Eileen E. Burke (317 IE – ) was a flag officer in the Compact Navy. Among her commands were the Tian Regional Command. As of 429 IE, she held the rank of vice admiral and used the Utopia Planitia as her flagship.
Burke spent most of her pre-flag career aboard the CNV Hancock. In 394, she became wing to Dragon, aka Cui Jiao-long. When eight-year-old Cui’s daughter Yun sustained tearing in her knee during physical fitness, Burker accompanied Cui to confront the overzealous teacher and pull Yun from her class for private training.
Burke had three sons and was a mentor to Quentin Austin. She had the unhappy task of relieving Austin of duty. She acknowledged he had pressed to retake Gilead instead of Amargosa and offered to help him once he was either court-martialed or put behind a desk. She also voiced disdain for his ex-wife.
When Austin revealed that Anacreon was the next target for invasion, Burke demanded Fleet Admiral Vu give her a task force to intercept it with a better battle plan than he gave Austin at Amargosa. Tran authorized the operation with Austin assigned as an observer.
She met the enemy fleet aboard the Valles Marineris, forcing their surrender. However, she lost three ships in the process. Burke let Austin dictate terms of surrender.
Immediately after the incident at Anacreon, Burke ordered reserve activations for Hideki Okada and Peter Lancaster, two of the leading members of the original Warp Project. She sent Cybercommand agents to Thule to retrieve Okada while Lancaster voluntarily came back after being caught in a scandal with an Etruscan politician’s wife.
When Captain Okada objected to Cybercommand engineers’ work on the Challenger, she prevailed on the G-2 overseeing that service’s involvement by informing him Navy personnel once involved with the Alcubierre would complete the work. As a concession, she allowed the G-2 in charge to assign O-4 Weiss to the ship as a security officer. She also applied pressure on Fleet Admiral Tran to allow the crew a three-day recovery break before launching the ship.
Burke had to deliver orders that amounted to genocide against a Gelt colony. She and Read Admiral Austin sent secret messages to Okada and Weiss asking them to travel to Amargosa to see the damage, then decide if they could opt out of the mission. When the Challenger returned, Burke admitted to the pair and Lancaster that they all had essentially committed treason, but that she and Austin had already been covering their tracks. She assigned all three permanently to the Warp Program.
In 430, she and Austin traveled with the Challenger to Hanar to meet with their First Citizen. Giddeus Modesto had been ordered to escort them to the ship, but Austin insisted on flying the shuttle himself. In the meantime, Burke chatted with Modesto, who had just crashed a shuttle trying to shortcut through Demeter‘s atmosphere. She informed him that the current fleet admiral had bounced his own shuttle off Aphrodite‘s atmosphere as an ensign.
Just before jumping to Hanar, Burke revealed to Modesto and Yamato the mission. Modesto would serve as Athena Jovann’s personal pilot while Yamato would see to her security. Burke and Austin would accompany Jovann and assess the situation on the surface. After speaking with Lattus Tishla, she and Austin agreed to approach, under armed escort, human separatists who did not recognize Tishla’s leadership. They found themselves taken prisoner after an ambush, but, thanks to persuasion by Suicide, were released unharmed. Burke then ordered the Challenger‘s special forces unit and pilots to train with Hanar’s troops in anticipation of liberating Amargosa.
Burke commanded the Compact’s forces during the Liberation of Amargosa. She and Quentin Austin oversaw the invasion from the CNC of the Valles Marineris, which originally took severe damage in the original attempt to retake the planet. However, Austin learned his son had crashed when the city of Riverside suffered a nuclear event and wanted to go look for him. Burke relented, asking for a rifle and a sidearm, along with six Navy Special Forces as an escort. She, too, would search for the downed pilot. She copiloted Austin’s shuttle as they flew down to the wreckage.
When they found JT, along with Duffy and a Navy Spec Force officer named Yamato, they learned how to use the Gelt stun grenades and helped with the attack on Lucius Kray‘s rear. Once most of the troops were subdued, she and Austin gave JT and Yuwono cover as they closed in on Kray. During the standoff, Davra Andraste managed to slip out of Kray’s grasp, get his firearm, and shoot the warlord. While he was down, the girl started kicking him. Burke warned her that continuing would be a war crime, though she did so without enthusiasm. She witnessed Tishla emerging informing Kray that Amargosa would now be amicably be disputed between Hanar and Metis, allowing the people to decide their own fate. However, Kray attempted to shoot Tishla with biotoxin-loaded bullets. She and Austin had to assure Chapaan that, as Ellie Nardino, she would not face war crimes charges in either the Compact or the Realm.
Burke later attended the medal ceremony arranged by Tishla at Walden for Suicide and the Children of Amargosa. She stood with Fleet Admiral Tran and Rear Admiral Austin to present the Compact Medal of Honor.
Burke returned to Amargosa in the wake of the assassination attempt on Provisional Governor Best in 432. She believed, based on the symbols found on weapons fragments, that Juno, not Realm extremists, perpetrated the attacks on Best, the Enclave, and Suicide’s home. She warned Suicide that the Anna Khirovsky was en route with presidential chief of staff Jez Salamacis aboard.
Some time before 432, Burke was promoted to full admiral. That year, she took her flagship, the Valles Marineris, to Marilyn when the Bonapartan Sappers, a Household Guard division, had been elevated to Navy Special Forces status with Mitsuko Yamato in command of a unit. In reality, Burke intervened in the search for Jayne Best. Yamato wanted to offer her services and unit to Suicide and JT Austin. Burke also sent in Connor Duffy to help obscure the Goldeneye‘s drive signatures.
In 432, Burke traveled to Hanar to oversee joint exercises arranged about Quentin Austin to give pilots experience against Gelt friendly to humans. She spoke with Suicide and emphasized more than one group was trying to infiltrate the halls of power in the Compact. Suicide made herself available for the work ahead.
Appearances: No Marigolds in the Promised Land, Broken Skies, Flight Blade, Storming Amargosa, Suicide Run