Soldier

Moderators: Shroom Man 777, Ford Prefect

Post Reply
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

I. The Great War: 1896 - 1924

Bullets whizzed overhead, the cacophony of the machineguns drowning out almost all other noise, save the occasional faint rumble and clap of an explosive going off somewhere nearby. The young infantryman eased forward, his face streaked with blood and grime, his hair clotted with foul-smelling mud. All around him he could hear the pained cries and moans of those who had been mowed down by the emplacements or blown apart by artillery and landmines. No-man’s land was a cancer, a blight that pockmarked the earth they fought for, and he was just one lonely and insignificant fodder fighter trapped in the hellish festering wound. The man squeezed his eyes shut, crawling forward another meter or so, then dashed his arm against his face to remove the muck, streaking more of it across his visage as he did. As the mud stung his eyes, the young man felt like crying as all hope fled from his body. He wasn’t going to survive here; he was just one man, not even eighteen years old. Really, he was still just a boy, and there were so many things he still wanted to do. If, by some improbable streak of luck God decided to let him survive this godforsaken advance, let him just survive his first day of war, just let him get home safely to see his family again, Alexander vowed that such horrors as war would never again invade his life. He’d settle down with a nice girl, have kids, and the war and fighting, the bloodshed and the horror, the sheer primal waste would never be anything more than faint nightmares, if only he could survive this first day.

Alexander Thaddeus III was a man of war, born and bred. He was a man who stood at the centre of every war of the 20th century, and then some. Amongst those in the know in military forces around the world, Alexander Thaddeus is widely recognized as the most legendary soldier to have ever existed, a living avatar of conflict. In some circles, Thaddeus is considered to be War Itself, such is the legacy that he has left behind. Born in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, Alexander entered the world just days before his father travelled to Athens to compete as Canada’s only participant in the 1896 Summer Olympics, eventually taking gold in 3 of the shooting events, and a bronze in the weightlifting. Alexander’s father would eventually teach him the art of target shooting, and teaching him how to shoot rabbits in the hills that surrounded Charlottetown. On the weekends Alexander and his brothers would visit their grandfather, Alexander Thaddeus I, and listen to his tales of the Civil War, fighting steam-powered spider automatons, sabotaging Confederacy war trains, and dueling with Confederate mercernary teams. Alexander loved listening to his grandfather’s tales, and grew excited by the romantic notions of war that his grandfather fed him. So when the Great War was declared in 1914 Alexander jumped at the chance to fight in the war effort, immediately signing up to serve with the Commonwealth forces.

Initially, he served in the trenches as one of the front-line cannon fodder soldiers, but somehow managed to survive his first charge through no-man’s land, reaching the barbed wire borders of the enemy trenches and slipping through with a small group of other survivors of the charge to neutralize a machine-gun emplacement. Alexander was stunned by the brutality of the confrontation and swore that he would never fight again. But the next day he fought again. And the next day. And the next. Eventually, Alexander became more used to the horrors around him, quickly learning how to survive best, and how to ensure others didn’t. His father’s skills with rifles and pistols had been passed down to Alexander, and he soon became a makeshift marksman operating out of the trenches, sniping German troops who showed their heads using a captured German rifle that had been fitted with a scope, something almost unheard of within the Allied forces in the early stages of the war. It was his skill with a rifle that drew a recommendation that he participate in the First Army School of Sniping that was established in France to train Allied marksmen in order to counter the tactical use of snipers by the German forces.

Alexander quickly gained as much of a wartime mastery of sniping as the conditions and circumstances allowed, and served honorably as a sniper for the Allied forces until he was offered an opportunity to perform some espionage operations in order to assist the British intelligence community. There was enough intelligence collected to know that the Italians were about to take a very unusual step of creating a small combat arm designed to breech enemy lines in order to pave the way for broader infantry incursion. These shock troopers utilized a variety of tactics to breech lines, but it was known that the Italian military was specifically looking for skilled, daring and loyal snipers who could serve as distance support for the new shock trooper groups, known as the Arditi. Alexander was inserted into enemy territory with a fraudulent Italian history and the papers to back it up, and soon enough managed to secure a position as part of the Arditi, the first real modern special operations teams. Alexander served out the remainder of the war with the Arditi, feeding information to the British forces as best he could, and killing as few British infantrymen as he could manage without arousing suspicion. His intelligence reports prevented the Arditi from making several vital trench incursions in the later stages of the war, and when the war was finally declared to be over Alexander returned home with a number of medals commending his valor and effectiveness in service to the Commonwealth.

Arriving home in Charlottetown, Alexander found it difficult to adjust to normal life once more, having spent the better part of four years as a soldier in a state of constant warfare. He had changed dramatically from the boy who made his first charge over the trenches, the vow to never fight again nothing but a distant echo in his mind’s eye. The four years had hardened Alexander, but had also unlocked something within him. Warfare was something Alexander was good at, and he found himself relishing the idea of conflict at time. Not full-blown frontline warfare, but simply the act of serving his nation, learning new things and making a significant difference, protecting the things he loved. The Alexander that returned with this confidence in protection was a different man to the naïve and innocent Alexander who had left, and so distanced himself from his pre-war friends, burying himself more deeply in the political and theoretical aspects of national defense.

This interest in the politics of national defense led Alexander to become more deeply involved with the Department of Militia and Defense, serving as an advisor and contributing his knowledge of warfare and combat cleaned from his service in World War I. Though only young at 21 years of age, Alexander was already being recognized as a war hero and a soldier of unrivalled skill in the men he had served with, so his contributions to the Militia were taken as valuable thoughts and often implemented. Due to his experiences with the Arditi Thaddeus petitioned his government for the creation of an elite forces group for the Canadian military, and was almost immediately granted provisional access to the resources needed to form and maintain a special operations group. Utilising these resources, Thaddeus established the Canadian Unconventional Tactics, Missions and Intelligence Service in 1918, acting as the commander and primary administrator of the group. Using his experience and contacts Thaddeus was able to gather together the best of Canada’s individual combatants, as well as the most knowledgeable human resources on many aspects of war. He took it upon himself to personally train his handpicked team in skills that were deemed to be “unconventional” at the time, embedding in the entire team a grounding in sniping, infiltration and espionage, sabotage and tactical and strategic planning and logistics. Other members of the team also served as trainers, drilling and educating the remainder of the team in things like engineering, artillery ballistics, sabotage, psychological warfare and a number of other aspects. Because of this sharing of expertise within the group whilst retaining specialization, CUTMIS became recognized by the Militia as one of the most valuable small-scale assets and was utilized often in handling homeland terrorism as well as broader operations within America and the Soviet nations.

However, the effectiveness of CUTMIS had come at a personal cost to Alexander, as his time spent in establishing and running the team left him with little time to himself. Whilst he had become a military man through and through, Alexander still yearned for some companionship and love, and it was this lack of time for personal life combined with the deep-seated yearning for what he knew was probably not going to be his to have if he continued down his career path that led to the hasty and ill-fated relationship with Sarah Burchess. The two fell in love quickly, or so they thought. It would only be later that Alexander would realize what he thought was love was simply his own desire to fill a hole in his life, and what Sarah had thought was love was nothing more than youthful lust and naivety. Not realizing this at the time, the two got married and in 1920 Missy Thaddeus was born. Unfortunately, Alexander’s involvement with the time-consuming nature of running CUTMIS meant that he missed much of the formative years of his daughter’s life, and set himself a precedent for poor relationships with his family for the rest of his life. So busy was he that he barely even noticed when his younger brother Charleston was awarded a research position with an advanced avionics project, drawing bitter resentment from the rest of his family when he failed to show up to wish his brother the best of luck as he departed to work in Ontario. When Alexander’s first son, Mercer Thaddeus, was born in 1924 it took over a week before Alexander learned of it, having been isolated in a training regime that he refused to exit from, which inevitably caused a great deal of issues to erupt between himself and his wife during the short periods of time they would see each other.

II. The Atomic War: 1925 - 1945

Nonetheless, Alexander Thaddeus continued to operate CUTMIS at cost to his personal life, and the force proved its most valuable in 1925, when CUTMIS quelled a potential uprising by the French-Canadian terrorist organization Le Revolution de Canada, which was staging attacks in protest of the Commonwealth colonialism that still held the Canadian government. CUTMIS operatives raided the isolated base of operations of LRC, and it was Thaddeus himself who killed the Le Revolution leader. It was soon after this operation that CUTMIS began to work on an irregular basis with the American Special Response and Operations Corp in targeted operations against threats to all of North America, often serving as the watchers of Soviet activity, being so near to the nation. It was this on-again, off-again interaction between the two groups that started the ongoing relationships between American and Canadian special forces, and would eventually lead to Thaddeus’ command of the joint US-Canadian SMS and SADICOM later in life. CUTMIS continued to operate as the elite forces of the Canadian Militia, presenting such an effective method of operation that in 1933 the British commander who would later be codenamed Commander Steel started to push the British military to establish a similar force to CUTMIS within all the Commonwealth militaries, despite the fact that most of the Commonwealth nations were now independent from the Crown. His experiences working with Alexander in WWI, and his continued relationship with Alexander led to his understanding the effectiveness of the approach taken by CUTMIS, and with a desire to replicate that in Britain’s military.

In 1939 Alexander Thaddeus faced his biggest challenge so far, when the British government uncovered the INERT Project, the development of a walking atomic automaton based on reverse-engineered Martian Tripod technology and prototypical nuclear bombs developed from the Tube Alloys Project. The INERT Project had been a black-budget operation overseen by a single General operating out of a Black Rad Research Facility in Vemork, Norway. Though the project was a Commonwealth-funded one, the British government was worried about the political ramifications that could occur should the nuclear walker ever come to light, fearing that it could be the straw that broke the camel’s back amidst the immense political tensions that existed throughout Europe at the time. As the exposure of the INERT Project was exactly what the majority of the British government didn’t want, high level meetings secretly organized to allow the commander to provisionally create the Special Covert Operations Service. Thaddeus and CUTMIS were drawn into the loop to advise on such a delicate infiltration and sabotage operation, with the intention being that one of the CUTMIS field operatives would serve as the field operative for the infiltration of the Black Rad facility, codenaming the Operation as K-Rad, with the operation name and all other codenames coming from a short-lived comic series. Thaddeus was to operate as the main radio support for the operative, with Commander Steel and others providing more specialist support based on their areas of expertise.

However, when the CUTMIS operatives deemed suitable for the operation were briefed on it, all refused to participate in the project, some due to misgivings about sabotaging a Commonwealth project so soon after Canada’s independence, others because of the perceived internal struggle between factions in the British government and the British military, and still others because they believed that the INERT Project would be able to decisively end a war that they felt was almost inevitable at this point. With none of his CUTMIS operatives willing to participate as the field agent, Alexander took the unusual step of reactivating himself as a field agent, at the age of 43, having spent almost ten years solely as the administrator and commander of CUTMIS and off the field service listings. Adopting the codename Big Blue, Thaddeus infiltrated Vemork and after getting past guards, security systems and Sir Uther finally faced down the General, who fought Thaddeus in the newly-activated INERT Walker. Thaddeus single-handedly destroyed the INERT Walker, sabotaged the Black Rad facility and collapsed the lower levels, destroying much of the research into atomic weaponry at the time. The success of the mission led to the official creation of SCOS as a Commonwealth standard, with units being created in Canada, Britain, Australia and other larger Commonwealth nations.

With the outbreak of World War II, Alexander Thaddeus stayed in active field service, serving as the overall commander of the Allied SCOS units, undertaking missions of infiltration and sabotage. Whilst Thaddeus served in the capacity of Big Blue for the entirety of the war, he also served on the front lines of several battles, employing his honed skills and aptitudes to demolish Axis forces that opposed his own, and inspiring his troops to greater success by boosting morale through his mere presence. Thaddeus became so well known as a combatant that he became one of the faces of the war, appearing on morale-boosting posters and in newspapers throughout the nations of the Allies. He became well known to the American forces as well, working on several occasions with Jason Goldstein and his Iron Demons, both developing a mutual respect for each other. As his exploits throughout the war became greater, sabotaging missile facilities and infiltrating ports to scuttle U-Boats, Thaddeus’ image came to transcend nations, being seen as the Hero of the Allies, garnering acclaim from Britain, France, Australia and America as the media played him up with significant propaganda. Soon, he became known as the Legendary Soldier, or more simply as the Soldier, the avatar of justice and the way of the Allies. Because of his growing fame as Soldier, Thaddeus eventually had to abandon working as a field agent for SCOS, instead co-ordinating all the varied SCOS groups and exchanging intelligence and resources with SROC. However, he still continued to serve as a combatant in many of the key battles of the war, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and proving a decisive element of the Invasion of Normandy. During the D-Day battle, Thaddeus and his team sabotaged numerous V-2 emplacements and other artillery emplacements, working grudgingly with Sir Uther, who had not forgotten his encounter with Thaddeus in Vemork. Sometime later during the Battle of Normandy, Soldier fought alongside his own son, Mercer, commanding the frontline Canadian infantry men, and it was during this time that Mercer first understood what his father truly was, a man forged by war, and for war. Long-held bitterness and resentment flared up in Mercer, as he realized that he had no desire to become what his father was, and after the Battle of Normandy Mercer returned home to inform his sister and his long-suffering mother that he didn’t think his father would ever truly see them as family, not as long as there were brothers-in-arms to fight alongside.

As the war in Europe wound down, Soldier served in the Pacific theatre, fighting the Japanese alongside primarily Australian soldiers. It was in February of 1945, participating in the Burma Campaign, that Thaddeus lost his right eye during an ambush. Because of the injury, Soldier returned to North America, to serve the remainder of the war as a commander and planner. His status amongst the Allies and his overall military aptitude saw Soldier’s presence at the testing of the Gadget at Trinity in July, a spectacle that Thaddeus would hold later to be “possibly the most terrifying show of power” he’d ever seen, and that “no one nation should possess such destructive weaponry, much less use it”. Thaddeus was privy to the plans to utilize the atomic bombs against Japan, and was one of the most vocal military agents against the use of the weapons, particularly against civilian targets. Despite his objections to the bombings however, Thaddeus stood firm alongside the Allied governments and publically supported the bombings. It was at the end of the war that Soldier was granted an honorary citizenship by the Allied forces, becoming officially registered as a citizen of America, England, France and Australia. However, trouble was brewing on the personal front, as he had barely been home for his wife and children at all in the past six years, and little better in the fourteen preceding them. Returning home as a triumphant public hero, Thaddeus found his son to be unable to understand why he did what he did, his daughter to have grown up into a young woman, and his wife to have strayed in the years of absence and separation.

III. The Legend of War: 1946 - 1958

After the war finally ended with Japan’s surrender, the formation of the United Nations saw Soldier employed in a role best described as a “global military advisor”, a role he relished greatly as it allowed him to bury himself in his career and avoid the troubles and struggles of his personal life, which was by now in shambles. The war’s end also saw the reshuffling of the Special Covert Operations Service into the newer Special Missions Service, a joint North American team that operated under the jurisdictions of both America and Canada. With a high focus on testing prototype technology and utilizing otherwise rare and powerful resources, the Special Missions Service was the first truly joint-operated military service of North America. Thaddeus was appointed as the commander of the SMS, and given the similarities between the Special Missions Service and Task Force Eagle, Soldier would once more work alongside Jason Goldstein for the protection of the North American continent. Though he was by this time fifty years old, Soldier still regularly participated in field operations and intensive training, drawing the interested eyes of research thinktanks. Even at the advanced age of fifty, Soldier still appeared to be a man in his prime, strong, fast and devilishly intelligent, and the American and Canadian governments became interested in what it was that kept Thaddeus in the peak of human form. In 1948, under the orders of a high-level government committee known as the Trust, Soldier became involved in a eugenics and breeding program called Soldier Sons, attempting to breed true soldiers through in vitro fertilization, at the time an unheard-of process that remained a tightly-guarded government secret until the mid 70s.

The in vitro fertilization of eggs from some of the best female soldiers of America and Canada proved to be a great success, implanting numerous surrogate mothers, and it was through this Soldier Sons program that thirteen children were born, nine boys and four girls. The first two to be born, codenamed Alpha and Beta Soldier, were identical twins, and would later grow up to be the most viable of Soldier’s natural progeny birthed through IVF. Soldier expressed far more interest in his Soldier Sons than his natural-born children, but the carefully regulated government program meant he was unable to see any of them personally until they were sixteen, and before then only able to see them when he drilled them and trained them as part of the program. Understanding the reasons for why he was unable to see his children, Thaddeus accepted this, as he believed the established program would help make them stronger soldiers and better warriors in the defense of justice. By the 1950s Thaddeus’ ability to interact on a personal level with any family had atrophied terribly, and he found that it was no great loss to him, as the sadness he’d felt for so long about being unable to spend more time with family, and the loneliness, had gradually become dulled through the years of warfare and combat. By this time, Soldier was seen as a gruff man, friendly and cheerful, but without more than a handful of people he considered truly friends rather than friendly co-workers or acquaintances.

It was in 1950 that the Scion Agenda was initiated by the Trust, a program designed to enroll the most charismatic soldiers from the multiple Forces of America and Canada, and bestow upon them greater leadership and performance potential, the idea being to shape the Scions into skilled men as capable as Soldier in all areas of warfare, who could inspire and lead the greater military forces to victory in impossible situations. For the agenda, the most capable men and women serving in each branch of the Defense Forces were screened for higher-than-average ESP expectancy, political comprehension and leadership potential. Though they were to become wartime leaders as great as Alexander Thaddeus, Thaddeus himself was not particularly involved with the Scion Agenda at a more personal level, though he did build the majority of the curriculum and formalized his own unique fighting style into a martial arts form he called Applied Fighting Arts, honing it with other members of the SMS and Task Force Eagle before assigning some of them as teachers for the Scion Agenda. The Agenda lasted for four years, before the Scion Uprising occurred, an uprising that some of the Scions had been planning for almost three years. With the Scions out on active duty as testing and development regimes, they were able to use their newly enhanced leadership abilities and ESP to inspire dissention by bands of soldiers, as well as activating several sleeper Scions that had been placed throughout the US military, taking control of multiple B-52 Stratofortresses. At the same time Scion agents in England were able to break into the poorly-secured nuclear stockpiles and capture numerous atomic warheads, consolidating the Scions as a fluid power base at the time. However, before the Scions were able to enact the full extent of their plans to claim their True Inheritance, Soldier deployed his Special Mission Service operatives into the Scion hotspots, and personally infiltrated the Inheritance Facility where the Scion Agenda was located. Though suffering significant losses, the SMS managed to kill almost all the Scions, with Soldier eliminating their leader and destroying the Inheritance Facility, ending the Agenda. Emerging from the debacle of the Agenda once more as a hero and legend of war, Soldier was removed from command of the remnants of the SMS and inducted into a secret black-ops research project known as BASS, the Biologically-Augmented Soldier Synthesis project.

Instead of taking capable soldiers and training them to be more like Soldier and other legends of war, BASS sought to actively enhance those legends themselves, the ones that America and Canada knew to be loyal and devout soldiers. BASS was designed to enhance the soldiers selected beyond the human limits, the intent being to produce an elite force of soldiers strong enough, durable enough and fast enough to handle most any situation. Whilst the intent wasn’t to create a supersoldier in the vein of Major Britannic, the initial aims of the BASS Project were to create a soldier capable of military pressing 2 metric tons, able to survive hits from pistol-caliber bullets with minor bruising and an ability to run at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour, and with the endurance to perform at peak capacity for at least an hour. Derived partially from captured specimens of Vitamin X, collected by Jason Goldstein and his Iron Demons back during the war, BASS operated by enhancing the already near-peakhuman physique of the injecting soldier, the intent being that the effects would last for around 48 hours. Unfortunately, the BASS Project was a failure, many of the subjects becoming incapacitated by illness, struck by unexpected physical mutations or otherwise suffering erratic effects from the injections, overloading their bodies to the point of catastrophic organ failure, or gaining only select benefits, and only for short periods of time. Two of the injected subjects met the expected parameters of BASS, but whilst their strength, speed and durability vastly increased, their minds and bodies degenerated, one of them dying a bestial monster in a containment chamber only a week after the injection, the other escaping containment to become the Protohumanoid, the wandering monster of the frozen Alaskan tundra.

Alexander Thaddeus experienced some of the effects of BASS, however none as expected. Whilst the serum did not enhance Thaddeus’ physiology to posthuman levels, he did achieve a state that the government ended up designating ‘absolute peakhuman’. Thaddeus’ absolute peakhuman physiology indicated that his genetic structure was perfection, at the limit of human bounds, as he found himself able to match and eclipse all known baseline physical feats. Where the record for baseline deadlift had been 457 kilograms, Thaddeus found himself able to deadlift almost 500. Where the record for a military press had been 243 kilos, Thaddeus found himself able to press 270. He was able to sprint at Olympic speeds, and had the endurance to operate at absolute peak efficiency for close to four minutes, the ability to run a marathon in just under two hours, and nigh-perfect accuracy. His memory, already what would be referred to as “photographic” or eidetic, was enhanced to the pinnacle of human ability, garnering him instantaneous recall of any memory he held, and perfect memorization, with sub-cortical analysis and perception taking place only after the memory was implanted in his mind. This meant that Soldier was able to effortlessly recall exact details from complex images he was only exposed to for a second or two, and unrivalled pattern-matching skills. Whilst in his prime Thaddeus had already been around Olympic level in terms of shooting and endurance, the others aspects were boosted enough from his previous levels that Thaddeus was branded a partial success. Though it took almost a week for his physiology to grow to the absolute peakhuman levels with intense training, it was noted that Soldier had suffered not one of the side effects seen in any of the other subjects, and that whilst it hadn’t been an instantaneous booster to physiology, given that Thaddeus had to train and exercise to bring up his physiology, nor was the peakhuman nature degrading over time. It had taken four years to create just one peakhuman soldier, and so BASS was scrapped. But BASS would just be the beginning of the experiments that would collectively come to be known as the Soldier Initiative, and as the name indicates, Soldier himself would become quite involved with the projects to follow.

IV. The Hidden War: 1959 – 1963

The almost complete failure of the BASS Project didn’t deter the Trust thinktank, the scientists instead seizing on what had occurred with Soldier as an alternative that may be more easily repeated. Theorizing that the reason Thaddeus had reacted in such a way to the BASS treatment was due to him having what they suspected were almost perfect genes, the Trust commissioned a new project, Biologically Optimised Soldier Synthesis, the BOSS Project. This new project was to incorporate the breakthroughs in the field of molecular genetics, still a very new field at the time, with the structure of DNA only having been discovered 5 years prior. The intention of the new BOSS Project was to extract genetic material from Thaddeus, who had bonded unexpectedly at the genetic level with the BASS serum and as such already provided a base of biological material at peakhuman capacity, and combine it with a modified form of the BASS serum. Soldier remained within the research facility for the better part of a year, assisting the scientists with tests and providing various genetic samples. Originally projected to be a five-year program, the eruption of the Vietnam War saw the BOSS Project fast-tracked so that it could be tested on live soldiers and mass-produced for those in Vietnam. However, Soldier wouldn’t be on hand to see many of the results of BOSS until the latter years of the Vietnam War, when he was sent to serve in the jungle as a special ops commander.

In mid 1960, America formed a special operations unit that would draw from all the main military branches, but unlike Task Force Eagle this group only used more standard equipment, and baseline military men. This Special Operations Command focused heavily on inter-service communication and cooperation, unconventional small-unit tactics, and reconnaissance and intelligence operations. Though each branch of the defense forces had its own SOCOM units and structure, they were to be unified under the USSOCOM control in times of need, and it was here that Soldier was assigned to, in order to oversee the establishment and early operations of the fledgling organization. It was as the first commander-in-chief of SOCOM that Thaddeus began to garner the security clearances and service record to see some more indication of the Trust in action, higher-level documents and orders from above. Whilst he was intrigued by this mysterious Trust, he recognized that classified is classified, and never sought to pursue the matter. Regardless of any curiosity he may have held about the Trust, Thaddeus was too busy trying to coordinate SOCOM, as he’d been assigned to handle the rounding up of a number of Cuban exiles, for training in cooperation with the CIA. His details on the project were scant, but with the fact that the Trust had ordered the training of Cuban exiles in military operations, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that an attempted coup would soon be taking place.

Whilst CIA handled the collection of the exiles and establishing the training regime, it was Thaddeus’ SOCOM operatives that would train the exiles in some areas of necessity, working alongside the CIA. As it turned out, this proved to be a boon for the American government, as the CIA-established training regime was riddled with problems, such as an inadequate number of trainers able to speak Spanish, insufficient communication with the leaders of the exiled forces still in Cuba at the time, poor inter-departmental communication within the CIA, a notable lack of quality intelligence and reconnaissance and a dearth of contingency plans in case of failure. When Thaddeus’ SOCOM trainers informed him of the overconfidence of the CIA and the numerous failings within the training and planning stages, Thaddeus took it up with the government and was assigned to overhaul the planned invasion. Working carefully and applying his years of experience in infiltration and deception, Thaddeus cut out many aspects of the plan that he deemed too obvious and too much of an impediment to plausible deniability. Alongside this, he streamlined the training processes for the exiles, focusing on a much more extended training process as well as better insertion capabilities. Stripping the operation entirely from CIA hands, Thaddeus tightened up the security of the operation for, as a new branch of the Defense Force, SOCOM had less leaks in it, fewer moles and outside contacts that could constitute a breach of security.

SOCOM trained the exiles with military efficiency, the clear hierarchy of command that it held as a military department assisting Thaddeus in his training of the exiles, in a way that the decentralized nature of the CIA had impeded. However, it appeared to Thaddeus that at one point the entire operation was almost cancelled completely when President Eisenhower began to express disapproval towards the entire operation. Eisenhower, set to take a third term of presidency with sky-high public approval ratings and Trust backing, fell from grace during an eleventh hour scandal after an early election was declared, losing the election by a landslide to John F. Kennedy, and the operation moved ahead as planned. Though to the public it all appeared to be a surprising but legitimate chain of events, Thaddeus had seen and heard enough of the inner workings of the government in the tense months following Eisenhower’s objections to suspect that the Trust had engineered his spectacular fall from grace. In the weeks running up to the operation Thaddeus called in numerous favours and drew together contacts, his curiosity and sense of patriotism finally overwhelming his staunch military adherence to classified information and military hierarchy. Though he was not able to delve deep enough to find all the answers he had hoped for, Thaddeus found enough circumstantial evidence to implicate the Trust in the election’s unfolding. He was never able to prove his suspicions, but decided that he needed to see for himself what the Trust was up to with the operation he’d helped them prepare for.

Taking leave just before the operation commenced, Thaddeus ostensibly returned to his hometown for a relaxing break. However, the truth of the matter was that he was preparing to infiltrate the main ship that would be used to transport the Cuban exiles back to Cuba, so he could find out what was really going on. Successfully infiltrating the vessel, Thaddeus discovered the secret that the Trust had been hiding, the true purpose behind the mission at hand. Whilst the operation was indeed intended to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government and restore the previous American-friendly government, it was also to serve as the testbed for a new weapon of war. Based on intelligence that the American military had obtained back during the time of Tube Alloy and Thaddeus’ own mission into the Black Rad facility of Vemork, the new weapon was a bipedal nuclear-equipped tank known as Vagrant Arm, so called for the design team that produced it. Understanding immediately the implication of ground transportable nuclear-equipped tanks on a political level, Thaddeus set about with intention to destroy the machine, but was prevented from doing so by the designer of the warhead delivery systems, his own brother, Charleston Thaddeus.

Charleston had been extradited to the US as part of Project Manhattan, and had been part of the team who had designed the delivery systems for the atomic bombs used against Japan. In his years working for America, Charleston had become a patriot of the US, believing that Vagrant Arm was a necessity for America to retain its position of power in a changing global political world. Piloting the Vagrant Arm within the transport ship itself, Charleston attempted to kill Alexander, but through ingenuity and skill Alexander Thaddeus managed to take advantage of the weaknesses inherent in the prototype Vagrant Arm, as well as its delicate environment, and destroyed the death machine, scuttling the entire tanker with it and sending it to the bottom of the ocean. With the main weapon of the exiled force destroyed, and many of the exiles themselves killed or otherwise unable to participate in the invasion, the Bay of Pigs operation was doomed to failure. Thaddeus returned to his role as commander of SOCOM, but continued to keep his eye on the Trust, whilst also on the lookout for anything that may indicate attempts by America to build a new Vagrant Arm.

A year and a half later the political storm of the Cuban Missile Crisis eventuated as the Soviet Union moved nuclear missiles into Cuba, within striking range of the United States of America. A political negotiation team was dispatched to Cuba, composed of members of the varied North American, United States and Canadian governments and militaries, Thaddeus included. Though their intention was to negotiate the removal of the missiles from Cuba, Alexander Thaddeus was dispatched on a secret mission using the negotiation as a ploy to get into Cuba, along with several other SOCOM operatives. Their mission involved infiltrating and sabotaging Soviet missile facilities, disabling the nuclear weaponry and shutting the bases down. SOCOM’s infiltration soon revealed though that the missile placement had only been a distraction, political grandstanding designed to create a smokescreen in order to hide the true reason that the Soviets had arrived in Cuba. As the Soviet Union withdrew the missiles Thaddeus travelled to the motherland, finding out that the real intent of the Soviet forces had been to recover the sunken Vagrant Arm, in order to utilize its revolutionary warhead delivery platforms on their own nuclear-equipped hybrid tanks, designed with both treads and prototype hover technology. Infiltrating the research facility where the new tanks were being designed, Thaddeus was shocked to discover once more that his own brother Charleston was working on the weapon platform designs. Rescued from drowning by the Cuban revolutionaries of Castro’s government, Charleston had subsequently been imprisoned and interrogated, revealing the nature of Vagrant Arm and its capabilities. Forced to work on the design of the new Soviet death tanks, Charleston had stalled the design process by claiming that he needed the prototype missiles of the ruined Vagrant Arm in order to develop new ones. His hope had been that the Canadian/American military would notice Soviet movement in Cuba as they retrieved the Vagrant Arm, and that they would track the Soviets back to the facility, destroying the deathtank project.

Alexander and Charleston clashed again at this time, Alexander wanting to extract Charleston and take the intelligence back to his superiors so they could handle the situation politically and with minimal damage to either the Soviets or the North American nations. Charleston, on the other hand, still retained his fiery US patriotism that had caused him to attempt to murder his own brother during their last encounter, and was convinced that only by destroying the facility would America be safe. Though Vagrant Arm was still damaged and ruined from its previous battle and its time under the water, Charleston soon revealed that it was in an operative state, repaired personally by himself, and that if Alexander wouldn’t destroy the project, he would do so instead, using the nuclear warheads still loaded into Vagrant Arm. This prompted Thaddeus into action, and once more he faced off against Charleston and the walking behemoth, this time also caught in the middle of a Soviet facility and being attacked on all sides. However, once more he prevailed, systematically destroying Vagrant Arm. One of the saddest moments of Alexander’s life eventuated during this mission, as Charleston emerged from the blazing wreckage, assault rifle in hand, attempting to kill both Alexander and anyone else in sight. Alexander was forced to take him out, a clean headshot making sure his brother’s rabid fanaticism would not harm anyone else.

Upon his return, Thaddeus was given private awards, medals the public would never see, and personally met the president, John F. Kennedy, the man that Thaddeus had suspected for almost two years of being a tool of the Trust. Seeking to escape the morbid trauma of having killed his own brother, and wanting to recover from his constant battlefield fighting, Thaddeus turned to a different kind of fighting, gathering any information he could on the Trust and becoming further convinced that the Trust was a shadow government, running the political show behind the curtain, with John F. Kennedy as the public figurehead and mouthpiece of the Trust. Appalled by the various pieces of information he gathered, Thaddeus began to weave it all together into a coherent picture, complex but effective. He became convinced of the Trust’s masterminding and unjust rule of shadow dictatorship wrapped in the illusion of democracy, and decided to strike back at the Trust. Still, no matter how hard he tried his information trawling brought up no names, no connections or businesses that operated as fronts, nothing he could use to hurt the Trust. There was only one public figure he knew of who was connected to the Trust with absolute surety in his mind. He had no idea whether that man was important enough to the Trust to hurt them at all, or whether they would simply find someone else. No idea, no evidence even, only speculations, theories and a sense of revulsion and disgust at the way the Trust acted. Adept at hiding his true intentions from so many years of infiltrating enemy assets, Thaddeus felt sure he could wage a personal war against the Trust, dismantling them and allowing democracy and the will of the people to once more decide the fate of the most powerful nation in the world.

Thaddeus met with various people over the course of several months, important people whom he either suspected of Trust involvement or believed completely free of Trust influence. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, the head of the FBI, Eastern Bloc agents, even Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Thaddeus met with them all. Some he trusted, some he didn’t. Nonetheless, in the end Thaddeus came to the same conclusion he had before his various meetings. There was only one person he was sure would be connected to the Trust in a big enough way that action against him would be action against the Trust.

On November 22 of 1963 Alexander Thaddeus fired a rifle from a grassy knoll. In the hidden war against the Trust, the first shot had just been fired.
Last edited by Vagrant Orpheus on Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:36 am, edited 2 times in total.
Image
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Re: Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Part II has been added to the Alexander Thaddeus Chronicles.
Image
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Re: Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Part III has been added, they finally start doing experiments on Thaddeus! And now I'm a bit stuck, so don't expect part IV to come out so quickly, eh?
Image
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Soldier

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

It's very long and detailed, making for a very comprehensive article 'bout Alexander Thaddeus, and I liked reading it. Though I was kind of doodling with my own article for another legendary soldier, good old Fidel Castro, and I ended up independently writing something similar with the whole 'becoming one with war' stuff. But I liked this article, and the detail into the Soldier projects - how it all connects with all sorts of other stuff in the greater Comix world (I personally think you're great at that kind of stuff). I can't wait for 'Nam, man, you must totally mention NOBLE SAVAGE (and the CONG OF THE DEAD incident!)! :mrgreen:
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Re: Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Nam's not til part V Shroom, you'll just have to wait :P
Image
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Soldier

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Oh rite, the CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS! 8-)
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Booted Vulture
Posts: 965
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 9:33 pm

Re: Soldier

Post by Booted Vulture »

Awesome;y detailed article Orph. So this guy was made into a peakhuman when he was fifty odd?
Ah Brother! It's been too long!
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Re: Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Roughly, yeah. As a legendary soldier he'd been at about the peak of trainable human abilities in his prime, but that's still very different to absolute peakhuman.
Image
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Re: Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Updated, and pretty much some of the most crucial parts of the Soldier story unfold.
Image
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Soldier

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Holy shit. Soldier killed JFK? You bastard! :o

Man, I love the Cold War thing and the shadow play. It seems like Alexander Thadeus' histories just got a whole lot bigger, badder and really bloodier. I like how the various Cuban Crises got tied in with VAGRANT ARM. Seriously, Cuba, Castro, Crisis!

This is an odd blend of the original Captain America shtick, where we see Soldier grow old yet keep on truckin ole badass, with the combination of Metal Gear Solidy stuff (VAGRANT ARM). Yet now the whole Cold War spookshow's gone and outright exploded with the final words of Part IV, mang. Woah.

I sure hope you work this Trust stuff out in the end, because this stuff is pretty heavy and this whole war should play out like the epic shitstorm it should be. Man, Alexander Thaddeus traveling to the world and communicating with everyone from Lee Harvey Oswald to friggin' Fidel Castro while going on his downward spiral.

God, that is one looong profile. And it's not even halfway through! Holy shit!

ALEXANDER THADDEUS' WAR ON WHORES BEGINS TONIGHT!
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Booted Vulture
Posts: 965
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 9:33 pm

Re: Soldier

Post by Booted Vulture »

Mang; that was awesome! Walking Nucelar Death Tanks all round!

Soldier is such a self-righteous asshole :D Someone trying to start nuclear war without my express permission? I shoot you in the face!
Ah Brother! It's been too long!
User avatar
Vagrant Orpheus
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:59 pm
Location: Looking for Tim. WHERE'S TIM, GODDAMN YOU?!

Re: Soldier

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Don't worry Shroom, I have the Trust all planned out, I think it will work in well with what is already established in Comix canon. I'm glad you think it makes his history feel much bigger. This is pretty much my ultimate biography, I'm attempting to give him a really fleshed out feel and impact on the world around him beyond just "Oh, he's the best soldier ever so we tried to clone him and now we inject his jizz into other guys". I'm actually trying to drag him away from the Captain America/Big Boss feel whilst at the same time remaining true to them as his core influences.

Booted, he has seen the horror of nuclear asplosions. He will have none of that in his world of happiness and flowers.
Image
User avatar
Ford Prefect
Posts: 957
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Soldier

Post by Ford Prefect »

For what it's worth I've been discussing the Trust with Orph and I think it has a really satisfying conclusion.
FEEL THESE GUNS ARCHWIND THESE ARE THE GUNS OF THE FLESHY MESSIAH THE TOOLS OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION THAT WILL ENACT THE LAW OF MAN ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Post Reply