Defiant: The Skyward Series, Book #4 characters

Also known as Spin

Appears from the start

A DDF pilot from Detritus, the strongest human cytonic anyone knows of, and no longer entirely one person. She came out of the nowhere carrying the full history of the delvers, a fragment of a delver merged into her mind, and the loss of the friend who did not come back with her. She knows what the delvers actually are and that they can in principle be reached rather than destroyed, and she is the only person on her side who does. Still headlong and still fond of her own bravado, she now has to be a leader as well as a pilot.

Appears from the start

The piece of a delver that separated from the rest long ago, took on a human shape and the persona of a swashbuckling explorer, and became Spensa's friend before either of them understood what he was. He is now part of Spensa's mind, present as a voice and a perspective, with memories that stretch back further than any human's.

Appears from the start

Flightleader of Skyward Flight, a cytonic, and in practice one of the people running humanity's war. Months of holding the line without Spensa have made him a genuine commander and left him with a deep suspicion of governments that give orders from a safe distance, including his own.

Appears from the start

The Superiority official who staged a delver attack to seize emergency powers and has since made himself the effective ruler of the galaxy's dominant government. He commands its fleets, controls the taynix that make interstellar travel possible, and is building a weapon out of the delvers themselves. Outwardly fussy, mild-mannered and endlessly concerned with procedure.

Appears from the start

Spensa's blind grandmother, keeper of the family's stories and a cytonic herself, from a line that once navigated ships between the stars. She is very old, she remembers a great deal, and what she remembers is turning out to matter to the war.

Also known as Quirk

Appears from the start

A pilot of Skyward Flight and the finest shot in the DDF, still gentle and still quoting her saint, and quietly worn down by how long this has gone on and how many people she has watched die.

Appears from the start

A pilot of Skyward Flight, one of the DDF's authorities on the taynix, and the person most willing to challenge the National Assembly's claim to decide things on everyone's behalf.

Also known as Amphisbaena, Amphi

Appears from the start

A pilot of Skyward Flight, precise and wordy, long since grown into the second in command he once resented not being.

Also known as Nedder

Appears from the start

A pilot of Skyward Flight, large and cheerful and still, against considerable evidence, hard to worry.

Also known as Rig

Appears from the start

Chief engineer of the human fleet, Spensa's oldest friend, and the person who turned a hoard of stolen slugs into a working hyperdrive program. He solves the problems nobody else has time to look at.

First appears in chapter 10

A human raised inside the Superiority rather than on a quarantined world, and a cytonic of roughly Spensa's power. She is Winzik's instrument, taught from childhood that her species is a disease and that her only value is her usefulness, and she has never in her life been offered a choice she could believe in.

First appears in chapter 12

A cytonic pilot of the UrDail from ReDawn, the humans' first alien ally, and Jorgen's cytonic partner. Her own world is still contested, which shapes everything she is willing to risk.

First appears in chapter 31

The artificial intelligence who flew with Spensa from the cavern on Detritus to the heart of the nowhere and gave up his last body so that she could get out. He is not gone. What he is now is something he has to work out for himself, in a place where minds do not need machines to run on.