Back to The Lost Fleet Character Index
Leadership
The Executive Council
- Bad Boss: Both councils tend to order executions, Suicide Mission's and other indignities at the drop of a hat. The first council was willing to destroy their own capital system and its people in order to wipe out the Alliance fleet and avoid suffering a humiliating defeat on their home turf. This did not go over well with the crews of their escape ships (whose families they were leaving behind to die with everyone else) once they found out.
- Big Bad: They run the Syndicate Worlds and are responsible for its ruthless, shortsighted, and cold-blooded policies.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Bribes, kickbacks, assassinations, and general backstabbing are all part of the package for becoming a senior CEO in the Syndicate Worlds.
- Cutting Corners: The Lost Stars reveals that they're so cheap that they don't even allow the budget for their ships to have enough escape pods to evacuate everyone, reasoning that whenever it's time to abandon ship, either enough of the crew will already be dead that they won't need that many escape pods, or the crew deserves to be punished for abandoning ship when they could still fight.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The original Executive Council try to wipe out everyone in their capital system while they escape with enough resources to rebuild. When their plan is exposed, they lose the loyalty of their navy and get caught in a Mêlée à Trois where everyone wants them dead.
- Redeeming Replacement: Subverted, as Rione notes, the second Executive Council is likely to be just as self-interested and ruthless, given their high ranks, and the sequel series confirms that they are ruthlessly clinging to their power but they are willing to agree to a truce with the Alliance and show limited personal bravery in the face of a potential hypernet gate collapse.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The second Council only has one brief scene in the whole series, the first council never physically appears at all, and anyone who was on the Council at the start of the war is long dead, but their actions drive quite a bit of the story, in an almost exclusively negative fashion.
- We Have Reserves: Both Councils are willing to sacrifice whole fleets in attempts to crush those who stand in their way.
CEOs
CEO First Rank Shalin
- No Name Given: Until Victorious, he was just described as the commander who led the ambush in the first book.
- Promotion, Not Punishment: Even though he let Geary's fleet escape, he was promoted to maintain the illusion that he'd defeated them, although Rione suspects he suffered quite a bit of punishment behind the scenes.
- Smug Snake: He revels in his apparent victory in the first book, but is easily outmaneuvered by Geary. He hasn't lost any of his smugness by the time he reappears in Victorious.
- The Sociopath: A cruel man who seems to lack an understanding of decency.
- The Starscream: As soon as it occurs to Shalin that he has control of the only remaining fleet in the Syndicate Worlds, he immediately starts gunning for the Executive Council in an effort to seize power for himself.
CEO "Happy" Hua Boucher
- Faux Affably Evil: A grandmotherly figure who delights in ordering mass bombings, and butchers thousands if not millions of innocents casually.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her bloodthirsty actions to put down planetary rebellions actually make more people defect to Midway and their allies.
CEO Gawzi
The leader of the Simur Star System.
- Cannon Fodder: The Syndics are prepared to sacrifice her and her entire planet to try and hurt the Alliance fleet.
- Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Shows heavy unease and terror about what she is being used to do, and then stops appearing in communications (with the Syndic internal security forces trying to fool Geary with an avatar of her) leading to speculation that she either suffered a nervous breakdown or was executed for trying to stop the snakes.
- Impoverished Patrician: She's a CEO, but she's in charge of an expendable, unproductive star system, and Geary notes that her uniform looks like it should have been replaced a while ago, but she probably couldn't afford that luxury.
CEO Yamada
Head of the Indras star system.
- Decapitation Strike: He apparently falls victim to one. The second time Geary visit Indras (just days after the first time they went through), its under attack by the dark ships, vital targets all over the system have been destroyed and the angry and frightened CEO who contacts them and is running things is not Yamada.
- Fat Bastard: A smug man with a wide girth who is abetting efforts to illegally continue the war.
- Hypocrite: Protests the Alliance passing through his system as a sign of aggression even as he allows all kinds of covert activity aimed at the Alliance to go on in Indras.
- Soldiers at the Rear: The Indras Star system is deep enough in Syndicate space that it has never had to worry about an Alliance attack before.
CEO Niko Cafiro
A captured officer in the flotilla Geary battles at Cavalos.
- Anti-Villain: He's a CEO, but one who accepts that the war is being lost and is willing to give Geary tacit advice on how to end it (especially once he thinks there may be something in it for him).
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: His first appearance ends with the implication that he might be a tenuous ally to the Alliance in the future, but he never appears again afterwards.
- Everyone Has Standards: He argued for the CEO defending Lakota to be told about what destroying a hypernet gate might mean. He was overruled, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, died as a result in the collapse, something which clearly distresses him.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Although he lacks an official capacity to enact policy decisions, he does acknowledge that the war is lost, and show some interest in negotiating with Geary, once the current executive council is gone.
- Number Two: He was the second in command of his task force, and its highest ranking survivor.
- Oh, Crap!: He's not exactly smug and confident in the first place, but does seem to have some sense of hope that Geary's fleet can be stopped until Geary describes just how easy it will be for him to get home from there.
- Rage Breaking Point: Flies into a brief rant when Geary reminds him of how the attempt to trap the Alliance fleet at Prime failed. Cafiro protests that it wasn't his plan, but Geary counters that he would have certainly seen it as a sure thing and gotten onboard with it.
- Secret-Keeper: He has some knowledge of the enigma race, but knows to keep his mouth shut about it around both the Alliance and presumably his own people. It's also implied that he knew about the reserve flotilla that shows up in the next book.
- We Can Rule Together: Somewhat reluctantly, Geary implies that the Alliance might be willing to support him in a position of leadership if he stirs up discontent in the Syndicate Worlds, an offer which intrigues Cafiro.
- We Have Reserves: While he never actually says anything to this effect, Geary notes that he never once asks about the fate of his captured subordinates, and holds some resentment towards him for it.
The CEO of Cavalos
One of the first CEOs to receive a sympathetic portrayal, and the sister of a mining town mayor from a neighboring system.
- Cool Old Lady: An older woman who's very disenchanted with the war and the Syndicate government and is willing to display the proper gratitude for the life of her brother.
- No Name Given: Her actual name is unmentioned.
- Real Men Love Jesus: She believes in the living stars, despite their ban under the Syndicate government, and admits to thinking that maybe they really did send Geary to save her family from death, and her system from tyranny.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She provides covert aid to the fleet in exchange for having saved her brother and his family from Wendig.
- This Is Unforgivable!: A corporation within the Syndicate Worlds government abandoned her brother and his family on a mining town that ran out of resources simply because they deemed it too expensive to relocate them elsewhere (while telling their families that they'd died), and they would have eventually died if Geary's fleet hadn't given them a lift into Cavalos. When she finds out, she is not happy and sends the fleet information which will benefit their trip home out of gratitude, and to get revenge.
CEO Third Rank Frederika Nalis
The commander of the Syndic forces during the battle of Grendel.
- Blatant Lies: Claims to be on a diplomatic mission authorized by the Alliance government upon first being spotted by Geary.
- General Failure: She gets most, if not all of her force destroyed or badly damaged by a single heavy cruiser before even making it to the system she was trying to attack. Granted, she was going up against Geary, but that was at a time when the tactical skills of the average commander on both sides hadn't deteriorated yet.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her actions lead to Geary becoming a Human Popsicle, and emerging to win the war a century later.
- Technically a Smile: Geary describes her as having "the usual perfectly done hair, perfectly fitted uniform, and perfectly insincere smile" for a Syndic CEO.
- Uncertain Doom: Right before abandoning the Merlon via escape pod, Geary tries to destroy Nalis and her surviving ships by rigging his power core to overload as her ships approach, but it is unclear as to whether he succeeded or not. Either way, she would be dead of something by the time of the main series.
CEO Grandon
Commander of the forces seen attacking Kane in the last two Corsair issues and Boundless.
- Bad Boss: His bridge crew clearly live in terror of him, he rebukes them for offering him useful but irritating information, and he threatens to demote the head of his understaffed ground forces detachment to a common soldier and send him on dangerous patrols if he doesn't achieve more results.
- Beard of Evil: He has a small, but prominent goatee on his chin and is a petty-minded Bad Boss who gleefully bombs civilian settlements.
- Evil Is Petty: Vents his frustration on Wake by bombing the transmission site even after being told it was a relay station and not a genuine target.
- I Have Your Wife: Keeps the families of his soldiers hostage and makes it clear that their lives will be forfeit in the event anyone fails or defies him.
- Light Is Not Good: Grandon wears a white suit and might be the most evil character in the comic, being a Smug Snake who relishes slaughtering enemies and abusing his subordinates.
- No Name Given: He isn't called anything besides "Honored CEO" until Boundless.
- Rage Breaking Point: Loses his smile and has spit flying from his mouth after Wake states she won't surrender looks forward to killing his people until they get fed up enough to shove him out an airlock.
- Slasher Smile: When he smiles he looks utterly terrifying, and he probably knows it.
- Smug Snake: He's utterly confident in his ability to subject Kane despite their alliance with Midway and its formidable forces.
- To the Pain: Promises Wake that if she puts up a fight, "by the time I get done with you, you'll wish you'd already died".
The CEO of Corvus
Commander of the Syndicate forces in the first system the Alliance fleet passes through during their retreat.
- Bad Boss: He orders his ships (all three of them) to fight a hopeless battle against Geary's entire fleet simply due to his obsession with the rules.
- No Name Given: He never volunteers his name and Geary never asks.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: His response to demands for surrender is to recite a lot of Syndic regulations about defending military installations.Rione: He lives to enforce the rules regardless of whether those rules make sense.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Corvus is not a prestigious system, and his station there does not indicate status or trust.
- Uncertain Doom: After a while he stops talking to the fleet, leaving Geary to wonder if he died in their bombardments or is just hunkering down.
CEO Clovis
A Syndicate Mobile Forces commander who clashes with Geary and Aragon in two Corsair issues.
- Bad Boss: Bullies around her workers and starts shooting them when they want to abandon ship. This doesn't end well for her.
- General Failure: Acts stupidly against Michael and makes her ship a sitting duck while angrily shutting down any crewmen trying to warn her that her maneuvers are risky.
- Leave No Survivors: She has no intention of sparing any of the mutineers, Stating that if they try to fight her, then they'll die slowly, and if they surrender, they'll die quickly.
- No Name Given: Her name is unknown until Rendezvous at Corsair.
- Skewed Priorities: She seems to care more that the revolting workers took what was meant to be her flagship than about the escape and mutiny itself.
CEO Paulson
The commander of Indras in Boundless.
- The Chessmaster: He's a ruthless, strategic leader who passes up a chance to attack a smaller formation of ships due to suspecting that they're The Bait. Later, he nearly tricks Geary into going through a minefield while Geary is taking evasive action.
The CEO at Kaliban
Commander of the flotilla Geary destroys in the battle of Kalliban.
- Abandon Ship: Unlike many subsequent commanders Geary faces, he survives their battle in an escape pod.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He is utterly baffled by Geary's following the laws of war, and giving him and his men advice on reaching safety rather than killing them. To be fair though, this is less of a reflection on how the CEO thinks than it is about how everyone thinks after a century of war, and he does seem somewhat relieved by this act of mercy.
- General Failure: He isn't used to Geary's style of fighting, and when downplaying his own accomplishments at Kaliban, Geary notes that the man made plenty of mistakes.
- No Name Given: He remains unnamed.
- Punch-Clock Villain: He doesn't display the typical arrogance or cruelty of a Syndic CEO during his brief appearance, though that's probably because he's in a state of shock.
- Villainous BSoD: After losing a Curb-Stomp Battle to Geary, expecting to have his escape pods destroyed, and perhaps facing a You Have Failed Me treatment from his superiors if he does survive, he looks pale and frazzled throughout Geary's brief conversation with him.
CEO Fourth Rank Kolani
The last loyalist flotilla commander of Midway, who remains loyal to the Syndics and dies for it.
- I Have Your Wife: It is implied that part of the reason she fights so hard is to avoid reprisals against her family.
- The Neidermeyer: A lot of captains she harshly dressed down flock to Iceni, although Iceni later reflects that at least one probably deserved it.
- Nerves of Steel: Kolani acts brave and controlled while defending Midway from the undefeated Enigma warships.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She resents Geary during the first time the Enigmas attacked Midway, although both are committed to defending the system.
- You Are in Command Now: She is a relatively junior CEO in the flotilla but is the one left in charge of what didn't go off to fight the Alliance.
Supreme CEO Harris
A Snake CEO near the Midway System who apparently becomes a power-hungry warlord.
- Dirty Coward: Harris tries to run away as soon as his army starts losing the battle of Ulindi.
- Lack of Empathy: Harris orders many mass executions and bombings while never sparing a moment's thought for anyone's misfortune besides his own.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: His biggest skill is being a sycophant to power-movers, leaving him frustrated when posing as an independent player cuts him off from the chain of command and any opportunity to ingratiate himself to others.
- Puppet King: Harris seemingly becomes an independent warlord but really maintains little control over the planet and is serving as The Bait to lure Midway into a trap.
CEO Sara Okimoto Gardonyi
- "Ass" in Ambassador: She is sent to negotiate technology transfers with the Dancers and ends up threatening anyone else she finds independently negotiating with them before becoming unhinged enough to open fire at the very aliens she was sent to deal with.
- Bad Boss: She orders rampant executions of people her Sanity Slippage makes her suspicious of and blows up one of her own disabled ships for refusing to follow orders to rejoin formation when the ship is physically incapable of following such orders.
- Pet the Dog: After announcing her intention to kill Geary due to her belief that he is sabotaging her ship with radio waves, she says she will spare any of his sailors who surrender and are found to be "misled minions" after interrogation.
- Sanity Slippage: She is introduced after having spent a month in jump space and suffering from paranoid delusions, such as smugly gloating about how her State Sec agents detected the imposters Geary planted among their midst and sacrificed themselves to kill those people (which any sane outsider can tell really means that her security troops wiped each other out due to delusions that Gardonyi supports). It's speculated that this is merely her regular personality being amped up to eleven.
Other Military Personal
The Ravanna Sub-Executive
The deputy warden of an Internal Security Detention facility, who clashes with Michael Geary and Executive Aragon
- Armchair Military: He remains observing a battle in a heavily fortified office while sending out every one of his guards to fight.
- Bad Boss: His men charge to almost certain death in defense of the facility due to knowing that he'll kill them anyway if they don't.
- Evil Gloating: He takes pleasure in telling Aragon that her actions could get her family and the families of her men executed once their treason is known.
- No Name Given: Like most Snakes in the franchise, his name is never revealed, even in Rendezvous at Corsair.
- Sadist: Aragon is furious to find out that he was happily watching a video of her unit's families being sent to the frontlines and emptying her sidearm into him.
- Wardens Are Evil: He takes pleasure in sending his prisoners off on Suicide Mission's along with their families.
General Service Sailor Rank Seven Gyal Barada
A captured Syndicate sailor interrogated by Geary after the battle of Sancere.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Played with. She initially seems to be a true believer in the Syndicate system, but Geary starts to wonder if she's just mechanically repeating the Syndic propaganda as a Survival Mantra, given how easy it is to wind up in a labor camp or on the wrong end of a gun in the Syndicate Worlds.
- Oh, Crap!: Already rattled, she shows sheer terror about finding out that she's being questioned by Black Jack Geary.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Her official title is a long one, although unusually this signifies a low rank rather than a high one.
Executive First Rank Pyotr Zin
The leader of a task force chasing Michael and his escapees.
- Shame If Something Happened: While urging the Syndic deserters on the Corsair to surrender, he makes an unsubtle comment about how their families will receive "protection" again if they do.
Captain of Syndicate Heavy Cruiser C- 875
The commander of a ship which witnessed the destruction of the Kalixa System via an exploding hypernet gate.
- Bearer of Bad News: She informed the reserve flotilla what happened at Kalixa, causing them to attack Varandal in retaliation.
- Faking the Dead: Requests that her crew not be told that she survived and surrendered in order to protect her family back in Syndicate space.
- A Mother To Her Men: She disobeys direct orders to blow up Alliance prisoners (and the ships coming to get them) in a booby trap due to fearing that this would cause her crew (who had just abandoned ship) to be executed.
- Inter-Service Rivalry: After one meeting with the reserve flotilla, she reacts with visible anger upon being asked if they represent the most elite elements of the Syndic Navy (apparently they think they do and didn't hesitate to let her and everyone else know that).
- No Name Given: She's only ever referred to by her job title.
- Oh, Crap!: Her reaction is both this and skepticism when Geary tells her that his fleet didn't cause what happened at Kalixa.
- Perp Walk: Desjani accompanies her to the brig as a sign of respect to deter the crew from throwing verbal abuse at her.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Described as being clearly traumatized and suffering mentally from what she has seen.
Aragon's Snake Minders
The Internal Security forces keeping an eye on Aragon prior to her revolt.
- Defiant to the End: The badly wounded CEO of the group curses Aragon and tries to detonate a hidden nuke before being killed.
- No Name Given: None of them are named.
- Oh, Crap!: As his partner is letting an apparent unnarmed Aragon inside th sveilance booth, the other one realizes that some hacking they'd just found out about might be changing the feed and she could be armed and ready to kill them. She is, and she does.
- Properly Paranoid: The commander of the group doesn't trust Aragon -who is planning to mutiny- and orders her men to keep a close eye on her and alway be prepared for an emergency lockdown.
- Sexual Extortion: One of the surveillance monitors boasts about having offered to send Aragon home if she sleeps with him, while not planning to keep his end of the bargain.
- Starter Villain: They are the initial villains of the Corsair comic series as they fight against a jailbreak. All of them are dead by the end of the first issue.
- Villainous Friendship: The two surveillance monitors have this vibe, amusedly discussing how they exploit the soldiers.
Dun
The commander of one of Midway's orbital installations.
- The Mole: Revealed to be a deep-cover snake shortly after the initial Midway rebellion.
Civilians
Reynad Ybarra
A Syndicate merchant captured and questioned by Geary while passing through Baldur Star System.
- Dark and Troubled Past: His brother and sister both died in the war against the Alliance.
- Innocent Bystander: Although he survives, he ends up a brief prisoner just due to having been about to jump out of Baldur at the same time the Alliance fleet happened to jump into it.
