Donovan Strauss

Donovan - Irish -> Brown Haired Chieftain

Strauss - German -> Irritable and/or Awkward

## History

### Ten Years a Pilot

Donovan Strauss was raised, if you could call it that, by parents particularly ill-suited to the task. Very often the subject of either neglect or abuse, Donovan understood from a fairly young age that he would be having no part in such a life. As soon as he was old enough to enlist in the Armed Forces Program of the UNE he did so, ridding his parent's of his presence and devoting everything to his studies in order to become an ace pilot. At the ripe old age of ten, Donovan was already on the path to one of the most deadly jobs in the Navy.

He took to the material like a fish to water - calculus, physics, tactics, and logistics - he very quickly found himself on the fast track, set to become a fully fledged pilot by the age of twenty rather than the traditional twenty five. His first flight, an atmospheric flight test to determine aptitude, was performed at the age of thirteen, the youngest in about twenty years. At the age of fourteen he was approached by a high profile individual to consider going down the educational track for a particularly secretive role. He was not provided many details, but at the behest of one Draco Helmsguard he found himself accepting the challenge, with the good Doctor Helmsguard appointed as his advisor and supervisor.

By fifteen, Donovan was participating in exo-atmospheric training flights held by the Continents, the super-elite carrier based unit charged with the defense of Earth and training the elites of the next generation. That same year he found himself the subject of an intense training and lecture regimen. His classes were curated by those in positions higher than he was cleared to know while the subjects often confounded him. Land wars, manufacturing, design, infrastructure, all manner of engineering fundamentals associated with military constructions and planning were hammered into his skull alongside the relatively traditional space tactics, maneuvers, and flight hours.

By eighteen he was considered to be on the level of an experienced professional, capable of keeping up with the North American wing of the Continents in a dogfight, only losing due to physiological factors. Unlike his instructors, his body had not yet fully matured and was far more susceptible to high-g maneuvers. At this time, his schedule experienced a fairly drastic change. With his level of skill being capped by factors outside of the scope of control, only the baseline of flight hours were given to maintain his skill and test improvements. His education from this point on would be focused on the tactical and practical.

He would take the fast track on his fleet command courses, completing 'the Gauntlet', a series of virtual combat scenarios that would test his ability to command and control various sizes of fleets in a plethora of scenarios, without failing a single time. While this was not the first time such a task was completed, he was the only one to do it in under a year. After successfully running the Gauntlet, his focus changed towards the ground theater, tasked with acting as a case study for historians to base their analyses on.

His studies did not come without direct benefits for his other fields of study though. Ship design proved to be one of his better subjects, the results of his efforts culminating in a new theoretical armor scheme for lighter ships, Interstitial Honeycombing. It would do little to lighten the armor load of these ships, however it held the potential to increase the overall effectiveness by redirecting the mass of the incoming penetrators in such a way that it never breaches the innermost layer. Naturally it would do little for high velocity high energy weapons like railguns, but it held the potential to stunt the effects of ballistic and shaped charge penetrators.

His final year of study was focused entirely on acclimating him to his assigned role, which he was only allowed to know as **DS**. His classes were no longer in the presence of others, instead one on one sessions with individuals who had either designed or understood the mechanics behind the equipment he was to be tasked with operating. The most notable of these training sessions known as SAW, Systems and Weapons training, taught him how to operate a centralized remote guidance system for pre-launched missiles. His training software did not utilize the three-dimensional kind he would eventually have access to aboard the Noah, but many of the lessons transferred.

### Designated Survivor

Donovan never officially completed his training, however this was never considered to be an issue when assigning him to the UES Calibration. This segment of his development was tied to the ship he was assigned. This ship was not named at the time owing to its secretive nature, but was later titled 'Noah' once officially commissioned. It was a