Persepolis Rising characters

Appears from the start

Captain of the Rocinante, now decades older and working contract enforcement for the Transport Union out in the colony systems. Grayer, slower, and tired of being the man who turns up when something goes wrong, he is quietly planning to hand the ship over and retire with Naomi. His instinct for making decisions on principle and worrying about the consequences afterward has not aged out of him.

Appears from the start

The Rocinante's engineer and Holden's partner of thirty years, one of the most respected technical minds in the union's orbit. She has spent decades building the systems that keep traffic through the gates working, and she has agreed with Holden that it is time to stop. Careful, patient, and better than anyone aboard at seeing the shape of a problem before it arrives.

Appears from the start

A former Martian Marine, now the Rocinante's ranking soldier and the person Holden and Naomi intend to leave the ship to. She is old for the work and knows it, still trains in powered armor, and has spent her career being underestimated by people who then have to fight her.

Appears from the start

The Rocinante's pilot, a Martian who has been flying the same ship for three decades and has watched his home planet empty out through the gates. Divorced, sentimental, and reluctant to think too hard about what he will do when the crew he has built his life around finally breaks up.

Appears from the start

The Rocinante's mechanic, apparently unchanged by thirty years, still direct to the point of bluntness and still organized entirely around protecting the people he has decided are his. He has no particular interest in what happens to him and a great deal of interest in what happens to the crew.

Also known as Peaches

Appears from the start

The Rocinante's technician, once the daughter of an industrial dynasty and once Holden's enemy. The illegal implants she used decades ago left her with a degenerative condition that gets steadily worse; she manages it with drugs and stubbornness, does her work, and does not discuss it more than she has to. Amos is her closest tie to the crew.

First appears in chapter 2

President of the Transport Union, the Belter-led authority that governs all traffic through the ring gates and has become the effective third power of humanity alongside Earth and Mars. She built her career on ships and stations rather than politics, and she rules an institution she does not entirely trust herself to be running.

First appears in chapter 12

A senior figure in the Transport Union and Drummer's husband, based away from her in the union's operational sprawl. Well liked, well connected among Belter crews, and practiced at moving people and cargo without anyone official noticing.

First appears in chapter 10

A Laconian naval officer, young, disciplined, and thoroughly a product of the system that raised him. He believes the empire he serves is a rational and merciful improvement on the chaos it replaces, and he has been given his first independent command with a family waiting for him and everything to prove.

First appears in chapter 12

The ranking Laconian admiral in the field, commanding the empire's most powerful warship. A pragmatist rather than a zealot, he is more interested in what an occupation costs than in what it symbolizes, and he is willing to be patient in ways his subordinates are not.

First appears in chapter 18

The Laconian officer responsible for security in the occupation, methodical and unillusioned about what holding a station full of hostile people actually requires. He does his job precisely and offers his commander advice that his commander does not always want.

First appears in chapter 12

The Martian admiral who took a third of his navy's fleet through the gates a generation ago and vanished. He has spent the intervening decades on the world of Laconia building something out of the alien technology found there, and he now presents himself as the answer to humanity's disorder: a single authority, permanent and unopposable.

First appears in chapter 2

Patriarch of Freehold, a colony that has refused to register its ships or accept Transport Union authority over the gate. Proud, self-reliant, and prepared to argue that a world's independence is worth more than access to the rest of humanity.