Holly O'Connell

Holly O'Connell has been a Dust Devil since she was a year old, when her father, Kieran O'Connell, joined the unit during the Arano Restoration. Upon the death of her father, she took his place in the cockpit of his ancient Atlas II and his position alongside her childhood friend, and new Commandant, in Onyx Star.
==MRBC Dossier - 3065==
=== Biography ===
Holly O'Connell is technically noble-born, though to a cadet branch of the family with no claim to title or the family lands on her homeworld of Krimari in the Magistracy of Canopus. As a minor scion, Kieran O'Connell left Krimari with the old Koschi heavy BattleMech that was his sole portion of an inheritance to seek a fortune for himself and his young daughter (Holly's mother having died of Periphery Pox a few months after she was born) as a mercenary, joining the Devils in 3044 just before the Taurians entered the Aurigan Civil War.
As one of the few children aboard the DDS Makani 'ino in those early days, Holly was someone doted on by the unit's personnel, and as she grew older, she grew particularly close to "Uncle Yang", who enjoyed the child's curiosity and enthusiasm for tinkering. She became something of a fixture in the Mech bays, running tools and parts for crews and learning whatever she could about their craft, with skills equivalent to any of the Devils' AsTechs by the time she was a teenager. While not discouraging her passion in this field, her father also saw to it that she was tutored in other subjects as befitted a MechWarrior's heir (a program which, as the unit grew, became the basis of the Devils' more formalized educational program for their juvenile dependents), and when she was old enough and had passed her Neurohelmet Synchronization and Aptitude Test, she began training as a Mech pilot herself alongside new members of the Dust Devils' ohana and fellow cadets Nala Wanjiku and Tai Kekoa. The three became fast friends, with Holly's extrovert personality and penchant for mischief balancing out some of the intensity and seriousness of the other two.
Holly proved herself a talented gunner and was eventually assigned to Onyx Lance and the cockpit of a Centurion, from which she served the unit capably for the next few years until a Clan Hell's Horses Marauder IIC shot her Mech out from under her on Engadin. Still in recovery from injuries sustained before she could punch out, she did not drop with the rest of the unit on Kufstein, and so was not directly involved with the ambush that cost the unit so many lives, inluding her father Kieran and her close friend (and alternate in Onyx Lance) Michael Vladisovo.
The losses left a clear mark on O'Connell, who seems to have turned the pain into focus, and now takes the field in Onyx Star at the controls of her late father's deadly Atlas II with a skill and intensity worthy of any seasoned professional killer.
=== Distinguishing Features ===
Holly O'Connell is a compact, muscular young woman with shining copper hair, jade-green eyes, and pale skin covered in freckles. Her right arm is marked with a pattern of burn and laceration scars, a visible record of the injuries sustained in the loss of her Centurion.
=== Career Highlights ===
=== Decorations ===
Holly O'Connell has received the following decorations from their unit and/or clients:
* The Balm of Edo
* Kaumaha o ka ʻOhana
=== BattleMech ===
O'Connell's mount is a truly ancient machine, dating back to the days of the First Star League. A rare variant of a rare Mech, the Atlas II was one of the few machines that survived the encounter between the forces of the Arano Restoration and the Taurian Concordat on Artru during the Aurigan Civil War, as the Outpost Castle Brian from which it was recovered was destroyed in the fighting. The Restoration's leader, and future ruler of the restored Aurigan Coalition, would also pilot the venerable BattleMech alongside the Dust Devils during her final confrontation with her cousin, Victoria Espinosa, and on retaking her throne, provided the Atlas II to the mercenaries that had made it possible as a "bonus".
Commander Lelani Kekoa assigned the assault Mech to Kieran O'Connell, a fellow veteran of the Aurigan Campaign, who named the machine Fomor after the mythical giants of his family's ancestral homeland. The staggering power of its LosTech arsenal served O'Connell well for almost two decades, until the disaster at Kufstein cost much of the Mech's components, as well as its pilot. Having long since "worked off" the cost of the Mech, O'Connel's mount was passed as inheritance to his daughter Holly, who then arranged with Chief Engineer Yang Virtanen to further upgrade the machine with the spoils of the unit's raid on the Clan logistics depot on Lackhove. 
First and foremost, Virtanen replaced Fomor's damaged reactor with one salvaged from a Clan Wolf Daishi OmniMech, allowing for space and weight savings to mount a truly monstrous Clantech arsenal. A pair of extended-range PPCs, four extended-range medium lasers, a twenty-tube LRM battery, and an LB-10X autocannon provides devastating firepower and unexpected reach, capable of crippling assault Mechs in a single salvo, and laying complete waste to anything smaller. Opponents expecting that Fomor will wear itself out quickly with such alpha strikes are in for a nasty surprise; ample CASE-protected ammunition bins keep the shells and missiles flying, and eighteen Clantech heat sinks linked to a pair of Tier 3 heat exchangers allows O'Connell to maintain continuous fire in all but the most hostile environments without concern for overheating. Finally, the addition of a pair of jump jets and the replacement of its myomers with triple-strength versions provides Fomor with agility belying its size, and increases its already fearsome melee capability to the stuff of true nightmares for anything that squares up with O'Connell on the field.Fomor is painted with a base of the Devils' typical camel. Thorned Celtic knotwork in granite wraps around the Mech's limbs, with roses picked out among the brambles in coral. The Atlas II's death's-head pattern is emphasized in granite, with a vertical coral stripe down the center of the "face". The O'Connell family crest, a green-and-white escutcheon adorned with a stag's head and three bloody rose blossoms, is painted in the center of the machine's chest with a banner inscribed with its name.
Category:Characters
Category:Dust Devils Personnel
Category:Dust Devils AU