Captain Iain Mallory
Height: 5
Weight: 154
Eye Colour: Blue
Retinal Code: 023-C12
Current Assignment: (squadron)
A pilot in the GTVA often has little to hold on to. Every time you go up on a mission, you wonder if this is your last flight. The only way you can keep your nerve is to just bite down and do your job.
I served in the Second War with the Shivans. I've lost friends to battle, both dying in combat and dying in asylums after they've lost their minds. War takes so much out of a person that it often leaves them an empty shell unless you know how to deal with it.
There used to be a class at the academy, Desensitizing 302. For an entire semester they'd show you hours of battle footage. This isn't the same stuff you see on the news. You see pilots up and close when their fighter loses atmosphere and their head implodes. You see wounded soldiers with missing arms, legs, pieces of torso, and other various appendages.
In the final weeks of class, they replace the faces of those unfortunate souls with the face of the person next to you, your roommate, your best friend, your own brother. Eventually you stare at yourself on the televiewer and watch as you get ripped apart by a Shivan, vented out an airlock, or explode in a fiery death. Those that don't flinch move on to places like SOC and GTVI. Those that break down are sent home in tears.
I was one of the former. I was assigned to SOC less than a year after I graduated.
When my folks died, I went to go visit my brother. It had been the first time I saw him in three years. He was inconsolable. Where as I didn't feel anything, he was an emotional wreck. The GTVA had ripped any sense of remorse and grief from my heart.
The ceremony was short. There weren't any remains left to bury, no relatives to give a eulogy; just Aidan and I, sending a coffin of heirlooms in to space toward what was left of Capella.
Nine years later, I think I can say I've seen everything. My career has been a long and distinguished one. However, I can't be satisfied with what I've done in my life. It's taken me all this time to regain my emotions that were stripped away from me all this time. I can finally feel the grief that I should have felt all those years ago. I'm no longer a killing machine owned by the GTVA.
They don't offer Desensitizing 302 at the academy any more. The days of the GTVA sending out mindless soldiers out to do their dirty work is over. Still, those of us who are left from the old school, we can only serve the GTVA with all of our hearts. We know no other way to go.