Stars Above characters

Appears from the start

A retired military pilot living alone on a farm in southern France with her small granddaughter, in the opening story of the collection. A doctor she has not seen in years arrives at her door in the middle of the night with a request she is entitled to refuse and does not.

Appears from the start

A Lunar physician who has smuggled himself and a badly injured child off the moon, and who needs somewhere on Earth that nobody will think to look.

Appears from the start

The three-year-old heir to the Lunar throne, burned in the fire that was meant to kill her and kept alive only by the equipment she arrives in.

Appears from the start

Michelle Benoit's granddaughter, a small child on the farm in the first story, and the bride in the last one.

First appears in chapter 2

Eleven years old and newly rebuilt as a cyborg, brought to New Beijing by a man she does not remember to live with a family that did not ask for her. She has no memories at all before the operating table, an artificial hand and leg she is still learning to use, and a retinal display feeding her information she does not know how to interpret.

First appears in chapter 2

An inventor in New Beijing who has brought home an adopted daughter without properly consulting his wife, and who builds a household android to keep the girl company.

First appears in chapter 2

A household android built for Cinder, whose personality chip does not work the way the specification says it should, which turns out to be the point of her.

First appears in chapter 2

The younger daughter of the household, a small girl who decides on the first day that the new arrival is her sister and never revises the opinion.

First appears in chapter 3

A twelve-year-old boy in one of Luna's outer sectors, taken from his family for the queen's army and put through the training and the surgery that turn Lunar children into special operatives. The story follows him from the recruitment through to the soldier he becomes and the name he ends up with.

First appears in chapter 4

A thirteen-year-old American schoolboy with an unshakeable belief in his own charm, running a scheme to impress a girl he likes. The story establishes both halves of the man he becomes: the talent for talking people round, and the habit of taking things that are not his.

First appears in chapter 5

A Lunar shell child, taken from the others she grew up among and installed alone in a satellite in Earth's orbit to work as a hacker and spy. The story covers her first days in it.

First appears in chapter 5

A Lunar thaumaturge who has found a use for a child everyone else considers worthless, and who explains the arrangement to her as a kindness.

First appears in chapter 6

The princess of Luna as a girl, growing up in her stepmother's palace and learning exactly what the Lunar gift does to the people it is used on. The story is about the decision she makes as a result, and what it costs her.

First appears in chapter 6

The son of a palace guard, close to the princess since childhood, already resolved to become the kind of soldier who is allowed to stay near her.

First appears in chapter 7

An android in New Beijing whose damaged programming has left her aware of herself in a way no android is meant to be, and quietly attached to the young mechanic who services her. The story is a retelling of The Little Mermaid.

First appears in chapter 7

A young mechanic in New Beijing, kind to the androids he repairs and entirely unaware that one of them is watching him.

First appears in chapter 8

The crown prince of the Eastern Commonwealth, taking a broken royal android to a market booth himself rather than send a servant, in a retelling of a scene the series opened with from the other side of the counter.