Connor Duffy (born 415 IE) was a resistance fighter during the Laral Occupation of Amargosa and a warp engineer in the Compact Navy.
Childhood
Connor Duffy was the son of an engineer father and a government worker mother. Growing up, he became close friends with Ellie Nardino. The two took to putting fireworks in trashcans, graduating to computer hacking and hot rigging personal vehicles.
At the time of the Gelt invasion of Amargosa, Duffy’s mother had just left for an assignment on Etrusca, where she remained until the liberation. He assumed his father had died in the invasion.
Only Ellie Nardino called him Connor. Everyone else called him Duff.
Gelt invasion of Amargosa
Duffy fled Lansdorp for Gene Cernan Spaceport with Ellie Nardino. Ellie hoped to get Duffy onto a projection-drive ship secured by her father. They were joined by Eric Yuwono, Davra Andraste, and a boy named Suvi. The ship, however, was destroyed before they could board. A fusion blast leveled Lansdorp. Duffy had no clue if his mother had already left on business, and he assumed his father had been killed.
After a harrowing trip through the Transcontinental Maglev tunnel, where they fled to get away from the blast’s effects, they ran into an outlaw militia run by Lucius Kray, an aspiring warlord. Resistance forces rescued them and captured the insurgents. For a time, they traveled aboard large hovercraft taking refugees into the Misty Mountains, where the resistance had begun to gather. A battle ensued when Gelt battle wagons attacked, forcing Duffy and his friends into combat for the first time. Suvi died in the battle, but the others helped repel the aliens. An hour later, they spotted an idle maglev on the rail line and slipped off the hovercraft. The maglev worked, and they traveled west, hoping to get to safety faster. When Davra and Eric found an abandoned Gelt battle wagon, Duffy dismantled it to store aboard the train. Other than a seizure caused by Ellie’s claustrophobia, the reached the Edoras Transit Center. However, so had more of Kray’s insurgents. Duffy managed to survive the attack, though Eric took a bullet and was disabled. Marines already in Edoras came down the elevators and put an end to the attack.
Lt. Straker soon led a team aboard the maglev. With Eric Yuwono out, Duffy, Ellie, and Davra had to drive. They survived twin attacks by insurgents, then Gelt, but lost Lt. Straker. The Gelt attack ended when Suicide and JT Austin arrived in a pilfered battle wagon and destroyed the alien equipment. They continued on the original mission, now under Suicide’s command, to pick up stray resistance cells and refugees. Hitting a destroyed bridge, they gathered up villagers in the ravine below, who readily helped scavenge vehicles and joined the fight. As Suicide coordinated a new mission to take the Founders' Mine, Duffy improvised a way for humans underground to community using Amargosa’s ore seams as a medium. This kept signals away from the Gelt, who monitored over-the-air transmissions.
During the raid on the Mine, Duffy helped pull Suicide to safety and kept an eye on her as they pushed deeper toward Kray’s lair. Kray escaped, but the resistance would call the Mine its headquarters for the duration of the occupation.
Mission to the Ban Ki-moon
Three months into the occupation, Suicide selected Duffy and Ellie to accompany her on a mission to reach surviving members of the Ban Ki-moon crew. The ship had fallen into the ocean during a failed liberation attempt. She and Ellie rigged the tunnels into the Edoras Transit Center to explode, then turned over control to Lt. Tarak, resistance leader in Edoras. When Tishla was taken prisoner, it was Duffy who dubbed her “Trixie” as she wouldn’t speak Humanic in their presence. He was unaware the name meant “whore” in the Mother Tongue. When Ellie was carried off by Lycanths, he was inconsolable. He pressed on, however, and had to vote on Davra Andraste’s fate during a Section 11 trial. Beyond Lansdorp, after Tishla revealed her name and flawless Humanic, she helped him rig devices and find nanite control systems to patch up a boat to take out to the Ban Ki-moon. When the crew of that starship decided to scuttle the ship rather than allow Kray to take control of it, Suicide grabbed Duffy and JT to rescue Tishla. Along with two crew members, they fled the planet aboard a projection-drive ship hidden on nearby Nebraska Island to Hanar.
Time on Hanar
During his time on Hanar, Duffy trained first with Tishla’s nascent militia, then with Compact troops slated for the liberation effort on Amargosa. Eventually, they attached him to Mitsuko Yamato‘s team as an explosives expert. This meant he would fly with JT aboard his Falcon. Additionally, he traveled to Amargosa during a softening up mission aboard the Challenger. There, he made the acquaintance of Peter Lancaster, one of the warp drive specialists aboard the ship. Lancaster recruited him into the warp program, guaranteeing him a commission and a sporadic terms at MIT. While JT and Mitsuko bonded on Hanar, the latter began treating him like a little brother.
Liberation of Amargosa
During the liberation invasion, the fusion blast over Riverside knocked JT’s Falcon out of the sky. The crash killed two of Mitsuko’s platoon and left Duffy with a mild concussion. Nonetheless, he was overjoyed to reunite with Ellie, whom he thought was dead.
With Ellie’s Northern Resistance closing in on Lucius Kray, he joined JT’s operation to infiltrate and cause havoc in Kray’s rear. They threw Gelt stun grenades supplied by Hanar into the camp, freeing Eric Yuwono from imprisonment. To his horror, he watched at Ellie ordered sapient lycanths to devour Kray alive in a bizarre section 11 execution.
Post-Liberation
Duffy entered the Navy as a commissioned ensign, initially assigned with Davra Andraste to the Challenger. They sent him periodically for studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while pairing him with Lancaster.
Early Naval career
Between college stints, Duffy also rotated between the Challenger and the Valles Marineris. He was summoned to the Marineris during Suicide’s search for Jayne Best. Admiral Burke ordered him and Eric Yuwono to provide assistance in cloaking the second freighter Goldeneye before it left for Walton.
Mud
Duffy returned to the Marineris and was transferred aboard the Republic starship Minerva, where he, Ellie, and Eric Yuwono joined JT and Mitsuko’s team in retaking the Queen Maria Sophia.
Operation on Aphrodite
Burke again assigned Duffy, this time to provide technical support to Mitsuko Yamato as she hunted down terrorist Gerard Kurz. He went planetside on the mission to destroy Kurz’s bio-weapon and rescue Suicide. During that phase of the operation, he learned of JT and Ellie’s brief affair and expressed mild jealousy. However, he also succeeded, with JT and Davra, in extracting Suicide.
Later, as Mitsuko led a raid on Mt. Buxanshal, he provided support from orbit.
Cybercommand mission on Hosh
In another mission aboard the Marineris, he and Ellie went to Hosh to provide technical assistance to Eric Yuwono’s faltering Cybercommand mission to root out a Juno installation on the independent planet. Later, the pair, along with JT, posed as tourists while Eric infiltrated the city-state’s main casino to overthrow President Cassan with one of her own clones.
Personal Life
Duffy had a mischievous personality that belied a workaholic approach to everything he did. At one point, Ellie Nardino joked he would not get married because he was already married to his warp engines.
While he and Ellie never dated, he did have an unrequited crush on his friend. He showed mild jealousy when he discovered she and JT had been a couple briefly.
Ellie Nardino: Duffy and Ellie grew up together, Ellie’s mother stating he was her twin born of another mother. While they were prone to mischief, they never got arrested.
When Ellie was carried off, Suicide’s team assumed she was killed. Duffy was inconsolable for days afterward. He was so overjoyed to find her alive during the liberation he went on a rear guard raid for her despite his concussion.
They worked together frequently after the liberation. However, on Aphrodite, Duffy learned of her affair with JT and became somewhat jealous. While JT shrugged off needling from Davra and Mitsuko, Duffy chaffed. Still, he and Ellie remained close. On Hosh, she berated both men playfully like they were her harem.
Davra Andraste: Duffy and Davra met under fire and marched together away from the fusion blast over Lansdorp. They also rode the maglev together both on the way to Edoras and after when picking up refugees. He pulled her to safety during the raid on the Founders’ Mine.
During the mission to reach the Ban Ki-moon, Duffy voted her innocent and was against executing her for the murder of Cannon. In the liberation operation, he, JT, and Eric Yuwono helped her get free from Lucius Kray just before his execution.
Admiral Eileen Burke: As with the other Children of Amargosa, Burke frequently tapped Duffy for missions. She also gave him his slot in the warp program.
Peter Lancaster: Lancaster was his mentor in the warp program. At first, he was bewildered by the dwarfish engineer’s sarcasm and lecherous behavior. However, Lancaster recommended sending Duffy to MIT to enhance his skillset as trained on warp drive technology.
Linda Havak: The first time Duffy boarded the Challenger, Linda Havak served as first officer. Upon his return, she had risen to captain, a role she held as late as 434. While Duffy frequently transferred to the Valles Marineris temporarily, Havak considered him a permanent member of her crew.
Suicide: Duffy, like the rest of the Children of Amargosa (except JT and Mitsuko), met Suicide during an attack on the Transcontinental Maglev. Duffy impressed her by improvising the communication system via ore seams. She took him and Ellie Nardino along on the mission to reach the Ban Ki-moon. When the Moon‘s crew decided to scuttle the ship, Suicide took him along with Tishla and JT to Hanar. She remained his de facto commander until the liberation, when command passed to Mitsuko Yamato as Special Forces lieutenant. As with the others, he came to her as a mother figure.
Bio Capsule:
Species: Human (Sapiens)
Birth Year: 414
Birth Place: Lansdorp, Amargosa
Homeworld: Tian
Education: Several semesters at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Baikonur Academy, Tian
Service: Amargosan Resistance (429), Hanar militia (429-430), Compact Navy (430 – )
Appearances:
The Children of Amargosa, Second Wave, Among Wolves, Storming Amargosa, Suicide Run, Checkmate, Royal Orders, Another Way to Die