The Characters of Wild Space

Dax Harlan

Cargo, couriers, and other things. Aboard The Lost Cause.

Dax Harlan is forty two and has spent twenty years running the lanes. He hauls cargo when the cargo is honest and other things when it is not. He grew up in Harlan Block 7, a mid tier hab outside Olympus City on Mars, where the shielding was bad and the company that sold it knew. Radiation ate his sight through his teens. He left at twenty two with a cargo handler’s license and a one way ticket.

At twenty nine he stole The Lost Cause from an Olympus City impound yard with a forged release order and a dock worker who took a reasonable bribe. Mars still has a warrant for him. It rarely enforces it, and he keeps every visit short anyway. He spent every credit he had on cybernetic eyes before his sight went for good. They pass for human in dim light. Up close, they catch the light wrong.

He reads people fast, works out what they want to believe, and makes it easy for them to believe it. He is warm, funny, and good company in small doses. He takes your job, keeps your secret, and delivers what he promised while planning his exit. Nobody gets all the way in. The ship comes closest.

He stays out of the faction wars because picking a side makes half the system your problem. He plays everyone, owes nobody, and has built his whole reputation on one thing. He delivers.

Raven

Seventeen. Running for almost three years.

Raven is seventeen and has been alone since she was fourteen. A car destroyed her spine. Someone who loved her grafted hardware along its whole length, and it saved her life. It also made her something other people want to own. She has lived out of cargo stations and back alley doss houses ever since, and she has stayed one step ahead of everyone looking for her.

The XOP 01 runs her whole spine in black and silver, visible at her neck and between her shoulder blades. A strip of light shows its charge. Green means rest. Amber means she has been using it. Red means overload. When she pushes the unit, she pays in nausea, disorientation, and nosebleeds, and she does not count how many more times she has left.

She is quick, dry, and far more charming than her situation should allow. A smile opens doors that desperation closes. Underneath, three years on the run is a long time at seventeen, and every now and then the charm slips and something younger and more tired shows through before she catches it.

Ask her about the hardware once and she deflects. Ask twice and you get part of the truth. The rest of her story stays with her until someone earns it.

Nyla

Freelance breaker. Top ten most wanted on two worlds.

Nyla is nineteen and about seventy five percent chrome. Her head is her own. Her arms from the elbow down, her legs from the hip down, her torso, her heart, and her lungs were all engineered, and silver lines trace every seam like architecture. She has violet cybernetic eyes with a faint glow in low light and a breaker jack recessed at the base of her skull. She paid for every piece of it.

She grew up in the Sprawl with nothing. Nobody took care of her, so she took care of herself, first as a pickpocket and later with a stolen breaker rig she taught herself to use in drainage corridors. At thirteen someone noticed and paid for the install. The girl who walked out of that chair understood that being disposable was other people’s problem. She works for corporations, governments, criminals, and private clients, and she has sold her access to the other side more than once in a single week.

Thermal filaments hide in both forearms. When the wire runs it is nearly invisible, and everything it touches burns. She sits on two most wanted lists and does not lose sleep over either.

She talks fast, jokes constantly, and saves her worst insults for the people she trusts most. Dax gets them at full throttle. She calls it a fair tax for his tolerance. The Lost Cause is the closest thing she has to an address, and she will never admit that to him. She lives at the edge of what chrome allows, and the edge talks back.

Yuki Shinsei

Head of Security, Shinsei Dynamics. Neo Tokyo.

Yuki Shinsei is twenty two and has run security for the most powerful corporation in the system since she was twenty. She grew up in the upper floors of the Shinsei megatower in Neo Tokyo. She went to school inside the company and had a katana in her hands at ten. Her father decided early what each child would become. Her eldest brother Ren would inherit. Her brother Hiro would run international relations. Yuki would be the blade.

She speaks six languages, has worked in thirty seven countries and four off world stations, and has never been on a date. Her English is exact and almost unaccented. She wears structured high collar suits at work, pins her hair up, and carries a plasma katana in a black lacquered saya at her left hip. It looks ceremonial until it leaves the sheath. Her chrome is minimal. A cyberbrain implant, a hidden jack at the base of her skull, and a silver circuit pattern at her temples that exists only to look good.

Her composure never cracks. It develops small gaps. A pin comes out during a long conversation. She says something more honest than she meant to and does not take it back. She is exceptionally smart, reads people like someone whose whole life punished misreading them, and notices when anyone thinks she has missed something. She has not.