YAEL SABINE GASKO · 30 · WEAPONS SPECIALIST: HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT · THE DEFENDER · TAKEN
"What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.“ – MARGARET ATWOOD
+ Charismatic, Generous, Brave
- Stubborn, Paranoid, Impulsive
THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS;
Born at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, a U.S. Air Force installation in Hawaii, Yael Sabine Gasko grew up knowing that a duty to serve was in her veins. Both her parents, along with three of her uncles, proudly served for a combined one hundred and ten years. As such, Yael was raised on several bases and learned the importance of her family’s profession at a young age. The whole concept of protecting her country fascinated her and the amount of travel the job entailed exposed her to many different cultures.
Her mother, a British pilot serving in the American military, always made sure that she was aware of the culture and history of wherever they were stationed. Whether that meant exploring the city when she was off duty or simply trying all the native foods, Yael was never short on unique experiences. Her father, an Israeli naval general who’d met her mother during a visit to Florida, imparted Hebrew and the importance of empathy. "Everyone is going through something, Yael, you must never forget that.” And she didn’t, not even when her mother was gunned from the sky on her thirteenth birthday.
The loss of her mother reinforced Yael’s faith in the military: her mother had died doing what she felt was right, and it seemed wrong not to honor her with that same faith. Eighteen and convinced that the way to save the world was with a just government and a structured military, Yael enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Throughout her training, jokes were made about her identity —mocking her on the basis of serving in the American military without having American parents—, her accent, and her looks, but a jab at their fragile.
NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER.
In two short years, Yael found herself in Montreal on an important espionage deployment. She was tasked with locating and retrieving a time-sensitive file for a Valeris Project launch. One of the main computers crashed so she had to travel, undetected, to the vault where the original, hardcopy was kept. By the time she returned, the riots had worsened to the point where her superiors were advising the Marines to view rebellions as enemy forces. Towards the end of 2207, Yael was made team leader of a special ops unit, Force Recon, stationed at NASA’s RSFC.
As a staff sergeant, she managed to find the perfect balance between nice and strict. Those under her leadership felt understood and valued, both respecting her decisions and fearing her wrath should anyone make any derogatory comments about anyone else. And Yael honestly felt like she was making a difference, too blinded by her pro-military upbringing to see the corruption seeping into the operation.
Yael first began to rethink her idealistic view of the military when the Torchlight Rebellion took control of Colorado Springs.
Her training told her that she was meant to support the stance of her superiors, and a younger version of herself argued that the military would do what was best. It was a rebellion, after all, and aggressive rebels couldn’t be reasoned with.
The attack struck her as such a lack of regard for human life, the death count horrifying her. There were innocents within the city, children, and yet they had all been considered casualties of war. Yael’s view of her part in history changed that day, and she went into 2217 skeptical of the people around her.
A few weeks before the last shuttle for the Civ-Belt-1 was due to depart, Yael’s unit was amongst the other elite groups being offered the chance of a lifetime. Her work ethic and combative prowess made her a standout amongst her peers, and her unit’s success rate had impressed the right people.
The decision weighed hard on her: should she disregard all the doubts she had about Valeris’ focus and go into space or stand up against what was rapidly proving itself to be a corrupt system? She tried to think of her parents would do. Was this not everything that her colleagues wished for? They had earned themselves a shot at survival based on their own hard work; they were the best at what they did and were being rewarded for it.
It was on an unusually quiet night outside of the base that the decision was made for her.
Her nightly training session had ended early, by almost an hour, so she opted to take a long way back. The air was warmer than she’d come to expect from the end of times, it almost reminded her of the summer she spent on the sands of Puerto Rico alongside a woman called Esperanza. Yael was nearing the wall when she heard the shuffling of feet. A nearby torch revealed an older woman, wrapped in a tattered shawl with tangled gray hair, hobbling towards the front gates. The soldier had seen beggars before, had seen the things the environment was capable of doing to people, but this was different. The woman had her hands raised, an offering of peace and surrender. Yael looked hopefully to the guards on duty, one of them having been in her platoon at The Depot back when they first enlisted. He was kind, had taken her on a six-mile hike just to introduce her to Twinkies. Surely he would help this ailing woman.
She was wrong, and in watching her friends take out that elderly woman, something in Yael died. There was no good in the government, there was nothing noble about what this disbanded military was doing, and the world wasn’t becoming a better place because of them. They were an elite, corrupt group of murderers tarnishing the longstanding Marine Corps motto of “Semper Fidelis” (“Always Faithful”).
The realization hit her like a kick to the gut, a single tear rolling down her cheek as she turned and went to collect her things. On the way, she rounded up her team to inform them of her decision and offer them an out. She couldn’t guarantee their safety, but knew that it was important that they knew what she was doing; she couldn’t abandon her team. They understood and, while they agreed with her rationale, they’d risked too much to get where they were only to give up now. A guaranteed chance at survival was an opportunity they weren’t willing to refuse, and she understood. Maybe leaving wasn’t the smartest decision, but to her, it was the right one.
She left a note announcing her resignation on her superior’s desk, stole a jet black Zero MMX, and set out. Six months later, Yael, lives with quite a few regrets, the greatest being how long she remained blind to the government’s corruption. Now she does her best to make up for so many years of standing by while atrocities were committed, despite knowing that her ledger will always be stained in ways she can never erase. One thing that her military experience yielded was a thorough knowledge of combat, hand-to-hand being her specialty. So she puts her skills to good use, divulging combat techniques to those who seem dedicated enough.
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