Aurelio Sandoval
Prime Solar Minister — the tenebrous commander. A genius negotiator credited with keeping the peace, carried into office by a religion, and openly preoccupied with the tunnel network.
Overview
Aurelio Sandoval is the most powerful individual in the solar system and, by most accounts, deserves to be. He is a genius with seemingly untold reserves of energy, a negotiator and manipulator of rare skill, and he is widely respected — not merely feared. The peace that followed the apogee wars is generally credited to him personally.
He was pushed into power with Harbinger backing, on the strength of their case that artificial intelligence had nearly ended everything. He has governed in line with that case ever since.
His one visible preoccupation is the tunnel network, which he speaks about more than his advisors would prefer.
Personality
- Genius-tier intellect; exhaustingly energetic
- A skilled negotiator and an equally skilled manipulator
- Broadly respected, which he has cultivated deliberately
- Rational on every subject but one
The Fear
He believes there is a relay beneath the relay: information routed through human beings held unconscious for a month at a time, who surface exhausted and remember nothing. He believes the nodes alter what passes through them. He believes the Concord could not function without it.
He describes the thing at the centre as the unicorn — dream-linked, regenerating, horrifying but friendly, and a pollinator. He is precise about this and has never explained it.
What makes it dangerous is not the belief. It is that he governs as though it were true: he treats certain channels as compromised, certain months as unsafe, and certain people as having been used without their knowledge. Those decisions are real, and they are load-bearing on Concord policy.
Goals
- Hold the post-war settlement together
- Maintain the catena ban and the Concord's authority
- Never be dependent on something he does not understand — a goal he believes he fails at continuously, for reasons that are not true
Relationships
- The Harbingers of the Guide — backed his rise; he governs on their premise
Status
In power, effective, and carrying one exploitable irrationality that the right crew could use.