Description
¶ Overview
- Full Name: Mikhail Janson
- Aliases: Ijiraq
- Species: Human
- Ethnicity: Inuit
- Nationality: Terran
- Born: January 7th, 2659
- Place of Birth: Earth
- Gender: Male
- Sex: Male
- Sexual Identity: Heterosexual
- Faction: Freelance
Mikhail Janson has worn many hats in his life. He's been a Terran Marine, a Psychotronics Institute experiment, a Terran Spook, a body guard, and now, a member of the West Isles Company.
¶ Physical Description
Mikhail Janson is a burly man. He tends to keep his hair buzzed, his shirts sleeveless, and his friends at arms length. He actively keeps himself in shape and with two exceptions, he gets scars removed. When Mikhail is in a room, you are aware of it.
¶ Personality
Mikhail Janson's personality can best be described as a walking trauma response.
For the most part, he tries to maintain a jovial, devil-may-care attitude. Most days, this is accomplished through an upsetting amount of alcohol. Despite the best efforts of his few close friends, this has not changed. According to Janson: "When I drink, I am pleasant. When I'm sober, not so much."
When he was younger, Mikhail deeply valued loyalty. After everything he has experienced in his military and intelligence careers, that has mostly fallen by the wayside. Nowadays, Janson is more likely to be made suspicious by demonstrations of loyalty. The collective efforts of his fellow West Isles crew is slowly chipping away at this, but it's a long term project.
Janson enjoys getting into scrapes. He knows he's a very skilled combatant and delights in being completely in his element. In many ways, he feels the most like himself when he's in a fight.
¶ History
¶ Early Life
Mikhail was born in a Catholic offshoot sect's enclave in Anchorage, Alaska. Calling themselves the Revelation of Eternal Dei, they held a heretical belief that salvation was only available to those living on Earth. In their early days, they were a fairly benign organization who kept to themselves. Three years before Mikhail was born, there was a change of leadership and the group slowly became more radical and militant. When Janson was ten, the group attempted to destroy a passenger ship departing Earth Station. They failed, and Terran Security Services raided the compound a few days later. Mikhail was one of 16 children removed and placed in foster homes across the planet. Mikhail was placed with a wealthy foster family in Cape Town, South Africa.
¶ Family and Personal Life
For better or for worse, Mikhail's foster family fell on the wrong side of a contentious election and found themselves politically alienated. They still held on to their wealth, but even that was a tenuous thing. As his 18th birthday approached, Mikhail was given the option to move out to Freelance space with his foster family or to remain on Earth with a small trust. He chose to stay and enlisted in the Marines.
After he lost his second family, his personal life slowly but steadily contracted until seeing him interacting with other people was a rare event.
It wasn't until he met Walker d'Ardenne that this trend began to reverse. Some of his contacts became friends. He began toying with romantic encounters and is slowly working his way up to being ready to try for a relationship. His West Isles crew are keeping a close eye on this development, as they are fearful of what may happen to their friend if this experiment goes poorly.
¶ Religious Views
Owing to his upbringing, Janson is aggressively atheist. Over the years, he's mellowed on his direct mocking of the beliefs of others.
In his more lucid moments, Janson will express an appreciation of two of the more modern faiths: Seekers of the Silver Wing and the Church of Memetic Intelligence. To Janson, both of these organizations are focused on the here and now. They are seeking to understand the universe we all find ourselves in rather than promising some future glory beyond death. It also helps that neither group has much of a moral judgement bent.
¶ Military Life
Mikhail enlisted in the Republic Marines in advance of his 18th birthday, and by noon on his birthday, he was on a transport bound for basic training on Enceladus. He passed basic with flying colors and was recommended for Shrike 9 training, where he also proved to be a natural. Janson, maybe for the first time, realized during basic training that violence is a natural language for him. This revelation would have many ripples across his life.
After his series of training concluded, Janson was given the rank of Private, First Class and assigned to the Tianlong Juntuan (Heavenly Dragon Troop) stationed aboard Fortress II-class TRS Bao Warwick where he served faithfully for two years, moving up in the ranks all the way to Sergeant. Three days into his third year with the unit, they were dispatched to the TRS Retribution, a Valorous-class going to put down a border-world insurrection.
Unlike the previous times his unit had been assigned a similar task, this mission failed to even begin. Commander Fallorn Graves, the first officer of the Retribution, had been slowly instigating a mutiny against the Captain. With their orders being given to the crew, Graves put his mutiny plan into motion while the Retribution was in subspace. Graves was so confident in his success that he sent out a message to the Republic about his mutiny just as the ship was diving into subspace.
Graves was perfectly clear that he was motivated to mutiny not out of some desire to defect, or because he disagreed with the Republic, but because he didn't believe that the Republic was using enough force with the degenerates, as he called them, within the Republic. He intended to take the ship, and the crew loyal to him, into Freelance space and personally restore order, effectively wanting to carve out a territory of his own to rule over as a warlord.
Janson and the rest of the Tianlong Juntuan were not about to let a mutiny happen on their watch. As soon as Graves announced that the Captain was dead, Janson and his fellow Marines took it into their hands to secure the ship. Janson's Senior Sergeant made ship-wide announcement that all those loyal to the Republic were to lay down arms and lay face down on the floor, hands on their heads, with fingers interlaced until they were told otherwise.
The Marines then proceeded to clear the ship from bow to stern, until they reached the bridge. Graves laid a trap for the Marines, a series of charges carefully placed in hidden spots around the bridge. Just before breaching the bridge, the Senior Sergeant sent Janson and his squad down to the engine room to secure the systems there. This saved Janson's life, as the rest of the Marine force was killed when Graves detonated the charges.
Janson and his squad reached the engine room and found themselves confronted by Graves and his most loyal men. They disarmed the Marines and Graves decided to make them an offer: join or die. Graves started with the newest member of the squad: a capable Private fresh from basic training. When he reject Graves' offer, Graves slit his throat. One by one, the rest of the squad was killed after they all rejected the offer, until it was just Janson and Sergeant Raffen, his number two in the squad. Raffen took the deal and assured Graves that Janson wouldn't.
This is where the official report of the incident has a rather prominent gap in it. The narrative resumes roughly five minutes later with Janson emerging, blood soaked, from the main engineering control room holding his service knife that he had loaned to a fellow Sergeant of his that died on the bridge. Janson has only recounted the full details of that day to two other people, one of whom, Liz Locke, takes great pains to avoid him now, the same as he does her. The other was d'Ardenne.
According to Janson, Graves left Janson's execution to Raffen as a show of loyalty. In the brief seconds before his death, Janson felt a knife handle in his hand. He snapped the ties they had put his wrists into, plunged the mysterious knife into Raffen's temple, and then proceeded to slaughter the mutineers. As he told Locke and d'Ardenne, twice during the fight he left his knife stuck in someone, and both times he found it back in his hands when he needed it. It was another year before he learned that he had used his willpower to rewrite reality so that the knife would be in his hands each time.
When Janson got the rest of the crew to surface the Retribution from subspace, he sent out an emergency broadcast that brought an entire Republic fleet to him. Graves' mutiny announcement had forced Republic High Command to deploy a ready fleet to race ahead of the Retribution and blow her out of the sky at her destination. Janson's broadcast caused that fleet to surface and redirect to the Retribution's position.
Janson spent two months at a military psychiatric facility after his debrief as he came to terms with the brutal slaughter committed against his unit and that he had committed against Graves and the mutineers. When he was given a relatively clean bill of health, he was ordered to Earth Station where he was given a promotion to Master Sergeant Fourth Class, the Republic Medal of Valorous Service, the personal thanks of the Lord Admirals of the Navy, and his choice of deployment. He elected to be given a billet at the Enceladus Marine Training Base, and he spent the next eight months training new recruits and drinking heavily.
¶ Psychotronics Institute
After his performance onboard the Retribution, Janson caught the eye of the Psychotronics Institute, who always keep an eye out for those who they deem as potentials. A year after the retaking of the Retribution, Janson received fraudulent transfer orders that ended up with him in the hands of the Institute.
In what is most likely a blessing in disguise, Janson remembers very little of his time with the Institute. What he can remember most clearly is, unfortunately, the battery of extremely painful "tests" that he was subjected to. He remembers clinging desperately to two memories that allowed him to more or less hold onto his sanity. And he remembers the smiling man with the cane who gave him lessons on how to call up his knife at will.
After demonstrating to his Institute handlers that he could perform the "knife trick" at will from any distance (as they were unaware of what a velyki weapon is and how the process works), he was handed over to Terran Intelligence.
¶ Terran Intelligence
Terran Intelligence made use of Janson for most of a year until he came to the attention of Intelligence agent Gregorie who recognized the traumatized former Marine and helped him get away from Terran military service altogether.
Terran Intelligence was perfectly content to ply Janson with high pay and ready access to all the alcohol he wanted, so long as he was willing to utilize his "knife tricks" to serve as their pet assassin. Janson was so lost in his own trauma, he just went along with it.
A newly appointed assistant to the Director of Republic Intelligence, Misha Vostok, learned about Janson and carefully ensured that his and Gregorie's paths crossed. Soon enough, with some carefully applied leverage, Janson was out of Terran service entirely. Gregorie ensured that he was setup with a small slush fund, his Marine retirement pay, and his small trust fund that had spent five years growing without him drawing from it. The last words Gregorie said to Janson when they parted ways was "Keep your eyes open, soldier man. Someday, maybe you find someone you can help instead of hurt. On that day, you help them, da? That is a good story for you, and the way you can pay me back."
¶ West Isles
In 2684, Janson was drinking at a bar on Juno Station when a Terran Blackbag Team killed Ralph Marks and kidnapped Walker d'Ardenne's sister Danielle. Danielle was the new wife of a League Ambassador and the perfect target for some leverage on the young diplomat.
Janson saw the team make the grab and kill Marks. He also saw d'Ardenne arrive on the scene and for the first time in a long time, he saw someone he could help. He stopped d'Ardenne from rushing headlong after the Terrans and instead, the two of them pooled their knowledge and skills to execute a clean rescue of Danielle and turned the blackbag team over to League Intelligence.
d'Ardenne offered Janson a job in the aftermath with the simple pitch of "Wanna help me do some good for a change?"
¶ Legacy
...
¶ Ships
¶ West Isles Crew
To Janson, the West Isles Crew is a third and, to his mind, last chance at a family. He has found a lot of comfort and support in them, and more importantly, he has found acceptance regardless of his past or his ongoing poor choices.
That acceptance has been the single biggest driving force behind him becoming willing to branch out and embrace relationships again, a thing he has deep reservations about, and something that the rest of the crew is keeping a close eye on.
¶ Walker d'Ardenne
In many ways, Janson rescued d'Ardenne as much as d'Ardenne rescued Janson. When the Terran black-bag team killed Marks and kidnapped d'Ardenne's youngest sister, Janson was in a nearby bar when it went down. He followed the team and found where they were hold up, and then he stopped d'Ardenne from charging in unprepared.
The two of them were able to come up with a plan that handed an entire Terran SpecOps team over to McKenzie, got Janson's name cleared, gave d'Ardenne the vengeance he wanted, and saw his sister safely returned home.
Janson is fully, maybe even painfully, aware that Walker saved his life. In the days that followed, while the two recovered in a League hospital, Janson mulled over what that meant. By the end of their hospital stay, Janson had decided to rebuild his life into something worthy of being saved. He started by accepting Walker's offer of becoming the first employee of West Isles. He takes his role as Walker's muscle and surrogate big brother very seriously.
¶ Emmy Sinclair
¶ Anya Tyr
¶ Riley Aimes
¶ Whitney Antares
¶ Major Associations
¶ Lizbeth Locke
- Relation: Two predators keeping their distance
Courtesy of the Psychotronics Institute, both Locke and Janson are both very aware of each other, and they do their best to stay out of each other's way. It's not an issue of fear, at least not on Locke's end, it's more an issue of not bringing unwanted attention to the other.
You could call this professional courtesy, but really, it's neither professional nor courteous. A lion and a hyena are never going to relax when the other is in view.