Team

The crew of the Dawnwarden — Mara's StarTeam. All fictional characters.

Mara Kest — Warden-Captain

Poised, courageous, harbor-bred. Commands the Dawnwarden and holds the Aegis over everyone under her protection. Terrible cook, enthusiastic letter-writer, hums shanties off-key. Full story: Lore.

Ryn Harrow — Executive Officer

A reformed smuggler who surrendered to Mara in Cycle 1211 rather than to the patrol cutter behind her — and was recruited instead of arrested. Harrow flies the way he talks: fast, sideways, and with total confidence. He is Mara’s second-in-command, her devil’s advocate, and the only person aboard who will tell her she’s wrong to her face. “Somebody has to,” he says, “and the stars know it won’t be her.”

Harrow’s past is the crew’s open secret: he ran contraband through the Shatter Belt for six years before Mara caught him. He claims he surrendered because her frigate had him boxed in. The crew believes he surrendered because, for the first time in his life, somebody looked at him and saw a pilot instead of a problem.

Pell Voss — Chief Engineer

Found by Mara in Cycle 1212, elbow-deep in a dying reactor on a derelict station, refusing to evacuate until “the old girl” was stable. Voss keeps the Dawnwarden flying on stubbornness, spare parts, and a personal relationship with the ship’s resonance drive that the engineers at the Spire describe as “unhealthy” and Voss describes as “mutual respect.”

Voss is blunt, profane, and the first person Mara calls when something is impossible. Her answer is always the same: “Give me an hour.” It has never taken more than forty minutes.

Ilsa Mere — Scholar-Sage

Keeper of the star charts and the Concord’s memory. Mere requested transfer to Mara’s command in Cycle 1213 after reading her incident reports — “this,” she wrote, “was the officer the charts had been waiting for.” She is the oldest member of the crew, the calmest voice in any argument, and the only person Harrow will not tease. (He tried once. The look she gave him is now crew legend.)

Mere’s charts of the Dead Lanes, completed in Cycle 1220, opened twelve systems to Concord relief convoys. She insists the credit belongs to “the woman who kept the ship alive long enough to finish the survey.” Mara insists it belongs to Mere. This argument has been running for a year.

Jax Quill — Scout Pilot

The youngest member of the crew. Stowed away on Mara’s shuttle at sixteen in Cycle 1215; was made scout pilot instead of being turned in. Quill flies reconnaissance the way other teenagers do everything: too fast, too close, and brilliantly. Mara’s standing order regarding Quill is famous: “Bring the ship back. Bring yourself back. In that order, Jax.”

Quill idolizes Mara with the transparent devotion of the very young, and Mara — who remembers being sixteen and staring at patrol cruisers from a harbor dock — treats that devotion as something precious and breakable. She has never once raised her voice to him. She has never needed to.

The wardroom

The crew eats together every evening the ship is not at action stations — Mara’s rule, from her first command. The wardroom table has six places. On the nights the Dawnwarden makes port, there are seven: the extra place is set for Kaelis Thorn, and no one comments on it, and no one ever will. See Allies and Rivals.

Source notes

• All characters are fictional, invented for this fan reference. See Methodology.