[hider=Nikolai Markov]
[b]Name:[/b] Nikolai “Nik” Markov

[b]Age:[/b]  28

[b]Sex:[/b] Male

[b]Appearance:[/b] Before three weeks vacation at a little bed and breakfast on Mars, Nik Markov had been a little taller than your average grunt and built lithe. Skinnier than you’d really expect for special forces, not that you could tell when he was suited up to dive feet first into hell. Now he’s only really lithe if you stand him next to another Spartan and at 6’10” he’s taller than even many other IVs. For his old squadmates it’s a bit like talking to a tree trunk, not that he noticed during the PT to get used to his new frame. The Spartan IV augmentations gave him a whole new lease on life with combat capabilities that could extend well into the next century, but they didn’t do anything to hide a lifetime of injuries big and small. Outside his armor, Nik’s hands are calloused and pockmarked by well-healed scars. Without a shirt you could see similar marks across his body, along with a pale line tracing a path across his shoulder. 

As much as some things change, though, plenty has stayed the same. It might be almost a foot higher than it was but Nik’s face stayed the same. Pale skin, sharp facial features, and deep green eyes could easily look unfriendly (especially with his new build) but they’re softened by a friendly, irreverent demeanor. He smiles a lot more than you’d expect from an ODST, let alone a Spartan. Nik keeps clean shaven, aside from the occasional five o’clock shadow depending on how busy he’s been, and his brown hair is kept medium length though not always tidy.  

[b]Rank:[/b] Spartan

[b]Armor:[/b] [url=https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/383674146426454019/623644790516350977/firenhalo.png]Mjolnir [GEN2] Recluse with LOCUS Helmet[/url]

[b]Weapons:[/b] 

[indent][b][i]Primary:[/i][/b] [url=https://www.halopedia.org/images/5/59/MA5K.JPG]MA5K Carbine[/url][/indent]

[indent][indent][i][b]Secondary:[/b][/i] [url=https://www.halopedia.org/images/thumb/5/52/H5_M6H2_Tactical.png/800px-H5_M6H2_Tactical.png]M6H2 Tactical Magnum[/url][/indent][/indent]

[b]Personality:[/b] Friendly, laidback, self-assured, and easygoing; all of the words you would [i]not[/i] expect to apply to someone who’s been among the most effective operatives in the UNSC for the better part of a decade. But nine times out of ten, before his augmentation, Nik’s first impressions ran contrary to preconceptions. That’s a lot harder now, but he would say all the more important for it. Don’t want to become as frightening to the guys on your side as the ones against, you know? In another time and place he would have lived a pretty peaceful life, but born five years into the Human-Covenant war didn’t leave many options. It’s when he becomes focused, on whatever has his attention, that it becomes clear why he is where he is. Nikolai can be driven in the extreme when he sets his mind to something, and considers success an inescapable fact. It’s only a matter of how you have to get there.

What reputation he has he prefers to downplay, making light of his accomplishments but taking great pride in his skills. The man’s much smarter than he lets on, although his education is extremely informal. He lacks the enmity towards Spartan that many ODSTs feel; they were on his side before, and they’re certainly on his side now that he’s one of them. Any team he’s been assigned to will find him a loyal, implacable ally though not quick to talk much about himself. 

[b]History:[/b] Nikolai Markov was born five years into the Human-Covenant War in 2530, fortunate enough to be far from the front lines but not fortunate enough to avoid its impact. The neighborhood he grew up in wasn’t very affluent, and like everyone else he felt the pressures of the conflict. He grew up in the shadow of the existential dread felt by a whole species, and unsurprisingly that weighed heavily on a child. Nik acted out, Nik did whatever he could to feel like he had some control over his life. Ironically, this usually meant flying in the face of whatever authority he could. Every bit of defiance proved that he wasn’t powerless in his own life. He wasn’t a bad kid, not by any means. But he was mischievous in the extreme. By his preteen years he had taken to bypassing whatever security systems he could, both physical and digital, just to gain access to places he shouldn’t be. Not to take anything, or see anything, just to prove that he could. He never got into any real trouble, a low income neighborhood whose youth were quickly going off to war had bigger problems. But he [i]did[/i] eventually get himself a real snap on the wrist and some mandatory community service, and both were enough to push him a few degrees back towards the straight and narrow. He was old enough, by then, to be able to understand what it was that had made him feel so scared his whole life. 

And the Covenant kept advancing, with human victories few and far between. With his knack for working with computers he would have gone off to college, but Nikolai got it into his head to enlist. He’d spent long enough being afraid, and the only thing he could do about it was go out and do his part to end it. So he enlisted the day after he turned eighteen, and shipped out after a party with everyone left in his neighborhood. He wouldn’t return to Mars for nearly a decade. 

Hailing from a shipbuilding planet the Navy was his natural first choice. He excelled in his basic training, excelled at his duties, and spent a couple years serving shipside. A few skirmishes with the Covenant, of which he was fortunate to make it out alive, but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t [i]doing[/i] enough.

He got his chance to do more when his efforts to get into the ODSTs paid off. The training was beyond grueling, pushing its candidates to the very limit of their abilities. Lots of them didn’t succeed, but the drive to do more and the humiliation it would be to be Returned to Unit prevented him from even considering quitting. It wasn’t short, either; the training took months. But when he eventually returned to the front lines it was in a drop pod, serving among the best of the best. In time to serve on numerous typical (if there was such a thing) missions for the ODSTs, fulfilling extremely dangerous missions often behind enemy lines. Knowing the importance of information, and with his own system intrusion skills from his youth, Nik took to claiming any additional files or information he could to send back whenever he deployed behind enemy lines. He excelled as a saboteur, particularly, making sure that any Covenant technology that couldn’t be taken or repurposed was rendered completely inoperable. His assignments went on like this for the better part of a year, until he happened to be temporarily assigned to Reach in August 2552.

It was his dubious honor, as such, to take part in the defense of Reach. Though it ultimately failed, Nikolai earned praise for his performance under the circumstances. The Martian repeatedly brought undue risk to his own life to protect civilians, and bolster the morale of standard UNSC troops alongside his unit. Though his superiors declined to report the [i]exact[/i] nature of the remarks used to keep them all in high spirits, the handful of teammates who survived for very long continued to remark on them for the rest of the war.

The retreat from Reach brought him to Earth, where just over a month later he participated in its defense. In particular his defense of his ancestral homeland, snowy Russia, where the fireteam he was assigned to had to reclaim a key UNSC facility. The team’s commanding officer was injured in their descent, leaving Markov to take command of the mission. The facility was a Research and Development unit in rural Russia, tasked with developing weapons and armor for the UNSC. Though Russia wasn’t experiencing nearly the extent of the invasion that Africa was, command still considered any significant foothold to be unacceptable. 

So it was that outgunned and woefully outnumbered, Markov’s unit had to retake the facility from its occupying Covenant forces. Entry into the building was easy, as was securing a foothold, but by then the occupying forces had noticed their presence. The next skirmishes further depleted their supplies, and left another trooper with minor injuries. With the element of surprise no longer on their side and insufficient manpower to wage a conventional battle, he hit on another idea. Even though the facility’s computers had been largely disabled, both accidentally and to deny the Covenant any information, they were largely intact. Under his direction the team made their way to an ancillary security control room, and successfully reset the security countermeasures. The only problem, then, was getting them to take action. The system registered their own IFFs, but Markov lacked the credentials to be able to activate the system himself. It would have to be tricked.

So he directed the fireteam to establish a defensive perimeter around the security office, and set out to bait their would-be hunters. Drawing their attention was risky, to say the least, but not difficult; the Brutes were looking for something else to kill. The round fired pierced his armor at the shoulder, enough that he himself required not insignificant medical attention, but the system had flagged all of the Covenant forces as hostile before he even found cover again. Once the automated defenses were done, mopup was completed and a perimeter re-established within a matter of hours. Despite the odds the mission finished without any casualties. It was not his only participation in the defense of Earth but the most often cited when reviewing his service record.

After the war’s completion in December of the same year he didn’t get very much of a break. The UNSC was re-embroiled within small scale conflicts almost immediately, and many of them needed the not-so-soft touch of an ODST fireteam. ONI had been keeping track of the intelligence gathered from missions he partook in throughout his career and approached him, not long after the war, with an offer of employment and post-secondary education. By this point a number of his operations had been the sort hidden with a black marker, and the offer held some sway. But a competing offer came around the same time; selection for the Spartan IV program. 

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make.

[b]Extras:[/b] Though not formally educated, Nik holds several certificates of technical aptitude relating to computer systems and their security. He regularly employs this knowledge in the field wherever pertinent. 
[/hider]