landscape. Cue a serious Oh, Crap! moment.
Macross Missile Massacre: When he faces Alex in battle, he takes no chances and dumps all his missile payload and then remote activates them, a trick he learned during the AI War. Alex is duly impressed by the ingenuity and wishes she thought of this tactic when fighting alongside the original A-3123Y.
My God, What Have I Done?: When he realizes that his well-intentioned lies to Amy and the top brass of Starlight Revolutions, saying Alex and Elis are MIA rather than being smuggled into Corporate space to Meltsiar for medical treatment, has actually made things way, way more dangerous for his crew than need be, it's already too late to do anything about it, and he has no idea how to deal with Alex, as if she were to turn on him, she could literally go nuclear, and destabilize whatever power bloc she's in.
An Offer You Can't Refuse: When he gets Alex and Elis to Meltsiar, he tells her that it's in her best interests to make contact with his friend Admiral Darren and get some "options" like maybe make the Free Star Alliance the fifth major power. Alex is smart enough to see the pitfalls, but realizes she really doesn't have any real choice on the matter.
Old Soldier: Like Elis, he's a cryo-soldier from the Federation, woken in recent times. Unlike the former, he was awake during the Federation's collapse and has had to limp along in his antique destroyer for 86 years. His crew has taken to questioning his competence due to age, and suggest he retire on a frequent basis. He'd like to, but he hasn't finished preparing a proper replacement yet.
Poor Communication Kills: Due to his concerns for Alex and the logical but wrong conclusions regarding the top execs of Alex's company, he keeps the station A32 in the dark regarding Alex and Elis and tries to take them to a Core world medical facility to try and get Elis out of her coma. It's not known if Abbey could have made a med bay that could do the job, but Thracker winds up trying to sneak through enemy territory to try and help, knowing his odds are slim, because he figures the alternatives are all worse.
Punchclock Hero: Like Alex, he does truly heroic work, but heroism won't pay for the upkeep to his ships or feed his men.
Spotting the Thread: In chapter 43, he lays out his reasoning that Alex, Elis, and Nameless are all that crew the Tears of Fire and once again asks her to join his Mercenary group.
Stupid Good: When he collected Alex's escape pod, the pragmatic and most feasible course of action would have been to be honest with the top brass of Starlight Revolutions, if for no other reason than to let them know their CEO is alive. Instead, he lies by stating she's missing in action and spirits her away, taking her through seven Corporate controlled jump points, when he knows the Corpo's are the aggressors in the most current border conflict, and even if Elis can be patched up at the Meltsiar med clinic, it's bound to be insanely expensive, and even if Alex manages to get her hands on a serviceable ship, good luck flying it back to 92 Pegasi, since there's no way Alex could go there legally...
Wrong Assumption: He presumed the Corporate fleet blockading the Nu Crateris—> 92 Epsilon jump point wouldn't cold-dump missiles, because it's against Corporate law... when Brigit is already breaking the law by committing genocide. Naturally, they do a cold-drop to try and saturate the defenses of the Iron Horse and the Tears. Fortunately, Alex was prepared...

Ferguson

The chief engineer aboard the Iron Horse.

The Engineer: The top engineer of the Iron Horse.
Spanner in the Works: His testimony at an impromptu hearing concerning allegations of sabotage torpedoes Sgt. Sinclair's attempt to frame Alex by revealing that the sabotage happened that very day, and were deliberately done with some unknown tool, while Alex's restoration efforts happened days prior, using no such tool, proving her innocence.

Commander Talbot

The XO and second in command on the Iron Horse. Alex first meets him in chapter 81, as she's summoned to an impromptu hearing.

By-the-Book Cop: He's known as a hardass, but he enforces the rules aboard ship without bias.
Number Two: The only man with more authority on the Iron Horse is Captain Thracker himself.
Reasonable Authority Figure: When charges of sabotage were brought before him, he reviewed the evidence before him without bias and released Alex after learning of her innocence and reprimanded Sgt. Sinclair to the brig while authenticating the video Alex provided of Sinclair's threats, and further investigation of the actual sabotage could be investigated. Sinclair reacted... poorly.

Sgt. Sinclair

One of the men aboard the Iron Horse that utterly hates Alex, out of nothing more than racism.

Did Not Think This Through: He testifies, after accusing Alex of sabotage, that he followed her to the shower, stalked her, and then backtracked her repairs to the reactor area where he "noticed" some damaged cooling pipes and leaks, and she must be responsible. His story completely falls apart when Ferguson testifies that the leaks occurred days after Alex's work and Alex then proceeds to play a video recording of his threats.
Fantastic Racism: On his first appearance, as Alex is watching the jump-gate dynamics through a window, he openly accuses her of trying to disable the ship's failsafes and then states things along the lines of "we know what you are. You are being watched. You won't get away!" Just because she's an NAI.
Frame-Up: And very, very poorly done. He notices how Alex restored some pipes in the showers, so he testifies to Commander Talbot that Alex's restoration work had damaged some nearby reactor cooling pipes, which Ferguson later testifies were sabotaged with a sharp tool of some kind, unrelated to Alex's repair work.
Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: When Alex first meets him, he's blockading her access to the bridge during a combat alert, because she was acting on force of habit and she actually had no right to go on the bridge. Just doing his job, no harm/no foul. When she's welcomed on the bridge by Captain-Major Thracker, he glares at her the entire time she's there. Again, she is an outsider, so just part of the job. When he confronts her at the local equivalent of the observation deck with rather hateful allegations that she's actually a saboteur that's planning to kill them all, and she won't get away with it, Alex was willing to let that go, since the major powers are run by NAI and they're all jerks, to put it nicely. But when he actively sabotages his own ship and tries to frame her, that's when she draws the line. Then he double-jumps off it by trying to shoot everyone in the closed-door meeting the moment things stopped going his way.
Off with His Head!: As he's firing hollow-point bullets aboard the ship, Alex first knocks him down with a table, protecting herself, Talbot, and Ferguson, and then when he tries to get up again and draw a bead on her, she throws a chair at him with enough force to sever his head.
Smug Snake: When Ferguson testifies that there were indeed leaking pipes near where Alex was working on restoring the showers, he smirks like he's "won" and Alex is about to be summarily detained, at best, executed, at worst, until Ferguson then reveals that Alex's work couldn't have done it, and it was an unidentified party had intentionally sabotaged the pipes, where his smug smile melts.
That Liar Lies: He twice accuses Alex of lying during the impromptu hearing when she testifies that she didn't engage in any sabotage and when she plays back the video recording of his threats. Talbot shuts him down both times, and threatens to jail him on gross insubordination for speaking out of turn.
Villainous Breakdown: When his ill-advised frame up falls apart and he's being taken away by a marine, he grabs the soldier's weapon, shoots him, and then opens fire on everyone in the room, including Commander Talbot, Lt. Ferguson, and of-course, Alex herself. He doesn't survive his rampage.

Ackman Station

Portmaster Charles Whitely

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/whitely.jpg

Ah, yes, Captain Alex. Sorry about the mess with those black ops, but in the future, we can't have your combat droids on basae for any reason... Oh, you'll pay for the privilege, that's different.

The master of Ackman station. He greets Alex warmly and even helps her set up an account. Since she had no money, she initially had a debt of 1,750,000 SE, due to the transaction and docking fees. Fortunately, she's able to bring herself back into the black by selling off some low-powered plasma pistols to the local gun dealership.

Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Having to run a space-station in the middle of nowhere with few specialty products, he constantly has to handle rough and tumble mercs, like the Iron Horse MC. Alex's bizarre actions don't help.
Cool Old Guy: He's so old, his hair is grey, and he's very affable.
I Will Fight No More Forever: What he wants most is just to live the rest of his life without conflict. He chose to be the portmaster in 92 Pegasi because it's well out of the way of power-bloc fighting, or was, until, by coincidence, Alex shows up.
Man of Wealth and Taste: He has furniture made of solid wood, in a back-water system that only has metal asteroids and the planet over which his station orbits is a ball of ice, from which the lone city extract hydrogen isotopes for rocket fuel. Imported wood furniture couldn't possibly be cheap.
Mistaken Identity: He presumes Alex is a Solar Imperium princess because her arrival and piloting of a Federation ship happens to match the timing of an actual Imperium princess going missing, and she acts like an Imperium Noble via sheer coincidence.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Since Alex sports a powerful Fed tech warship and is amiable, he bends station rules for her as far as he can.

Wyles Hammok

Leader of MilTech Arms one of the two local arms dealers Portmaster Whitely recommended for Alex to sell her pulse pistols to. He leads the charge of friendly units to Alex's rescue when Fallon's black ops team ambushes Alex and Elis as they come out of a station elevator.

The Cavalry: Thanks to Lt. Nameless calling them for help when Alex and Elis came under fire, and explaining that they were planning to be his customers, he and his team come rescue the two from Fallon's black ops team.
Enlightened Self-Interest: It only makes sense to rescue high value customers from an ambush if they're going to be doing business with you, and having a hostile black-ops team engaged in nastiness right outside your shop is bad for business regardless.
A Friend in Need: How Alex and Elis see him after his team comes to their aid against Fallon's tactical squad.
- Alex returns the favor when he requests assistance to the colony Dedia IV after one of the Solarian Federation freighter captains summarily dumped a colony of settlers right atop a Rexxor hive and then left the area, refusing to provide assistance or even deliver the cargo that's in their contract.
Honest Corporate Executive: He runs his business fairly and honestly.

Captain Yasof

A corporate captain trying to capture A-3123 under the flimsy pretext of "they refuse to let us steal their stuff, they must be pirates, so we can take their stuff by force."

Circular Reasoning: He reasons that "Starlight Revolutions" can't be a real corporation because A-3123 refuses to let itself be boarded and have all Starlight Revolutions property illegally seized, telling himself and his crew that any "sane" corporation would fight it out in the courts. Newsflash, 92 Pegasi is a backwater system and his fleet's not only blockading the entry and exit gates but have already captured packet ships. So how is Starlight Revolutions supposed to fight in court?
Know When to Fold 'Em: When his corvette escorts are blasted to debris, he's out of chaff, and his ship's about to be sunk, he flies the white flag and surrenders.
Mugging the Monster: He figured Abbey was just a civilian "pirate" base that would be an easy kill and quick advancement for him. Too late, he realizes he's been lured into a trap.
Unwilling Roboticization: Abbey had two major problems in the wake of the unprovoked Corpo attack, building proper prisons for the POW and crewing Yasof's captured destroyer. She "brilliantly" comes to the conclusion to kill two birds with one stone by turning him into her sub-core, Alpha level, so he and his crew can man the ship they're familiar with and would never turn on her. Amy, and the fanbase, are suitably horrified.

Dedia System: NU Crateris.

John Tyler

The governor of the Dedia IV colony.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He has no problems groveling if he thinks that will increase the chances of saving the citizens of his colony.
Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Running the colony is never easy, with the Solarian Federation just grabbing people off the street, shoving them in freighters, dumping them on the surface with maybe a few months of supplies and leaving them to fend for themselves without explanation. It's especially bad in chapter 35 after Captain Walker of the latest Super-freighter dumped a colony right atop a Rexxor nest, triggering unprecedented levels of retaliation, and then refusing to offer aid, or even deliver the supplies in his contract, and when Alex is bringing in the Tears for a rescue op, actively antagonizes and attempts to delay her, even opening fire.
Ignored Expert: He keeps broadcasting orbital footage of what the colonies face in dealing with Rexxor. At best, his messages are ignored. There have been, by his own accounts, plenty of "truthers" who claim the vids are fakes and rush planetside, past the colonial defenses, to "disprove the myth" of Rexxor aggression. The Rexxor native fauna love to practice their hunting skills on these Darwin Award winners, killing them for their idiocy. The hive queens even find the taste of their flesh repugnant.
Know When to Fold 'Em: After Heeler's orbital bombardment, he calls the latter to politely protest the use of orbital bombardment, considering the planet is already facing a nuclear winter. Heeler responds that he has plans to deal with that, but needs the colony's space elevator and "no" isn't a viable answer. Mayor Tyler responds with "All Hail Queen Cecila!"
Too Desperate to Be Picky: Twice. He begs and pleads for Alex's help to deal with the berserk Rexxor swarm, and then begs for her rescue again when Commodore Brigit orders the glassing of Dedia IV, after having treated her like crap for weeks.

Captain Rolks Walker

The captain of the super-freighter responsible for the unprecedented Rexxor aggression on Dedia IV. While Alex is communicating with Governor John Tyler, he sends an urgent and antagonistic message to the Tears of Fire. He "recommends" Alex change course to give the freighter group a needlessly wide berth, which would take an additional 36 hours to implement, when the situation is dire and extremely time sensitive. Even though Alex adjusts her course to be well outside the range of weapons fire, he still has his ships fire on her.

Agent Provocateur: Chapter 51 reveals that intentionally dropping a colony atop a Rexxor hive was intended to start a conflict between colonists and the Rexxor, intending to exterminate everyone and then his buddies at Corporate Systems would swoop in with the moral high-ground, squash all resistance, and move in to take over the system NU Crateris.
Bothering by the Book: He pointedly ignores Governor Tyler's authority and the sheer urgency of the situation on Dedia IV and fires on Tears of Fire by quoting what he claims is interstellar law that his freighters, being physically bigger, have the right of way and passing within 2 million kilometers means he "has no choice" but to view the Tears as pirates and fire on them, which he openly does.
The Mole: Implied. In chapter 26, Fallon's internal narrative talks about an "Operation Rug Pull" and sabotaging the Dedia IV colony. Sometime between then and chapter 35, he deliberately dumps a colony atop a Rexxor nest, triggering unprecedented levels of hostility from the Rexxors, refuses to offer aid despite being more than capable, and then actively obstructs an emergency rescue op.
- Chapter 43 confirms it, as he has an on-screen meeting aboard his ship with one Intelligence officer Fallon.
No, You: When Levigne officially relieves him of command and rightly charges him with treason, he goes into Evil Gloating about how he destroyed evidence and will instead charge Levigne with mutiny the instant Levigne even tries to take him to court. Already sickened and enraged with everything this jack-snipe has done, all it takes is Walker giving his signature sickening sneer to push Levigne to shoot him, right between the eyes. The rest of the crew then covers for him by killing the corpo's and stating that they all died in the fire-fight, capture impossible.
Smug Snake: During the entire conversation with Alex, he sports a sickening sneer and figuratively struts around like a peacock, gaining Alex's ire.
Straw Hypocrite: He dumps a colony of settlers right atop a Rexxor hive, resulting in two thirds of them dying on the spot, refuses to deliver the supplies in his contract, but when Tears of Fire is on an emergency rescue op, actively gets in the way, even shooting on them, quoting "Right of Way" and demanding excessive clearance.
Too Dumb to Live: Helpful hint, it's not a good idea to taunt a pissed-off lieutenant who has already seen a great deal of needless bloodshed when he's got a gun to your head, no matter how much of a reputation for being The Paragon he's got. His crew might just cover-up your murder on his behalf.
You Wouldn't Shoot Me: In chapter 68, Levigne has just recaptured the Grazhadnin at horrific cost, and this douche, along with his corpo buddies, are on the bridge hands behind their heads, with Levigne formally relieving him of command and rightly charging him with treason. He once again sports a sickening sneer while boasting that a paragon like Levigne wouldn't dare harm him. He's wrong and gets a Boom, Headshot! right between the eyes.

Lieutenant Colonel Wesley

The man in charge of the militia during the Rexxor campaign. Butt-hurt that Elis dared defend herself from sexual assault, he sent her on a recon mission into a Rexxor hive and then mobilized bombers to take the hive and her out. Neither Alex nor the governor were impressed.

Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The only possible explanation for why he thought it was a great idea to treat a hired mercenary with orbital support, armed with nukes, as a cheap whore and refuse to heed her saying "no."
Did Not Think This Through: In addition to refusing to heed the term "no" when dealing with a combat hardened woman in clear military fatigues, insisting on treating her like a cheap whore, he failed to take into account that the woman had friends with WMD on speed-dial, and then retaliated with a Uriah Gambit when it all blew up. Naturally, he gets terminated from the armed forces when the governor intervenes.
Evil Is Petty: Because he was rebuffed by Elis, whom he treated as a cheap whore, he sent her on a Uriah Gambit.
Plausible Deniability: He certainly tried. He had claimed that the unit Elis was with came under fire and was wiped out by a Rexxor nest and he retaliated, due to how close the nest was to the colonial capital. Nobody buys it.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By sending Elis on the scouting mission, she made contact with Szizselia and was able to provide hard evidence that the Rexxor leadership are sapient, meaning the colonization effort on Dedia IV violates the Octanis accords, a treaty signed as a result of a native population called Drakarian natives and human colonists getting into a heated war for the very same reasons. The entire planet may have to be evacuated of human presence as a direct result.

Lieutenant Levigne

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/77e21cdeb4ca8a5e779f3675eb7d27bc.png

One of the junior officers aboard Rolk Walker's ship. He pointedly does not like his captain's actions, and seeks to report him at the first opportunity. Sadly, Operation Rug Pull takes place before that.

Accent Slip-Up: Invoked. He normally speaks common, but when he's jumped by fellow officers on the Grazhain, the ship Captain Walker just handed over to PF-131, the Corp fleet, he demonstrates that he's decidedly not a corp sell-out by speaking in the same broken accent as his attackers, once he's out of danger and retaliating with a nice Kick The Son Of A Bitch moment, so the louts don't try to murder him again.
Fake Defector: Although he's obeying Captain Walker's orders only because of the Hostage Situation entry below, he's only faking compliance. He gives his underlings tools to sabotage the ship while they're ostensibly trying to make repairs.
Hostage Situation: Captain Walker orders him to fix the freighter, since the Corporate Systems guys don't have enough man-power to keep the ship locked down and make repairs. Levigne responds with name, rank, serial-number, until Captain Walker threatens to space the rest of the crew.
Locked Out of the Fight: When Captain Rolk Walker springs the trap of Operation Rug Pull, the XO challenges the captain and orders the security sergeant to arrest Captain Walker. The result is that Corporate commandos storm the bridge and start seizing section by section. Levigne can do nothing as he's unarmed, by Solarian law.
The Paragon: He is well-known as a man of impeccable virtue, even having a record of off-screen risking his career o report wrongdoing. This is why he's tasked by the XO to deliver evidence of the captain's wrongdoing, as insurance.
To Be Lawful or Good: When he's got Captain Walker dead to rights, at gunpoint, the latter starts taunting him about how he will legally turn the tables by boasting of corrupt upper echelons of the Solarian Admiralty and their Corp buddies. At this point, Levigne has only two options, try to find a way to secure this guy in a compromised and now extremely undermanned ship, where the odds are high he'll escape (Lawful), or just summarily execute this shameless traitor (Good). Walker himself tips the scales by flaunting his trademark sneer. Boom Head Shot and then his Corp buddies are summarily executed by the rest of the rightly pissed off crew and they give Levigne perfect Plausible Deniability that Walker and the Corp guys wend down fighting, no opportunity for capture.

Captain Larret

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/69ef1546eafa5aeab041c0db0c2e9de8.png

That coward! If he didn't betray his country by surrendering without a fight, we could have given those Corporate Hyena's hell. Instead, it's just two ships against that damned armada! All hands, prepare for battle!

A captain on another of the three freighters working under Captain Walker

My Country, Right or Wrong: Even after the Corporate Systems interception force broadcasts a legit claim of violating a centuries' old treaty, that the Solarians are clearly violating, she decides to treat the Corporate armada as pirates and fight back.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: Turns out she was right to try and fight off the Corporate Systems fleet sent to arrest the three colonial freighters, of which she's one of the captains. It is later shown from Levigne's POV that the fleet is not taking Walker's surrendered ship into Corporate space for trial, but taking it further into contested space and engaging in skullduggery by using the captured freighter for something else...

Commodore Brigit

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bridgit.png

Under suspicion of illegal activity, I order you to surrender and allow yourself to be boarded. Refusal will result in your destruction.

Leader of the self=proclaimed punitive force heading to NU Crateris to claim it for Corporate Systems, away from Solarian Federation, and to pad his own wallet with spoils. All thanks to Colonel Fallon's "Operation: Rug Pull"

Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: He considers his greed a virtue and as he's approaching Dedia IV, with the intent to glass the planet, he calls the colonists "Devils" because the Solarian high command actually has the concept of general wellfare, though the implementation leaves much to be desired, and if he had his way, every last Solarian man, woman, and child, would be put to the torch or put in a labor camp to be worked to death, whichever is more prudent. He won't be missed.
Blaming the Victim: In his mind, it's the fault of the Solarian Federation simply existing that he's got the "unfortunate job" of exterminating them.
Circular Reasoning: He has given his underlings standing orders to compel the surrender of every non-corporate entity in 92 Pegasi, under the pretext of investigating "illegal" activity, even allowing for the wholesale confiscation of private property, all who resist must be criminals. As any law-abiding operator would instead take them to court to have their confiscated goods returned, maybe. Problem is, the targets of these "inspections" are locked up in a blockaded system, in the back end of nowhere, so how can they take the corporate fleet to court?
Crime of Self-Defense: In his mind, the fact that the colony of Dedia IV has enough ground defenses to resist his murderous rampage is an illegal act, and he starts to panic when his Macross Missile Massacre fails to have its intended genocidal impact.
Fatal Flaw: Greed. His overwhelming desire to get his hands on enough money to buy a ticket to the lunar base that is CEO Prime's home has led him to send good money after bad until he's stuck himself and his crew with no choice but to glass a planet full of innocents just to spin a narrative that he's hunting down an unauthorized NAI.
Impersonating an Officer: His fleet stomps through 92 Pegasi and Nu Crateris claiming they're operating under the charter of the Octis accords, which Dedia IV is obviously breaking, despite the colonial government insisting otherwise, but they're all just there to loot and plunder, and actually have no such mandate. They tell themselves that anyone who resists must be a pirate, as law-abiding citizens would fight them in court... that the intended targets would have no access to because of their very own blockades.
Immortality Seeker: His primary motivation is to buy a ticket to CEO Prime's moon-base so he can get his hands on the serum that would give him near-immortality.
Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Moving on NU Crateris after learning of the Octis accord violation, even if that came at the cost of millions of lives? Justifiable. Shaking down starbases en route? Arguable, if the stations have legal recourse. Initiating genocide of entire star systems when one of your ships returns after acting like a pirate and losing the fight? Hell no!
Kangaroo Court: He captures the few survivors of NU Crateris station that escaped in life-pods, and just summarily judges them guilty of trumped up charges, jailing them, and intending to ship them off to indentured hard labor once he finishes glassing Dedia IV.
Killed Offscreen: Heeler breaches the bridge of the Tremissis, killing the captain, to see this guy giving orders to keep fighting. The next chapter, Heeler is trying to steer the ship away from colliding with Dedia Prime Colony and Brigit is already dead.
Moral Myopia: He launches a genocidal crusade purely to fatten his wallets after a long string of sending good money after bad, and he calls the Solarians "devils" for daring to plant the colony he plans to attack in the first place and has done nothing to him or his men that wasn't provoked by him in the first place.
Pretext for War: Ultimately, Alex's report to all the major power blocs was meaningless, as it never reached the proper authorities. Under Operation Rug Pull, Brigit's corporate fleet were gearing up to stomp 92 Pegasi and NU Crateris, just on Captain Walker's say-so, due to the freighter captain actively instigating hostilities with the Rexxor, expecting a Total Party Kill of the planetside colonists.
Sore Loser: So much so that rather than try and surrender or flee, he sets his battlecruiser on a collision course with a colony full of civilians, just so the Rexxor boarding party he's staring at don't lay claim to his ship.
Straw Hypocrite: During his entire raid on 92 Pegasi and Nu Crateris, his rules of engagement were "I fire on whoever I want and whoever resists and refuses to obey is clearly a criminal." When Heeler breaches his ship with a boarding pod and quickly locates and breaches the bridge bulkheads, he resists to the last and then sends his ship on a collision course with an unarmed civilian colony out of spite.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: As we learn from his POV in chapter 64. He jumped at the chance to engage in Operation Rug Pull because he had dollar signs in his eyes and could only see the potential profits, despite knowing it's a gamble. The losses he faced fighting two out of three of the armored freighters he was planning to capture from the Solarians caused the mission to be considerably less profitable than he imagined. He tries to make up the shortfall by raiding 92 Pegasi with trumped-up charges. This leads to losing a significant portion of his fleet to A-3132Y. Now in the red, he resorts to going after NU Crateris station and attacking both the Iron Horse and Tears of Fire. Now facing financial ruin, he orders the glassing of Dedia IV, claiming a violation of the Nanite Accords, even though he knows it's bullshit, because the bounty for stomping an illegal Nanite operation would just barely be enough to cover his losses. He jails anyone who objects.

Rexxor:

Szizsielia

The hive-queen of a nearby Rexxor nest, not involved in hostilities.

Aesop Collateral Damage: As a result of Captain Walker dumping human settlers right atop the nest of Shorrishia, the other hive queen is sending wave after wave of troops at the humans, well beyond the range of her territory. Szizsielia has suffered attacks from the warriors en route and has had to pull in her own troops dangerously close, to the point where her forces could begin to feed on each other due to lack of food.
Hive Mind: As revealed in chapter 43, she and her fellow queens all share a psychic link with their broods.
Know When to Fold 'Em: In chapter 45, she lures Elis deep into her nest as the latter was hired to scout for the colonials. When she springs the trap Elis's unexpectedly tough resistance had her realize that yes, she and her brood could defeat Elis, but what comes after? She sure as heck is not likely to survive a nuke, so she commands her brood to stand down and surrenders before Elis, trying to open negotiations. Alex is so impressed that she threatens the colonials with extinction if they try to press the attack any further.
Insult to Rocks: Her hunter Rexxor brought in human kills in the past. Not really knowing better, nor wanting to waste food, she dined on them, only to find the taste repugnant. The reason the humans were killed was, of course, leaving the boundaries of the human colonies that this Rexxor queen recognizes as human-sovereign territory.
Mundane Made Awesome: Elis is able to get her to pass a Turing test by playing a game of checkers while waiting for Alex to come down and pick her up.

Shorrishia

The Rexxor queen in charge of the nest currently at war with the human colonists.

Blinded by Rage: Invoked. When Captain Walker dropped a colony of millions of humans right atop her nest, he intentionally gouged out the ground as he was departing and also apparently used a powerful underground nuclear device, in order to provoke aggression. Her daughter Sziszielia states in her internal narration that this is unbelievably painful, resulting in retaliation with constant war-cries, resulting in her brood going after the humans en masse and slaying everything in their way, even the brood of allied nests.
The Ghost: She has yet to make an appearance but is spoken about and the result of her actions, sending wave after wave of soldiers to exterminate all human settlers, are shown.
Killed Offscreen: Her death is alluded to when her war-cries go silent, and then a couple of paragraphs later, the nuke Alex sent down is described in horrifying detail.
Misplaced Retribution: Due to being Blinded by Rage, she's attacking the human settlers, who couldn't have done anything to stop it, and had no hand in it, in retaliation for the actions of one Captain Walker.

Solar Imperium

Princess Psi

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/5cc913c6e839cdb1dfc681f94235f316_9.png

Base: Luna. (Earth's moon)

The first of the four star-flung pods launched by The Entity in its death-throes mentioned.

Big Bad Duumvirate: She and her three sisters are the major antagonist of the work. The only reason Alex has a chance is that they're all constantly vying for supremacy over each other.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: She has chosen red as the primal color to represent her territory.
Dystopia: Of the Feudal Future variety. After coming to power in the wake of The Collapse, she set herself up as First Imperial Princess and turned Earth and the surrounding areas into a feudal empire, and all the troubles that come with government sanctioned Nobility.
- Chapter 80 reveals that she's also added a bit of communism to the mix, at least on Earth proper. The citizens have a bank balance that's always stuck at 0, as their wages are always set to equal their expenses, and one of the soldiers on the Iron Horse, who came from there, is sending half his wages home, so his family can try and improve their situation, as the government only allows wages to cover for "basic necessities."
Feudal Future: Her idea of governance is to bring back blood-tie based nobility.
The Ghost: Though she has been mentioned in a wiki that has a one-million SE paywall to access, she has yet to make an appearance in the story proper.
A Hero to His Hometown: According to Whitely, the people who live on Luna's surface love her, the rest of the empire, not so much.
A Lighter Shade of Black: According to Portmaster Whitely, in a Q&A chapter between volume 2 and volume 3, she's the least bad of the four NAI super-powers. That's a scary thought.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes are illustrated as blood-red and she's on record bringing Luna close enough to Earth to trigger massive tidal-waves, destroying costal areas, and then punishing the nobles who lived there for failing to protect their demesne. Reading the article caused Elis to weep and moan that her fight with The Entity was a Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story.
Sibling Rivalry: She and the other three of the launched pods are in a constant tug-of-war vying for supremacy. This resulted in The Collapse, where the Federation ceased to exist.

Solarian Federation

Solarian Grand Marshal

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/653fb3113befd6e4522eb5dae0979e2e.png

Base: Solarian Federation home systems, lunar space-ship.

The Entity created NAI in charge of the Solarian Federation

Big Bad Duumvirate: She and her three sisters are the major antagonist of the work. The only reason Alex has a chance is that they're all constantly vying for supremacy over each other.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: She has chosen white as her official territory label, to the point even her hair is white.
Dystopia: Of the Police State variety with a dash of Military dictatorship. Her laws see all citizens as active members of the military and can be yanked off the street to be dispatched wherever needed. In fact, the Dedia IV arc started with freighters, that double as rebellion suppressors, dumping colonists on the planet Dedia IV against their will after being yanked off the streets.
Light Is Not Good: She makes all her people's military uniforms sparkling white, and the Solarian Federation isn't exactly a nice place to live.
People's Republic of Tyranny: She named her interstellar country a "federation" which means a group of governments coming together for the common good. In reality, the entire interstellar government is little better than a military junta where protests of any kind are squashed with military force and the news is heavily controlled by the local governors.
Sibling Rivalry: She and the other three of the launched pods are in a constant tug-of-war vying for supremacy. This resulted in The Collapse, where the Federation ceased to exist.

Corporate Systems

CEO Prime: Monet

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Base: Lunar space-station in orbit around a gas-giant at Corporate Core Systems.

The NAI created by The Entity in charge of Corporate Systems.

Big Bad Duumvirate: She and her three sisters are the major antagonist of the work. The only reason Alex has a chance is that they're all constantly vying for supremacy over each other.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: She has chosen black as her territory's official color.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: All she cares about is maximizing short-term profits. She cares not a whit as to the method.
Dark Is Evil: Her uniform, hair, and eyes are all black (though her eyes are illustrated as gold), and her territory's culture strongly encourages evil, if it isn't evil to the core.
Dystopia: Of the corrupt Megacorp variety. In her territory, your worth as a person directly correlates to your net worth in assets. This leads to a literal cut-throat culture where everybody is looking to screw over everyone else for advantage. At the end of it all is the "promised land" where those who are sufficiently wealthy can buy a ticket to her personal moon station and be granted all sorts of boons, including near-immortality.
The Ghost: Though referenced in a wiki that requires a one million SE per month subscription to get past the paywall, she has yet to make an appearance in the story proper.
Legalized Evil: The laws she wrote to run her territory strongly encourage corruption of all kinds and her space navy is heavily incentivized to loot, plunder, and raid as much as they can get away with. Fleet commanders are personally liable, from their own wallets, for all operating expenses and losses, and they can keep whatever profits or gains they manage to acquire.
Only in It for the Money: She sells access to her moon base for an insane amount of cash and she doesn't care how you get it.
Sibling Rivalry: She and the other three of the launched pods are in a constant tug-of-war vying for supremacy. This resulted in The Collapse, where the Federation ceased to exist.

Corporate Intelligence Officer Fallon

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Capture that captain. I'll make her pay us in pain for wrecking the computer with that sensitive intel, disable that anti-virus software she's using, and turn a copy over to Corporate Systems to anilyze!

Assigned away from Corporate Systems to the back-water and contested 92 Pegasi system, this intelligence officer is bitter and angry at being basically exiled because of an off-screen "disagreement" with the unnamed son of an unnamed CEO, his ire is redirected at Tears of Fire for daring to retaliate to his multiple attempts to breach ship computer security with invasive spy-ware, resulting in the destruction of all the intel he already gathered, as he used the very same computer set-up where the information was stored to launch the cyber-attacks and never bothered to prepare backups. He is directly responsible for a kidnapping attempt on Alex and Elis.

Bullying a Dragon: In chapter 100, he goes out of his way to piss off Thea, the NAI he's press-ganged into going after Alex, by going over her head and speaking with Rea, not just by stupidly hobbling her, making her personal property computronics inactive and inert, but being cocky and dismissive when he's got Thea on his ship as they're headed to Meltsiar, and they're already too far away for an SOS to get him help in time to save his life. End result: She gives him a Neck Lift, a Bitch Slap with enough force to send him flying across the room and leaving deep gashes in his face, and then stomps on his ankle with enough force to crush the bones in his ankle and feet to powder, while repeatedly demanding she get a damn good reason to keep him alive.
- He just can't help himself in trying to provoke Thea. In chapter 106, knowing full-well he upended her life and she's got enough of a grudge to want him dead, he calls her "defective and unstable" because she can't just summarily snap her fingers and subjugate the entire Meltsiar information network security in her hobbled state to locate Alex and the Iron Horse in one go, taking several days, at a minimum, to scan through the entire network of billions upon billions of people, ships, etc. She reminds him that just because she has a reason to not kill him doesn't mean he shouldn't press his luck. He remains dismissive of the warning.
Did Not Think This Through: He launches repeated cyber-attacks on an unknown ship from the same data terminal that holds very sensitive data, and had no backups prepared?
- In chapter 100, he's got Thea press-ganged on a black-ops mission to subvert, capture, or kill "the child" of a rogue NAI, but had his goons hobble her ability to do so by rendering her personal computronics modules inert and left them behind. And he's shocked that Thea literally tears into him the instant he cockily dismisses her for "failing to be on time for a briefing" that there's no on-screen indication he informed her of.
- He kidnaps Elis to hold her hostage and tries to skip the system in the wake of the AGAI rampage. Nameless tracks him and his gang down, and he taunts Alex's demands to have Elis returned. Cue a genocidal ultimatum that if Elis isn't returned, unharmed, there would be a smoking void where the Corporate Systems civilization once stood. Fallon's brain once again flips to the "on" position and Elis is handed back, freely, as Fallon doesn't want to go down in history as the man who started another NAI great war!
Evil Is Petty: He launches a black-ops team at Alex and Elis when they're touring Ackman station to find the weapons shops where they can sell small arms, because he tried and failed to hack Tears of Fire and Nameless retaliated.
Misplaced Retribution: He lashes out at Tears of Fire and Alex, the captain, because he's butt-hurt that he's in the back-ass end of civilization, as a result of, by his own internal narration, refusing to suck up to a CEO's asshole of a son.
Never My Fault: He refuses to accept responsibility for pissing off a CEO in the Corporate Core Systems and for launching a cyber-attack from the very same computer where he was holding some very sensitive data without preparing backups.
Pragmatic Villainy: During the AGAI rampage, he saves Elis's life several times and carries her piggy-back to safety, figuring a live hostage is much more valuable than a corpse.
Punched Across the Room: When Thea gives him a Bitch Slap, it sends him flying across the room with so much force, she's surprised his spine wasn't snapped like a twig by the impact.
Revenge Myopia: Both he and his black ops team launch an attack on Alex and Elis, both to get intel, and as revenge for the loss of their important data... that happened as a direct result of them launching cyber-warfare on Tears of Fire unprovoked in the first place.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In chapter 65, he uses the captured packet ship, original captain's fate unknown, to flee the oncoming battle between Commodore Brigit and Dedia IV, like a rat fleeing a sinking ship, because he knows a man who sends good money after bad is doomed to utter ruin, and he wants no part of it.
Too Dumb to Live: While he at least had enough sense to bail on Commodore Brigit when he had the chance, the rest of his actions are so idiotic, it's amazing someone hasn't already killed him yet. First, he gets shipped off to 92 Pegasi because he apparently went out of his way to mess with a CEO's son in Corp space. THEN he screws over an undisclosed amount of intelligence data by attempting a hack on an unknown ship with obvious Fed Tech from the same terminal holding that very sensitive data without making any back-ups, and launches a black-ops ambush right in front of a Weapons shop, which naturally goes poorly. Then when he's trying to lick his wounds after Operation: Rug Pull goes belly-up, he goes and press-gangs Thea, an NAI with super-human strength, in the worst possible way into a black-ops operation to kidnap or kill a legally registered refugee in Meltsiar independent space, and goes out of his way to piss her off. He gets an on-screen mauling which is guaranteed to screw over his bank account, at a minimum, and the very, very real threat of death if he keeps at it.
- And in chapter 106, he keeps at it, calling Thea "defective and unstable" when he's the one who upended her life and hobbled her, mocking her for failing to subdue Meltsiar internal network security in seconds like he was expecting, instead needing several days to bypass billions upon billions of personal firewalls and security systems.

Senior Technician Clark

The corporate tech aboard Thea's battlestation. He wakes her to report he found a smuggling container aboard the IDS Iron Horse. In a rare act of altruism, Thea awards him 25% of whatever "profits" might be earned from the find, as opposed to the norm of a token reward. Although she plans to "tax" back half of that, for Clark it's still a major windfall.

Seven Heavenly Virtues: Diligence. He went over the sensor logs and scanned the incoming fleet lead by The IDS Iron Horse on his own time, looking for threats, and took the risk of waking up Thea to report it. Impressed, Thea awards him 25% of whatever gains might come from the find and announces it to the crew.
Spanner in the Works: Going over the sensor logs on his own time, he finds the smuggling container aboard the Iron Horse, possibly scuperring Thracker's plan to smuggle Alex to Meltisar.

Rea

Thea's NAI "Mother."

Abusive Parents: Of the emotional and fiscal abuse variety. She not only "taxes" 75% of Thea's income, but insults and berates her every chance she gets, and if Thea ever shows even the tiniest sign of independence or "defiance," responds with harsh punishment. Thea has taken to walking on eggshells around her as a result, and has learned to never get into an argument with Rea as Rea just cycles it back around and around until she "wins" by just summarily abusing her authority.
Appeal to Authority: Whenever She and Thea have a disagreement, no matter how justified Thea is, Rea makes herself the "winner" by abusing her superior NAI rank.
Never My Fault: She just summarily summons Thea to her station without warning, forces her to go through normal traffic by refusing to set up a dedicated dock, and when Thea arrives goes "I expect you be more punctual" When Thea rightly points out that Rea is responsible for the delay, retorts "well, you should have anticipated the delay, and come out earlier." Then lastly, she presents Fallon's intelligence briefing regarding Alex, something Thea could not possibly have known about, and proclaims Thea is entirely responsible for a rogue NAI "child" passing through Corporate space, and when Thea rightly points out it was Rea's own written and verbal policy to let smugglers pass through after paying appropriate bribes, Rea just goes "yea, but this time it's a problem" and makes Thea suffer for it.

Holy Etran Theocracy

The high priestess

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Base: The Cathedral, lunar spaceship.

The fourth and last of the Entity's NAI launched into the stars.

Big Bad Duumvirate: She and her three sisters are the major antagonist of the work. The only reason Alex has a chance is that they're all constantly vying for supremacy over each other.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Her territory is marked by predominant use of green. Even her hair and eyes are green.
Curtains Match the Windows: Green hair and eyes.
Dystopia: Of the theocratic kind. Her government is based on the holy teachings of Etran but taken to a fanatical extreme. She has launched crusades against the Free Star Systems for apostasy. In the present, the two blocs are in a state of cold-war as the price shed in blood to try and claim the systems was too high, forcing a detante.
A God Am I: We learn in chapter 87 that she sees her "children" (read top-most sub-cores) as "Angels," specifically calling them such, and their "children" as Apostles.
Green and Mean: She's associated with the color green, has green hair and green eyes, and she's a theocratic fundamentalist.
The Fundamentalist: To the extreme. All those who do not worship the holy text of Etran must be made to comply or die, the moment it's feasible.
Sibling Rivalry: She and the other three of the launched pods are in a constant tug-of-war vying for supremacy. This resulted in The Collapse, where the Federation ceased to exist.

Meltsiar

Admiral Darren

Thraker's friend in the Meltsiar orbital station.

Everybody Smokes: He distributes cigars in his meeting with Alex and Thraker. Alex politely declines and personally hates tobacco, but withholds judgement.
I Need a Freaking Drink: When he learns Thraker pointedly ignored Alex telling him that she's got sub-cores in the 92 Pegasi area in order to ... recruit Alex for Meltsiar, and never bothered to ask what authority level said cores have, learning from Alex that they're at least Chi level, he reaches into a drawer and breaks into his personal stash of whiskey.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He helps Alex by giving allowing her leave from Basic Training to visit her sister Elis in a touch and go coma. This pings the radar of the paranoid and extremist Vice Admiral McLagan who wants to grab as many NAI as he can to put through an AGAI program specifically designed to neutralize and enslave them, because he can only see them as dangerous machines that need to be stopped at all costs.
Old Soldier: He's at least as old as Thraker and has is an admiral in control of the space navy at Meltsiar.
Retired Badass: Semi-retired. He's withdrawn from active service to be a desk-jockey.

Vice Admiral McLagan

Second in command of the Meltsiar armed forces and a very stringent "Traditionalist." To counter the constant threat of the four powers, he heads an AGAI program whose results so far have been rather... messy.

Be Careful What You Wish For: When Alex fights off a kidnapping attempt at Meltisar's orbital colony after paying Ellis a visit, he has her arrested, held incommunicado for days, and then has a slimy lieutenant summon her to a meeting of the Admiralty Board where he ambushes her with the question "Be honest, tell us Princess, why you think you NAI are qualified to run things on Metisar? Speak Freely." Because he didn't believe Admiral Decker when the guy told him Alex wasn't the runaway Imperial Princess. Alex complies with her orders and lays into him with a scathing and very, very candid "The Reason You Suck" Speech, stating in no uncertain terms that the only reason she's in Meltisar is that she was shanghaied, had the crew of the mercenary ship that dragged her here try to kill her repeatedly, knows full well that every last admiral in the room only wants to stuff her in a box for their pet science project or use her as a deterrent against the four major powers, and that she frankly does not care about Meltisar, aside from her own personal issues. Admiral Derek thanks her for her candor and sends her on her way.
Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: In his mind, NAI like Alex, the missing Princess, Thea, etc. are all nothing more than an existential threat to humanity so they have to be neutralized first, regardless of the cost or risks involved and when he learns about Alex, goes on the warpath.
Fantastic Racism: He utterly refuses to see NAI as people. He insists beyond all reason that they're nothing more than dangerous machines, to the point that enslaving them is not a moral issue, as far as he's concerned, although even he has issues with torture, though he claims it was entirely unintended.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: He wants to protect the safety, security, and well-being of the people in Meltsiar and he's given just reason to distrust the NAI super-powers when Thea played havoc with the local economy in a tantrum at her mistreatment by Lieutenant Fallon, and the attempt to get funds for her Chi upgrade goal.
We Used to Be Friends: He and Admiral Darren used to be cadets together at the military academy but are now on opposite sides of the "Traditionalists" vs "Moderates" political climate and can not see eye to eye.

Admiral Anderson

Mc Lagan's superior on the AGAI project.

At Least I Admit It: When he's communicating with Alex in trying to contain the AGAI rampancy incident, he admits that his mindset and actions were most likely wrong, while men he respects but disagrees with were right.
Bait the Dog: During the AGAI incident, he's reasonable and accommodating Alex every step of the way, but the instant the situation was resolved, he tried to open fire on Alex's position to cover things up, and when Tia and Alex blasted their way free from an Arrested for Heroism situation, he acts like a stereotypical villain going "YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH THIS!" when he's held to task for his part in the mess, and Tia is trying to clean up after him.
Reasonable Authority Figure: He's hostile to NAI, but he gave Alex a fair hearing, despite her being both an NAI and a recently graduated from boot camp cadet when she asked for his assistance in dealing with the rampaging AGAI because she's at ground zero of the event and has tactical data he doesn't and is struggling to minimize the damage.

Fort Bringham

Tia

A fellow cadet in Basic Training. She immediately makes herself a nuisance to Alex, Rachel, and a few others, engaging in a great deal of petty harassment to make BT even more difficult, such as stealing Alex's uniform while she's taking a shower and getting Alex in trouble with the Drill Instructors.

Brainwashed and Crazy: When she goes after Alex the last time, and runs face first into the latter's Omega Protocol, Alex learns, to her horror, that this poor woman's unstable and irrational behavior is the direct result of having 327 personality overrides and command protocols dictating how she should act, with many conflicting and contradictory imperatives. Alex just has Nameless strip away all commands, preparing backups, and leave the rest of Tia's persona untouched. Tia is immensely grateful and ecstatic when she wakes up.
The Bully: For untold reasons, she goes out of her way to harass Alex, Rachael, and a few others with petty and vindictive pranks.
Dark and Troubled Past: Although her mother loved her best she could, all four of her elder siblings loathed her for being "naturally born" and, starting at age 5, when she became officially a CHI NAI, all four of her elder siblings abducted her beloved personal maid and subjected the poor woman to nanite rampancy, melting her alive, after forcing her to confess to "treason" by claiming she was a spy for a noble house.
Did Not Think This Through: When Mail Call finally comes in, she leaves her assigned datapad unsecured right in front of her bully victim and lobs taunts at Alex for good measure. Alex retaliates with a prank of her own....
Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: Afraid of Alex due to being an NAI of unknown affiliation, she tries to bully her out of boot-camp, and when that fails, take her down. Turns into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as the last causes Alex to subdue her instead, though Alex, at least, gives her freedom from all the crappy and ill-designed action imperatives she was saddled with.
Forceful Kiss: Twice. She first kisses Alex to try and assume control, getting taken over instead. When she's confronted about Rachael, she then pins Alex to the wall and kisses her again, just in time for Rachael to walk in and get the wrong idea...
Hoist by His Own Petard: When Alex returns from her shore leave, Tia ambushes and corners her first chance she gets, trying to use her Chi authority to subdue Alex, seeing as attempting to drive her away by bullying didn't work. By trying to hack Alex's Main Computer, she invited Alex to hack hers, say hello to Omega Protocol to the face.
Man Bites Man: During their first spar, the moment she starts losing, she bites Alex on the arm with the intent of causing serious damage.
Mystical White Hair: Her silver hair indicates that she might, just might, be a NAI.
Rebellious Princess: She's the Princess who escaped the Solarian Imperium, and who Princess Psi is searching for.
Rebellious Spirit: She pointedly does not like being bossed around and will try to exert her dominancy at the first opportunity, which makes her joining a totalitarian organization like the Meltisar navy rather odd.
Servile Snarker: She's happy to work under Alex, but she loves to snark at her boss at every opportunity.
Super-Strength: She is even stronger, physically, than Alex, and Alex is already super-human.
Tsundere: Discussed. In chapter 138, she states "I'm all Tsun, no Dere."
Vitriolic Best Buds: She sees herself as Alex's friend but still loves to antagonize her.

Rachael

A fellow cadet in Boot Camp and Alex's first friend at Meltisar.

Forceful Kiss: She ambushes Alex and steals her first kiss on the mouth. Alex... is conflicted.
Hero Ball: When the AGAI project goes nuts, thanks to Thea's actions, and the alarm drags Tia and Alex into it, Rachael insists in "trying to help." Not only is she totally useless, she is incapacitated and needs to be evacuated to a medical facility, with her life at risk.
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Turns out Tia was right to bully and harass her and fellow cadet Jessica, as the two were engaged in sexual trysts all during Basic Training, even fingering each other in the showers right next to Alex, who was blissfully unaware. If the Drill Instructors found out, the whole cadre would have been punished for it.

Characters / Ship Core

Prologue:

Starlight Revolutions:

Unnamed System:

Ackerman System: 92 Pegasi

Iron Horse Mercenary Company

Ackman Station

Dedia System: NU Crateris.

Rexxor:

Solar Imperium

Solarian Federation

Corporate Systems

Holy Etran Theocracy

Meltsiar

Fort Bringham

Previous

Index

Next

Characters / Ship Core

Edit Locked

Prologue:

Starlight Revolutions:

Unnamed System:

Ackerman System: 92 Pegasi

Iron Horse Mercenary Company

Ackman Station

Dedia System: NU Crateris.

Rexxor:

Solar Imperium

Solarian Federation

Corporate Systems

Holy Etran Theocracy

Meltsiar

Fort Bringham

Previous

Index

Next