Connor Ward

Connor Ward was a husky, dark-skinned marine in the Confederate Marine Corps who fought in the squad that became known as Heaven's Devils during the Guild Wars. He used paired four-barreled rocket launchers as his primary weapons, with a gauss cannon as a backup, and carried into every battle a grief and rage born of the loss of his entire family to the Kel-Morian Combine.

Loss on Tyrador VIII#

Connor Ward lived with his wife and children on Tyrador VIII, near a refinery. During the Guild Wars, his wife urged him that they should move away from the refinery for fear of Kel-Morian Combine attacks, but Ward disagreed. She proved correct. The Kel-Morians attacked with Hellhounds and wiped out his family, and his daughter, Dara, bled to death in his arms. Ward became consumed with revenge against the Combine and joined the Confederate military, intending to kill as many Kel-Morians as he could.

Heaven's Devils#

Private Ward became part of a six-man squad based at Fort Howe on Turaxis II, led by Sergeant Tychus Findlay and Lance Corporal Jim Raynor, the unit that would be remembered as Heaven's Devils. Findlay had only just taken command when a Kel-Morian attack on the base was announced. As the squad moved to the armory on Raynor's suggestion, they came upon Confederate marines fighting heavily armored Kel-Morian rippers, and Ward blew one apart with his rocket launcher to his comrades' jubilation, a feat he soon repeated. At the armory the squad saw Confederate marines loading two trucks with loot, and Findlay ordered them hijacked and driven to the empty town of Whitford.

The base commander, Colonel Javier Vanderspool, who had intended to split that loot with a Kel-Morian officer, grew suspicious and folded the squad into a Special Tactics and Missions platoon under Lieutenant Marcus Quigby, planting a medic, Petty Officer Third Class Lisa Cassidy, among them as a spy. When the squad met a buyer in Whitford they were ambushed by hijackers, and Ward destroyed one at short range with his rocket launcher. The platoon was trained in Thunderstrike armor, which let marines be dropped from the air onto enemy territory.

On a charity mission where Max Zander gave food to war refugees, Ward and the armor technician Hiram Feek went along as security, but the attention drew an attack by Silas Trask and his bandits, who took Ward and Zander prisoner while Feek escaped. Held in a hand-dug pit and then verbally abused in a farmhouse, Ward refused to be cowed, told Zander not to apologize, and spoke of the Kel-Morians who had destroyed his family and the blame he laid on himself, before Feek crashed through the roof to free them.

A self-destructive fury#

When Vanderspool ordered an attack on Kel-Morian Internment Camp-36 to free its prisoners, the platoon, now led by Sergeant Findlay, trained intensively with Thunderstrike armor at a site called Camp Crash, while Jim Raynor volunteered to infiltrate the camp first and warn the prisoners. After dropping in and fighting their way through, the marines found Raynor had been identified and tortured. There Ward acquired the gauss cannon he would carry as a backup. The evacuation by dropship collapsed under Kel-Morian air attacks, forcing the platoon to steal enemy vehicles and run the prisoners toward the disputed zone, where the Snakehead Komando found them. Foreman Kar Ottmar led the attack from his light attack vehicle, and Ward, lost in memories of his family and taking no cover, fired all eight of his rockets at it, destroying it with the five that struck. Switching to the gauss cannon against heavily armored sloth vehicles, he had little effect and ignored Findlay's orders to take cover, threatening to kill Findlay even as the sergeant dragged him to safety. The platoon escaped with the prisoners but had been cut to half its strength.

Under a new commander, Lieutenant Samantha Sanchez, the depleted platoon took part in the Third Battle of Polk's Pride, a town split by the Paddick River, with a strategic resource repository held by the Kel-Morian Combine in the north and the Confederacy holding the south after two failed crossings. Vanderspool's plan threw waves of neurally resocialized marines at the enemy while the platoon acted as the competent spearhead. As goliaths ferried pontoon bridge sections across the river, Ward spent his rockets on rippers and a goliath that emerged from a parking garage, was reloaded by Max Zander, and fell back on his gauss cannon. Reaching the repository hill, Ward bellowed in rage and charged a line of gauss cannon emplacements, surviving only because the sniper Ryk Kydd picked off the operators, then paused in surprise to find himself still alive as his team caught up and cleared the remaining positions. With the repository taken, Vanderspool arrived to claim the credit before a UNN reporter's camera, and Ward, out of rockets, was again hauled into cover by Zander. Afterward the squad earned a little rest, except for Raynor, who went to prison for assaulting a superior, while Ward spent his first stretch simply collecting sleep.