Raj Patel commands the Borderleap Initiative's first Mars settlement mission. He carries himself the way people do when they have already made peace with every outcome a mission like this can produce — unhurried, grounded, rarely the one who raises his voice first.
Command suits him less because he seeks it and more because everyone around him keeps deferring to it. When the mission's first real crisis arrives, it is his read of the situation, not the Initiative's, that the crew ends up trusting.