Grover Jay

Grover in civilian attire.

Grover Jay is a human researcher and former crew member of the EFS Dauntless who was only slightly involved in the Dauntless Incident. Born on Mars, he was given an exceptional education and learned various skills. An extremely smart and talented individual in the books, he was recruited as part of Project Grissom, if only to get away from the home where everyone knew the kind of person he truly was.

### Escape and Survival

He was present during just one mission aboard the vessel before using the power lockdown in the early stages of the incident to sneak to the fore section of the ship and jettison out of the vessel in an escape pod. He later met with Derek Lee and Huỳnh-Hoàng Giang Linh on the surface of the planet after having been there almost three weeks before their arrival. Together with them he survived for another week before witnessing a battle between the Stand for the Reconciliation of the Tarkan and the Grand Tarkan Army. Here he met Xad'aross Phosgelias, who introduced himself as "Zad Phos". When extended an offer to join the SRT, he refused, deciding to return to humanity.

### Debauchery on Oasis

Though he survived with them, he did not call Linh or Lee friends, and quickly fell out of contact with them when he arrived in Babylon, establishing himself as a local legend by exacerbating details of the Dauntless Incident and using his former status as a crew member to awe new arrivals to the planet. He bounced from job to job, never holding down a true career. When the First Contact War began, he enlisted immediately and became a logistics clerk in the Systems Union Ground Forces. He was never invited to rejoin Task Force Dauntless, though confided in friends that he never would have rejoined anyway.

Grover Jay viewed the Tarkan species as literally sub-human, and was known for picking fights with members of the species by calling them "bruised, beaten bugs". He retired in 2537 and took a military pension for 'valorous service', enjoying vacation time on the beaches of Redville.

### **Fire on Oasis**

In 2540, Grover Jay became involved in the Tarkan assault on Babylon that marked the beginning of Masterly's War. Due to a tense run-in with Humanity in Power operatives, he was incriminated in treasonous activities, for which he was arrested by the Babylon police department. After being interrogated, he was put to work by the police as an informant, developing a tense relationship with his handler, Agent Walter O'Neil.

After the Fly Free Lounge Raid, Grover Jay and Peter Villiers escaped to a farm outside Redville where they "borrowed" a cargo freighter. After a brief shootout with Babylon police forces, Jay and Villiers escaped Oasis, just hours before the arrival of the Tasaar Grand Fleet.

**Later Life**

Grover Jay and Peter Villiers would become perhaps the greatest criminals the galaxy had ever known. Peter Villiers, a natural criminal, convinced Grover Jay to turn his otherwise lazy demeanor into something useful, and the two gradually began building a fleet of freelancers and mercenaries after the beginning of the Tasaar War. Using the chaos of the galactic conflict, Grover Jay's pirate armada expanded exponentially in both scale and profit and became a nuisance to the Systems Union for several decades, sparking the beginning of Interplanetary Piracy.

Grover Jay's fate remains undetermined. He disappeared in May 2556, taking with him a single luxury ship and hundreds of billions of credits, and not even Villiers, his most trusted friend, was privy to the details of the disappearance, though if he was, he took the secret to his grave.