Alexandra Daya Atreus

Alexandra Daya Atreus
Personal
Also known as	Lex (nickname)
Affiliation	Federated Commonwealth
Career
Rank	Leftenant
Profession	MechWarrior

Alexandra "Lex" Atreus was a MechWarrior and officer in the Florida Periphery March Militia.

History

Early Life

Alexandra was raised in a kibbutz on Valloire and eventually joined the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces, attending the War College of Buena. As her class had four other cadets with the same first name, she selected the nickname "Lex" to distinguish her from her peers, as it was the only version of the name that had not been claimed. She placed sixty-fourth in her class and received placement in the Florida PMM. Her parents were unable to attend her graduation ceremony due to widespread riots against Acrux Agricultural Industries that took place on Valloire that year.

Penance

After her Grasshopper was taken out of action, Lex Atreus was assigned to a Florida PMM security detachment for Tertiary Undersecretary of Commerce Bartholomew Clemments as he made a tour of the so-called "hinterlands" of the Periphery March. The Undersecretary and his entourage arrived in the Viborg system to visit the asteroid based Periphery Engineering and Northcross Asteroid Mining Consortium, nicknamed "Penance" by its inhabitants, on 7 May 3057. While waiting for the Undersecretary to complete his goodwill mission at the habitat, Lex used the downtime to learn how to pilot space-based IndustrialMechs. On 17 May, while she was out practicing her newfound skills with a miner she had befriended, a group of pirates attacked Penance, apparently seeking to steal the large amount of germanium it housed. Unbeknownst to Lex, her friend had been one of several disgruntled crewmembers on the habitat that had helped to organize the raid and had sabotaged her MiningMech to keep her out of the way while it was carried out. Now trapped outside the habitat, Lex and a few miners who did not side with the pirates engaged the raiders in combat and she was able to disable and capture a pirate Grasshopper. While the loyalists on the habitat were unable to prevent the pirates from making off with their actual objective— supplies to build a new habitat, along with MiningMechs, goods, and valuables— they did manage to recover a Lancelot and a lefthanded-variant Nightsky from the pirates. As a token of respect for her valor and surprising skill in battle, the Penance miners chose to gift Lex the Nightsky.

Florida

Upon her return to the militia headquarters on Florida, Lex was assigned to the PMM's Third Battalion, Third Company. As the newest addition, she was placed in the company's third lance as its fourth, most junior member and received the callsign "Charlie Gamma Four" as a result. With no assigned missions, the militia turned to training and Lex was able to become more confident in her new 'Mech. During routine field exercises, she found that all of her individual skills were adequate or better but she struggled when putting them together in practical application. After completing an evaluation run by her company commander, Hauptmann Richard Showalter, and the regimental tactical officer, Hauptmann Solomon Judson, Lex was assigned to a special duty lance with the hope that she would gain valuable field experience and break some of her bad habits.

On 10 August 3057, Lex met her new lance: Leftenants Willard Britto, Magda Caradine, and Thomas "Tommy" Aldicott all piloted hatchet-equipped 'Mechs as well. Britto, the lance leader, had received word that they were being assigned as security for a planetary survey team on Despair but had no indication as to why such a relatively-safe operation would require 'Mech protection.

Despair

En route to the Enders Cluster system, Lex received official word that Katherine Steiner-Davion had seceded the Lyran Alliance from the Federated Commonwealth. While this news was a shock, it did not affect the Florida PMM contingent's objectives. Once she and her lance arrived on 29 September 3057, they received a full briefing on why they were needed. Massive megafauna and their associated ecosystem, which was hostile to human life, were damaging the survey team's base and killing team members. The lance was to take up protective patrols pushing giant herbivorous "tonners" away from the base perimeter so as to avoid the man-eating carnivores and scavengers that posed a danger to base personnel. On one such patrol, Lex came across what appeared to be an intelligent, man sized tonner that used tools. On her return to the survey base with Caradine, she was met by scientist Bannik Severin, who advised her that the natives were previously known to the researchers. He told her that the base's founder had uncovered a native village, like nothing anyone had ever seen before, but had died after making a video record of it, his scout car apparently torn open by an unknown force. Severin asked that Lex and Caradine keep the secret of the natives to themselves, with the hope that the survey team would find no exploitable resources on Despair and that he could return to study the natives once they departed.

BattleMech

Lex was initially assigned a standard GRH-5H Grasshopper BattleMech when she joined the Florida PMM, but was granted a NGS-4S-L Nightsky after helping to fend off a pirate raid on Viborg.

Notes

• As a teenager she had a dog named "Rufus" who became twelve but passed away several years before she was accepted at the War College of Buena.

Bibliography

• Pirates of Penance (novella)
• The Dragons of Despair (novella)
• Djinn of Despair (novella)
• Rock in a Hard Place (short story)