Gatecrasher runs this operation like a boss who expects everyone else to stop making her day difficult. Unfortunately, the people making her day difficult include the person she…

Gatecrasher runs this operation like a boss who expects everyone else to stop making her day difficult. Unfortunately, the people making her day difficult include the person she has been hired to abduct. In The Sword Is Drawn, her authority comes from Saturnyne's assignment. She directs the capture of Rachel and treats the resistance around her as interference with legitimate business. That confidence is part of what makes her unpleasant. Rachel's opinion about the arrangement scarcely enters it. There is a great deal of personality in the way Gatecrasher takes up space. She is physically imposing, visibly impatient and surrounded by employees whose jobs she expects them to perform. The Technet's assortment of strange bodies has an organizing center because she keeps acting as if this is all perfectly routine. The comic pushes that attitude into particularly dark territory when Ferro is killed. Gatecrasher's response turns toward the difficulties of keeping good help. The scene has the shape of a workplace joke, but somebody has actually died. Her concern for the operation keeps overwhelming the human response a reader might expect, even if the people involved aren't human. She is useful as an opponent because she doesn't have to hate the heroes. A customer wants something. Gatecrasher intends to deliver it. That can be every bit as dangerous as a personal grudge, especially when a frightened person is being treated as something to collect. Her bluster also leaves room for embarrassment. Authority, size and a confident set of orders don't protect her from her own crew's powers going wrong. The boss who has been directing everyone else eventually becomes part of the chaos she thought she controlled.