Loren Kray

Loren Kray talks his way into more trouble than his blaster could ever get him out of, which is why he collects people who are better with theirs. He came up on the docks of a mid-Rim port, a fast-handed kid moving cargo he knew better than to ask about, and he learned early that the galaxy sorts people into those who hold the leash and those who wear it — and that a good enough lie, told with a good enough smile, can cut any leash. He won his first ship in a sabacc game he definitely cheated, lost it a month later to people who cheated better, and stole it back with a plan that needed four other pairs of hands. He has been building crews ever since.

What makes Loren the leader isn't the fastest gun or the coldest nerve — Rai is faster, Dinara is colder, and Mex is smarter than all of them put together. It's that he is the one who decides the crew comes home. He takes the bounties that pay, but he takes the ones that let everyone walk away from them, and when a job turns and the smart move is to cut a loss and run, Loren is the one who goes back. His people have all noticed this. He has not noticed that they've noticed, which is the other true thing about Loren Kray: he reads every room in the galaxy except the one he is standing in.

He gathered them one at a time — Rai out of a client's death-trap, Mex out of a repossessed clinic, Dinara out of a three-way standoff that should have gotten them both killed — and somewhere along the way a collection of dangerous loners became a crew that comes home. The custom sidearm he calls the "Fist" is mostly theater; his real weapon is that he is usually three moves ahead and always, infuriatingly, likeable. He is not a good man, exactly. But he keeps his word and he keeps his crew, and in his line of work that is rarer than either, and worth more.