Ryk Kydd

Ryk Kydd, born Ark Bennet, was a sniper in the Confederate Marine Corps during the Guild Wars and later an assassin for hire. The son of an Old Family of the Terran Confederacy, he was abducted and forced into military service under a false name, where he discovered a natural gift for sharpshooting and fell in with Jim Raynor, Tychus Findlay, and the marines who became the Heaven's Devils.

Ark Bennet of the Old Families#

Ark Bennet was born to Errol and Lisa Bennet, members of the Confederate Old Families and owners of Bennet Industries. The family kept a low profile, and so few outsiders knew Ark's face or even of his existence, with only a handful of pictures ever reaching the public. As a child he liked to take apart the household's service robots and rebuild them, usually with parts to spare. As a young man he found himself dissatisfied: his father wanted him to be a "spare" heir behind his older sister Tara, his mother wanted him to be a scholar, and neither path appealed to him. After he finished upper school in 2488, the pressure to choose mounted, and there was talk of an arranged marriage to Hailey Falco of the Falco family.

Two weeks after his graduation, the Old Families held their annual Reunion in Tarsonis City, and Errol Bennet ordered Ark to attend in the hope he might learn something of the family business. Bored, Ark wandered into Hacker's Flat, a low-income district where he stood out, and got lost. A grifter operating as "Laura Posey" marked him as prey, lured him to a bar, and gave him a drugged beer. He passed out, and "Posey" discovered his true identity before "losing" it again. Bennet was sold to a recruiting sergeant named Harley Ross and woke aboard a military system runner, where Staff Sergeant Wright informed him his new name was "Ryk Kydd." His protests went unheard, though Wright told him that if he passed basic training the Bureau of Personnel might sort the matter out.

The making of a marksman#

Bitter at first, Kydd discovered that he was uncommonly good at sniping with the BOSUN FN92 rifle, trained under Sergeant Peters, and set his sights on qualifying as a sniper during boot camp, a feat only two recruits had managed before him. Within eight weeks he was the best shot in his training battalion and had earned the coveted sniper's badge. His instructors said he had the "X-factor," a quality that made time seem to slow when he took a shot, and a psychologist suggested he might be mildly psychic. One trainer, Major Lionel Macaby, learned of Kydd's identity predicament but, unwilling to lose so promising a recruit, passed the case up the chain in the hope Kydd would graduate before the truth was confirmed.

On a punishment detail Kydd was thrown together with two lower-class rowdies, Jim Raynor and Hank Harnack. The three became friends after Kydd reprogrammed a maintenance robot to do their assigned work, and the two marines taught him how to live a life away from the Old Families. On the night before graduation they celebrated in the bars of nearby Braddock, brawled with fleet personnel, stole a vulture, and crashed it into a police station, earning a night in the cells. At the ceremony the next morning Kydd avoided Cornelius Brubaker, a friend of his father who might have recognized him, having come to prefer his new life, and remained in the Corps.

The Heaven's Devils#

Sent toward Fort Howe for seasoning, Kydd's convoy was ambushed by Kel-Morian Combine Hellhounds, and he was ordered to set up a sniper's post in a farmhouse overlooking the approach to Firebase Zulu, where he cut down many enemy soldiers as Raynor led the green marines to victory. The squad was later folded under Sergeant Tychus Findlay and absorbed into Colonel Javier Vanderspool's Special Tactics and Missions Platoon, the unit that came to be known as the Heaven's Devils. Through the campaigns of the Guild Wars, Kydd's marksmanship carried the platoon through firefights at Fort Howe, a raid on Kel-Morian Internment Camp-36, and a brutal assault on the divided city of Polk's Pride.

At Polk's Pride the platoon's commander, Lieutenant Samantha Sanchez, with whom Kydd had fallen quietly in love, was shot dead by a Kel-Morian sniper during a flanking maneuver. An enraged Kydd had Raynor draw the enemy marksman's fire, then killed him with a single shot, and wept over Sanchez afterward. As the battle wore on he saved his comrades repeatedly, picking off the crews of gauss cannon emplacements. When the city was taken, the UNN reporter Max Speer photographed the Devils, and Kydd wore a boonie hat and mirrorshades to hide his face.

Desertion and death#

The Devils' downfall came when Kydd and Max Zander overheard Vanderspool conspiring with Kydd's own father, Errol Bennet, and the Kel-Morian overseer Aaron Pax to rob an ardeon-crystal train and dispose of the platoon afterward. The Devils tried to seize the train themselves, but Vanderspool's spy betrayed them and Pax double-crossed everyone, and the operation collapsed into a running fight at the starport. There Hank Harnack set himself ablaze when his flamethrower ignited spilled fuel; Kydd had seen the danger too late to warn him and ended his friend's suffering with a sniper round to the head. Kydd then shot Pax through Vanderspool's shoulder from five hundred yards. With the colonel cornered and offering to reunite him with his father, Kydd refused, and Raynor shot Vanderspool. Kydd, Raynor, and Findlay fled by dropship, going absent without leave.

Kydd parted from Raynor and Findlay and turned his skills to contract killing, growing cold and indifferent to who his targets were, a development that left Raynor feeling responsible when he learned of it. In 2494, while carrying out a hit on Senator Westyn MacMasters in Tarsonis City, Kydd was tracked down by the sadistic bounty hunter Ezekiel Daun, whom the wounded but surviving Vanderspool had hired to kill him. Daun overpowered him with cybernetic enhancements and unnatural speed, strangled him with a cybernetic arm, recorded the death, and delivered his head to Vanderspool. Daun would later use that recording to unnerve Raynor and Findlay when he hunted them in turn.

Character#

As an Old Family heir Kydd had been told by his mother that he was a handsome young man, though he privately thought his eyes too far apart, his lips too thin, and his chin too narrow. He preferred low-key clothing and kept up his childhood habit of taking apart and reassembling robots. He was of average intelligence but possessed the elusive marksman's gift his instructors prized. Though he struggled to settle into military life at first, he came to embrace it and the comrades it gave him, refusing more than once to abandon them even when offered his old name and family back. By the end, working alone as an assassin, he had hardened into a man indifferent to the lives he took.