Marc ("Blackie") DuQuesne, Ph.D

Antagonist: Marc ("Blackie") DuQuesne, Ph.D

Age: 57 years old at time of Alouette's Song, 73 at time of Alouette's Dream

Birthdate: unknown

Birthplace: unknown

IQ: 180

Physical description (at start of story cycle): Caucasian,
tanned, 6 foot 2 inches tall, straight black hair (well grayed) black
eyes, 220 pounds, square head and jaw, crew cut and short beard, in
outstanding physical shape for a man his age.

Orientation: straight male

Celestial represenation: Mars.

Religion: Atheist

Likes: Hungarian paprikash, bowling, swimming, tennis, golf, big game hunting.

Special Talents: business jet pilot, field medic, 9 mm automatic pistol, knife fighting.

Paranormal abilities: None

Relatives: Dana, lover and fiancee (murdered at least 30 years ago)

Advisors: (At time of Alouette's Song) Shelmi (psycho-therapist and surrogate)

Friends: (At tme of Alouette's Dream) Aadrika (lover)

Enemies: Any and all of Dana's murderers.

Title: Distinguished Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at Spokane Institute of Technology

Employers: NASA, NSA, Spokane Institute of Technology, self-employed defense contractor

Marc in his late 20's was a 3rd year medical student, engaged to
be married to a lady approximately his age named Dana. A drug gang
desired to suborn him as a source of narcotics from his hospital,
threatening to destroy his family if he either refused or reported them.
 He discreely reported the demands to his supervising resident
physician, who believed Marc should refuse. He consulted his fiancee.
She ***ordered*** him to refuse even at the possible cost of her
 life, saying he would not be the man she loved if he gave in. Marc
interviewed the local FBI chief regarding the gang. The FBI could do
nothing at the time due to a government fiscal shutdown instigated by
the House of Representatives.

Evidently Marc's movements were being tracked carefully, because
upon Marc's return he found his apartment a bloody mess, with hacked
parts of Dana in each room and her severed head lying on the table with
an obscene note scrawled in blood on the glass. It was fairly obvious
that Dana had been brutally raped and murdered by members of the gang,
who wanted to make an example of him to deter any others who might defy
their will.

Worse, Dana's parents denounced him as prideful enough to place
honor above life, and wanted nothing further to do with him. He left
town and he left his career, heartbroken and disgusted. He decided he
would avenge his fiancee, the first step of which was to join the CIA to
 obtain more information about the gang. He eventually gather
sufficient intelligence to locate at least one gang member, who had by
the time fo the Iran-Contra affair become the jefe (chief) of his
village in Columbia.

Marc wanted to know the identities and locations of the other
gang members, who evidently also rose to leadership positions in
Columbia. He interrogated the jefe by threatening to destroy everything
 the jefe held dear if he refused, just like the jefe had done to Marc.

The jefe evidently had ideals and beliefs at least as strong as
Marc's, because the jefe utterly defied Marc's demands for information.
 For each "no" Marc received, Marc:

1) Ran the villagers out of their houses and torched their houses.

2) Ordered the villagers aside from the jefe's family into a square and executed them en masse.

3) Lined the jefe's family from wife to toddler, for further "no's" executing each with a bullet.

4) On the next "no", held the jefe's infant in his hands and snapped the infant's neck before the jefe's eyes.

5) Marc didn't wait for any more "no's". He simply put a pullet in the back of the jefe's head.

Marc received no useful information and was aware that while he
had indeed partially avenged Dana's brutal murder had destroyed his own
humanity in the process. Major Robert Crane was embedded in his black
operation as a military liason, looking on but legally powerless to
stop Marc's actions, based on his orders to not interfere with Marc.
Robert was still outraged by what happened and gave Marc a blistering
lecture regarding the Geneva Conventions. Marc shrugged and instructed
Robert to take the matter up with Robert's own chain of command.

Marc gained the well deserved sobriquet within the para-military community of "Blackie" for his actions, and this was ***not***
 a compliment. It implied that as a man whose heart was as black as
sin, he'd take on the filthiest jobs available and do them, if not
enthusiastically at least efficiently. This made him a candidate for
recruitment later into HEAL, an agency originally chartered by JFK to
neutralize inventors of any technology having the potential to be
weaponized for mass destruction. HEAL instructs Marc to be discreet,
using alteration of any databases worldwide the US could hack as a means
 of punitive sanction for the idealistic who had gone one step too far,
but also authorizing Marc to kill if his targets were truly malevolent.

Marc isn't employed 24-7 hunting the most dangerous game. He
doesn't finish medical school, but instead transfers to physics and
obtains his doctorate in that field, becoming a professor to Spokane
Tech and an occasional consultant to NASA. To keep his tenure he must
occasionally instruct children at middle schools and high schools. He
discovers Margaret as a 12 year old playing around with two-dimensional
curve fitting when she should have been learning pre-algebra. Naturally
 he sees a shocking waste of natural talent and decides to do something
about it. Since Margaret's is in foster care, he begs the social
workers to give him a chance with her, saying what's happening to her
now is an outrage and he can do everything in his power to accelerate
her.

He tutors Margaret in math himself during evenings and hires a
battery a day tutors for her other subjects. she manages to finish
 the equivalent of high school before her 15th birthday. In a couple
more years, she finds a flaw in a proof he was showing during a
seminar. Marc appears totally astonished any child could
understand the math behind his version of string theory. Upon the start of the following semester he
 has her transferred into the graduate math department where she will
finish her bachelor's and master's in math concurrently. He hires her
as his research assistant, and cuts the paperwork needed to get her
judicially emancipated, since at 16 high school is now far behind her ***and*** she's also supporting herself.

Margaret is now 17 and himself 57 by the time the story begins.
Somehow a young artist in New Jersey accidentally used a plating bath to
 propel a copper candlestick into orbit, and he must confiscate the
artist's materials with a gentle warning to play with safer toys. He
soon discovers Margaret, her best friend Martin, and his best friend Rick all have connections of one sort
 or another, and that Rick made his own connection by rescuing the
beautiful daughter of a cattle baron from the Philadelphia subway
tracks.

He discovers Margaret is playing with truly dangerous stuff
without really understanding the possible consequences. He must either
stop her or kill her.