Lizzie Groves

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Groves is the daughter of two former Techs from the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces. Her parents were among the first few recruits into a new mercenary unit, the Waco Rangers, and they took Lizzie and her older brother with them when Wayne Waco secured his first military contracts outside of Capellan space.

Lizzie grew up as the archetypal "mercenary brat", moving from world to world and base to base, never settling anywhere for very long. She helped out as an extra pair of hands in the maintenance bays, and came to view the men and women of the Waco Rangers as her extended family. However, the idea of becoming a trainee MechWarrior like her brother Alex never appealed to her. Small and quick, Lizzie had the hand-eye coordination and reflexes necessary to become an Aerospace fighter pilot.

She graduated into the ranks of Noble's Assault Battalion, piloting a TR-7 Thrush light fighter, in the last few months of the Rangers' contract with the Draconis Combine. Lizzie flew scouting flights and ground-support missions for the Rangers during their first few operations for the Lyran Commonwealth, but it was not long before she had a change of heart regarding the Waco Rangers.

The first thing that happened was a personal tragedy. Her father, one of the Ranger's senior Techs, died in a repair-bay accident while working on Colonel Waco's BattleMaster. The second thing was the news that the Rangers were going to scrap their older CCAF-surplus Aerospace fighters... including her beloved Thrush.

Alex Groves had left the Rangers a year before, and with both her parents gone - her mother passed away when she was only six - Lizzie suddenly felt out of place and very much alone. When an HPG message from Alex reached her, telling her about the job he had secured with a mercenary company way out on the rimward boundary of the Free Worlds League, she took it as a sign. She bought out her contract with the Rangers, purchased her old fighter at scrap rates, and found herself a berth aboard a freighter headed out for the fringes of known space...