Kaff Tagon

Captain Kaff Tagon is a human mercenary, and the founder and former leader of Tagon's Toughs. When Breya was around, he displayed a tendency to put his foot in his mouth regarding sexism in the workplace, but this was a result of inexperience and lack of tact rather than actual sexism on his part. He is a mercenary at heart and enjoys extracting all possible money from a job; getting paid several times, potentially by different clients, to do a job is a favorite event. Tagon is a good leader and a skilled tactician, but his vocabulary is too small for the word "melange." He frequently quotes from The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries.

He is often regarded as dumb as his troops by the scientists and even the troops themselves, with examples such as Ennesby advising Kevyn to keep his words to two syllables for Tagon's comprehension, and his inability to interpret most of Kevyn's technobabble. However, he has proven to be quick-witted (if not especially subtle) about tactics and strategy, and has a keen eye for getting clients (and opponents) to pay through the nose for his services.

Tagon was killed in action in the Averted Future, willing the command of the company to a shocked Kevyn Andreyasn. In the real timeline, Tagon's life was spared through the actions of a time-traveling Captain Andreyasn and his past counterpart during the Pa'anuri Wars, who managed to pay off the mercenaries who would have otherwise killed him, although at a price of over one hundred million kilocreds.

Tagon's skill with a Gauss/Gunfoam Pistol is such that on the firing range, he can actually draw pictures on a book-sized target. He also carries epaulet-grenades and a Dorothy System, and his soldier-boosts and powered uniform make him a weapon in his own right. Tagon's hand to hand skills are also exceptional; he is undefeated on screen in pugil-stick drills (though he cheats), and his knife fighting was so brutal and effective it prompted his father to question his mental health.

Early military career prior to the formation of the Toughs
Captain Tagon is a native of Celeschul, and a veteran of the Celeschul Defense Service. He initially started his military career in the infantry where he served for four years. During the Terraforming War, he did a tour with the Oatmeal Peacekeepers before joining the fleet as an officer. Tagon served as a midshipman aboard a light frigate where he saw a "little action". Tagon later used a shipsteading program offered by the Celeschul System Reservists' Corps to become a merchanter-at-arms and start his own mercenary outfit. After the mandatory ten years as a reservist, Tagon left the Reserves and traded his armed merchantman for a cruiser.

Tagon served with John Der Trihs, then a junior lieutenant in the Celeschul Defense Service, during his time in the fleet. Tagon was deeply impressed by Der Trihs's talent as a tactician, asserting that his frequent tweaks to his superiors' battle plans saved a lot of lives, including Tagon's. When Tagon founded his mercenary company, he immediately hired Der Trihs when he learned that he had been discharged from the military after suffering brain trauma.

Family
Kaff Tagon's only living family is General (retired) Karl Tagon, the rest of their family having been assassinated in the first strike of the Terraforming War. The two surviving Tagons blamed each other for failing to stop the nanoweapon that killed them, and were bitterly estranged for over thirty years, but finally patched things up just after the Oisri mission. When the company grew into a multi-ship squadron that needed a commodore to command it, Captain Tagon decided that his career as a single-ship captain did not qualify him for the job and invited Karl to take the commodore's slot instead, ceding command of the company to him.

Clones of Kaff Tagon
Tagon has been killed two times as of this writing.

The first instance was in the book Averted Future, where the original is killed on a mission with Lt. Ellen "Elf" Foxworthy. However, Kevyn Andreyasn's time clone ended up saving both from dying in the actual timeline.

Following the discovery and distribution of the red-reo technology, backups of Tagon and the rest of the Tough's crew have been made and repetitively updated. This would result of two notable Clones of Kaff Tagon.

Kaff Tagon II
Born in the virtual waiting room in the Tough's city, JumpStar Prime, Kaff Tagon was reborn after the original died a heroic death saving his crew from the Esspererin aboard the Broken Wind by using a ship to ship warhead 'indoors.' The backup used for this clone was made 40 minutes before the original died. This Tagon would become the series' continuation of the original, without major differences in personality or mannerisms.

Kaff Tagon III / (Mind Clone) Kaff Tagon
The third instance of Kaff Tagon is a digital clone of his gestalt produced by the Plenipotent Dominion, sometimes referred to as a mind clone/virtual clone. He was created because of Kaff Tagon (II) giving permission to have a clone made of him for one-way mission to meet the Hrathi, an ancient race whose artifacts suggest they saved the dinosaurs of Earth and may know why the galaxy was continuously having mega-civilizations disappearing or going extinct. Petey gave the co-command captaincy of the Pursuing Dinosaurs to Kaff, but as the ship was too small for an organic crew, a digital copy of the captain was needed.

Unlike the original Tagon, Virtual Tagon became began a relationship with (the digital clone of) Alexia Murtaugh, who signed on to be his co-captain. The virtual Tagon can be distinguished from the original by the virtual version's beard.