Group: UNSCDF-Principal/2C
Posts: 23
Member No.: 2,050
Joined: 3-November 07
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Lieutenant Commander Maximus Ulf
Descendent Nationalities: Italian, Danish, Anglo-Saxon
Born: 2502
From: New Legaspi, Mars
Height: 6 ft 2 in
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Brown
Background Information
Lieutenant Commander Maximus Ulf was born to parents Sven Ulf and Ashley Marie Ainsworth in 2507, at a local hospital near the outskirts of New Legaspi. Both parents had civilian jobs at the Reyes-Mclees Shipyards, his dad a contractor and his mother an accountant.
In 2515, when Maximus was the age of ten, his father became involved in a controversy regarding a decompression of a section of a warship that he had been working on. The details were never fully released to the press, but what is known is that Sven was acquitted of all charges made against him, only to be shot by the brother of a worker who died in the incident. Maximus' mother, grief-stricken and fearful that revenge would be taken out on them, moved the two of them to the Luna OCS where she took a job as a payroll specialist.
In 2520, 5 years before the first contact with the Covenant, the UNSC took note of Maximus' gift with mathematics. At the age of 18 with no formal mathematical training higher than a high-school level, he was completing advanced navigational equations and various other math applications with much higher accuracy than most of the students at the Luna OCS. Added to that the fact that people seemed to like him and would at the least listen to him, and the UNSC made their call.
After careful deliberation Maximus accepted the UNSC's offer and went into career naval operations. He was fed through boot camp like all of the other soldiers, then was sent to Command and Tactics school. While Maximus excelled in mathematics and was a natural leader, he was below average in most fields of science and was not the most eloquent writer. It was the UNSC's decision to carry on with his training, however, and buffer some of his incompetencies with a solid command staff (as they did with most command-level positions).
From start to finish, it took him three years to make it out of training. On June 5th, 2523 Maximus was given the clearance to launch his cargo ferry for field command experience. He made several strong connections with the commanders of other ships during the one year period that he was in command of the ferry.
Update Thursday May 15
On June 23 2524, Maximus was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and re-assigned as first officer on board the UNSC Heracles. He served the post for several months, leading up to the ships involvement in the Harvest colony incident (later recognized as the start of the Human-Covenant war). Her skipper, Captain Veredi, was temporarily knocked out during the battle when a shot from a covenant vessel hit the bridge area, knocking several people from their stations and Veredi against the wall.
The skipper recovered from his temporary state of unconsciousness a rough ten minutes later, in time to give the order to retreat. Upon arrival to Reach, Captain Veredi recommended Maximus for promotion for his quick thinking and cool head during the captain's incapacitation. Maximus boarded a ship heading for Earth and departed from the system on October 7th 2525, just barely a month after the Harvest Colony incident.
Upon arrival in Sol, Maximus - now a Lt. Commander - was sent to the Reyes-Mclees Shipyards to begin the selection of his command staff, pending the approval of funding. He never received the permission.
One night on shore leave, Maximus became involved in a brief incident that ended in the death of a wealthy stock broker. The authorities arrived to find Maximus carrying the body out of an alley way. Charges were pressed and a court martial arranged.
Maximus testified that he was attempting to carry the man to a hospital, as he had found him before he had died and was trying to save him. The judges were inclined to believe him based on his flawless record, but the company pressing charges happened to be one of the major contributors to the UNSC war efforts in the Mars area and threatened to withdraw their support from the UNSC.
The UNSC Admiralty made the decision that in order to maintain their current production levels, they needed to appease the civilians, although they in no way enjoyed the prospect. They also judged that based on Maximus' psyche evaluation he would be able to rebound from any punishment and continue on with his life.
They over estimated.
When news came of his mother's death in a ground-car accident just a week after the trial, Maximus sunk into a deep depression. The UNSC had not wanted to waste his gifts, and offered him any job that was not a command position. His depression drove him to choose the quickest rout to death that he could think of: the newly formed 105th Orbital Drop Shock Trooper Division (ODST).
ODST training is neither gentle, nor appealing to most. It is considered by some to be suicide and only the craziest of people enlisted. On January 1st 2526, Maximus Ulf was shipped off to **/Information Classified/** to begin his training. Most of the training is classified under directive 337 of the UNSC regarding ODST operations. Sufficed to say he passed his field test within six months and was promptly promoted to Lance Corporal, assigned to a ship, and sent off to battle along with 11 other ODSTs.
For the next three years Maximus' unit saw extensive combat, ranging from anti-rebel police actions to the occaisional covenant engagement. Maximus' also earned the name "Pit" due to his eating habits. He had a reputation for eating enough food to fill three marines, yet never seemed to ever gain weight. Maximus was awarded the Purple Heart twice (was shot a couple of times) and was awarded the Bronze Star for a suicide rush on a rebel machine gun emplacement which was ultimately decided to have saved the lives of his ODST unit.
Maximus eventually fought enough battles to work his own way out of depression. He became incredibly close to his ODST unit (most troopers do) and most of them men wound up turning to him for advice and instructions, even though he was not in a command position.
On July 25 2529 Maximus was shot in the leg during a routine operation against a rebel base on the surface of a moon. The details have never been published, but what is known is that the bullet penetrated the leg just above the knee and clipped the side of a nerve on the way through. Luckily, they were in a pressurized section of the base when it occurred and Maximus was not exposed to vacuum. The rest of Maximus' unit pulled him to safety, gave him a pistol, and locked him in a closet while they finished the mission. They were successfully retrieved and the ship's medical officer performed emergency surgery to remove the fragments of the bullet. From that day on, it was difficult for Maximus to walk. He could use a cane to relieve some of the pain on a day to day basis, but if he tried to walk upright without any aid his body pressed down on the damaged nerve and caused him excruciating pain.
The UNSC wanted to give him an honorable discharge, but he refused and stayed on as his unit's quartermaster. Maximus had grown to feel that his unit was his family and was loath to leave. That is, until 2530.
2530 marked a change in the war with the Covenant. Before, most of the encounters had been limited to minor skirmishes and engagements. However in 2530 the Covenant glassed Eridanus II. Coincidentally, around the same time new evidence turned up that proved that Maximus was in fact not the one that killed the stock broker in 2525. The UNSC removed the conviction from Maximus' record and forcibly re-instated him as a Lt. Commander and first officer of a Marathon-Class in light of the glassing of Eridanus II.
Maximus knew that he could not serve the UNSC best in the war against the Covenant in the ODST because of his leg, and accepted the new posting (not that it mattered, the UNSC was going to put him in the spot anyways) on the condition that be allowed to keep his ODST body suit as a personal memento to the men he knew he would never see again. He served in the post until 2535 and the battle of Jericho. With the destruction of so many ships the UNSC Admiralty had to rebuild the fleet, almost from the ground up.
As with many other Navy personnel, anyone that had command experience were given commands to help fight the Covenant.
**/End Background/**
This post has been edited by PringleMan on May 15 2008, 07:53 PM
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Maximus "Pit" Ulf
