Winston Hendricks

**Winston Hendricks** is a former GUARDIAN operative and an experienced soldier who fought in many battles during the Terminus War and the Reaper War. He is part of the Council Recovery Corps, serving as the Systems Alliance Liaison for the organisation.

## Biography

Winston “Ricks” Hendricks was born on the farming colony of Cornucopia, to Henri and Jennen Hendricks who were of both the same mind as the late Stephen Hawking that other life in the cosmos can pose a threat to humanity especially if they are more advanced than us. While the First Contact War and its aftermath were not on a similar line of thought, his parents were greatly concerned about what it meant to no longer be alone in the galaxy, deciding to start their family away from such things. Two years after Winston was born his sisters, twins, Diana and Lily were born.

Over the years, as Winston helped his father work the farm it was apparent that he had great skill and aptitude at repairing and improving the machinery that they used for the harvests. What spurred this technological mind and interest was Winston’s knowledge that there was so much more out there in the universe than the colony that he was on. When he was 13 years old his father passed away and he had to step up more for the family in maintaining the farm as a source of income and food whilst still going to school and pursuing his growing understanding of mechanics and technology, which he began to use to help out the other colonists, supplementing his family’s income. His ability to repair equipment that was deemed unfixable and get it to work better than before caught the eye of the colonial governor, who put in a recommendation for Winston to be part of the first class at Grissom Academy in 2175. After a great deal of convincing his mother about the prospects of the education and when the recommendation came back with an offer of a full ride scholarship, she relented and gave her blessing for him to go.

While this would have been a great and wondrous moment for Winston as he had finally left his home to see the stars, however this was not to be the case as when he arrived at the academy reports began to come in that the colony of Cornucopia had been hit by batarian pirates. Most of the population were either dead or missing, his mother was listed among the dead but his sisters were listed as missing. Consumed with grief, Winston had a very difficult time focusing on his studies and after four weeks left the school with no path to follow. He sought out a variety of odd jobs working as a mechanic and technician moving between colonies and Arcturus station from time to time. Burying himself in work in order to not dwell on what happened to his home and the unknown fate of his sisters.  He hated himself for at times he hoped that they were dead, knowing what might happen to them if the batarians had took them as slaves. Before he could fall into a spiral of despair, Winston’s impressive skills found him a new family in the form of the crew of the cargo freighter,  the Celestial; though it would not last.

Two years after joining the Celestial, fate once again reared its head toward Winston. While on a mission to deliver supplies to a colony on the edge of the Attican Traverse, the ship had to drop out of FTL due to internal and external engine problems. Being the ship's Chief Mechanic/Engineer, he decided to deal with the more dangerous and critical exterior repairs by himself. This decision would so happen to save his life, as he was finishing up repairs a batarian ship dropped into the system and began to waylay the Celestial, first targeting its engines to leave it dead in the water. The first volley landed away from Winston however the resulting damage flung him and debris far from the ship. In the chaos Winston was struck in his left leg by a heavy piece of debris, breaking it but not rupturing his suit. And so he drifted listlessly through space away from the horrors taking place to his new home in the stars, as his oxygen supply was slowly going out. As Winston was about to pass out from his diminishing supply of air he was bathed in the lights of a ship he hadn’t noticed.

When he woke up half a week later, Winston discovered that he was in a clean room on the quarian liveship Rayya, with his leg in a cast and still inside his EVA suit. Apparently a scout ship, called the Dawn, of the Migrant Fleet had been searching the system that the Celestial had been in to gather resources. While they had seen what had happened to it, they were under armed to take action, but one of the crew Niehre’Vostok vas Dawn, noticed that Winston was drifting away from it all and convinced her ship’s captain to help. While he had never met a quarian before, only knowing of the stereotypes from Citadel space,  he was surprised by the altruism displayed by those who had rescued him. The doctor who had treated him, (their first time working on a human) had Winston stay with them for about a month minimum to make sure that he was healing properly. In that time, Winston learned of the culture and the lives of the quarian people, gaining an understanding of their plight of being bound to the Migrant Fleet and the constant risk of death they were facing. After the month that he was to stay passed, he stayed on for six more offering his skills to the crew of the Dawn until he had repaid to some measure their kindness. In this time he grew close to  Niehre, slowly their relationship began to develop but he was always to scared to see if she had similar feelings for him at all because of their differences. As he prepared to finally leave to try and make his own way once again, Niehre gave Winston his own quarian headscarf for all the work which he had done for her and her crewmates, and they have kept in good communication since then. However with recent events, the near constant dialogue between the two ceased. Because of his experiences over the last few years Winston wanted to give back and to help people who are suffering from disasters, to help them rebuild their lives once again. This led him to join the System Alliance's disaster relief team HUS-T1, in order to do just this. Since then Winston has served with distinction in HUS-T1 helping in multiple disaster zones by re-establishing infrastructure and maintaining and repurposing mechanical equipment.

While Winston was not on the Citadel during the First Coffee Shop Massacre, it was the Second that spurred him to look to joining GUARDIAN. On the day the second massacre occurred, Hendricks had taken leave to participate in Christmas day celebrations elsewhere, only learning and joining his team too late to help make a difference.  With this and other threats to galactic peace arising, Winston realized that while he and his team did good work, it wouldn’t be enough. After getting all of his affairs in order, he applied to GUARDIAN so that he could make a bigger impact, giving back more to the galaxy than he could as a part of HUS-T1.

### Guardian/Reaper War And Post War

After being hailed as one of the Heroes of the battle of Asgard, which was more or less the official start of the Terminus War, Winston Hendricks was initially assigned as the only engineer aboard the merchant/privateer ship the GSV Libra. For a few months he operated as the ship’s only engineer staff member until additional support was finally requisitioned. During this time he was known to have forged close relationships and friendships toward many of the other crew, which solidified during the events of [REDACTED]. Additionally at this time the bond that Winston had started with the cultivate with GUARDIAN operative Zoey Nader, flourished into something more as the two attempted a romantic relationship even though they were stationed on separate ships.

Once news of the Trust and the Council’s culpability in the Second Coffee Shop massacre, Winston Hendricks was one of the most vocal bodies pushing for GUARDIAN to go independent. Upon this event taking place he would soon take part in the Second Skyllian Blitz as the squad leader of the engineer detachment known as the Gearheads. It was during the battle that Hendricks and Nader finally reunited, however that would not be long lived as she was later killed in action during the course of the battle. Having served with distinction during the battle, he eventually found himself promoted to the ship’s official Chief Engineer. This didn’t last long as when the event of the Outsider’s attack on Haven and across the Fleet.

Winston and a handful of other survivors headed to join the rearmament efforts the next year after a brief stint on the engineer’s home world of Cornucopia, the only place he thought was safe in those days. Once he had rejoined with GUARDIAN, Winston was assigned to the Osiris, an experimental craft using the cutting edge of technology. While stationed about the vessel, he participated in many ground operations that would lead to immeasurably important discoveries to the nature of the threat they and the galaxy were about to face. Besides being part of the team that discovered Prometheus, Staff Sergeant Hendricks would be a part of many missions that would see him take direct action against the human terror organization Cerberus. It was during this period of action that the engineer “reunited” with his youngest sister Lily, who in the years after the raid on Cornucopia became a high ranking assassin and scientist of the organization.

In the intervening months, Guardian and disparate factions of the galaxy at large prepared for a joint effort against the Reaper threat, Winston was sent on a highly classified mission. The objectives of the operatives sent was to infiltrate the Cerberus command station and remove members of their leadership to destabilize the organization. It was confirmed in the chaos that the team initially was able to capture the Illusive Woman, however she was later executed by Staff Sergeant Hendricks under noncollaberated circumstances. Additionally at this time, Winston worked fast and developed a new armor system known as the Redan Archangel with various offensive and defensive capabilities, reaching four iterations before being deployed by the Alliance en masse.

In the Battle for the Omega 4 Relay, Staff Sergeant Hendricks and the newly created Archangel Corps were assigned with the task of destroying the Hades cannon that had been affixed to the mass relay. While the team was able to infiltrate the structure they were entirely unaware of the horrors. Very few of the members talk about what transpired during the mission, though it seems through the helmet cam footage that a portion of the team was stricken by some unknown force. After recovering from it the team carried on to the heart of the weapon and discovered it was a Reaper that awaited them. Knowing the threat that this revelation posed to the entire unit, Winston ordered the others to fall back and retreat to allied ships and the Osiris while he set about destroying the Reaper with the MK.2 Cain.  After destroying the Hades cannon Winston made his way back and returned to the Osiris as it was escaping the effects of the Omega 4’s and Reaper Fleet’s destruction. While the ship was unable to survive unscathed the crew was able to crash land on a planet after using the relay to escape the carnage.

Initially after the war and Guardian’s disbanding, Winston returned to Earth to reunite with his sister Diana, who had been found during the course of the war. The two soon received an unexpected summons to visit their family’s lawyer. While the two had been raised very distant from their Uncle Mathias, he kept an eye on the lives of his nephew and niece. Having no children of his own, their Uncle left to them many of his worldly possessions including his majority stake in the family business, as well as the family’s estate. In addition to all this there one more gift that he had for Winston in particular; a six shooter that his one of his long past ancestors had purchased to defend his home and had passed down through the generations so that the head of the house could protect their family. From that point brother and sister went to their new home and took over the business.

A few days after this event as the siblings started to acclimate to their new lives, an unexpected guest came to their homestead. Colonel Morgan Cartwright of the Systems Alliance the second in command of the Gagarin Research Station, had come to Winston’s doorstep. Based on Mr. Hendricks’ history of technical prowess, the combat effectiveness seen from the Archangel system, and his experience with both Remnant and Reaper tech the Alliance wanted to recruit the engineer. While it was an interesting and enticing proposition after the Reaper war, Winston wanted to try and regain some sense of normalcy with his family. However after the events of December 24th, 2187, Hendricks reached out to Cartwright to accept the offer that had remained on the table as long as the Alliance would protect his family.

Upon taking the position with the Systems Alliance, the engineer was sent to Gagarin station, promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in the Navy. Initially Winston made various weapons and more standardized upgrades to the Archangel systems in order to streamline production. Though soon his specific expertise with rem-tech called him up to the front lines of the post-war technological race. This found him assigned to Alliance Rem-Tech  Recovery Team Omega; deploying with a squad of marines and an N7 to the world of Pragia, following leads that their might have been a Remnant beacon on the planet that led the ship to where it crashed countless centuries ago . Many of the records of the direct events have been sealed by the Alliance Intelligence Service, though what can be gathered is that the team encountered a hostile force. Due to the skirmish the facility’s defense systems were activated causing mass casualties on both sides. Having been at the heart of one of these structures before, Winston knew the only way to stop the remnant machines. In the heat of battle Lt.Hendricks sprinted from the defensible position of cover and into the line of fire to interact with the central matrix of the Remnant facility. By interfacing with the device, Winston was able to break into the neural network of the Remnant constructs and changed their IFF to attacking the opposition force that the team had encountered. Much like prior attempts to interact as directly with Remnant technology, the Lieutenant’s mind was wracked by the data transference.

Following this mission and the account from his team, Winston received the Alliance Medal of Courage and an offer to join the Interplanetary Combatives Training program. Seeing it as an opportunity to better forge himself as a warrior, becoming someone who would once again being on the frontlines of averting or stopping disasters like those that he had faced, it be a life worth living. Even though it had been a time since his time in GUARDIAN, he took to the program like a fish to water. Since his interactions with the Remnant network his skills and aptitude with machines both human and alien, sky rocketed along side with the training. The engineer was becoming somewhat of a rising star considering his records prior to joining the Alliance and the way that he doggedly pushed through any challenge that was put his way. Though eventually it seemed like the ghosts of the war and his constant frontline service started to wear on the man. Rumors are that Winston became very open about the possibility that the Alliance should push research into the field of artificial intelligence.

Around this time, the then Commander Hendricks was discretely taken off the special forces track and was sent back to Gagarin station to continue work on pending projects and for observation. It was noted that during this initial turn about for his career and path, that his disposition began to drastically worsen. However it eventually receded and stopped altogether; after a psychological evaluation nothing was found to be a miss with the engineer, with the physician stating that whatever demons that Winston had been carrying he had either exercised or had come to terms with. Either way his outstanding statements keep him from continuing to completion of the ICT. Since then he has continued his work at Gagarin station under the watchful eyes of Colonel Cartwright, until recently when his name was put forward to act as the main Alliance Liaison Officer to the new Council Recovery Corps. After much debate in Alliance command, it was decided that Winston Hendricks would take on this role due to his experience in the forerunner to the CRC initiative. Receiving a promotion in what might be name only to that of Captain, Winston was assigned to the Resurgence for its maiden voyage and deployment.

## Personality

Winston’s parents raised him along the moral lines of Christian teachings and of the golden rule. If ever someone is in need of help, especially a person who he sees as an innocent, Winston is always more than willing to stop and lend a hand if he can even if it is detrimental to what he is trying to do. Though he is much more comfortable working around asari and quarians, the first based on their similar appearance to humans and the second for the time Winston spent with them. While he is competent with defending himself and others with force, Winston prefers to try more diplomatic routes first before resulting to violence.

There is a streak of violence and distrust toward one group in particular; the Batarian Hegemony. While it is true for a long time Winston also held a grudge against the Turian Hierarchy and its people at large. However due to his service in GUARDIAN alongside many turians, he grew away from the sentiments that he had grown up with, to the point of considering one Siva Turakis like a sister. Winston has a deep seated hatred and distrust for the Batarian Hegemony and its people. He views them as just a collective of slavers and pirates who are responsible for the  death/ possible enslavement of not just his family, but of the crew of the cargo ship with which he had served for two years.

Winston’s service in GUARIDAN has worn on the man that he was when he had first volunteered for the organization. In the course of just a short period of service he has loved, lost, had it happened all again, experienced the joy of being reunited with ones thought lost and witnessed the horrific schemes of the Reapers and Cerberus. Additionally, he is very suspicious and sceptical of the Citadel Council due to revelations about the hand which they played in the outbreak of the war and cost of innocent life that the current leaderships’ game of power held.

### Exceptional Skills

* *Don’t Worry I Speak Machine* - Winston has an uncanny ability to assess and understand mechanical and electrical operating systems. Where it may take other engineers and technicians hours or even days to assess a problem with the systems of a ship, weapon platform, armor/shielding, etc.; he is able to figure out the issue with surprising speed and unparalleled accuracy. This ability also lends itself to dealing with technology that Winston has not encountered before, being able to figure out and ‘talk to it’ to gain an understanding of how it works and functions.
* *I Can Fix That With Duct Tape!* - Even from a young age, Winston has had the surprising knack to fix machinery with limited resources and that talent has only increased with his age and knowledge. The real ingenious part of his repairs is that he is able to fix broken machines and technology to a state as if they had just been sent out from the factory or even better than such.  While known to always keep a roll or two of industrial strength duct tape in his kit to use for emergency suit repairs and to hold things together momentarily while he gets the proper fix ready more so than using it as an actual solution to a problem. No matter what tools and materials are at hand Winston is able to Macgyver repairs and upgrades on the fly and in the middle of intense combat.
* *Any better he’d be an N7* - During his time in GUARDIAN, Hendricks fought in numerous fields of battle with distinction. From the city streets of Eylisium; where he showed tactical acumen by getting his squad through the conflict with no casualties, to the operation on the Omega-4 relay where his lethality in battle was put on grand display. Following the events on Pragia, Winston was extended the opportunity to go through the N7 training program and made it all the way through N6 before being taken off the special forces track.

## Physical Description

Winston is both a very tall and well built individual, towering over many of his peers throughout his early life. He attributes much of his lean and muscular to his life growing  up on a farming colony and working in the fields with his father. To add to his looks his dark green eyes and near constant 5 o'clock shadow have cemented him a “good but not great looker” as his sisters once teased him.

While through much of his early life he maintained a tan from farming, in recent years he has returned to a more pale complexion, after spending a good deal of time with the Quarians. It is on occasion noticeable that Winston has a slight limp on his left leg as well as scars on it, however the limp does not seem to impede his athletic ability, only coming into view during extreme exhaustion.

After the war, Hendricks spent some time recovering from his injuries sustained in the final battle and its aftermath. Both of his legs hold significant scarring due to the procedures that he had to undergo after breaking both of his legs and suffering multiple fractures. While not initially noticeable, the engineer does walk with a bit of a limp to his left side. His face while hardened much from the realities of total war that he faced is home to a series of small scars, thanks to his helmet’s visor breaking during the crash landing of the Osiris. Over the years as he has worked for the Alliance his hair has started to gain more fleck of grey in it as the stresses of combat have taken their toll.

### Armament

* M-96 Mattock
* M-10 Nemesis
* Sidewinder
* M-9 Tempest
* M-88 Dozer Heavy Machine Gun Cal. 50
* MK 01 Redan Archangel Power Armor Frame (With all current MK. packages)

### Abilities

* Overload
* Combat Drone
* Tech Armor