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This fanfiction article, Carlos Driscol, was written by Brodie-001. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission. |
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The author of this article, Carlos Driscol, urges anyone who reads it to provide feedback on the quality of the article. Thank you! |
Carlos Driscol was a soldier, smuggler, arms dealer, rebel leader and crime lord operating in the 26th Century. Over the years, he became infamous for the brutal tactics used against his enemies, as well as his total lack of compassion for human life, something that led to many betrayals over the years. Driscol was a consummate survivor, fighting to survive and thrive in the worst conditions against insurmountable odds, always seeming to rise up in spite of many failures and setbacks. Driscol saw many years of military service during the Human-Covenant War before defecting to the Insurrection, upon which he began a long campaign of sabotage and guerilla warfare against the United Nations Space Command, who had to contend with constant Covenant attacks in addition to his own forces. After he was captured in mid-2552 following a lengthy battle on Mamore, Driscol spent several years in Fenwell Prison, a maximum security installation in deep space run by the UNSC. There, he languished until the fateful day when a group of former allies freed the old rebel, allowing him to run rampant in the outer colonies for some time. Unhindered by any laws or morality, Driscol began to rebuild his powerbase and joined the New Colonial Alliance to further his own goals. His lust for power would eventually lead to the infamous Ciudad de Huesos Incident of 2557, which ended in his demise. Biography[]Early life[]Carlos Driscol was born on the outer colony world of Cygnus in 2507. The planet was a hotbed of dissent at the time, many members of his family having links to Insurrectionists. As a child, Driscol grew up in a militaristic household, both of his parents having fought in the Marine Corps before leaving in disgust after the Far Isle bombing of 2492. As such, the young boy was often subject to lectures on the 'evils' of the UNSC for what was seen by many as an atrocity, giving him quite a negative view against their supposed rulers on Earth. Living in a large metropolis, Driscol attended a school with students of all backgrounds and beliefs, often getting into trouble for inciting violence against supporters of the UNSC in his early years there. By the time he was seventeen, however, in 2524, he had adopted a more neutral view on the subject, wishing to distance himself from the biased views of his parents. He did reasonably well in school, attaining decent grades with designs on running for a job in colonial administration on Cygnus, being quite a talented and charismatic speaker. By the end of 2626, however, the threat of the Covenant was revealed for the first time to the general public. After seeing the destructive capability of their enemy, Driscol, along with thousands of other volunteers, joined the UNSC military to fight this new foe. Though his parents despised the UNSC for it's actions against rebels, Driscol's parents conceded to him that humanity should defend itself from any and all threats. Barely a week after news of the Covenant reached Cygnus, he had enlisted in the UNSC Marine Corps, and was taken to Reach for training. Human-Covenant War[]Driscol was taken to Reach to train as a Marine, having enlisted with thousands of others once the alien threat was revealed, being assigned to one of many groups taking part in training. While there were many recruits sympathetic to the Insurrection, the general consensus was that the Covenant took priority, most putting up with the harsh training and UNSC protocols for that reason alone. By mid 2527, Driscol had passed through his training and was stationed on Reach with several other platoons, something seen as a dead-end post by most of the recruits eager to see action against the Covenant. However, with the massive casualties inflicted on Harvest, and the need for soldiers on the ground, Driscol's unit was pulled and assigned to a battlegroup heading for the planet in early 2528, when the fighting was beginning to sway in the Covenant's favour. It was here that he saw his first real combat, engaging a number of enemies advancing on their positions shortly after landing. Wielding an assault rifle, the young man was able to hold the line even when most of his platoon were massacred, being found by reinforcements badly wounded and surrounded by human and alien corpses. Driscol was taken to a field hospital nearby, where he first met Edward Buck and Mira Reyes, who had narrowly escaped death not long before from a banshee strike. The three became good friends as they recovered from their wounds, before being sent back into battle. With the demise of the local commanding officer in the strike, a new person was sent in to take command: Richard Mack Senior. Growing up, Driscol had heard many stories and watched reports on Mack, learning of his fame as a hero in the UNSC's Special Forces as he had single-handedly destroyed a massive insurrectionist cell years before. In spite of his parents' attitude towards the UNSC, he had always seen Mack as a sort of hero figure and was surprised to meet him on the battlefield. Mack, who had come surprisingly close to the frontline for a Lieutenant Colonel, first worked together with the then-Private First Class Driscol to launch a risky two-man counter-attack against a Covenant jamming tower in a poorly-armed combat support vehicle that saved the lives of half a Marine battalion and contributed to a larger UNSC victory on the field. However, Driscol's hero did not quite live up to his expectations outside of the battlefield; Mack was notably blunt in his mannerisms and often harsh but fair to the troops under his command. Over the course of the next year and a half, Driscol earned two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star for his efforts, with Buck and Reyes proving to be some of the best soldiers beside him during the battle. In 2531, Harvest was finally been reclaimed by the UNSC. By this point, Driscol was a Corporal, with dozens of kills under his belt and a number of peers who had survived the hell that was the Harvest Campaign. With the battle won, most non-essential military units were evacuated outsystem. Shortly after, Buck suggested the idea of joining the prestigious Orbital Drop Shock Troopers to Driscol, who had become fiercely loyal to the UNSC over the years, a far cry from the denouncements of his youth, accepted, enlisting before being sent to the Special Operations Application Centre on Fargad to undergo psychiatric and intellectual evaluation.  Driscol (far left) and the other members of his ODST training group. After passing through a series of tests, Driscol was accepted into the training process, along with a few dozen hopefuls. They were then transported to Reach to undergo their training proper. Upon arrival, the trainees were put into several groups, corresponding to their results in the previous tests. Driscol was placed into the leading group, Alpha, along with seven others, including Buck and Reyes. He was also surprised to meet Richard Mack Junior, the son of his former commanding officer, in his team. Upon reaching the training facility, the recruits were briefed by their new Drill Instructor, Second Lieutenant Henry McNair, another veteran of Harvest and dozens of other battles. They would spend the next few months undergoing intense physical and mental training, emerging as fully-fledged ODST's, being remarked on as some of McNair's finest trainees. Massacre on Tantalus[]Driscol and his comrades were assigned to various Helljumper units, participating in multiple campaigns over the years, fighting through many victories and defeats. Two people who remained with him from training were Gregor Papadakis and Konstantin Starkwho were regarded as some of the best troopers in their unit. In mid-2546 they were sent to Tantalus, a colony world that was supposedly under threat from Covenant advance troops. Upon their arrival it was discovered that the colonists there were nearly at the point of revolting against the sparsely deployed UNSC troops sent in to keep order. Due to the planet's relative strategic unimportance and the abundance of farmland, most of its food was being sent towards the Inner Colonies that supposedly needed it more. This had led to shortages on some areas of the colony world, provoking unrest among the citizens, many of whom were the farmers growing these crops. The ODST's did their best to help maintain order and root out any potential leaders who would stir up violence against the UNSC, though Driscol and Papadakis were privately rather sympathetic to the plight of the colonists. This would continue for several weeks until widespread rioting broke out throughout the capital, with thousands of angry civilians vastly outnumbering the UNSC forces. As Driscol's convoy was returning to their spaceport base, they were ambushed by armed Insurrectionists and Papadakis was badly injured while covering his team. Fighting for their lives, Driscol and his comrades were able to drive the enemy back and moved the wounded trooper towards the base. Their commanding officer, a Major with a history of fighting Insurrectionists, forced them to move on before they were surrounded. Driscol defied a direct order to abandon Papadakis and almost dragged him almost to their fortified base before he was forced to take cover once more from gunfire. With the battle intensifying in the street, their Major pushed Driscol back into the base, forcing him to abandon his friend in the middle of the road. Caught in a crossfire and barely a dozen metres from vital medical aid, Papadakis bled out in the street. Ordered back into battle when he attempted to complain, a grieving Driscol was horrified to discover that their superiors had issued martial law and were using the troopers to kill anyone who was out on the streets regardless of whether they were armed or not. In spite of his years of service, Carlos Driscol found himself totally losing faith in the UNSC as his fellow soldiers massacred dozens of protesters and rebels across the city in the name of 'restoring order'. During the confusion that followed in the tough street-to-street battles, Driscol was pinned down in a room, alone with the Major who issued these orders. Seizing the opportunity, he shot the man in the back of the head after switching off his helmet recorder and threw his corpse from a window. The battle was all but won once reinforcements arrived to put the situation under control, Driscol gaining a promotion to Gunnery Sergeant as one of the few surviving NCO's. The Major was assumed to have been killed by armed protesters during the violent uprising. Tantalus was a life-changing moment for Driscol. While he recognised the Covenant threat, the actions taken by the UNSC on the planet were unforgivable in his eyes. Over the next few months, he began to make contact with a number of people that had been put under suspicion by the UNSC in recent years, having his first contact with the Insurrection while on shore leave shortly after. Driscol agreed with his contact that he would remain in the UNSC military for the time being as an informant for the United Rebel Front. Battle of Skjope[]Main Article: Battle of Skopje By 2547, Driscol had been put in charge of another ODST unit that had been folded into his company. This included Ash Mitchell and Mal Roberts, the last survivors of Henry McNair's old platoon which had been all but wiped out on Draco III along with his old trainer. Driscol often argued with Mitchell due to the younger trooper's dislike of his violent and unorthodox methods in the field, though they were both very competent soldiers. When the Covenant attack finally arrived on Skopje, Driscol had already negotiated a deal with his rebel contacts about hijacking an arms shipment from a base on the surface, which would more than likely be abandoned during the ground battle. Dropping onto the planet's surface, Driscol's platoon were ordered to defend a shipbuilding corporation's headquarters while vital tools, machines, and personnel could be evacuated. They were able to defend the location for some time against the Covenant onslaught, killing hundreds but being reduced to under half their number in the process. Knowing that they would be wiped out if they held their ground, Driscol ordered a retreat, leaving dozens of workers behind as they fled the facility on warthogs. They travelled for several hours before stopping in a rural town, where a fight immediately broke out. Sergeant Mitchell, tired of Driscol's very uncaring nature when it came to abandoning civilians to the Covenant, confronted him as they took cover in a nearby house, the argument nearly turning fatal until they were both calmed down by Private Roberts, who reminded them of the mission at hand. Having come very close to murdering Mitchell, Driscol called for his rebel comrades over a private channel, finding out that their raid had been successful. The Covenant soon bore down on the village, with infantry swarming towards the troopers there. While most of the survivors were ready for a final stand, reinforcements arrived in the form of the rebel Pelicans, who kept the Covenant at bay long enough for the unaware troopers to approach. The moment Driscol greeted the rebels, he shot Mitchell in the stomach and climbed aboard a Pelican as a firefight broke out, several troopers being killed as the others fell back into cover. While aboard, Driscol handed over the device he had been ordered to protect at all costs: a Fury tac-nuke. He then mocked his seemingly doomed former comrades over the COM before leaving them to be slaughtered by the Covenant. Unbeknownst to Driscol, his old squad would be saved by reinforcements before the Covenant regrouped. Mitchell and Roberts would inform their superiors of Driscol's defection, though their vessel had already regrouped with a transport ship and left the system before anyone could stop them. Skopje would mark Driscol's final departure from the UNSC as he cut all former ties and prepared for his new life. Now a wanted traitor, he pledged allegiance to the closest thing the rebellion had to a unified force: the United Rebel Front. United Rebel Front[]Driscol and his comrades arrived on the rebel-run Eridanus Secundus settlement shortly after their escape from Skopje, which acted as a supply base for many insurrectionist groups operating in what remained of the outer colonies. With the stolen nuclear weapon delivered, their group were given a hero's welcome there. Having only dealt with a few contacts in the past year, he was surprised to find an entire settlement living outside the confines of the UEG-governed and UNSC-protected colonies. Expecting it to be an entirely military-run operation, Driscol soon discovered that most of the people living there were civilians, not soldiers. He remained on Eridanus Secundus for several weeks until he joined up with a large group of URF soldiers on a mission to 'liberate' several Outer Colony worlds which had been all but abandoned by the UNSC. The next few years were spent moving from planet to planet, making quick attacks against lightly fortified bases and stealing from supply ships as they left slipspace. To Driscol, the URF seemed like little more than opportunistic pirates at times, though he greatly enjoyed fighting on the ground against those he had once served with. From time to time he would still check in on his old friends from training, largely through news footage of successful ODST engagements. He was surprised, if little else, to find that a few had perished, including Michael Baird and Konstantin Stark. Driscol rapidly rose up the ranks in the URF, largely due to former commanders getting themselves killed, and was made a Colonel by 2551. He cared very little for rank or title, having lost all affection for the military and its rigid rank structure as it reminded him too much of the UNSC. Nonetheless, he proved to be a very capable field commander as he led his ever-growing force to victory on many occasions. With the Covenant destroying colony after colony, the UNSC had little time to spare sending a massive attack force after the URF force wreaking havoc in what remained of the Outer Colonies and instead opted to hire mercenaries from the PMC known as Lion's Claw, dispatching them against Driscol's men in mid-2551. This new group proved to be much more formidable than even the UNSC Marines, the well-trained and equipped mercenaries quickly adapting to the strategies used by Driscol's URF force and inflicting several defeats on the rebels before they managed to launch a counter-offensive. During a heated engagement in the remnants of a colonial city, Driscol became separated from his men and was forced to take on half a platoon alone. His light machine gun took care of most of the men with ease, though he found himself defeated by the mercenary commander, who would have killed Driscol if his reinforcements hadn't arrived in time. Rather than have his soldiers kill the enemy commander, Driscol let the man live on the condition that his forces stand down. They did so shortly after, the man identifying himself as Abd-al-Qadir ibn Asad, the founder and CEO of the PMC. Driscol was surprised to see the man, who was known in many circles as 'The Lion', fighting on the battlefield himself rather than managing his company from behind a desk. Asad spoke with Driscol for some time, the two forming an odd friendship out of mutual respect before parting ways. The URF soldiers let the Lion's Claw mercenaries go as they both departed the planet for good. After stopping by on Venezia, another Insurrectionist outpost, Driscol moved his force towards Mamore, a world with a long history of rebel activity. Mamore Insurrection[]After several months of smuggling supplies and people through the UNSC-controlled spaceports of Mamore, Driscol's soldiers managed to gain a sizeable foothold in a rural town, recruiting disaffected locals to the cause as they did so. It was around this time that he encountered a young Remi Marshall, who had joined the Insurrection and ended up serving in his army. Driscol took the young man under his wing and taught him a lot about survival in hazardous situations, imparting some of the skills he had learned as an ODST years before. Driscol's force moved from settlement to settlement across Mamore, utilising a number of stolen civilian and military vehicles as they attacked a number of UNSC outposts on the way. While at first they took prisoners, the amount of Marines that surrendered to the rebel force had become too much, leading to Driscol enacting a zero tolerance policy on their enemy. He then ordered for the execution of every prisoner, using this to test the loyalty of his newer soldiers and weed out those who refused. This caused some stir amongst the ranks, with a number of people believing that the executions would make them little more than common terrorists rather than an army with a cause. Driscol had several dissenters killed to restore order before moving on, his army set on destroying a large encampment controlled by the Marine Corps. On May 10, 2552, Driscol's forces launched their assault on the encampment, using a truck rigged with explosives to gain entry before storming the place under the cover of night. They killed over fifty soldiers, taking a number of casualties themselves before they finally seized the base. With a number of weapons and vehicles captured in this assault, Driscol was set to march on one of Mamore's larger cities, which was already unstable due to pockets of insurrection there. As they departed from the ruined base, however, the rebels came under heavy attack from an unknown ship, which after only twenty minutes of attack had killed over half of Driscol's forces. The survivors, which numbered as just over a hundred, managed to flee into Mamore's mountainous region, using the area's caves for cover from any more UNSC counterattacks. With this crushing defeat, Driscol planned for his forces to flee to a nearby spaceport, hijack the first ship they found, and flee the planet, retreating to Venezia or the Caucasus Station to lay low. Before they could make a move, the makeshift camp came under attack by a lone figure, who slaughtered nearly everyone there. Driscol was able to save the life of Remi Marshall, giving him time to escape before the attacker disarmed him, breaking his hand in the process. Realising that his attacker was a Spartan, the rebel tried to fight back one more time before being knocked out with a TTR round. Imprisonment[]
Driscol awoke in an ONI-run prison soon after the attack with his army completely dispersed and a number of broken bones in his right hand. After spending three days with no contact other than a guard bringing him food, he was finally brought for interrogation, where he first met Frederick King, an ONI agent with decades of experience. Rather than make a big show in the media about Driscol's capture, ONI had decided to simply make it appear that he had disappeared, keeping a total blackout of his campaign on Mamore to the general public. He was then told that although his forces were all but destroyed, their actions had greatly destabilised the colony world and had led to smaller uprisings across the planet. Over the course of two months, Driscol underwent a brutal series of interrogations under King and other ONI agents. While his training and years of experience kept him from breaking entirely under the intense physical and psychological torture, he was coerced into revealing a number of secrets regarding the Insurrection, from bases to sleeper agents within the UNSC. In July, he was transported to Fenwell Prison, a secretive installation used to house a number of supposed terrorists indefinitely, away from the public eye. Due to the long-lasting damage caused by his campaigns, Driscol was confined to the maximum security wing immediately. Driscol remained locked away within Fenwell prison, hearing vague bits of news from the outside world such as the end of the Human-Covenant War and a truce with the Sangheili. In late 2554 he was finally put into the general prison populace, where he made a name for himself and plotted his escape. Rather than attempt the head-on tactics used in the past, he began to use underhanded tactics to smuggle items around and manipulated others to do his bidding. Thrice he orchestrated escape attempts, all of which failed and led to deaths, though during each he remained in his own cell. Driscol lost all semblance of honour or respect for others during this period as he fended for himself inside Fenwell. He was even suspected of murdering two inmates during a momentary lapse in surveillance, though this was never proven. Escape[]In March of 2555, Fenwell Prison received a delivery of supplies from an unremarkable freighter that happened to contain dozens of heavily armed soldiers who overwhelmed the guards in the hangar bay and opened every single cell in the prison. Seizing his opportunity, he made his way into the kitchens and stole a large carving knife as a weapon. En-route, he murdered Johan Hennerman, an inmate who had given him trouble in the past. He then began to make his way to the armoury, where he knew the guards kept a large assortment of weaponry for times of dire need. After surprising and murdering a trio of guards, Driscol came face to face with a team of the attackers, led by none other than Remi Marshall, one of his soldiers from Mamore. Though he believed that Marshall had sought to break him out, it was revealed that he was actually after someone else; his sister, Isabelle. Driscol had seen the young woman brought to the prison not long before, and directed them to her cell. From this point, he accompanied Marshall's team as they fought their way out of the prison. Here he met Amanda Wade for the first time, nicknaming the rather surly rebel 'Smiler' for her general demeanour. En-route, he made a stop at the armoury, where he acquired a M739 Light Machine Gun, also known as the 'SAW'. He took an immediate liking to the weapon and used it to gun down half a dozen guards before escaping in Remi's ship, the Dynasty. As he was used to getting his own way and speaking his mind around others, Driscol was disliked by the crew, some of whom hinted to Remi that it would be better to throw Driscol out of an airlock. Nonetheless, he remained with the ship until they arrived at a supply outpost, where he left the Dynasty and asked Marshall to contact him if anything important came up. A free man again, Carlos Driscol decided to find some of his old contacts on the near-lawless colony world of Talitsa. Talitsa[]After arriving on the planet several days later, it soon became clear to Driscol that he had chosen the wrong location. The migration of so many leading rebels to the Caucasus Station had deprived Talitsa's ruling faction of its best leaders, causing a power struggle. Nonetheless, he spent the best part of a month meeting old friends and began to set out a plan for a lucrative black market business that would move stolen Covenant military equipment into the inner colonies for rebel and mercenary groups to buy. Due to the turbulent situation on Talitsaat the time, he decided to begin shipping goods to warehouses in the capital city of a safer colony world, Andesia. This would continue for some time until March, when the UNSC finally invaded the planet in force. Driscol immediately knew that even with years of carefully hoarded weapons the leaderless rebels would be swiftly defeated by these attackers. Once the massive fleet began to deploy ODST's to a nearby city, the defenders were quickly overwhelmed and crushed, though intense urban combat persisted for a number of days. Driscol managed to fight his way through most of the city, and had reached the outskirts when he discovered a group of troopers about to kill a teenage boy, who had killed one of their own with a large machete. He quickly gunned them down on the spot, saving his life. Seeing an opportunity, he offered to work with him to escape Talitsa and the UNSC.   Driscol meets Winston Zhou. The boy, who identified himself as Winston Zhou, agreed to Driscol's offer immediately. The pair were able to travel through the ruins safely, ambushing several patrols en-route. Driscol was genuinely surprised at Zhou's raw fighting talent and willingness to kill, correctly guessing that he was one of Talitsa's many child soldiers. After some time, they managed to hijack a warthog and escape onto what remained of the highway, heading for a nearby spaceport. As they drove, Zhou attempted to interrogate Driscol at gunpoint, though the seasoned soldier did not panic and merely explained his situation to the boy. They eventually came to an agreement to protect one another as they drew closer to the spaceport, which had been seized by the UNSC and turned into a refugee camp for Talitsa's citizens. While Zhou would have been able to get into the camp, Driscol's infamy over the years would almost certainly lead to his identification and recapture. So, they formulated a plan to escape the planet. Driscol parked the stolen vehicle on the road and set it on fire, hoping that the smoke would attract nearby Marines guarding the spaceport. When a patrol came along to investigate, the fugitives managed to sneak past them and entered the spaceport through a hole in the fence. From there, they moved into the refugee camp, which housed nearly a thousand people at the time. Driscol sent Zhou to look for a ship while he searched for allies, discovering a number of rebel soldiers like himself hiding out in the camp with concealed weapons. Gathering nearly two dozen people, he ordered Winston to cause a distraction, the teenager faking illness to gain the attention of a few guards while they made their attack. The soldiers were gunned down, allowing the rebels and refugees to make a break for the ships in the spaceport. By this point the patrol had returned and a firefight broke out nearby, though the UNSC Marines were heavily outnumbered. Driscol and Zhou fought their way towards a small freighter while under heavy fire as reinforcements arrived. Before he could climb aboard, a grenade landed dangerously close to him. It exploded as Driscol attempted to kick it away, blowing off a large portion of his right leg and severely injuring him. Though many others ignored him and boarded the ship, Winston Zhou ran back for Driscol and dragged him aboard before it took off. Due to the fighting elsewhere on Talitsa, the ship was able to evade the UNSC fleet and escape the system. Travelling[]Badly wounded and in shock, Driscol was put into cryosleep on the freighter, which eventually arrived at the Caucasus Station. The independently-run base had escaped full UNSC dominance following the UNSC attack the year before, and possessed the medical facilities to keep Driscol alive. He spent several days in a free hospital there and was given a rudimentary prosthetic leg to get around. After departing, he found Winston Zhou waiting for him outside. As the teenager had never left Talitsa and had nowhere to go, he wished to follow Driscol and help him wherever he could. Since the boy had saved his life earlier, Driscol accepted and the pair began to travel through the Caucasus Station, meeting up with old contacts and checking in on his black market goods en-route to Iskandar. They left on a transport after a few weeks, heading for outer colony worlds with little UNSC influence. Driscol and Zhou spent a busy week and a half travelling, participating in several meetings and illegal deals with criminals and insurrectionists alike. By this point Driscol had all but given up on the rebel ideal of becoming free from the UEG's grasp, and sought only to make money. This rubbed off on Zhou somewhat, as the young man became totally dedicated to completing jobs so long as there was some kind of payment. During this period he had his prosthetic leg upgraded at great expense, going from little more than a walking aid to a fully-functioning robotic limb, outfitted with a data storage module and even a hidden knife for emergencies. This came in handy during their travels, as Driscol was now in his late forties and not as sharp as he once was. Nonetheless, he still participated in a number of firefights against criminal enforcers and even ONI agents during this brief period.   Driscol and Zhou arrive at Asad's home. A week later, following an intense battle that saw Zhou wounded, Driscol realised that his young companion, though a skilled combatant, would likely end up getting himself killed if he remained with him. Seeking to avoid this, he sought out an old friend, whom he had contacted periodically over the years. That man was Abd-al-Qadir ibn Asad, former leader of the Lion's Claw PMC. Though retired, Asad was known for being taken on as a military advisor and occasionally managed security contracts from his home in the Outer Colonies. The pair arrived on the peaceful planet unannounced and under fake names before turning up at Asad's mansion, bought with years of money from mercenary work. Driscol was well aware that Zhou would end up returning to the battlefield, and so asked Asad to give him proper military training; the teenager had learned most of his combat skills from field experience rather than from instructors. The elderly mercenary accepted his offer, believing that Driscol would take Zhou with him when they were done. With the young man in Asad's care, Driscol left in secret that night and boarded a transport heading to the Caucasus Station, having received an urgent message from Remi Marshall to meet up there. NOVA Incident[]Shortly after his arrival at the independently-controlled station, Driscol ran into an old comrade of his: Mal Roberts. As Driscol had abandoned Roberts and his ODST unit to die on Skopje, the former trooper was less than happy to see him. The two nearly killed one another before finally agreeing that they were both on the same side now in spite of their past actions. With a large assembly of mercenaries and veteran insurrectionists at the ready, John Verensky briefed them on their mission, which would entail an attack on Earth, a nigh-impregnable fortress as far as they were concerned. It would take weeks, but equipment and personnel would be taken to the planet under Verensky's supervision and prepared for the rebels when they arrived. The two main objectives of the mission would be to assassinate the leadership of the UEG, who were at a summit with several Sangheili leaders, and to steal a NOVA bomb, possibly the deadliest weapon in mankind's arsenal. Picking what he saw as the less dangerous of the two missions, Driscol volunteered to lead the NOVA group personally. Verensky declined, stating that he would take charge personally as security in ONI's PILLAR base was very high and would require his own status as a known agent to gain access. On September 14th, the attack was launched, the two teams attacking targets on opposite sides of the Earth. Driscol's part in his side of the operation was fairly minor, fighting off guards as they fought their way into the base and acquired the NOVA bomb. Their group was barely able to escape onto their evacuation ship in time as a group of SPARTAN-III's dropped in from orbit, almost killing Driscol before they managed to escape. After arriving back on the Dynasty, news came of the second team's failure and the arrival of the entire UNSC Home Fleet. However, Verensky was able to keep them alive by threatening to detonate the NOVA bomb in orbit, something that would certainly destroy the fleet and cause catastrophic damage to both the Earth and Luna. In the end, the UNSC were forced to back down, allowing the rebels to escape the Sol System with their prize. After returning to the Caucasus Station, Driscol knew that it would not be long before Verensky was tracked down and killed, and began to plan his escape to another world outside the UNSC's reach. For over a year he built up contacts in the criminal underworld in between minor missions with Remi's crew, most of whom were still loyal to the Insurrectionist cause. In November, all that changed when Verensky used stolen chemical weapons to bomb a stadium in Kuiper, Circumstance, killing nearly 300,000 innocent people. In response, the remaining leaders gathered to discuss what to do with their former leader, who had seemingly lost his mind. The day this meeting was to take place, a large UNSC fleet arrived, immediately assaulting the large asteroid station and deploying hundreds of troops to seize control. Driscol, who had been in one of the lower station's many bars, was late for the meeting, something that saved his life when he spotted the enigmatic figure known as Magnus killing everyone his way towards the command room. Before he could flee, he ran straight into Amanda Wade, who was desperately attempting to save Marshall's life. The two of them fought off several enemy troopers as they boarded the station before being forced back towards the meeting room, where the rebel leadership had been slaughtered. They arrived just in time to see Remi succumb to his injuries, temporarily trapping Magnus in the room as they did so. While Amanda was preoccupied with her dead friend, Driscol took the opportunity to abandon her, travelling to the lower station in an emergency elevator where he could hide among the civilian populace. The UNSC largely gave up on the Caucasus Station after destroying a majority of the upper habitats, which contained most of their weapons. A few notable rebels were taken prisoner following the attack, but otherwise the people there were allowed to live in peace. Driscol had waited out the attack alone in a safehouse meant for the rebel leadership, surfacing a few days later before meeting what remained of his contacts. He was soon able to barter for travel on a small freighter, heading to Andesia in hopes of meeting up with members of the smuggling group he had started months prior. The Minutemen[]By the time Driscol arrived on the planet, Driscol's black market business was already booming, with opportunities springing up in the criminal underworld. His group had taken to calling themselves 'The Minutemen', and were beginning to make a name for themselves as reliable arms dealers. Driscol set up his headquarters in a warehouse in Noctus, Andesia's capital city. From there he worked hard and spent a number of months negotiating deals with other organisations to gain a firm foothold on the colony world. A few groups did not take kindly to these upstarts and tried unsuccessfully to kill Driscol; in return he had a number of gangs exterminated, building up something of a reputation to ward off any other potential threats. A few small-time street gangs supplied the Minutemen with new members; many were used as hitmen or smugglers, though a few were noted for their initiative and were given more important jobs. One individual, Alistair Travis, went from the leader of a street gang to Driscol's top lieutenant after just a few weeks working for him. For Driscol, this business proved to be a good source of money and was much less dangerous than the work he had taken as a mercenary or military leader in earlier years. In addition, the UNSC seemed to have all but given up searching for him as an escaped war criminal, making it easier for him to operate without fear of being recaptured. In early 2556 he was surprised to find out that Ash Mitchell, the man he had abandoned on Skopje during the war, had become one of the most wanted men in human space after a massacre on Circumstance. After hearing about the bounty he dispatched a few of his men to collect Mitchell's corpse out of spite. As leader of the Minutemen Driscol was taking in a great deal of money from the lucrative weapons trade in Noctus, his scavenger teams bringing back more and more expensive Covenant tech as the months went by. By the end of the year, however, others had begun to take notice of his group's rise in power. In March, Driscol was alerted by one of his contacts that a number of agents working for the Office of Naval Intelligence had arrived and were operating within Noctus with the intention of shutting down a number of major criminal organisations there. In addition, his contact informed him that a large shipment of military-grade UNSC weapons that had arrived were all tagged with tracking devices by ONI, something that Driscol intended to use against them. Once he had pinpointed the location of almost every ONI safehouse within the city, he dispatched most of his workforce to wipe them out with the very weapons ONI had monitored. What followed was a night of slaughter as dozens of agents were massacred. To add insult to injury, he ordered his men to leave the tagged weapons at the safehouses among the bodies. Not long after this victory he was contacted by envoys identifying with the United Rebel Front, supposedly under the command of one Adam Makosky. He declined their offer to rejoin the URF with his old rank of Colonel, believing the Insurrection to have died years ago. In response, Makosky's men ended up dispatching an assassin to kill Driscol. The man failed in his attempt and was subsequently captured, tortured, and executed by Driscol personally. Not long after, the same contact that had supplied Driscol with the information on ONI requested his services to make someone 'disappear' by giving them a new identity, home and if necessary, a new appearance. He accepted and arranged to meet the customer while his Minutemen took care of business elsewhere in the city. This man turned out to be none other than Ash Mitchell, prompting a standoff that would have turned violent had it not been for a massive raid on the Minuteman warehouses by a number of ODST's in retaliation for killing the ONI agents. Driscol and a few others were able to fight their way back into their base, losing track of Mitchell as they headed for their escape tunnel. Before he left the warehouse, Driscol detached his robotic leg and replaced it with a more rudimentary one, leaving the leg on a timer in his office. Once they had escaped into Noctus' undercity, he detonated the explosives contained in his robotic leg, which destroyed a large portion of his main warehouse. From there, he and a few top lieutenants boarded a private Yacht he had purchased some time before and used it to escape from Andesia before the UNSC could find him again. As they left Driscol sent another insulting message to Mitchell, just as he had done twenty-seven years earlier. The New Colonial Alliance[]With the Minutemen all but destroyed on Andesia, Driscol and his surviving forces were forced into mercenary work for a brief period, the ageing soldier proving his worth as they participated in several engagements against warring rebel groups in the Outer Colonies. In April of 2556, the Minutemen went up against a much larger force and fell into an ambush that almost wiped them out. By the end of the day Driscol's unit had suffered heavy casualties at the hands of a single enemy soldier, who cornered him and Travis as they attempted to flee. Their foe was none other than Winston Zhou, Driscol's old protégé having recognised him during the battle. As he was unwilling to kill his former mentor, Zhou took Driscol and Travis prisoner and delivered them to a nearby base where the enemy forces had set up camp. There, they met with Robert Amenwae, a Major serving in an Insurrectionist group known as the New Colonial Alliance. Driscol agreed, more out of necessity than any real desire to fight for the NCA. They had grown into the largest known Insurrectionist group in Human space by this point, and had absorbed many former rebels to swell their ranks. While he disliked rejoining the Insurrection, Driscol was well aware of the NCA's surprisingly large resources that could benefit him in the long run. He was welcomed into their ranks and was soon given orders from Amenwae to lead a small group on Forseti, where the UNSC were attempting to set up a military outpost in spite of the local's protests. In spite of his age, Driscol was still a competent fighter and his knowledge of military tactics allowed their team to slip in undetected, with Zhou keeping watch as their marksman nearby. They quickly overpowered the guards and stormed into the inner base, slaughtering the enemy soldiers there before they could raise the alarm and pillaging the base's armoury. The rebels destroyed the base with C-12 explosives and escaped in a stolen Pelican, picking up Zhou as they fled the scene. Driscol was surprised to see how proficient Zhou had become in the time since their separation, the angry teenager having turned into a professional killer in just a few short years. Driscol was handsomely rewarded for his success upon their return and ended up taking an official position within the NCA shortly afterwards. Following a transmission from the NCA's leader Mattius Drake in June of 2556, Driscol was assigned to Madrigal, with orders to establish a presence there as news arrived of an independent settlement on the glassed planet. With a large force of NCA rebels and Kig-Yar mercenaries, Driscol quickly found the settlement, which had been named 'Ciudad de Huesos' - City of Bones - by its founders, most of whom were former residents of Madrigal or their descendants. The group had been able to clear out a valley after returning to the desolate planet in 2548, spending years secretly importing supplies and equipment to make their city liveable. Most impressively, they had enlisted the aid of numerous Unggoy whose abandonment of the Covenant military at the end of the war had brought a great deal of advanced technology to Madrigal, namely three Spires that had been deployed from starships with the intention of creating a massive cloaking field to hide away Ciudad de Huesos. Though the settlers initially believed Driscol's force to simply be traders, he soon ordered the building of military outposts and armouries, turning the city into an important outpost for the New Colonial Alliance. Eventually, his expansionist policies and ignorance of the laws set out by the settlers became too much, and as they moved to evict Driscol he had many killed in a single night while others fled into the glasslands with one of their mining rigs. His position now firmly secured, Carlos Driscol took his place as the sole ruler of Ciudad de Huesos. Not long after his successful takeover, General Miriam Bakos of the United Rebel Front arrived on the planet, looking to trade with the NCA. While officially Driscol had orders to detain any URF members as the organisation's terrorist activities were officially condemned by the NCA despite their similarities, he allowed them to do some limited trading with his subordinates before they left three months later, seeing no harm in making a profit. It was around this time that he first became acquainted with Gordon Mills, an infamous mercenary who offered his organisational skills to transform Driscol's somewhat ragtag militia into a well-organised fighting force before implementing a system giving codes to trusted merchants that illegally ran supplies to the settlement, maintaining their secrecy. The ageing rebel was impressed enough that he made Mills one of his lieutenants despite Alistair Travis' complaints, and began the process of growing the settlement into a genuinely productive city. While Driscol was fully aware that a large portion of the populace disliked him, his well-armed militia ensured that none could rise up against them and strict control of all starships coming and going from Madrigal stopped any civilians from leaving without his knowledge. In January of 2557, Driscol was struck by intermittent bouts of an unknown illness that induced dizziness and vomiting, in addition to constant bloody coughing. Though he initially assumed it was Cancer or some other form of illness contracted during his travels through the Outer Colonies, no medical scan or checkup could detect what was wrong with him as his health slowly deteriorated. Eventually he began to take medical pills that alleviated his symptoms somewhat, though being faced with the real possibility that he was dying frightened Driscol immensely and gave way to more violent, reckless behaviour. By late February, he had made plans to leave Madrigal for long-term medical treatment and would leave Travis and Mills to run the city in his absence. However, the disappearance of one of his important supply-runners and the appearance of a UNSC Destroyer in the 23 Librae System would change the balance on power in Ciudad de Huesos. Ciudad de Huesos Incident[]
While he was confident that the city's array of cloaking spires would hide it from any kind of aerial surveillance, Driscol remained paranoid that they would be discovered and prepared his defensive array of Covenant-made anti-aircraft cannons to fire, hoping that a sustained plasma barrage would gut and destroy the UNSC vessel immediately. Much to his surprise, a series of explosions suddenly tore most of the Destroyer apart from the inside, giving Driscol a chance to open fire and totally obliterate it in orbit. Aware that the crew likely sent out a series of escape pods, he had an assault force prepared to deal with them. While he was initially prepared to join this force, Driscol's long-range scanners picked up two vessels moving towards Madrigal. One was an ONI Prowler, while the other was a ship he recognised operating under a false name and giving the credentials of one of his cargo runners: The Dynasty. Opting to intercept the former, he ordered Gordon Mills to take the Dynasty's crew captive while he tracked the Prowler outside the city, and was surprised to discover that it had landed near an old rebel bunker his men had begun excavating. Cornering a pair of intruders outside the bunker, Driscol discovered that they were none other than his old acquaintance Abd-al-Qadir ibn Asad and a fetcher named Bess Rivers. Though he discovered that Asad had been brought out of retirement to work for ONI, he opted to take the man back to Ciudad de Huesos as a guest with the intention of discovering his mission instead of shooting one of the few men he genuinely respected, and had them escorted to his fortress. En-route, he was informed that the Dynasty and its crew had been detained, and that the survivors from the Destroyer had been hunted down. As it turned out, the saboteur was his old protege Winston Zhou, who had been picked up by Alistair Travis' team and returned to the city. Feeling exhausted due to his illness, Driscol chose to wait until morning to conduct any interrogations, and after a few hours of sleep ordered his guards to bring the captives before him for questioning. Much to his pleasure and surprise, the Dynasty's captain Amanda Wade had acquired Ash Mitchell as part of her crew, giving him a chance to mock the fugitive's predicament as he had done on Noctus long before. Forcing Wade to explain why she was on Madrigal, he discovered that she too was seeking the old bunker and a supposed stockpile of nuclear weapons hidden inside. When she proved reluctant to reveal any more, Driscol shot one of her crewmates, Rizhan Kama, in the leg until he got the full story. In a display of lenience that surprised his lieutenants, he then decided that he would allow his captives to leave Madrigal in peace, only for an explosion to sound out across the city before he could make good on his promise. Sending Wade and her allies back to their cells, Driscol was then forced to deal with a violent attack within the city as a number of explosive devices tore one of the three Spires apart. Dispatching a sizeable force to hunt down and deal with these interlopers, he remained within his command centre until news arrived that Wade and the others had somehow escaped their captors and fled into the city. This armed conflict, prompted by a team of Orbital Drop Shock Trooper infiltrators, seemed to provoke a chain reaction throughout Ciudad de Huesos as hundreds believed it a sign to rise up against Driscol's occupying forces and attack his militia. Despite his best attempts to direct troops, they were cut off at multiple points and were unable to stop both the ODST's and Wade's crew from meeting up in the spaceport and retaking the grounded Dynasty. As the freighter blew apart the other two spires, completely destroying the city's shields and active camouflage, it was able to escape and headed off towards the bunker. Now completely enraged, Driscol called for two thirds of his men to pursue the ship. Leaving Gordon Mills and the newly-arrived Winston Zhou to help hold the city, Driscol boarded his personal vessel - a second-hand ship with the rather unfortunate name of Quisling - and had Travis direct the rest of his troops while he prepared for battle, taking several stimulants to combat the adverse affects of his worsening illness while he acquired heavy weapons and a modified Mark III Cyclops to do battle in. Ensuring that Asad and his companion would join in on the assault, Driscol led the charge towards the bunker and oversaw the early stages of what would soon become a pitched battle. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the troopers and Wade's crew were able to fend off a much larger force of poorly-trained militia members with the help of their own Mantis while the Dynasty provided air support. The moment the freighter was momentarily driven off, Driscol manoeuvred the Quisling overhead and boarded his Cyclops before leaping down into battle. Such a reckless move took the other machine by surprise, and though it fired upon Driscol's mech the rebel was able to crush its cockpit with his suit's jackhammer and tearing off its left arm before bringing the enemy vehicle down. As he turned his attention towards Ash Mitchell and some of the other defenders, one of the ODST's was able to leap atop Driscol's Cyclops and attach a demolition charge, jumping away as it detonated. Within the mech's armoured cockpit, Driscol was saved from the blast even if his Cyclops was utterly ruined. Momentarily trapped inside, he was able to remotely access the Quisling's systems as it held position high above to the bunker monitor the situation. As the Dynasty came in to pick up the survivors, he fired a single Archer missile from his ship's underbelly which caught the enemy crew by surprise as it struck the engines, blowing the rear half of the vessel to smithereens and grounding it for good. Content to have finally destroyed Wade's ship, Driscol fished out his trusty M739 SAW from the rear of the cockpit and exited the destroyed Cyclops just in time to ambush his foes. With a single burst of sustained fire, Driscol killed Faisal Khan, Rizhan Kama, and Victor Denley, scattering Wade and the surviving troopers just as a sandstorm swept over the glasslands around them. As Alistair Travis arrived with reinforcements, Driscol had the Quisling brought in to land and realised that Wade had recovered some of the nuclear weapons, giving an order for his men to find her. It was at this moment that an Owl insertion craft arrived over the battlefield, unleashing a Spartan fireteam on Driscol's forces. Fully aware that he could not fight Spartans, Driscol chose this moment to flee Madrigal once and for all and boarded the Quisling. As he entered the cargo bay, the venerable rebel was tackled by Lieutenant Michael Green, who had led the ODST's against his forces back in Ciudad de Huesos. The two fought at close range, with Driscol's years of combat experience clashing against Green's sheer strength and speed. Aware that he had no time to lose, he put everything he had into fighting the younger man, who almost overcame Driscol at several points before he was able to overpower the other man and break his leg. While the ODST had a few tricks up his sleeve that continued their battle, Driscol quickly gained the upper hand once again chased Green towards the ship's docking ramp before executing him with a burst of rifle fire to the head. Moments later, Driscol was sent flying as a Spartan flung the corpse of Alistair Travis at him, flooring the man long enough for Amanda Wade to board the Quisling and engage him in combat. Having lost his rifle in the fall, Driscol drew his handgun just as Wade whipped a pair of customised 'Snapshot' pistols from her sleeves in quick succession and the pair opened fire. Momentarily disoriented, the rebel leader shot once and missed the younger woman entirely, while she emptied all twelve shots into his upper torso. Uttering one final curse, Carlos Driscol collapsed and died almost instantly from his injuries. His ship was stolen by Wade and Mitchell, who after escaping Madrigal threw his corpse out of the airlock while in deep space. Remembered by those who knew him as a cruel, arrogant man with the heroism of his early life all but forgotten, Carlos Driscol's death marked the end of a long and bloody career. Skills and Abilities[]As a trained soldier since his early twenties, Driscol had decades of combat experience and was a veteran of a number of conflicts against both the Covenant and the UNSC. Even at an advanced age he would often surprise enemies who underestimated his strength, being remarkably fit and healthy for his age, chain smoking notwithstanding. Driscol was trained in a variety of weapons, though he much preferred the M739 LMG, or SAW, in combat. Driscol was not the best at head-on engagements, preferring explosives, ambushes and general trickery to win on multiple occasions. These tactics served him well in his years as both a rebel fighter and a crime lord. In terms of strategy and planning, Driscol did prove to be surprisingly competent, being able to wage a successful guerilla campaign for months at one point, and orchestrated multiple assassinations years later. His position of leadership was forged largely out of either money promised to mercenaries and fear of reprisal from those who disobeyed him. He had very few genuinely loyal followers due to his generally paranoid and hostile nature, though in battle he was a rather inspiring leader who was unafraid to fight alongside his men. However, he did have a great knack for managing to escape from desperate situations at the last second, something that saved his life on multiple occasions over the years. Personality[]
As a young man, Carlos Driscol was known for being a rather friendly, if vocal individual and a trusted ally on the battlefield. Even during the five years of hell that the Harvest Campaign had become, his generally optimistic personality earned him the respect of his colleagues. This characteristic would assist him greatly in becoming an emerging squad leader during his brutal ODST training, where he emerged as the top-graded recruit by the end. His selflessness and charisma at this time made Driscol a hero figure of sorts to some of the younger recruits. However, as years of war went by and Driscol witnessed the deaths of many friends, he became much more jaded and bitter regarding the war in general and following the Tantalus Massacre and the death of his best friend he lost all faith in the UNSC. Driscol would end up openly insulting the military and even saw fighting the Covenant as a lost cause during his last days as an ODST before he defected. Growing older, Driscol's personality only seemed to worsen as he became rather rude and obnoxious towards his subordinates, openly mocking Ash Mitchell and his platoon when he left them to die on Skopje and treating any failure harshly. There were only a handful of people whom he truly trusted due to him having lost all faith in the United Rebel Front after they abandoned him and being very wary of any surviving Insurrectionist groups despite his later allegiance with the NCA. Driscol would also go to any lengths to remain alive, selling out or simply abandoning his comrades to save his own skin when things went downhill. While seen as cowardly by many, it was this characteristic that enabled Driscol to survive as long as he did in spite of his many enemies. He had very little regard for life, human or otherwise, seeing most others as no more than pawns to use for his own personal gain. Promotions[]
Behind the Scenes/Trivia[]
List of Appearances[]
References[]
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