Samantha “Dead-Eye Sammie” Alcro is one of the most notorious and dangerous mercenaries in the galaxy. Known for her no nonsense attitude toward her work, plus her cold, ruthless professionalism makes her both someone to be feared and at the same time, an individual whose services are highly sought after. Even though she has no mystical force, her skill in combat, her resourcefulness and her high powered mech suit make her a deadly adversary. One who can even go toe-to-toe with a Taman Knight, as Shi-ria found out. Yet there is much about Dead-Eye that remains a mystery.

Long before she was “Dead-Eye Sammie”, she was simply Samantha Alcro. A small child born into a working class family on the planet of T’nubria, in the Torathol Empire. A world that had been conquered an annexed by Torathol over a thousand years ago. Despite Torathol attempting to suppress the culture of the T’nubrians, they still maintained their reputation as brave warriors, though some regard them more as savages. This is in part due to the Torathol Empire having a rigid caste system, one where one’s status and opportunities in life depended on what race and or species they were. A human with a mystical force such as magical essence, was regarded as being better than a non-human citizen of the Empire such as a demon. Being a human from T’nubria, automatically placed Samantha Alcro into a higher ranking in Torathol’s social hierarchy, though as often was the case, this was how it worked in theory, not necessarily in practice. Being from a working class family, coupled with their lack of a mystical force, greatly hindered any opportunities to make a better life for a young Samantha Alcro.

While her family wasn’t wealthy, they did manage to live a happy and relatively comfortable life until one day when T’nubria was struck by a planetary catastrophe. T’nubria was in a binary star system, orbiting the twin stars known as “Tenu” and “Bria.” Like Earth, T’nubria was the third planet of this system. Unlike Earth, T’nubria had a unique relationship with the fourth planet in the system, Voral. Voral had an elliptical orbit. Thus, periodically, T’nubria and Voral would switch positions. T’nubria would be the fourth planet from Tenu and Bria, while Voral would be the third until their paths crossed and they switched back. One day, according to rumours, the Imperial Space fleet of the Torathol Empire had been testing a top-secret weapon on the smaller star of Bria, which resulted in the star collapsing. The government of Torathol naturally denied this and tried to cover it up, but there was no covering up the results of their mishap; the collapse of the star shifted the orbits of the planets in the system, causing T’nubria and Voral to crash into each other. Voral, being the smaller of the two planets, was destroyed. While T’nubria survived, the damage left a lasting mark on the planet. The western hemisphere of T’nubria was decimated, while what remained was buried under the dust and dirt, all that remained of Voral. The clouds of dust and dirt became so thick that they blocked out the sun completely, creating what we commonly referred to as a “nuclear winter.” Without sunlight, every plant and tree on the planet withered and died. Temperatures dropped so low that blizzards and blinding snow storms, something unheard of in the tropics, were now the norm for the planet as a whole. Billions of lives had been lost in the cataclysm. Those fortunate enough to survive were forced to flee their home and start a new life elsewhere.

Those with money could afford to resettle on different worlds within the Torathol empire or other worlds outside the empire. The rest of the refugees, which included Samantha’s family, were now homeless and destitute. Born into a working-class family, Samantha’s parents had little in terms of finances. Despite this, they managed to scrape together what little funds they had to afford passage on a cargo freighter to escape T’nubria. Unfortunately, that was all they could afford. The problems of massive inequality in Torathol, made possible due to the autocratic monarchy’s racist policies and strict caste system, meant people like them had very few options, if any, to advance up the ladder of society. Without money and deeply in debt due to the massive corruption of the empire’s vast, privatized, for-profit infrastructure, Samantha’s parents had no choice but to sell themselves and their daughter into a life of slavery. A life that once again, thanks to the massive corruption and caste system, meant that slavery was still legal in the Torathol Empire, while other worlds in the galaxy had long since outlawed such practices. As a teenager, Samantha ended up being sold off to a powerful crime boss who forced her to work in the sex trade industry. For a generous fee, her owner would offer this young woman to various men to satisfy whatever carnal desires they had. Despite both her owner and his customers valuing her only for her body, she grew cunning and resourceful enough to learn how to take care of herself. Part of her job would sometimes be to seduce a target, usually someone her owner wished to have eliminated, and subtly kill him. Usually she would seduce her target, get as much information out of him as possible, and then murder him via poisoning his food or drink. One such client was the owner of a company that was manufacturing a prototype mech suit for the military. It was Samantha’s job to murder the owner while her fellow slaves had the task of stealing the mech suit. Unfortunately for Sam and her fellow slaves, they were caught in the act. The mission nearly ended in failure until Samantha was forced to don the suit herself and use it to rescue her fellow slaves and kill their target.

With this stolen mech suit now in her possession, Samantha decided rather than hand it over to her owner to sell on the black market to the highest bidder, she instead decided to keep it for herself and use it to win her freedom as well as liberate her fellow slaves. Thus she murdered her owner and became a wanted criminal. Despite her owner and his various clients being interested in her only for her body, they failed to realize that she was no dumb blonde. With her quick learning and ability to think on her feet, she figured out how to use the suit and later, modify it into the protective armour she still wares to this day. In order to make ends meet, Samantha used her newfound suit to become a mercenary for hire. For a fee, she would steal, extort, or eliminate anyone her clients hired her to deal with. Her targets always wound up staring at her with their dead eyes frozen in looks of horror. Thus earning her the nickname “Dead-Eye.”. Her suit provided her with many advantages. It provided her with protection, allowing her to survive in environments that would otherwise be hazardous or even deadly to a human. It also greatly enhanced her strength and protected her from attacks that would have otherwise injured or even killed her. The suit also had various sensors built into it, allowing her scan her surroundings for hidden traps as well as thermal scanners to detect other lifeforms and even see through solid matter such as walls, to monitor where security personnel might be when attempting to break into a secure location. But perhaps the suit’s greatest advantage was that of concealing her identity. With the helmet hiding her face, the body having a gender neutral design, plus the suit’s vocal modulator disguising her voice, everyone simply assumed Dead-Eye was male. Thus, Samantha Alcro, or “Dead-Eye Sammie,” as she came to be known, did nothing to stop this misconception. Since Dead-Eye Sammie was a dangerous criminal wanted on several planets, it made for the perfect cover; the authorities were so busy looking for him, they failed to notice her even when standing right in front of them. Thus, she developed a dual identity. In her suit, “he” was Dead-Eye Sammie, the notorious male mercenary—ruthless, cold, silent and deadly. Outside the suit, she was simply “Ms. Alcro,” the go-between. Anyone who wanted to hire Dead-Eye for a job had to go through her. She took care of all the meetings and arrangements while“he” did the actual dirty work.

Having won her freedom, she set out to do the same to her parents, only to discover that they had been killed by a notorious Thalien crime lord. Dead-Eye never forgot this, and she vowed to make him pay for what he did. Ironically, this man—unaware of her true identity and the fact that he indirectly murdered her parents—contacted her in order to hire Dead-Eye for a job to eliminate a witness about to testify in court about this man’s various criminal activities. Travelling to Thalia, Dead-Eye carried out the job successfully, ensuring that said witness never lived to testify, for which her client paid her handsomely for. Little did he know he was also about to pay for his crimes with his life. With the job completed, Dead-Eye showed up at her client’s mansion unannounced one evening. When questioned why “he” was there, Dead-Eye removed her helmet and revealed her secret identity to this man. He was shocked and angered by the deception, but his anger was nothing compared to hers. Revealing that he was the one responsible for the murder of her parents, she repaid the favour, ensuring that his murder was both slow and excruciatingly painful. When his wife found out, she attempted to contact the authorities. To prevent this, Dead-Eye had been forced to eliminate her as well. Unlike the now elderly Thalien man, his wife had nothing to do with any of his crimes. She was half his age, merely a trophy wife, an arrangement which suited this young woman just fine. As long as she was wined and dined at the fanciest restaurants, shopped at the most prestigious and expensive stores, wore the latest in designer clothing and jewellery, and most importantly, didn’t interfere in her husband’s “business” dealings, she got to live the high life while he paid the bills. In a way, the life of this trophy wife wasn’t that much different from Samantha’s back when she was a sex slave. While this woman had it much better than Samantha ever did, a gilded cage was still a cage, even if this woman willingly chose to live in said cage. The difference was that Dead-Eye’s reasons for killing this crime lord was an act of revenge, a personal matter. For his wife however, she was simply a liability, a loose end to be tied up, nothing more. Dead-Eye felt sympathy nor hatred toward this woman. Like many of her victims, it was simply a job to be done. Yet, Dead-Eye had no idea how this simple quest for vengeance would alter her life in a way she never imagined.

With this Thalien mob boss and his trophy wife eliminated, Dead-Eye prepared to leave when the sound of a baby’s cry caught her attention. Following the sound, she entered a nursery where Dead-Eye discovered a small girl, only a few months old, in her crib, crying out to her mother, who would never come again. Normally, Dead-Eye didn’t care about such things; as far as she was concerned, this was just a job to do. It was nothing personal; she just did what she was hired for, and whoever got hurt in the process didn’t matter. However, this time, it was different. This job was personal. She had been laser-focused on getting revenge against the one who took her parents, she never stopped to think whether this man had a family of his own. She had been so obsessed with revenge that she ended up becoming no different than the very man she just eliminated. Now, how long would it be before this small child grew up and decided to hunt down Dead-Eye to avenge her parents? Looking down at this small crying child, Samantha was suddenly transported back in time, back to her own childhood and the painful memories of herself as a young girl, sobbing while her parents had been taken away from her while she could do nothing about it. She allowed her inner darkness to warp and twist her until this very moment when the horrifying truth struck her head-on; she had become the very thing she despised. She had become no different than the man who took her family from her. Perhaps it was this startling revelation combined with a twinge of guilt, or maybe she simply saw herself in this little infant. Still, whatever it was, Samantha Dead-Eye Sammie Alcro couldn’t bring herself to abandon this small, helpless child, nor could she bring herself to kill the child. Dead-Eye had never even thought about becoming a mother. Family was a liability she couldn’t afford in her line of work. Nonetheless, she was directly responsible for this child now being an orphan. She couldn’t just wash her hands of this, take off, and leave the child to fend for herself. Thus, before departing, Dead-Eye picked up the small child, gently cradling her in her cold, metallic arms, and carefully left the house, leaving behind whatever life this child would have had. This little girl was Dead-Eye’s responsibility now. If nothing else, Dead-Eye wanted to make sure this girl was spared the tragic lifestyle she had to endure.