Max Zander

Max Zander was a marine in the Confederate Marine Corps and a member of the Heaven's Devils during the Guild Wars. A short but strong, hollow-faced man who knew his way around a truck engine, he served in the Special Tactics and Missions Platoon of the 321st Colonial Rangers Battalion alongside Jim Raynor, Tychus Findlay, and Ryk Kydd. He favored a man-portable grenade launcher and often carried ten grenades over his authorized loadout, a liberty a larger man could not have managed.

A slum-born marine#

Max Zander grew up in a slum, an upbringing that left him somewhat ashamed and self-conscious about his origins but also gave him a mechanic's skill and a knack for moving through tight, dangerous places. As a newly graduated Confederate private he was transported by truck from Boro Airbase to Fort Howe, and on the way he befriended a fellow marine named Hank Harnack over games of dice. Near Firebase Zulu the convoy was ambushed by Kel-Morian Hellhounds, which destroyed two trucks and damaged a third while inflicting few casualties. When Corporal Hawkes asked whether anyone could repair a truck, Zander volunteered his mechanical knowledge, while the new marines found themselves cut off from the firebase by Kel-Morian infantry and armor.

Jim Raynor took up an unofficial leadership role and sent Zander, the sniper Ryk Kydd, and Harnack to find a path through to the firebase, which they did. Zander and Kydd then moved on a farmhouse that would make a good sniper's post; Zander entered first and killed a Kel-Morian observer inside, then listened to the dead man's comm unit while Kydd picked off the enemy from the window. The Confederates threw the Kel-Morians back, and Raynor was promoted to lance corporal for his bravery. Having reached Fort Howe, Zander acquired a single-shot grenade launcher.

The Special Tactics and Missions Platoon#

Sergeant Tychus Findlay was put in charge of the squad, and when the Kel-Morians attacked the lightly held Fort Howe, the squad rushed to the armory. On the way they met a troop of Kel-Morian armored rippers; Harnack set one ablaze with his flamethrower, and Zander dropped a string of grenades into the blaze for a spectacular explosion. At the armory they found suspicious Confederate marines loading trucks, and Findlay abruptly ordered the trucks hijacked and their loot stored in the war-emptied town of Whitford, unwittingly angering Colonel Javier Vanderspool, who had meant to profit from the scheme himself.

Findlay's squad, Zander among them, was assigned to Lieutenant Marcus Quigby's Special Tactics and Missions Platoon. There they met the technician Hiram Feek, inventor of the experimental CMC-230 Thunderstrike armor that allowed controlled jumps and drops from dropships, and Petty Officer Lisa Cassidy, a medic who was secretly a spy for Vanderspool. While on leave the squad sold the hijacked loot, and Zander used his share to buy food he intended to give away to war refugees, taking Feek and Private Connor Ward along as security. They were captured at a false Confederate checkpoint run by the bandit Silas Trask, and Zander, who made no effort to hide his contempt for his captors, suffered abuse before Feek blasted through the barn roof to rescue them. Findlay was furious at the attention drawn, but Zander gave the food away regardless.

The Heaven's Devils#

Colonel Vanderspool tasked the platoon with assaulting Kel-Morian Internment Camp-36 to free its Confederate prisoners, a mission that required dropping onto three heavily defended hills around the camp. Findlay chose Zander as his second for the operation, judging Harnack too impulsive and Connor Ward suicidal. The platoon dropped on the camp, freed a tortured Jim Raynor, and moved to steal vehicles from the factory, where Zander shot the overseer Hanz Brucker in the leg and forced his surrender before Brucker died under suspicious circumstances. The platoon fought its way back through Hellhounds and a vehicle-mounted force, losing half its members but earning the name Heaven's Devils.

Under a new commander, Lieutenant Samantha Sanchez, the platoon was sent against the Kel-Morian-held north of Polk's Pride, a city split by the Paddick River. Vanderspool's plan ferried sections of pontoon bridge across by goliath, and the platoon was among the first units over the river. Fighting alongside strangely obedient marines, the Heaven's Devils took the north at high cost, losing Lieutenant Sanchez in the fighting, after which Vanderspool arrived to claim the credit. When UNN reporter Max Speer photographed the victors, Zander lit his cigar off Harnack's flamethrower.

Korsy and the last betrayal#

While on leave in the town of Darby, Zander accompanied Ryk Kydd to a restaurant, where Kydd was shocked to see Colonel Vanderspool dining with Errol Bennet, an Old Family tycoon and Kydd's true father, along with an unidentified man. The two soldiers followed the group to a meeting and overheard the plot: the stranger was the Kel-Morian overseer Aaron Pax, and the men proposed to rob a Kel-Morian train carrying a fortune in ardeon crystals, with Vanderspool intending to eliminate the platoon in the process. When Vanderspool offered to sell Bennet the location of his son for half a share, Bennet disowned Kydd, and a shaken Kydd nearly gave them away before Zander silenced him. The two carried the story to Tychus Findlay, but Lisa Cassidy took the information to Vanderspool in exchange for drugs.

Vanderspool moved with a team of resocialized men under Lieutenant Fitz, disguising them as Kel-Morians to seize the starport of the occupied settlement of Korsy. As the platoon swept the town, Zander and Connor Ward entered a building that proved to be a daycare; Zander sent two civilian women away, dealt with the enemy soldier holding a child hostage, and then drew on his slum upbringing to move and hide the children to safety. At the train station the scheme collapsed into a double-cross when Aaron Pax turned on Vanderspool, and the train escaped. A furious Vanderspool rounded on the Heaven's Devils, who fled in stolen saber vehicles. During the flight Zander spotted one of the women from the daycare wandering into the line of fire, stopped his vehicle, and dragged her clear. As he directed her to safety, Vanderspool rounded the corner, shot him twice with a needle-gun, and shot him once more for good measure, killing him.

Character#

Zander carried his slum origins as a quiet shame, nervous of small things like using the wrong fork in a fine restaurant, yet the same background gave him a steady competence and a deep instinct to protect the defenseless. He was a capable mechanic and a grenadier who pushed his loadout past regulation, and he repeatedly put himself at risk for civilians, hiding children at Korsy and dying in the act of pulling a stranger out of the line of fire. His friendship with Connor Ward, Ryk Kydd, and Hank Harnack anchored him through the Guild Wars, and his loyalty to the Heaven's Devils held even as the platoon's own colonel turned against them.