CACass ArdenEverything you need to know about Cass Arden, StarTeam's EVA hero.
AI-generated illustration of Cass Arden with the StarTeam crew on a starship bridge
StarTeam aboard the Starhold Vigil. AI-generated dramatization art.

Roster // Starhold Vigil crew

Team — StarTeam Roster

"Nobody drifts alone." Seven crewmates, one flagship, and the EVA specialist they all count on. Every person on this page is a fictional character.

Fiction note: StarTeam and every member below are invented by this site's writers. Relationships are explored in depth on Allies & Rivals; the crew's history is on StarTeam History.

Commander Ilya Voss — Mission Commander

Voss recruited Cass after the Kestrel footage and has commanded the Starhold Vigil ever since. In the fiction, Voss is the strategist who plans the op and the authority Cass trusts enough to abort to — the one voice that can call him back inside. Twice offered Cass a command track; twice declined. Their dynamic is mutual respect with a running argument about whether Cass’s place is in the suit or on the bridge.

Marisol “Jinx” Kane — Pilot

The Vigil’s shuttle and interceptor pilot, and the crew’s resident chaos agent. Jinx flies like Cass spacewalks — by feel, at the edge — which makes them natural partners on intercepts and natural antagonists in every safety briefing. She named the Driftline Run (SC 1211) from the cockpit, narrating Cass’s two-kilometer intercept like a sportscaster. He pretends to hate it.

Dr. Sen Okafor — Flight Surgeon

The crew’s doctor and Cass’s medical conscience. Okafor cleared him for EVA duty after the Kestrel graze, has patched him up after half the ops in the archive, and quotes Cass’s own line — “the checklist is the bravest thing I own” — back at him whenever he tries to skip a post-EVA medical. The fiction gives Okafor the driest humor on the ship and the final word on whether anyone goes outside.

Petra Lindqvist — Ship’s Engineer

The Vigil’s chief engineer, keeper of Cass’s suit, and the painter of the patch wall. Petra maintains the AEGIS Mark VII to a standard the manufacturer (in-fiction) once called “unreasonable,” and Cass trusts her work the way he trusts his tether. At Tether’s End (SC 1216) she was the one drifting; he was the one who caught her. She has never let him forget it, and he has never wanted her to.

Theo Marchetti — Comms & Signals

The voice in Cass’s helmet. Theo runs comms, signals intelligence, and the telemetry boards — the person who watches the suit data while Cass works and calls the numbers before the alarms do. The SC 1212 cadet self-rescue, talked through over forty minutes of radio, is the op Theo is proudest of, because the talking was his.

Rin Solberg — Navigator

The Vigil’s astrogator: orbits, intercept geometry, debris-field drift models. Every EVA Cass flies starts as one of Rin’s plots — the Driftline Run’s two-kilometer intercept was her math, executed on his nerve. Rin is the quietest member of the crew and, in the fiction, the reason the dramatic rescues look routine: the geometry was solved before the airlock cycled.

Dax Harlow — Boarding Specialist (Rival)

The rivalry. Harlow’s doctrine is breach-and-board — get inside fast, decide fast — and he thinks Cass’s seal-and-save caution costs lives. Cass thinks Harlow’s speed risks them. They have argued about it since SC 1209, competed over everything, and — at Cold Berth (SC 1214) — boarded a derelict together and brought fourteen people home. Neither has ever said the other did well. Both wear the patch. Full story on Allies & Rivals.

How the crew works

The fiction’s operating principle: StarTeam is small enough that everyone knows whose hands their life is in. Cass is the crew’s outside hands — the one who goes into vacuum so the rest don’t have to. The World Guide covers the Vigil and the sector they protect; Training covers how the crew drills together.

Source notes