Ardo Melnikov

Ardo Melnikov was a Private First Class in the Confederate Marine Corps during the early zerg invasion of the Terran Confederacy. He was nineteen years old at the time of his service, and his memories had been so heavily rewritten by neural resocialization that the details of his own life were left hazy and uncertain. His brief career on Mar Sara became the means by which he uncovered the truth that the Confederacy itself, not the zerg, had taken everything he had once loved.

A remembered life on Bountiful#

By his own recollection, Melnikov was born on the religious colony of Bountiful, a settlement that lay beyond the close influence of the Terran Confederacy. At the age of nine he met a neighboring family, the Bradlaws, and among them a girl named Melani Bradlaw, a year his junior. He took little notice of her at first, but six years later, as she came of age, the once-shy girl drew his attention, and he was the first to approach her. The two formed a close friendship.

By nineteen his prospects were bright. He had graduated, his father's agriplots were productive, and there was talk of his receiving forty acres of his own at the end of the homestead. With his future looking secure, he found the courage to propose to Bradlaw, half in jest but with wholly serious intent, dreaming of a long and peaceful life with her. He never learned what her answer would have been. The sirens of Helaman Township began to wail and fireballs fell from the sky as the zerg descended on the colony.

Keeping Bradlaw close, Melnikov ran with hundreds of others toward the center of the township, only to find it under attack. Confederate Wraiths inflicted what damage they could on the Swarm, enough to let a single dropship descend. Melnikov reached the dropship, but as he climbed aboard, three hydralisks seized Bradlaw and dragged her beyond his reach. The dropship lifted off in the same moment, carrying him away from his home, his life, and the woman he loved. That, at least, was what certain people wished him to believe.

Resocialization and the road to Mar Sara#

Melnikov was attached to the 417th Confederate Marine Platoon and shipped to Mar Sara. While processing through the register at the starport, he glimpsed rows of resocialization tanks and lost consciousness, subjected to an extreme application of neural resocialization, a procedure he had most likely already undergone before. He woke disoriented but ready to fight and die for the Confederacy.

Lieutenant L.Z. Breanne briefed the platoon on their mission: to support a Confederacy evacuation at Bunker Complex 3847, to scout for zerg activity, and to recover a piece of equipment that command had lost. Aboard the dropship Valkyrie Vixen, the platoon flew to the outpost, where Melnikov was assigned to Second Squad under Sergeant Jon Littlefield for the descent to the town of Oasis. His first taste of combat came when he fell down a zerg shaft and lost contact with his squad, finding himself rushed by a horde of zerglings. He cut them down with his C-14 Gauss Rifle, but the killing brought him no triumph. He had taken life for the first time, an act his training had prepared him for but his upbringing had condemned, and he began to break down before his fellow marines found him and brought him back to the surface.

The unsettling truth#

The recovery of the lost equipment came with a female civilian found unconscious, and Melnikov was assigned to guard both at the abandoned Confederate outpost. When the woman regained consciousness, her resemblance to Melani Bradlaw was so strong that Melnikov could not look away. To his grief she was not Bradlaw at all but a woman named Merdith Jernic, and key differences in her face soon made the distinction plain. Jernic, a member of the Sons of Korhal, unsettled him further by knowing vague details of a past she insisted was a lie, and she revealed that the recovered object was a psi emitter, a device used to lure the zerg.

Melnikov demanded the truth and Jernic gave it to him. She had him recount what had happened on Bountiful, then pointed out the inconsistencies, places where his memory had been altered so that marines appeared where the zerg had truly been. Slowly the realization settled on him. It had not been the zerg that stripped away his former life. It had been the Confederacy. The knowledge that his entire past might be a fabrication did not sit well with him, and a mutalisk attack soon cost the platoon dearly, robbing them of transport just as the Confederacy evacuation reached its final stages.

Absolution on Mar Sara#

Catching up to Jernic in the chaos, Melnikov learned that the Sons of Korhal were bringing in their own transports to evacuate the planet, though the cities could not be saved given the speed of the Swarm. Grasping the psi emitter, he understood that the zerg could at least be slowed. After some effort his plan was accepted over the objections of a marine named Cutter: they would use the emitter to draw the zerg in and trade their own lives to save thousands. To Melnikov, facing death had become bearable, his unlocked memories filling him with lessons of an afterlife and the peace that awaited him.

The zerg arrived early. From a bunker Melnikov and the remnants of the platoon held them off before being forced back to the inner perimeter. To keep the bunker operational, a marine named Jans suited up in an SCV, and when hydralisks threatened to overwhelm it, Melnikov stormed out to keep them at bay while only he, Jernic, and a marine named Bernelli remained alive. As the last of his ammunition ran out, he looked up to see the Sons of Korhal transports lifting off the planet. No one would ever hear his name or sing of his deed, and he alone would know of his triumph. He smiled at his final thought as the darkness closed in, for the contrails of the escaping ships were all golden, exactly like his last day on Bountiful.

Character#

Melnikov's nature was shaped above all by his religious upbringing, which gave him both a firm moral center and an oversensitivity to death. His willingness to lay down his life to save others grew from that same root, as did the grief that overcame him when he first killed a zergling. Toward the end of his service he assumed the role of natural leader, devising the plan to lure the zerg and directing the defense of the complex. Despite his gentle background he carried a strong early desire for vengeance against the zerg, along with a sarcastic streak that surfaced only in his private thoughts rather than aloud. He was also remembered among marines as the maker of a custom hollow-point ammunition variant for the C-14 rifle, designed to flatten and expand on impact for maximum wounding effect.