Commander Fiona Ayoade

Background

Commander Fiona Ayoade is the leader of The Resistance. She was born in London, United Kingdom. She is an intelligence operative.

Her service record:

Captain, Royal Army Intelligence Corps, ret. 2006;

Case Officer, undisclosed location, Secret Intelligence Service, 2006-2007;

SIS liaison to U.S. Counterterrorism Center, 2008-2009;

Chief of Station, Lagos, 2009-2012;

Chief of Station, Islamabad, 2012-2014;

Deputy Chief of African Affairs, 2014-2015;

Senior adviser to insurgent group, location undisclosed, 2016-present.

Personality

Fiona Ayoade is a big ol' boomer. She brings to the table a healthy distrust to contemporary technology, grit and strong desire to maintain the status quo.

Being a cop, a former British spy and a serial Alphabet Soup representative in third world countries, she knows well that surprise visitors from technologically advanced societies are often up to no good. This means that her mindset is as close to mentality of Hydra operative as it gets.

Fiona suffers from a nuclear anxiety, a condition developed by some children who grew up during cold war, which causes fear of nukes and nuclear power plants. Ironically, many of her solutions to alien-related problems involve nuclear power.

Likes: tea, data science, the queen, her family, the good old days.

Dislikes: nuclear power, hydras, Wikileaks, the Irish.

Quotes

Research

• "Don't ever make the mistake of thinking a problem is solved. Defeating any enemy is like plucking your eyebrows - for every hair you remove, twelve more will show up to the funeral." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Email to SIS regarding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
• "Diplomacy has its place, but if you don't go into every situation prepared for the absolute worst case scenario, you might as well turn up wearing nothing but a smile." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Leaked training video
• "You'd think a threat this big would finally make us abandon old grudges and band together, but humanity always finds a way to hurt itself, doesn't it?" — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Undated letter, recipient unknown
• "That senator's demand that we deploy rifle companies to patrol the suburbs for aliens is foolish for so many reasons, not the least of which is that they may not be sent home when this is over." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Private correspondence
• "Information is our greatest weapon, bar none. If we know enough about what we're fighting and where, we can win wars before even a single shot has been fired." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, From her thesis at the Joint Services Command and Staff College
• "There's a them, and there's an us. Always has been, as much as we kid ourselves that somehow we've become more enlightened over all these years of blood and suffering." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, SIS correspondence
• "The damage from a bullet is not caused by the projectile itself, it is caused by the energy of the impact. Energy weapons just cut out the middleman." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Technical weapons briefing
• "I brought you on board, doctor, because I believe you're the only one who can pull this off. The good news is that, if I'm wrong, there'll be no-one left to tell me about it." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Engineering briefing
• "Tell me what we need to send more people further, faster. Otherwise we'll be stuck playing defense forever - and that's just a slow way to lose." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Attending a technical design briefing for the UK space program
• "Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed ... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We really don't need Yeats' defeatism right now." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, responding to media coverge of the Resistance
• "Never forget that the true power in any kingdom is not the man on the throne, but instead those who quietly stand at his shoulders." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, "Data in the Shadow of War."
• "You'll frown at my ignorance and romanticism, but look, if one good thing comes out of all this mess, it's getting to tell my kids that every spaceship has a tiny star at its heart." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Private correspondence following a tour of Los Alamos National Laboratory
• "In 1954, the Americans built the first nuclear-powered submarine, and changed the course of naval warfare. Now, it is upon us to become the creators of the first nuclear-powered spaceship. It is upon us to define warfare in space." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, From a speech made while opening the Churchill Shipyards
• "Mum's last years were a blur of doctors and treatments. By that point, every movement was painful. The one thing she loved was her aquatic therapy. Whenever I was home on leave, I'd take her to the pool for hours. Weightless. Smiling. Free." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Response to SIS psychological evaluation question "What gives you strength in difficult times?"
• "With all due respect, there are only two things that really matter here: Getting wherever we need to be fast, and not getting ourselves killed in the process." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Research Proposal Review Conference for the U.K.'s Defense and Security Accelerator
• "Believe me, these bastards have already read everything humanity's ever written. If we don't come up with some way to talk without them listening in, we've got less chance of survival than a hummingbird in a hurricane." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Encrypted Signal message to Resistance scientist Philip Rhodes (D.O.B. 2.27.77, SSN 078-05-1120) on 4.9.18 at 17.42, from 4.824167,7.033611
• "We can speculate about where these bloody things came from until the cows come home, but right now all the matters is whether or not we've got something that can put a bullet square between whatever the hell they call eyes." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Comments made during a confidential videocall, shortly after first contact
• "Together, we're stronger. Apart, we're weaker, yeah? Sounds great on paper, love, but the trouble is there's always some bloke with a loud voice who wants to keep us apart - and a whole lot of someone elses bankrolling him." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, Responding to an email from her cousin
• "The dreamer in me wants to believe it would bring a golden age of advancement and prosperity for all mankind. But I'm a realist. I know better.
  Any race advanced enough to find us would be advanced enough to end us, likely without even regarding us." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, NATO Symposium on Alien First Contact
• "When I was a kid, the threat of nuclear armageddon was on every front page, every day. So forgive me if I get just a tiny bit anxious when you tell me that our best hope of sailing the stars is staging nuclear explosions inside our spacecraft." — Commander Fiona Ayoade, In an email, receiving address encrypted

Science

• We have reached the edge of the solar system. We have defined the age of space combat. But we are far from done; the war isn't over. So, tell me, what is the next thing that will take us through the void?
• In her final days, my mother told me we should cherish our life. We should see it as an adventure with a clear end. By keeping the end of life in mind, we would live every minute fuller.
• Materials have always defined human advancement. Stone and iron, steel and silicon. So to clarify my question: Is this the next discovery that defines our future?
• Solving the energy crisis? We said that when we developed nuclear power and again when we mastered fusion. Let's be realistic here: whatever new technology you invent to generate power, we will find a way to need more.
• I don't want to sound like a broken record but information is our greatest weapon. So, let's call the researcher back in to hear her proposal. And this time, don't interrupt her just because you don't understand the details yet.
• Conflict in space doesn't have an exact analog in terrestrial warfare, although our instructors keep trying to explain it like it does. Armored warfare where the tanks are all sliding around on ice? A submarine engagement with nowhere to hide? Air combat where there's no gravity to overcome, or air to bank against? Trying to come up with a universal metaphor will lead to wrong assumptions and broken ships. Teach the physics and the decision sets they imply. Our crews can handle it.
• I have seen what the prospect of nuclear armageddon did to society; I have witnessed what the arrival of aliens brought out in mankind. Let's assume I have a decent enough handle on how the human psyche works to understand the basics.

Trivia

• Fiona has at least 2 children.