The eponymous protagonist is an orphan from a hellish industrial space station, who escapes prison and indentured servitude to join the Emperor's armed forces well, he was sort of pressed into the service, but it beat the hell out of industrial slavery.
His native talent and the skills he acquired not dying on the hell-world Vulcan come in handy in the military, and he goes on to become a covert operative in the enigmatic Mercury Corps, the Emperor's special forces. Throughout the course of the series he adds to his rank, consequence and badassery. He has as much success with women as one would expect of a covert operative, only with more monogamy than your average James Bond.
Because almost every single character in the series is a member of a military, expect to see a lot of Combat Tropes , Military and Warfare Tropes , Espionage Tropes , and badass tropes. Sten now has a Character Sheet. Please to add examples to it. Ace Pilot : "drakh-hot" Hannelore La Ciotat. Acrofatic : Ida, one of Sten's only surviving buddies from his original Mantis team, is a battle-hardened commando and also quite overweight.
Action Girl : Bet, Cind, and pretty much every female character in the series. Agent Provocateur : Mercury Corps uses this as a matter of course. Sten incites rebellion on Vulcan by fulfilling the Mig folk story of "one of their own" who will get out, return, and lead them to freedom. Especially effective because he is, and does. Air-Vent Passageway : Played straight, but still rather well done.
Ambadassador : In the second-to-last book, Vortex, Sten has become this. His assignment is to stabilize a world full of ethnicities and races that absolutely despise one another, and even though he's pretty deft at managing problems through diplomacy, he's still as much of a lethal badass as before, as some would-be rioters and assassins find out. Anyone Can Die : Oh God yes. Applied Phlebotinum : AM2 , Antimatter-2, is used in everything from bullets to spaceships.
