Bio:
As a young man growing up in public starfighter simulators, Andy got fairly proficient behind the stick. He often challenged his classmates to duels within the confines of virtual space, winning far more than he lost. Tactics came naturally to his youthful brain in cyberspace, and he often tried many new things in the duels that he took pride in seeing his peers using in subsequent tilts. His prowess led to him being bullied outside of the simulators by the more vicious and physically imposing peers that couldn't win in the cockpit. On top of building his flight skills and tactical studies, the frequent beatings he took led to him becoming pretty adept at treating minor injuries to reduce the physical marks left behind.
His father was a mildly successful independent spacer, often gone for weeks at a time doing runs to keep their middle-class lifestyle flush with credits. However, this time away also had the downside of his father never realizing his love of flying or his skill behind the stick. So his father continued to be gone for weeks at a time, leaving Andy with little supervision and ample means to get into trouble. This led to a party boy lifestyle that went unchecked throughout his adolescence. The beatings continued, as the bullies that couldn't beat him in virtual battles also couldn't compete with his reputation with their female peers. They still took pride in getting to him in the only way he couldn't best them. By this point, however, Andy was into too many illicit substances to really feel the beatings or care that they continued to happen.
On his 18th birthday, Andy's father gave him a modest loan with the intention of him buying his own ship to join the family business. The sum was large enough to buy a very advanced freighter, with his father dropping a heavy hint that he should purchase a lightly used YT-2000. Instead, Andy opted to purchase a heavily used YT-1200 and used the balance of the loan for some aftermarket modifications and ample amounts of alcohol.
The moment it was fit to fly he christened the ship The Dalliance, and his father brought him fully into the family business. They began running shipments for the highest bidders. As time went on and credits continued to flow in, Andy continued to find more creative ways to blow his share of the profits, sampling all the delights from the sectors of the galaxy they visited. On the rare occasions trouble arose during a run, the two Clark men were more than capable of bloodying the noses of any pirates hazarding a run at the pair of surprisingly well-armed freighters.
For more than a decade, they continued to rake in the credits, and Andy found more ways to immediately blow his earnings. Much to the chagrin of his father, who had hoped his son would be more than capable by now to handle the family business and let him retire.
One fateful day, a pirate attack had surprised the pair and put them into a defensive running light battle. An Imperial patrol arrived and immediately provided aid. In an unfortunate series of events, one of the pirate Z-95 Headhunters was clipped by one of Andy's aftermarket auto-canons and it collided with a TIE Fighter that was rendering aid. Immediately, the Imperials turned their guns on the father and son and started pounding their shields.
At the most dire instant in the battle when both men were sure they would die, a rebel strike force of X-Wings and Y-Wings hypered into the system and fell upon the Imperials with reckless abandon. The Victory-Class Star Destroyer was crippled, allowing the two freighters to escape. They were fed coordinates by one of the rebel pilots, saying that their cargoes were needed by the Rebels. Not being in a position to say no, they acquiesced to the request and followed the fighters to their base, which happened to be on the abysmal ice planet Hoth.
While freezing their backsides off in the base and having their cargoes picked through by the rebels, a general alarm went up. The Imperials had found this new base and set up a blockade, with a ground assault sure to follow. Their freighters were immediately commandeered by the Rebel Alliance, needed by the ragtag fighters to evacuate. They were thankfully allowed to pilot their own craft, but they had to carry rebel personnel and the supplies they had just given away off the ice planet.
The two men were cleared to leave together without fighter escort, as the majority of rebel fighter pilots were throwing themselves in a futile gesture against the Imperial juggernaut AT-AT walkers in little more than a box with weak blaster cannons. To this day, Andy still doesn't understand why the rebels didn't use their X-wings on the battlefield. These craft surely had the punch to destroy the Imperial ground forces.
The planetary Ion cannon fired behind them and drilled the Star Destroyer in their exit vector, disabling it. It didn't, however, stop the swarm of TIE Fighters from angrily harassing them. A piece of TIE Fighter debris from one of Andy's kills collided with his father's engines, disabling him. Andy watched helplessly as the remaining TIEs swarmed and destroyed his father's ship. Anger welled up inside of him, and he wheeled his ship about despite the numerous protests of the rebels he was charged with ferrying to safety. He cut through formations of TIEs, his ship shuddering with each laser blast. Alarms wailed, but still he pressed on in his rage-blind revenge tour.
Once there were no TIEs left, he saw a rebel medium transport being harangued by more Imperial fighters. He charged in with guns blazing, clearing the transport's exit vector. The transport's pilot radioed that their nav computer was damaged and they needed to slave their ship to his to make it to the new rendezvous point. Unable to leave these people dead in the water with no hope of escape, he relented and slaved his destination to theirs and left the scene of his father's grave.
While offloading the supplies and personnel he carried off Hoth, the rebels in the other transport thanked him profusely for saving their lives. One had called him a Bulldog for being so tenacious in his pursuit of TIEs. A passing fighter pilot heard the comment and suggested he try his hand at being a fighter jockey. Andy had nothing but revenge in his heart and immediately took the pilot up on his offer. He sold his freighter to the Rebellion at a modest discount, and never looked back.
He spent the first year of his tour as a Rebel stationed on a backwater planet with minimal action. In the few light fights he did participate in, he distinguished himself well and earned a promotion, which was quickly revoked after Andy became inebriated and got into a scuffle with his timid commanding officer. He was busted back down to Flight Officer and transferred to Corsair Squadron, onboard the Mon Calamari Cruiser Liberty, where more action was there to be had and it was hoped that this increased action would provide more focus and purpose to the angry pilot.
For every step forward in the rank ladder, he always seemed to take a larger step back with his conduct outside of the cockpit, frequently being put up on discipline charges and spending many nights sleeping off a bender in the brig. Somehow, though, he was given a promotion to 2nd Lieutenant and it managed to stick through the battle of Endor, where he miraculously survived and earned another promotion to 1st Lieutenant and a move to Buccaneer Squadron onboard the new Renegade Wing flagship, the CRS Vigilant.
What changed? Not a thing. He's still a hard-drinking snub jockey with a hard-on for vaping Imperials in any way possible, legal or not. He's been known to take a run at disabled fighters to give them the release they deserve in his eyes, taking joy in the thought of them feeling the same helpless fear that his father did when they immolated his disabled ship at Hoth.
