John Reynolds

From Archimedes

John Eugene Reynolds

Rank: Lieutenant Junior Grade (O-2)

Appearance

Species: Human
Gender: Male
Born: 30 January 2355
Place of Birth: Harmony Cove Colony - Former Demilitarized Zone, Federation / Cardassian Border
Hair: Black
Eyes: Green
Height: 6'1"

Having spent most of his career in Security and Tactical, as well as his undercover work beforehand, John has kept up a regular exercise and training routine to maintain a good level of physical fitness without becoming too obsessive about it. When out of uniform John has a habit of wearing his favourite leather jacket despite the fact it's rather beaten and worn from years of bar brawls and the likes. He tries to maintain good personal hygiene but often ignores shaving because he thinks the 5 o'clock shadow makes him look edgier and impresses the ladies.

History

John's parents were members of a small group that had their fingers in every pie among the colonies. Because of this John grew up unaware of what it was like to struggle for recourses, like some of the others living in the DMZ, however life was far from easy for John and his younger sister Samantha.

Where the other colonists could do nothing about his parents, he and Samantha were a different matter; they were picked on by adult and child alike. But as John soon came to expect, his parent's saw him as the catalyst to these problems. Samantha was fortunate enough to avoid this type of atmosphere until about the age of five or six, when she started interacting with the local children. Then of course, John made it clear he would take on anyone who even thought of turning their anger towards her. It wasn’t long before Samantha was the only one to see her brother for the good person he was.

Despite their distant nature, Anthony and Catherine Reynolds tried to provide their children with every luxury their wheeling and dealing could produce. In their own way the pair did love John and Samantha, however they never really understood what life was like for them. Thankfully though, they always had each other. John may have been ten years older but Samantha was highly intelligent and understood far more than she let on, even to her brother.

Shortly after turning eighteen, war broke out against the Dominion. Given the things John had to face on a daily basis in the colonies, it might be surprising to know he was conflicted about leaving to join Starfleet; doing so would mean leaving Samantha alone with two distant parents and people who hated the name Reynolds.

However Samantha wanted more for her brother; she knew he didn’t stand a chance of amounting to anything in the DMZ. So semi-reluctantly he left for Earth; his desire to leave the miseries of the colony behind and to help the Federation in any small way winning out. While nowhere near as bad as home, even Academy life turned bad soon enough. After almost being kicked out due to mediocre test scores, due to what his instructors called 'problems with authority', John was desperate to find a way of making things work. That's when he met a man from Starfleet Intelligence who changed everything.

Commander William Hart hoped to use John to infiltrate the Maquis, who were known to have connections to the demilitarized zone. Like an untold number of other Starfleet operatives, John would be placed inside the Maquis to both report on their movements and perhaps even sabotage their efforts to disrupt the agreement between the Cardassian government and the Federation. This meant that as far as the public were concerned, John had failed and had been released from the Academy. However, he was placed in an accelerated training program for a few months before being introduced to known Maquis agents and left relatively to his own devices until needed.

This inevitably led John to some Maquis agents operating on and around Bajor, commanded by Jespen Torel; a former Bajoran resistance member. The group were dividing their attention between the Bajoran people and the Maquis’ main objectives. Here, among supposed criminals and vigilantes, John found the sense of home he had only known with his sister. Unfortunately after about a year undercover, John was captured by Cardassian forces when they raided the Maquis vessel he was working on. Unbeknownst to John, it was his information that had led the Cardassian patrols to them; part of an agreement with the Federation. To avoid blowing his cover, John was also tortured for information and then taken to a labour camp. After a few months he and some of the others were rescued by ‘fellow’ members of the Marquis.

Upon returning to Starfleet John was offered a position in Tactical and what he considered to be nothing more than a bribe to keep quiet. He declined, deciding he had lost whatever admiration he once had for Starfleet and the Federation as a whole. Instead he returned to the colony, only to find everything had changed; his father had been killed, by whom was unknown, and his mother and sister were living in relative squalor. The whole balance of power among the colonies had shifted in the year or so he had been away and the so called committee his parents had belonged to were now just regular colonists.

His time back in the colony was short lived however when he came clean to his mother and Samantha about what he had been doing for Starfleet. Branding him a traitor, Catherine threw him out and forbade him from seeing his sister. John took losing both his sister (contact with her) and the friends he had made among the Marquis pretty hard and spent the next few months drifting around; spending almost all his time in bars or on dodgy transport vessels. Despite this low point in his life, he always made sure he contacted Samantha as often as possible, and that she had enough latinum to take care of herself.

In mid 2374 John was beginning to run out of steam; he was no longer content to just drift around having meaningless relationships, romantic or otherwise, with people he came across between bars. He contacted Starfleet and after some wrangling and negotiation took their previous offer of a position in Tactical. Although John knew it would be a tough job proving himself, and that the terms of the agreement kept him from ever progressing, he put himself whole-heartedly into his new role. After joining the USS Archimedes he even surprised himself by managing to find the home he had always been looking for.

Family

Father: Anthony Eugene Reynolds
Mother: Catherine Ann Turner
Sister: Samantha Marie Reynolds