Starsight characters

Also known as Spin

Appears from the start

A pilot of the Defiant Defense Force on the planet Detritus and one of the very few humans known to be cytonic, able to hear across the void and to teleport a ship by will. Since the battle that revealed humanity's jailers to be an alien government rather than a mindless enemy, she has flown with Skyward Flight while trying to make sense of an ability her own military distrusts. Impatient, combative and given to grand declarations, she wants to take the fight outward rather than wait for the next siege.

Appears from the start

The artificial intelligence of the advanced starfighter Spensa recovered from a cavern on Detritus, rebuilt after the battle for Alta. Talkative, vain, fascinated by mushrooms, and still officially of the opinion that it is not sentient, it flies with Spensa and argues with her constantly.

Appears from the start

Flightleader of Skyward Flight and, since the battle for Alta, the person Spensa trusts most. Rigid about procedure and increasingly aware that procedure is not enough, he carries the weight of a high-ranking family and of leading a flight that keeps losing people.

Also known as Mongrel

Appears from the start

Admiral of the Defiant Defense Force, formerly the flight instructor who forced Spensa into training. Blunt and sceptical, he has to weigh what Spensa's ability makes possible against what it risks.

Also known as Rig

Appears from the start

Spensa's oldest friend, now an engineer working on the ancient orbital platforms above Detritus and on the technology recovered from the enemy. He is far happier solving problems on the ground than flying.

Appears from the start

The small yellow slug that adopted Spensa on Detritus, which repeats sounds it hears and refuses to be left behind.

First appears in chapter 5

A pilot of an alien species called the UrDail, from a world named ReDawn, who arrives at Detritus and is shot down. She is cytonic, she came deliberately to find the humans, and she hoped for allies against the galactic government that rules her people. The crash leaves her unconscious, and her ship, her equipment and her identity are all that the DDF has to work with.

First appears in chapter 11

A senior official of the Superiority's Department of Species Integration, a dione, unsettlingly polite and difficult to read. Cuna takes a personal interest in the newly arrived pilot from ReDawn, for reasons that are not obvious.

First appears in chapter 12

A dione who has not yet been born: a provisional blending of two parents, given a trial life in which to prove worth being made permanent. Gentle, anxious and desperate not to seem aggressive, Morriumur joins the fighter program in the hope that it will demonstrate value.

First appears in chapter 13

The official in charge of the Superiority's new fighter program and a member of the same species that ran the drones over Detritus. Fussy, soft-spoken, endlessly concerned with paperwork and with the danger posed by aggressive species.

First appears in chapter 13

A human raised inside the Superiority rather than on a quarantined world, attached to Winzik's department. She is cytonic, formidably capable, and has been taught all her life that her species is a disease and that her worth depends entirely on her usefulness to the people who own her.

First appears in chapter 13

A kitsen, a fox-like alien small enough to stand on a human hand, who until very recently was the god-emperor of his people and is now formally a private citizen with a great deal of dignity and a taste for poetry. He commands a starship crewed by dozens of his kind.

First appears in chapter 13

A cadet in the fighter program belonging to a species with no solid body, present only as a scent and a voice. Vapor is unnervingly good at knowing what is going on and gives away nothing about herself.

First appears in chapter 14

The kitsen captain who runs Hesho's starship day to day, practical where her former emperor is ceremonial.