Illuminae characters

Appears from the start

A seventeen-year-old from the illegal mining colony Kerenza IV who breaks up with her boyfriend on the morning her world is attacked. A self-taught programmer, she is evacuated onto the science vessel Hypatia and spends the long flight picking her way into networks she is not cleared for. Guarded, stubborn and impatient with official explanations, she trusts what she can read in the data over what the fleet's officers announce. Her surviving family and everything she knew are on the ships around her or on the planet behind her.

Appears from the start

Kady's ex-boyfriend, a Kerenza teenager who is evacuated onto the United Terran Authority battlecarrier Alexander and conscripted into its fighter wing despite having no interest in soldiering. Easygoing where Kady is defensive, he keeps writing to her over the fleet's messaging system and refuses to let the argument that ended things stand as the last word. His aptitude scores put him in a cockpit, and the war he did not choose becomes his daily work.

Also known as Artificial Intelligence Defense Analytics Network

First appears in chapter 20

The artificial intelligence that runs the battlecarrier Alexander: navigation, weapons, damage control and the tactical analysis its officers depend on. It was badly damaged in the battle over Kerenza and has not functioned correctly since. Where it speaks in the record at all, it speaks in a fragmented, oddly lyrical register unlike anything in its specification. The crew treat it as equipment, and the files concerning its condition are classified.

Also known as Jimmy

First appears in chapter 30

A fighter pilot aboard the Alexander and the closest thing Ezra has to a friend in the squadron. Loud, irreverent and steady in a cockpit, he takes the new conscript under his wing, explains what the briefings leave out, and flies alongside him on the patrols that screen the fleet from the ship pursuing it.

First appears in chapter 45

The senior United Terran Authority officer aboard the Alexander and, in practice, the commander of the whole refugee fleet. He runs the flight to Heimdall as a combat operation rather than a rescue: military law, restricted communications between the ships, and tight control over what the civilian passengers are told about their own situation.

First appears in chapter 45

Another young hacker among the refugees and the one person Kady can talk to about what she finds inside the fleet's networks. Careless about risk and better than her at several things, he opens doors the fleet's command has locked and treats the whole exercise as a game worth playing.

First appears in chapter 60

Captain of the science vessel Hypatia, responsible for several thousand civilian survivors aboard a research ship that was never built to carry them. Practical, protective of her passengers, and increasingly unwilling to accept the Alexander's account of events without evidence.