Malcolm Kelerchian

Malcolm "Mal" Kelerchian was a terran wrangler, the man responsible for acquiring Nova Terra for the Ghost Program and for telling her of the memory wipe she felt she needed. A former detective with a weak psionic sensitivity that let him feel the presence of other telepaths, he was an able investigator cursed with terrible luck and worse social skills, and he spent years in a job he despised while growing steadily closer to the agent he had once been sent to hunt.

Not just a thug#

Kelerchian was a member of the Tarsonis Police Force, a corrupt institution that mostly protected the interests of the rich. Officers with any brains were promoted to the detective squad, and good detectives were usually taken up by the government or military as spies. Kelerchian made detective easily and actually used the department's resources to solve crimes, even tapping Tarsonis City's Traffic Control system to follow suspects; his clearance rate was triple that of his peers, which won the department budget increases from the Council.

He fell out of favor about a year before the Great War while working the Rample murder case, in which two bodies found in the poor southern Gutter turned out to be the children of a semi-prominent shop owner. Kelerchian discovered the killer to be Emmett Tygore of the Old Families; the press abruptly recast Tygore as a man who had crumbled under pressure, and he was quietly sent to a rehabilitation facility on Halcyon. Despite the accolades he was owed, the Tygore family made it impossible for Kelerchian to keep his job.

Ghost wrangler#

It was during this period that Ilsa Killiany of the Ghost Program found in the files that Kelerchian had a Psi Index rating of 3.5, higher than the 2 or less of most terrans but well below the 5 of a typical ghost. He could sense other telepaths and the use of psionics but could not wield the powers himself, which made him an ideal wrangler. The military snapped him up, freeing him from the Old Families but placing him under Killiany, who knew he would rather be a detective but found him too useful to release. He received six months of training, one month in sensor equipment and five in a failed attempt to develop his telepathic powers, and ever after he got a headache in the presence of a telepath.

Hunting Nova#

Kelerchian investigated a terrorist attack on the Terra Family, an Old Family, along with the psionic outburst that killed hundreds nearby. Glad to be doing detective work again, even if it gave him headaches, his satisfaction was cut short when Killiany ordered him to track down November Terra, whose outburst had caused the deaths, while the Tarsonis Police handled the terrorist attacks. He reasoned that Nova would flee to the Gutter to escape her former life, and began by enlisting the Gutter officers Larry Fonseca and Sergeant Volmer, gaining access through the latter to the traffic control computers.

Months passed and his health, mental and physical, slowly broke down; the people of the Gutter would not talk to a Confederate agent, Nova never appeared on the traffic computers, and no telepathically slain bodies turned up. Summoned by an angry Killiany, who threatened to bring in the psychopathic Major Esmerelda Ndoci and her Annihilators, Kelerchian got a break from Fonseca: a clue about "the Blonde," the new enforcer of the crime lord Fagin. Having neglected basic detective work, Kelerchian had not even known who Fagin was, and an exasperated Fonseca explained that Fagin was the Gutter's crime lord, more respected there than the government, and that the Blonde never left his complex.

Kelerchian and the Annihilators set out to retrieve Nova; where Ndoci wanted to slaughter all of Fagin's people, Kelerchian held her in check with the authority of the Ghost Program. Fagin, gone mad during the search, responded to neither diplomacy nor threats, and was killed by Nova and his own chief lieutenant. Kelerchian persuaded Nova to join the program, but at that moment the Sons of Korhal landed on Tarsonis, prompting the Annihilators to launch a reckless attack that brought the building down on Kelerchian and Nova. Severely injured, Kelerchian survived only because Nova threatened Ndoci's career and freedom if she let him die.

The emperor's expectations#

Kelerchian woke aboard the hospital ship Pasteur to learn it would be months before he could walk. From Ghost Program Director Kevin Bick, Ilsa Killiany's replacement, he learned that Tarsonis had fallen not to the Sons of Korhal but to the zerg, that Nova was now training on the world of Ursa, and that Killiany had been removed for refusing to serve the new regime, the Terran Dominion, with Arcturus Mengsk as its emperor.

Weeks later, recuperating on Ursa and watching over Nova's training, Kelerchian was met by Mengsk himself, who asked to be called "Mr. Emperor" in public as part of a democratic image campaign. Kelerchian told Mengsk that the Gutter had refused to cooperate because the Confederacy and the Old Families had never helped its people, and he scolded the emperor for twisting the news that Universe News Network still published under the new regime. Mengsk said he had kept the Ghost Program because he knew firsthand how effective ghosts were, his former second-in-command Sarah Kerrigan having been one. When Kelerchian pointed out that Mengsk's acquisition of Kerrigan was the reason trainees had their memories wiped on graduation, Mengsk replied that Kerrigan had come to him of her own free will; the memory wipe was not removed. Mengsk was noncommittal about whether Kelerchian would keep working in the program.

After six months Kelerchian could walk again, though regular gravity remained hard on him, and he met Nova for breakfast, the closest thing to a successful date he ever had. He told her he was heading to the low-gravity Sakrysta Mining Base to find a telepath, having been accepted as a wrangler by Mengsk. Reading his mind, Nova learned that Mengsk wanted him dead and expected the dangerous mission to be the end of him, and in her own way she was saying goodbye.

Sakrysta and the spectre crisis#

Kelerchian survived Sakrysta and remained a Terran Dominion wrangler. No admirer of Mengsk, he judged there was no one better positioned to replace him, and was given his own ship, which he named the November after Nova. Physical therapy, rehab, and muscle stimulants restored his legs and left him leaner than before.

In 2503 Mengsk sent Kelerchian to Altara to find a missing ghost, Kath Toom. At a refinery the ghost had been investigating, men were dismantling the facility and opened fire on him; in the fighting the refinery's core was breached and the building consumed. Beset by newly arrived zerg and knocked unconscious when his ship was attacked, Kelerchian was saved by Nova, part of a Nova Squadron force sent to investigate, though her memory wipes meant she did not recognize him; aboard the Palatine she began to recall him in generalities through flashbacks brought on by terrazine exposure. Mengsk denied ordering Toom to Altara or knowing of any United Earth Directorate cell there, and ordered the pair to find the missing ghosts and shut down those responsible.

Kelerchian's analysis showed the abductions falling along a single route through space, indicating a mobile base too small to be detected yet large enough to sustain its operators. As the investigation widened, Nova was ambushed by a spectre, and the Annihilators arrived demanding to board; though Kelerchian and Major Spaulding had not forgotten Tarsonis, Colonel Jackson Hauler reaffirmed that Kelerchian and Nova remained in charge. Mengsk then revealed the existence of Project Shadowblade and the effects of terrazine and assigned the pair to bring in Gabriel Tosh, who had led the spectre attack.

In private, Nova realized that Kelerchian was in love with her, the reason he had named his ship after her, and that she had come to feel the same. Knockout gas then filled the room, and Kelerchian woke imprisoned on Gehenna Station, the base of the spectres' rebellion, which was secretly led by Hauler himself. Hauler used a hostage image of the tortured wrangler to coerce Nova into agreeing to assassinate Mengsk. The ploy failed: Nova infiltrated the station and rescued Kelerchian, and as they fought free, Hauler took Kelerchian hostage at knifepoint and demanded Nova enter a psi indoctrinator. Before she had to choose, Gabriel Tosh killed Hauler in revenge for the death of his lover and let them go. The two escaped aboard the November as Gehenna Station was destroyed, agreed to find the young telepath Lila a foster family rather than surrender her to the Ghost Program, and then parted ways.

Character#

As a detective Kelerchian was intelligent and hard-working but plagued by terrible luck and dismal social skills, almost wholly lacking tact, with a smile so unnerving he used it only in interrogations; every attempt at a relationship with a woman ended in disaster, though some found him rugged and attractive. He wore a tattered, old-fashioned leather duster over his wrangler uniform and had a habit of rubbing his hands against the coat when nervous. His Psi Index of 3.5 gave him only the weak ability to detect telepaths and psionics, which manifested as a headache, worsening still further when someone tried to read his thoughts. His bond with Nova Terra was the defining relationship of his recorded life.