Position: Pilot

Birthplace: Greenleaf

Affiliation: Independance

Age: 32

Background:

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Mark Reiner.  That is about the happiest part of his story really.  Reiner’s life was one of hardship and desperate poverty.  His family tried the best they could to make ends meet and it always seemed that they were always one step behind the eight ball.  Ever since he could remember he was scrounging for everything that they had.  Whether it be for food, or even clothes, the family took and used what they could find, and had very little else in the way of anything.  Reiner’s life actually went down a rather dark path quite early in life, where at the age of six, he had stumbled upon a local smuggling operation that was using what was supposed to be an abandoned building.  Too young to kill, they just let him go, and would occasionally get paid a tiny sum for bits of local information by them over the next few years.

At the age of 11 though, Reiner thought that their life would obviously be a heck of a lot cooler than what he was currently living.  So he stowed away on one of their ships on a run to St. Albans.  When he was found it was obviously too late to bring him back, so he tagged along for their trip to St. Albans.  He became the crew’s defacto mascot.  Once there they tried to conclude their business out in the middle of nowhere, and the area got hit by reavers.  Everyone was killed, but a wily little Mark actually managed to hide in the cold hills and get away.  Over the next little while he found his way back to civilization somehow, and was essentially stranded in the middle of St. Albans for the next two years until he managed to find someone nice enough to help transport him back home.  When he arrived it was obvious that his family was furious, and went from the level of family burden, to hated family member over night.  He lived in the same condition of poverty and apparent hatred until one day he knocked his father out with a punch, and packed his stuff and left.  He was seven-teen.

Reiner was not very good at a lot other than surviving.  His education was sorely lacking in a lot of areas, and his skills in other areas were apparently non-existent.  Reiner hired himself to ships as a labourer, tried mining, logging, everything that could give you money.  Nothing stuck and he seemed not very good at a lot.  One day at 18 years of age, on one ship the captain let Reiner fly the ship.  It was apparent that he was a natural.  Not used to the sudden praise, Reiner was suddenly suspicious, but after those suspicions were soothed, the captain took Reiner under his wing and taught him to fly.  Reiner absorbed the learning he had to do to become a pilot like a sponge.  Navigational mathematics, spatial relations, piloting, and all that minute calculations that were involved in fuel consumption and maximizing fuel loads came quickly to him.  It was as if he had been doing the job for years.  The captain essentially inherited a new pilot, and Reiner was actually content for the first time in his life.

Then the war came.  At 20 Reiner said goodbye to the captain and took off to join the Independence forces with bells on.  As a brown coat pilot, he flew the ramshackle fast attack crafts that they could put together, and did fairly well for himself considering the number of sorties he flew.  His first major battle in space pretty much almost killed him.  65% of the Independence forces were blown from space and he sat in his broken cockpit bleeding from a nasty abdominal injury.  He was rescued by his own side, and rushed to medbay where massive surgery had to take place to put his mid section back together.  He survived but his abdomen can be seen to have gone through something major.  From there he went back into the cockpit and seemed to learn from the being shot down.  But battle after battle he went in outnumbered, and either turned the tide of battle by blowing highly ranked Alliance aces from space, or holding off long enough for his side to get away.  He earned several citations and medals for his actions over the years of the war.  Then it was over, and Reiner tried to go back home to see a family that wanted nothing to do with him.  With nowhere to go, he started looking to fly something, anything that could keep him moving.

Personality Profile:

Once upon a time Mark Reiner might have been considered many things.  He had lead a hard life, but he was still witty and had a ready smile for those around him.  The war took a lot away from him.  He was literally a machine in the cockpit.  He would go out, kill everything that he could shoot at, then head off to sleep and do it all over again the next day.  He is a careful and exacting man when it comes to aspects of his life and his chosen career.  He can be seen as a caring individual to those around him, but he is also rather grim at times.  He does not smile a lot, rather stern, and his humour tends to run into the dark spectrum than anything normal.  A long time ago him and god seemed to have a falling out.  He has no patience for that sort of stuff anymore and would rather remove himself from the presence of the devout, than punch the smile off of their face.  If there is one dark point aside from his grim outlook, is that he is rather vengeful.

Skills:

Even though he knows the business end of a gun, he is not a very good ground combatant.  His primary skills lay in the air, or in space.  He is a mathematical prodigy of sorts, even though he would never admit to being good at that sort of stuff.  He sees numbers and can sift through them like we might sift through our socks to pick out one quickly to wear.  He is a good pilot, but proved better with smaller craft than the larger ones.  He does a good job piloting the Fading Sun, and in the few tough scrapes over the years, had proven that his natural affinity with spatial relations had not gone away.  He is always the fighter pilot, in a transport pilot’s clothing.