Perkins takes People's Home with kind eyes, gentle manners, and power-armored Marines, making absolute authority more crushing by declining to humiliate its former president.
Captain Rowman Perkins arrives aboard the Stover after Leuctra and becomes the new leader of People's Home. He permits residents to return, places Drummer under comfortable house arrest, and governs with a power-armored fire team ready to convert every wish into law.
Perkins treats Drummer with small courtesies, even sitting across from her desk rather than claiming her chair. The politeness clarifies rather than softens conquest: he does not need to bully, win arguments, or preserve face because he possesses absolute power either way. Her confinement, meals, exercise escorts, and censored access all continue by his choice, making his equanimity part of Laconia's demonstration that submission will be managed without chaos.
An older Martian man with close-cut white hair, stained-oak brown skin, kind eyes, and a folksy Mariner Valley manner, wearing a Laconian captain's uniform.
Perkins is People's Home's occupation ruler, embodying coercion so complete that it can afford personal gentleness.