The Navigator: Ohan, who, as a Sianat Pair, has the ability to visualize space-time, a vital role for any tunneling crew; in fact, Sianats are by far the best Navigators in the galaxy thanks to this skill. Mondegreen Gag: Kizzy sings along to some alien punk rock without knowing the language that it's in, leading to her yelling "Socks! Dramatic Irony: Near the climax of the book, Nib forwards Rosemary some information from the Galactic Commons warning that the Toremi have Super-Hearing, so GC citizens should not say anything controversial or offensive while in the same room as them.

When he was female, his whole world took part in a civil war that destroyed their race, leaving only a few hundred to slowly die out.Earth That Was: Earth suffered through "The Collapse" which was apparently an environmental disaster that made the ecosystem uninhabitable by humans. Gender Bender: Sidra's friend Tak is a shon Aeluon, and at different times throughout the book, uses he/him or she/her pronouns to indicate xyr current gender, and occasionally actually uses xe/xyr when in the process of transitioning. At the end of the book, once he has been forcibly cured by Corbin and is no longer a Pair, he begins to spend more time with his crewmates. The second, factory-reset version of Lovelace as well, who is acknowledged as being a different person from Lovey. As such, all dialogue and signage is directly "translated" as it were with the narration noting any language changes.

Jane raids a factory for supplies so she can escape the planet in Owl's shuttle, and ambushes one of the employees, who turns out to be Laurian, at gunpoint. Taught by Television: Pepper was raised alone by an AI from age 10 to 19, and all she knows of other people comes from a small selection of interactive films the previous owners forgot to delete from the AI's memory.To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe. Cannot Tell a Lie: A huge problem for Sidra, as it's part of her programming as a Lovelace unit that she must answer direct questions honestly and must obey direct commands, which makes her wary of becoming too close to sapient lifeforms for fear that they'll find out the truth about her, and forces her to become very good at utilizing Exact Words.