Characters

Peter Jameson

Elite-rated pilot and decorated war hero during the dying reign of GalCop and their struggle against the Thargoids, Commander Jameson has been at home in the cockpit of a spaceship since he was a teen. At 59, even given the medical advances of his era he is no longer the action man of his youth. A gun pilot, he served with honour in the Thargoid Wars and suffered great personal damage in doing so. Following the war he succeeded financially – first as a trader plying the Lave-Riedquat corridor and later as a more gravity-bound businessman. Cashing out under a cloud of controversy, he exiled himself and his alien-hybrid partner to the serene tropical waters of the small backwater planetoid Lwxana, a moon of the gas giant Diioru. There, on the shores of the Quiig Archipelago, he built the two of them a handsome estate and settled down to a little extended play luxury. Along the way his partner was killed in a freak accident, which affected him greatly and he remains paranoid and destabilised to this day. At the opening of the book his thoughts are dark and growing darker, he spends more and more time dwelling on the unpleasantries of the war, of his sacrifices and the ultimate vacuity of his chosen lifestyle.

Xarak Jones

A young pilot with lightning reflexes and a cocky attitude. The magnitude of his skill with both sidearms and women is outstripped only by his vanity. He has chosen the path of the darkness as the more commercially rewarding option – that of apprentice crook and bounty hunter. His taste for reckless destruction and his obsessive accuracy are rather advanced for his tender 19 years of age. His childhood and family origin are unknown, and he is loathe to speak about it. Not that he is big on conversation: should you ever find yourself in a situation where the two of you might converse, he will most likely have already been paid to kill or collect you, and will likely let small arms fire do the talking. Loudly. So far it’s been a successful career, he has freed himself from a damaging MDK habit, and survived long enough to earn a pilot rating of Deadly. Bringing in Jameson will surely take his career to the next level.

Mmniri

Jameson’s live-in female partner. A feline-human hybrid from the remote Ontiare colony where a centuries-old experimental hybrid race was permitted to flourish. She was outcast for keeping company with a masta, who had turned out to be a slaver anyway. Jameson bought her freedom, but found he could just not get rid of her, despite his best efforts.