David Kahn

"Mr. Chairman, please don't pass me off as some common thug or hit man. To someone like me, those kinds of scum are just a bunch of kids playing around in the muck with their daddies' guns. Now me, I'm a professional. That means I make sure to get the job done, no matter what's in the way. I'm not going to just point a gun and pull a trigger. I'll plan it out, understand every angle, and do what I've been hired to do before your enemies even have a clue that someone's after them. And no matter what, I'll always survive to get paid. Now, do you want to hire me or not?"

- David Kahn to a skeptical employer

If you want to kill someone, hire a hit man. If you want to kill someone closely guarded, utterly secluded, or completely untouchable, hire David Kahn.

Quite possibly the best mercenaries and assassins for hire in the galaxy, David Khan rose out of a foggy past in time to fight in the tail end of the Human-Covenant War and gained both prestige and infamy following the conflict when he began selling his considerable skills to the highest bidder. Responsible for countless successful mercenary operations and for the assassinations of innumerable politicians, dignitaries, criminals, and warlords, Kahn is a relentless commando who is willing to take on any job, no matter how impossible the task may seem. As cunning and meticulous as he is lethal, Kahn is respected and feared by both his potential employers as well as those who seek his death or incarceration.

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 training of the Humanity Liberation Front's operative Nimue, devoting over a decade to her instruction and upbringing.

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.

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 Syndicate run by Thomas Powell, which would eventually claw its way to the top and become the most feared criminal organization 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.

Project Knight
Around 2560, David was once again contacted by Redmond Venter. Venter had by now become a highly placed and funded officer within the Humanity Liberation Front, and had recently spearheaded a new project that he hoped would both increase the HLF's effectiveness against the UNSC and give him enough clout to rise even further within his organization's leadership. This project was Project Knight, and its goal was to create rebel supersoldiers akin to the UNSC's Spartans. Using DNA samples retrieved from a Spartan traitor, Venter's scientists had managed to replicate some of the chemical augmentations undergone by the SPARTAN-IIIs. Although these drugs would not be as potent as those used by the UNSC, the HLF hoped that with the right training their "Knight" operatives could become superb operatives in their continuing resistance against UNSC control.

Augmenting close to a hundred test tube babies conceived through the DNA of several HLF operatives and mercenaries, Venter's scientists turned the "batch" over to Venter and his hand-picked cadre of HLF and mercenary trainers after three years of flash-learning and development. Though the HLF-brewed augmentations were far less effective than Venter had hoped, the one hundred Knight trainees were still in peak physical condition and he decided to go ahead with the project. However, he singled out one young girl--assigned the code-name "Nimue"--who was deemed to have the fastest reflexes and reaction times of all the trainees. Venter saw in the project an opportunity to quietly build a small army of skilled operatives that were more loyal to him than to the HLF as a whole, and wanted to ensure that at least one would not be affected by any parts of the training that were going to be influenced by his fellow HLF leaders. In order to create the "perfect assassin", Venter decided to contract the best assassin money could buy in order to train her.

David was initially skeptical of the deal, especially since it involved taking in and raising an three-year old child for an indefinite amount of time. However, with a ten million credit contract (in addition to an additional twenty million once he delivered the finished "product") riding on the job, he accepted and allowed himself to be taken to a remote colony world where the HLF had quietly assembled a small bunker complex for him to live for the duration of Nimue's training.

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

Overview
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 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 decade 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 and thereby creating something concrete that would live on after he himself died. This ego-born 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 assuaged his guilt through the justification 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. The combination of Nimue's influence and the short-lived partnership made David a much more personable man when dealing with his associates, although he did his best to maintain the cold demeanor he'd possessed at all times before they entered his life.

With David only able to maintain sporadic communication with Nimue and his partnership with Mordred dissolved, he has mostly returned to his old ways of operating as a lone agent but occasionally agrees to work with other mercenaries if he feels a contract warrants it. He maintains an air of cold detachment when performing jobs and is willing to use any means necessary in order to fulfill his contracts so long as they adhere to his loose code of honor. Attempts to buy him off always fail, as he is both too proud and fearful of the damage it might do to his ever-precious reputation.

Mental and Physical Abilities


Although many deride men of David's profession as uneducated thugs and criminals, David himself is possessed of a sharp mind and uses it just as much as he uses weapons to both plan and execute his contracts. While lacking much knowledge of classical subjects aside from what he has picked up during his spare time, he is well-versed in the use of almost any weapon system imaginable and maintains a working technical knowledge by maintaining much of his gear and even performing some upgrades to his ship personally. His time as a partner to Mordred and Diana improved his computer skills greatly, as the A.I. Diana was always causing trouble in David's ship and he often attempted to lock her out of the system (he rarely succeeded). Aside from his first language of basic English, David can communicate coherently in both the Kig-Yar and Sangheili languages and knows a small amount of Unngoy as well.

David keeps himself in peak physical condition at all times and will always take time away from more leisurely activities to exercise or practice different forms of combat. Both strong and agile, he is said to be one of the deadliest non-augmented humans in the galaxy--though some rumors claim that he has arranged for his body to undergo physical augmentations of its own--and is rumored to have even engaged SPARTAN-IIs and IIIs in combat at different points in his career. He is trained in a variety of martial arts and knows how to wield knives with speed and efficiency. His skill with weapons is equally proficient and he is willing to engage at close, medium, or long ranges depending on the situation. He is somewhat knowledgeable of various poisons, but rarely uses them as he considers them to be less efficient methods of killing than bullets. He has made a point of building up immunities to as many poisonous substances as possible without causing permanent harm to his body. Although comfortable with using explosive as traps and weapons in combat zones, he despises using them for assassinations as they are far too random and clumsy for him to consider them serious tools for that sort of job.

Hobbies and Pastimes
Although the majority of David's time was spent either fulfilling contract 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
David Kahn's lifetime of combat experience has made him proficient with almost every small small-arms weapon manufactured by humans, and he is known to be extremely adaptable in the field when it comes to retrieving weapons from fallen enemies in order to match the ever-shifting conditions of battle. He is an excellent shot with all manner of weapons, though his preferred firearms are rifles designed for long range engagements and high-caliber pistols for closer-ranged fighting. He has been reported as using conventional military weapons such as assault rifles and submachine guns while operating in a more standard combat capacity. In spite of his distaste for using explosives for assassinations, he is more than willing to set up booby traps using grenades and other explosive charges during the heat of battle.

While by no means preferring fists and knives over firearms for combat, Kahn is still masterful with both when necessary and is rumored to have killed groups of better-armed opponents with his bare hands on several occasions. Were one to analyze Kahn's unique styles of fighting, they would observe a comprehensive and fundamental mind constantly taking note of the surroundings and opponents and adapting its technique and strategies in order to maintain the upper hand.

Armor
During most assassination jobs requiring little to no contact with hostile troops, Kahn either utilizes plainclothes or wears a modified "body sheath" similar to the kind worn underneath most suits of full-body armor. It has been rewoven with countless hardened nanofibers that maintain wearer flexibility but can also protect against light small arms fire and absorb kinetic impacts. For more conventional mercenary work that usually occurs during skirmishes and full scale battles, Kahn makes use of a stolen suit of Orbital Drop Shock Trooper armor that he is believed to have salvaged and refurbished during the Great War. Like all ODST suits, the armor can stand up to projectile and plasma impacts while allowing the user maximum protection without hampering body movement. By wearing his modified body sheath along with the armor, Kahn manages to maximize his protection without sacrificing too much movement and flexibility.

Trivia

 * While it remains a fact that most modern mercenaries from the 21st century and on to the 26th have generally organized themselves into large-scale Private Military Companies, security forces, or even fringe armies in order to secure larger profits and to remain desirable hirelings for larger--and better paying--entities or organizations, the large-scale reconstruction visited upon the galaxy following the end of the Great War opened the doors to a wave of "freelance" mercenaries as well. Many humans, Sangheili, and Jiralhanae, particularly ex-special forces from all sides of the war, either formed smaller mercenary groups or even operated entirely on their own. These veterans of the war were often highly capable fighters who could potentially develop a large enough reputation that mercenary groups or potential customers might actively seek to procure their services for large amounts of money. Furthermore, the rise of organized crime--particularly around the massive Syndicate criminal empire--allowed for better organization within the mercenary "community". Several databases of the many freelance soldiers were compiled and made available to criminal brokers and go-betweens, who could then contact the individuals in question in order to set up a contract. While David Kahn had enjoyed a healthy career already as a freelance assassin--a profession more suitable for solo operatives--this paradigm shift allowed the fiercely independent operative to take on more jobs with private armies, criminal and rebel groups, and even some local governments.
 * Many believe that the high prices Kahn charges for his services have granted him a huge fortune that is hidden away in some private bank or bunker. The truth, however, is that much of his contract money is spent on covering the high costs of equipment, bribes, and ammunition that are made necessary by his freelance status.
 * In the earliest days of his career, Kahn used the alias of "Hector Thornfield" on several occasions. Whether this name holds any meaning to him outside of a false identity is unknown.

Behind the Scenes

 * David's original last name was "Wellesley" before the author changed it to the simpler-sounding surname of "Kahn."
 * David is the first of Actene's characters not to have a complicated childhood and early life.
 * Although initially drawn from Boba Fett, David Kahn's current iteration is heavily inspired by the assassin David Cain from DC comics and almost all of the pictures in this article are derived from images of that character. His training of Nimue is also inspired by Cain's training of Cassandra Cain, though the results and aftermath of the training have been completely altered.