David Kahn

David Kahn was an enigmatic mercenary and assassin who operated before, during, and after the Human-Covenant War. Although fairly successful during his early days as a gun for hire, Kahn gained fame and infamy as one of the galaxy's most effective and lethal mercenaries during the waning years of the Human-Covenant War and the periods of reconstruction that followed. Aside from his highly successful career as a solo freelancer, Kahn was also the illegitimate parent of Cassandra-G006 and formed several partnerships over the years, most notably with the up and coming Redmond Venter during the height of the Human-Covenant War and with the aspiring young mercenary Mordred and his A.I. companion Diana. He was also heavily involved with the creation and training of the Humanity Liberation Front's Knight operatives, forming a particularly close bond with the young trainee Nimue.

Early Life
Very little is known about David Kahn's life before he became a mercenary. The most prevalent rumor amongst most underworld circles is that he was an Insurrectionist soldier who decided to abandon the war against the UNSC in favor of a more profitable life as a mercenary. Another speculation is that he is a renegade ONI operative who began selling his services after committing some unforgivable crime against his superiors. A third theory, one that has been endorsed primarily by those who have actually fought against him and lived to tell the tale, is that he was one of the UNSC's early attempts at creating super soldiers, possibly a SPARTAN-I candidate or washout. Kahn himself has provided no particular evidence to support any one hypothesis, but the skill and efficiency with which he accomplishes his contracts suggests at least some background in military special forces. His first recorded "job" occurred in late 2521 when he was noted during a Colonial Administration Authority investigation as having been one of several hired guns contracted by a colonial governor to assassinate political rivals. After this first appearance he took on numerous contracts throughout both the Inner and Outer colonies, mostly working for politicians or organized crime bosses to eliminate rivals or other unlucky individuals who had incurred his employers' wrath. Although most of his known hits are recorded as being successful, Kahn was really nothing more than a well-traveled hit man during this early stage in his career.

As if realizing the low rung he inhabited on the ladder of mercenary professions, David also began taking bounty hunting jobs in several Outer Colonies where he was not wanted for crimes he had committed during the fulfillment of his contracts. Although initially unsuccessful on most of these jobs, his growing knowledge of the galaxy's underworld and a slow but steady increase in his tracking abilities allowed him to collect more and more bounties as time went by. He also experienced his first tastes of "true" mercenary work when he was hired on as a soldier to fight on the front lines of several local brush wars that occurred from time to time in the Outer Colonies.

The onset of the Human-Covenant War in early 2525 proved to be a horrific shock for the human community at large but did very little initially to hurt the availability of jobs within the UEG's colonial underworld. However, as human losses began to pile up and the Outer Colonies began to fall, guns for hire like Kahn saw a sharp decrease in the amount of work provided in their formerly thriving field. Many joined the UNSC military in a growing show of solidarity as humans began to see that their only hope in survival lay in unity. Kahn himself was unable (or unwilling) to join the military due to his now-extensive criminal record and instead began taking on the jobs left available by the shrinking amount of mercenaries in circulation. But even with the vacancies, it was still becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet and David found himself taking on jobs that he would normally have considered too high-risk. One of these involved the assassination of a released criminal who was once again under suspicion and being questioned at a public hearing. Hired by the man's former associates to ensure that he did not divulge information about them, Kahn ran into more trouble than he was expecting when he tried to carry out the hit. His first attempt, at the mark's office, failed when he mistakenly shot a different man sitting at his target's desk. The second attempt, a drive by shooting, succeeded only in killing one of the man's police escorts. Almost out of options, David snuck into the hearing itself with a silenced pistol and finally eliminated his target. During his escape from the court building he was shot several times by police officers and only barely escaped with his life. Although most of his wounds were superficial, David had been given two direct hits to his leg, leaving him with a limp incurable by anything short of extensive surgery that he could not afford.

"So I'm 'classier than a prostitute.' How uplifting."

- David Kahn after receiving an unusual job offer from Jocasta Powell

Now handicapped and nearly broke, Kahn was gambling away the last of his money in a bar in 2537 when he received a unique job offer from Jocasta Powell, the wife of Thomas Powell, head of the powerful Powell Syndicate. Jocasta was fuming from the discovery that her husband had conceived a son through his mistress. Although Thomas had thrown the mistress and her unborn son onto the streets after Jocasta had threatened to leave him, he had not fully realized the extent of the damage to his wife's pride and her almost irrational desire to get back at him through an act of symbolic revenge. Jocasta, who was impressed by Kahn's career and aware of his current state of poverty, offered to both pay him a handsome sum and cover his leg surgery if he would conceive a child with her. Although initially feeling degraded and insulted by the offer, Kahn was quickly forced to face the reality of his situation and agreed to take the so-called job. After spending a night with Jocasta without Thomas's consent, David stayed near the Powell estate and lived off a retainer from Jocasta until she learned that she was pregnant with a girl during the spring of 2538. With his leg surgery completed and a staggering amount of money now in his accounts, David left Jocasta, who now enjoyed a sense of triumph over her husband for having him raise a child that he thought was his own. Still flabbergasted by the nature of his salvation, Kahn was determined not to waste the strange second chance he had been given and vowed to become the absolute best in his trade.

The Human-Covenant War
Following his job with the Powells, David dropped almost completely off the galactic map for almost a decade. While such disappearances were extremely common in the chaos sparked by the Covenant's constant encroachment on UNSC territory, David's was unique in that he actually reappeared (he began officially taking on contracts again in 2548) rather than simply vanishing into the fog of war. While none can actually attest to what he was doing during this time period, there were many unofficial sightings of individuals resembling him taking part in several engagements against invading Covenant forces. One such sighting occurred during the evacuation of Acre City on Theseus IV in 2543 when a fellow mercenary believed he saw Kahn providing independent sniper support against advancing Covenant forces, while another was recounted by a hit man turned marine who claimed to have been aided by Kahn in an ambush during the jungle fighting on Xenophon in 2546. Although the various sightings differed in time, location, and feasibility, they all involved Kahn participating in actions against Covenant forces in some way, shape, or form. Like his origins, Kahn's activities during this period and his motivations for pursuing them are more the subject of conjecture and rumor than they are of solid facts. However, the most widely-held and feasible hypothesis is that he wished to do his part to aid humanity while honing his skills in preparation for a revitalization of his career. Later sightings of Kahn also made mention of a unique set of shocktrooper armor worn by the veteran mercenary. While none at the time could properly associate the full body armor with Kahn, the reputation he and the armor gained several years later leave little doubt that this armored figure was indeed him.

David reemerged into the mercenary community in late 2548 when he and several other mercenaries took on a contract from a rich refugee to risk infiltrating a captured human city on Sobek III in order to retrieve several priceless heirlooms from the man's house. The mission was successful, although only Kahn and only one other mercenary lived to collect their fees, and from that point on Kahn was once again accepting contracts from anyone who would pay well. Although the number of traditional contracts remained at an all-time low, there was plenty of money to be made accepting bodyguard jobs for opulent refugees and taking on scouting or escort jobs from beleaguered UNSC commanders. The final year of the war saw David active on the embattled face of Earth herself and he was reported as having fought in several engagements in the Central and Southern American regions before the war was officially ended.

Reconstruction Period
"When I take a contract, I see it through to the end. I don't care how well hidden the target is or how many goons, aliens, or genetic freaks are between me and him, because I'll do whatever it takes to get the job done. That is what makes me different from the others in my line of work: they have limits; I do not."

- David Kahn speaking to a dubious employer.

As humanity began to get back on its feet in the years following the end of the war, David wasted no time in setting up shop in the revitalized galactic underworld and refilling his old niche as an elite gun for hire. With most police forces overstretched from refugee influxes and reconstruction projects, many local governments were happy to hire the likes of Kahn to help keep wanted criminals in check. Likewise, the slow rebuilding of the UEG's colonial infrastructure opened a new door for humanity's various criminal syndicates to forge new underworld empires and David found himself accepting countless contracts to help one crime boss after another eliminate their rivals (Somewhat ironically, he received the most contracts from the Powell Syndicate, which would eventually claw its way to the top and become the most feared criminal organizations in the galaxy). Another burgeoning market existed amidst the confusion of the Covenant's dissolution, as former client races such as the Kig-Yar or Unggoy beckoned in waves of human missionaries, con men, relief workers, criminals, and mercenaries. One job taken by Kahn in 2555 had him assassinate a Sangheili warlord who had set himself and his men up as rulers of a small colony of Unggoy. Clad in his already battered armor, Kahn infiltrated the warlord's compound and eliminated almost every warrior in sight with a sniper rifle before killing the rest in a furious firefight that gave Kahn a fierce reputation in the eyes of the Unggoy and Sangheili alike.

While Kahn made a killing in government and criminal contracts, his most lucrative clients were by far the various Insurrectionist factions who saw great value in hiring such a lethal operative. While he did make a point of turning down bombing jobs ("terrorist business," he called them), Kahn was so efficient when it came to eliminating individual CAA and UNSC officials that his work for the Insurrectionists actually killed his government contracts. Five months after his first Insurrection contract, Kahn was a UNSC-wide public enemy and forced to wear a variety of face-altering make ups whenever he wanted to go out in public. But the contracts that flooded in from Insurrectionist factions more than made up for what he saw as a mild inconvenience. One of his most frequent clients was an up and coming officer in the Humanity Liberation Front faction named Redmond Venter with whom Kahn developed a mild rapport as time wore on. Years later, Venter's experience with Kahn would lead him to offer the mercenary a job that would radically change the course of his life.

The Ezekiel Plot
As David's infamy spread, he gained as many enemies as he did clients. This was made abundantly clear in 2560 when, after successfully completing a job on Arcadia, the bus he was traveling on detonated seconds after he had gotten off, killing over a dozen civilians. A day later, as he was recuperating at a contact's tavern, close to a dozen mercenaries assaulted the building with rockets and machine guns in an attempt to kill Kahn that became evident when they specifically targeted his room. Kahn, with the help of his contact's bodyguards, killed all of the attackers but was now left with a problem: someone was trying to kill him, and he couldn't discern who this person was or why they wanted him dead.

Tracing the dead mercenaries back to the outfit they worked with, Kahn learned that they'd been hired and briefed by a local warehouse owner who doubled as a middleman for various criminal organizations. But this lead also turned out to be an attempt to kill him, as Kahn arrived at the warehouse only to find it crawling with enforcers. After a brutal shoot-out, Kahn escaped the scene with a wounded hit man, whom he learned worked for the Ezekiel crime syndicate after a short interrogation. Checking back into his personal records on the various contracts he'd taken on, David remembered that he'd been hired a few years ago to kill the Ezekiel syndicate's leader. With the syndicate now being run by his daughter, Colleen Ezekiel, it seemed that the attempts on Kahn's life were being made out of revenge. Off-handedly referring to the whole incident as being "bad for business," Kahn decided to hunt down Colleen and eliminate her before another attempt on his life could be made.

Traveling to New Ceylon, an Outer colony that was the Ezekiel syndicate's base of operations, David attacked Colleen's mansion and single handedly wiped out over half her security force with only a few well placed explosives and a sniper rifle. Breaching the mansion itself, he killed even more of Colleen's bodyguards before confronting the syndicate leader herself. After interrogating Colleen, Kahn learned that the Ezekiel syndicate had in fact been paid to eliminate him by an agent from a faction within the United Rebel Front. The only reason the agent had given for the assassination had been that he was involved with the HLF. Armed with this knowledge, Kahn used Colleen to get him in contact with the agent who had ordered the hit. The agent panicked when David threatened to begin eliminating URF assets of his own volition knowing full well how dangerous the mercenary could be. The man canceled the Ezekiel syndicate's contract on Kahn, but requested information from Kahn about his dealings with the HLF. The agent seemed surprised when Kahn told him that he'd only taken on some assassination jobs from the organization, but pressed no further in the matter. With the matter resolved (he would still spend the next year or so staying on guard for any further attempts on his life), David chose to spare Colleen. To him, the whole incident had "just been business" as far as the syndicate leader was concerned, something that he could respect. Any revenge he might have wanted had already been meted out through his attack on the Ezekiel compound, so he departed without doing any more damage.

David would be curious about the agent's only given reason for killing him being his connection with the HLF, but further contracts pushed the issue from his mind. It was, however, the first time he would be affected by the HLF's Knight Project.

The "Mercenary Wars"
WIth the galaxy's criminal underworld expanding just as fast as a revitalized humanity, a new market for large scale mercenary work emerged on the fringes of civilized space. Businesses and criminal organizations alike were more than eager to hire "security contractors" for protection, especially since requesting aid from the UNSC would always mean an investigation by ONI or CAA agents. Mercenary organizations grew larger than ever before to fulfill the need for hired guns, with some stretching across whole systems at a time. Although he received numerous job offers from many of these private armies, David refused to join any of them. He saw all of the groups as being composed mainly of greedy thrill seekers who lacked both the resolve to choose a real side to fight for and the skills necessary to succeed as a freelance mercenary like him.

But while David dismissed the mercenary armies as inconsequential bands of thugs, the UNSC and ONI in particular saw them as a collective bomb just waiting to go off. Their experiences with such terrorist groups as the Humanity Liberation Front had taught them that Insurrectionists were quite capable of getting their hands on considerable funds, and if any rebel group ever reached a point where it could actually challenge the UNSC's military forces with a real chance at winning, these groups would provide easy reinforcements for its main forces. However, to legally shut the groups down would outrage the various private businesses that employed them and do little more than create bitter groups of former mercenaries who could easily turn to piracy or terrorism. Furthermore, some elements of ONI saw mercenaries as ideal tools with which they could access the darker corners of the UNSC, places that even special agents and spies had trouble gaining a foothold in. With this in mind, an aspiring member of ONI's Section Zero, Commander Xavier Nelson, proposed to his superiors an operation that would end the threat of organized mercenary armies indefinitely. Using funds procured for the operation, Commander Nelson used an underworld middleman to pay David Kahn to join the largest mercenary organization currently operating in UNSC space, Kronos Defense. Once his reputation had earned him a significant place within the operation, Kahn was instructed to ensure that it collapsed as violently as possible.

David performed his task better than anyone within ONI could have hoped. After several weeks of biding his time, he struck with a series of assassinations within the organization that all pointed at different members of its command structure. Within a month, Kronos Defense was a tangle of various internal factions headed by leaders who sought to assume control of the organization and its considerable finances. David feigned loyalty to the rapidly-weakening original leadership while continuing his assassinations with ruthless efficiency. With his primary target already on the verge of fragmenting, he began linking some of the killings to rival mercenary groups. While many individual mercenaries correctly suspected that Kahn was the real perpetrator, the evidence to the contrary that he planted was enough to convince the majority who used the new opportunities to settle old scores and seize more power for themselves.

More mercenaries and assassins hired by Commander Nelson's small task force performed similar operations within other leading organizations, and within a year most of these groups had splintered into various smaller factions all scrabbling for contracts in a market that had gone from being dominated by a handful of organizations to being a far more competitive environment in which only the strong survived. This shift would touch off a series of skirmishes and brush wars between rival factions that would collectively be known as the "Mercenary Wars." The end result was that the UNSC hardly had to lift a finger to eliminate the foreseen mercenary threat; it effectively eliminated itself. The surviving factions were far more competent and ruthless than their larger parents had been, making them easy tools for the UNSC to use in its efforts to battle criminal syndicates and the Insurrection.

The Mercenary Wars proved to be both a blessing and a curse for David Kahn, the man who had effectively started them. Well paid for his efforts--he received close to five million credits from ONI's agents--he enjoyed an increase in the number of freelance jobs offered to him. On the other hand, many remnants of the larger mercenary companies had suffered from this sudden shift and blamed him for their fall from power. Although the additions to his already extensive list of enemies didn't greatly worry him, he did have to face more attempts on his life than he had before the Wars and was forced to use more caution when traversing the galactic underworld.

Personality and Traits
"There are only two things in the universe that I'll never hit. No kids, not under any circumstances; no civvies unless they're involved with the mobs or politics. They stop being civvies after that. Everything else is fair game."

- David Kahn discussing his modus operandi with Mordred

David was a brash, outspoken man when he entered the mercenary trade and was suited for working as little more than a common soldier and hitman. His experiences with injury, degradation, and of course the Human-Covenant War served to temper both his attitude towards his work and his outlook on the universe in general. The man who emerged into the post-war galaxy was no longer solely concerned with surviving and fulfilling his day to day wants and needs. The post-war Kahn had seen his own species brought to the brink of extinction and had faced death enough times to become more than aware of his own mortality. With no family or similar ties to guide or direct his actions and mindful of how insignificant his life would be in the grand scheme of humanity and the galaxy at large. With this in mind, Kahn set out to build himself a name that would live on long after he himself had died. This desire would drive him to earn a reputation as the best mercenary, bounty hunter, and assassin in both human and Covenant space. Until he accepted the job to raise and train Nimue, all David was concerned with was maintaining and expanding his fearsome reputation.

The twelve years he spent tutoring Nimue forced David to reevaluate his priorities. For the first time in his career he had someone other than himself to look out for and (eventually) to care about. Realizing that he could establish more than just a reputation as his legacy, David sought to make Nimue the greatest assassin the galaxy had ever seen, surpassing even himself and those trained by the UNSC. This ambition would often come into conflict with the conscience that David was slowly developing in response to his paternal feelings toward the young girl. His emotions also conflicted with the harsh methods he employed to train Nimue, but he justified his actions through the thought that he was preparing her for the survival of the fittest nature of the galaxy they lived in. Although saddened by the separation brought on by Nimue's resistance to the HLF's designs for her, David was satisfied that he had done all he could to prepare his charge and was made proud by the independence made plain by her choice to flee the Insurrectionists sent to retrieve her. The years with Nimue softened David enough to make him rethink his previous dislike of having companions during his jobs and inspired to pursue a brief partnership with the up-and-coming mercenary Mordred and his A.I. accomplice Diana shortly after Nimue left him.

Hobbies and Pastimes
Although the majority of David's time was spent either fulfilling contracts missions or in transit to new ones, he would occasionally take time for himself in order to relax and enjoy the exorbitant amounts of money he charged for his services. While he kept the majority of it tucked away in small pockets across UNSC space in the care of various underworld money launderers and made a point to never spend more than a modest some on his own entertainment, David would keep small sums on his person solely for certain pastimes and hobbies. His most common method of relaxation was spending long hours in seedy bars. In the early days of his mercenary career David cared little about how much he drank and would more often than not be amongst the drunken participants in the brawls that would invariably spring up in these low-brow establishments. However, as his reputation grew David began to feel that it was both dangerous and undignified to drink himself into a stupor so he began to carefully limit the amount of drinks he had in each sitting.

One of David's more guilty pleasures was his enjoyment of musicals, especially those of the ancient "Broadway" variety. Claiming that they both "invigorated and calmed" him at the same time, David especially enjoyed the musicals Les Miserables and The Producers. He was very secretive about this particular hobby and would only indulge in it if he knew he could get away with it unnoticed.

Weapons
"You don't need a tricked out sniper rifle or custom pistol to guarantee success. If you can hit your target, pretty much any gun will do the trick."

- David Kahn

Behind the Scenes

 * David's original last name was "Wellesley" before the author changed it to the simpler-sounding surname of "Kahn."
 * David Kahn is based upon a variety of mercenary and bounty hunter characters who appear throughout fiction. These individuals include Boba Fett, David Cain (the basis for his name), Leon, Angel Eyes, Thane Krios, Zaeed Massani, Urdnot Wrex, and The Man With No Name.
 * David is the first of Actene's characters not to have a complicated childhood and early life.