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Alec Voelkel
| Alec Voelkel | |
 | |
| Admiral Alec Voelkel, Rheinland Military Main Fleet. | |
| Profile | |
| Origin |  Rheinland |
| Occupation | Admiral and (sub)-leader of the Rheinland Military |
| Gender | Male |
| Affiliation | Rheinland Military |
| Rank | Admiral (ret.) |
| Status | Inactive |
| Born | December 7th, 787 A.S., Planet Hamburg. |
| Died | Still alive. |
Alec Voelkel was one of the Admirals leading the Rheinland Military. After a troubled childhood and adolescence, Voelkel's enlistment into the Rheinwehr brought him a reputation and a career turning him into one of the most competent and well-known military officers alongside Malexa Malte and Gunther Rall. Aside numerous victories against Libertonians and the resolution of internal conflicts alike, he is well known for his radical political principles and stereotypical distrust shown to anyone not of Rheinland descent.
After a year of leading the Rheinwehr primary fleet, the Admiral resigned and moved to Baden Baden with his family.
History
Childhood
Alec Voelkel was born on planet Hamburg, into a family with average social circumstances. His father, Sven Voelkel, a Rheinwehr Feldwebel earned enough for the whole family to move out from their suburb two-rooms flat when Alec was two, into the outskirts of the Planet's capital city, so he wouldn't have to grow up in the hellish level of poverty caused by the ever-increasing industrialization. His mother, Maria Hoch was a Freelance merchant, one of the many to be found on Hamburg, dealing with middle-class luxury goods, such as low-grade jewels and exquisite clothing. Her occupation never was as successful as it was meant to be, so she entirely stopped conducting such business as her daughter and Alec's sister, Tanja Voelkel was born. Alec was five at that point.
Alec attended an elementary school located in the suburbs, just a few streets away from their house. During the minutes which he spent with walking, he always crossed a smaller privately-owned ship launchpad, not once witnessing smaller civilian vessels taking off and landing, despite the pad hardly being used. It is believed that had a huge effect on his later aims as well as a huge family tragedy that happened when Alec was 14.
Feldwebel Sven Voelkel was ordered to escort a Daumann convoy from Dresden to the Oder Shipyard, along with two of his comrades in arms. The convoy was ambushed in a trade lane and was fired upon by a wing of Red Hessian marauders. Feldwebel Voelkel's wing was forced to defend, but with the arrival of another Hessian wing, they found themselves outnumbered. Each of the Feldwebel's wingmen were shot down, as well as all the pilots being killed, but himself. Even though his ship suffered a massive degree of reactor meltdown, only his weapon systems, engines and life support systems were taken offline, but not the ship itself being ripped apart as a result of an explosion.
The Rheinwehr pilot had to witness the Daumann ships he had to protect being destroyed, then looted by more arriving Hessians, as well as a recovery vessel of an Junker design, before he froze to death in his ship's cockpit. Posthumously, he received a second to the highest decoration for armed service contributed to Rheinland.
Adolescence
The death of Alec's father left the family in chaos. Since there were no close relatives able or willing to help, Alec had to replace his father in his role of raising his sister, the 9 years old Tanja, while their mother took temporary jobs ranging from assistant administration to toilet cleaning. Thus, the attention the young man contributed to his sister was taken from his schooling. Only studying at home was out of the question at first, but eventually he stopped going to school, at all. He dropped from High School when he was 17, two years before graduating. Not only because he had to take care of his sister, but because he got acquainted with a small-time crime boss, leading a bunch of ex-workers to the path of thievery. Alec himself didn't join the gang, but tried producing his own instead.
Forming a group of people he took from disreputed institutes or uneducated families, he became a legend among the Hamburg youth, as well as a highly disrespected and feared vandal leader. The gang's motives were nothing but mere destruction of everything they claimed to be a "threat to the Rheinland youth". They damaged police patrol vessels, beat up lawyers, bankers and small-time politicians and were even charged with attempting to blow up a coffee shop.
Alec was eventually apprehended during a protest organized to support the Unioner movement. Alec was not there to emphasize his support for the workers' cause, simply to be able to participate in a meleé between the Police force and the protesters. His anticipations were wrong, the stormtroopers were in superior numbers and with superior equipment, as there was a high-ranking Unioner individual there himself. During the melee, he was rendered unconscious and was taken in to a police station.
He was trialled for nothing but the aggression he showed during the protest and had to spend three months in prison, during which, he miraculously developed an entirely different personality. He realized that his father died in protection of Rheinland, fighting against people like him, people who fought a senseless war without the slightest notion of motives, or motives no more than placing more money in one's pocket. He did not know much about the revolutionary movements, but he knew all that was enough to keep him away from one. He was not an "abused citizen" of any sort. He was simply ignorant.
Rheinwehr service
His first thing to do as his prison sentence was over was to sign up for Rheinwehr service. He promised his mother that he would earn enough money for her to be able to stop taking low-grade jobs that were necessary to provide Tanja an adequate childhood. He promised his mother that she would be proud, because he would be serving nothing but Rheinland itself. He meant every word he said and acted adequately.
Alec's training was difficult. Most of the characteristics he had as a feared vandal, such being the aggression and independence, were hard to carve off. It was remarkably hard for him to learn patience and obedience, but he was persistent in not only trying to do so, but to try the compensation of his lack of High-school education by taking classes in history, sociology and mathematics. Getting started was hard, but his training results leaped at the end of his first year. His piloting skills developed, his will to cooperate became perfect, although his disability to control his anger is still not contained.
His participation and even leadership in battles such as the Omega-3 joint operation, the Dresden liberation and numerous Liberty offensives earned him a prestige among both his comrades and leaders. At 26, he was promoted to Hauptfeldwebel and sent to officer training and schooling, where he finished with outstanding results.
Soon becoming a Major, Alec got entrusted with high command tasks, overseen by the Admiralty itself. His excellence regarding diplomatic situations and his skills to coordinate large-skill engagements soon earned him an early promotion to Vizeadmiral of the Rheinwehr in merely a few months after his initiation to the Major rank.
His most notable successes were achieved during his Vizeadmiral career. With over three dozen Liberty capital ships destroyed, earning the Liberty veteran medal, the Ace Service Medal, the Leadership excellence medal and filing over 50 reports of successful engagements, he became a living legend among his men. He shook hands with the Kanzler personally every time he resolved a notable crisis, eventually even getting the relations of Bretonia and Rheinland to a greater level.
As a full-fledged Admiral, Alec Voelkel used to share command of the Rheinwehr Hauptflotte with Gunther Rall until he disappeared to Liberty after his woman, Eva McDowell. The Admiral's schedule mainly consisted of coordinating strikes and recon operations towards Liberty territory, but he has often been seen during patrols in his standard-issue Wraith fighter as well. After being fed up with the requests of technology and dealing with enemy forces wishing to defect (up to Dreadnaughts), he entrusted most of his paperwork to his skillful secretary, Anna Kirsch.
At the end of his career, the Admiral got entangled with political issues in a more and more detailed manner. He preferred to ignore the decisions of the Bundestag, which he considered slow and overly bureaucratic, and took orders directly from the Kanzler. This behavior led many politicians and representatives of civilian corporate assets to suspect that Voelkel was intending to establish a military dictatorship under his personal rule, overthrowing the Bundestag and Chancellor Rheinhardt. This assumption was proven to be largely without a base, though it was true that the Admiral got more and more autonomous and politically aggressive in his final years, in addition to that, he also started to employ officers with a well known far-right political perception, such as the iconic Major Einar Harkonnen.
As the result of his actions, the relations with Bretonia, the IMG and the Junkers worsened notably, while he promoted the advancement of national companies and tightened ties with Kusari. The latter led him to coordinate an entire Rheinwehr fleet to promote the Kusarian boycott of Planet Kurile, an operation that resulted in a disaster.
Many people claim that a situation causing numerous civilian lives to be lost was also the work of Admiral Voelkel, though the truth is that he only responded to the aggressive Omega-7 expansion of the IMG with the same manners, issuing a blockade of Rheinland to IMG ships. This resulted in an almost open war, involving not only Rheinland and the IMG, but the Colonial Republic as well.
Resignation
As a result of the Omega-7 crisis, the Red Hessians obtained an alarming number of supporters, mainly from the ranks of miners and pacifist socialists who felt threatened by the aggressive actions of the Rheinland authorities. Despite peace negotiations between the IMG and Rheinland, the intensity of Hessian attacks in the Omega sector kept increasing, prioritizing Rheinwehr patrol vessels. Due to this influx and because of the Sigma case, bureaucracy tightened the grip around Admiral Voelkel, who was blamed by many as the catalyst of two events, indirectly causing the deaths of hundreds of Rheinland citizens, as well as Vizeadmiral Horst Steiner aboard the now destroyed Kreuzer Seydlitz.
Political pressure was eventually the one to force Admiral Voelkel to his retirement, aside his age. Despite that, his resignation was held with a ceremony, which many Rheinwehr personnel and Voelkel's former acquaintances attended. Despite his despotic, aggressive and hard-lined leadership style, he is remembered as an iconic and prominent leader.
After decades of service in the Rheinwehr, Admiral Alec Voelkel retired with a gruesomely large pension and bought a villa on Baden Baden, where he's enjoying the rest of his years along with his wife, Martha. Their son, Walther is continuing his career in officer school.
Off-duty occupations
Off-duty, he is known to be occupying himself with writing books and collecting military equipment as well as uniforms from olden eras. His largest spendings involve aside financing the reconstruction of the Hamburg suburb and buying his personal spaceship, a Tiger Shark. He made millions of credits worth of donations to museums, most notably the Berliner Kriegsmuseum, where his favorite piece of weaponry, a genuine Luger P08 is located. He contracted Daumann to replicate the pistol and produce a working version, which he uses as his personal sidearm.
Voelkel got married once, to the daughter of a Stuttgart farmer, Valeria Schuster. After five years of marriage, they divorced due to the fact that Alec rarely found time to pursue his personal interests of any sort, as such attend his private life. Currently, he is single, though rumors exist of a secret relationship between him and his secretary, Anna Kirsch. Although anyone bringing the subject up ended with a prison sentence or a long-term Omega-11 reassignment.
Personality traits and personal relations
Personality-wise, Voelkel is often harsh, hostile and denying to his men, but obedient and loyal to his superiors, to whom he displays a neutral and quiet personality. During patrols, he's not commonly seen to divert from assessing the field or discussing any subject unrelated to the operation being conducted, he also strictly orders his men to follow his example. Voelkel is a strict believer of employing a different personality on the field from the one off-duty.
Admiral Gunther Rall
Despite his young age, Voelkel shows total esteem and respect for Gunther Rall, whom he acknowledges as having superior talents in both flying skills and as a commander. He secretly adores Rall's skills to deal with people, especially subordinates. While Voelkel prefers to employ harsh manners and punishment to regulate, Rall can resolve insubordination with a few sentences said in a private conversation. Aside some of his immature actions, like his relation to Eva McDowell, Alec believes a few years will bring guaranteed chance in the mentality of the Admiral, making him a role model officer and leader.
Despite that, Rall's disappearance from the Rheinwehr did not seem to shock Voelkel at all. By malicious voices it is often assumed that Voelkel always envied Rall's rise in career and wanted to prove that he's more capable of leadership than the immature officer. In reality however, it is more possible that Voelkel wanted to wanted to resolve the change as swiftly as possible, giving internal confusion and anarchy no time to erupt.
Admiral Malexa Malte and Vizeadmiral August von Speer
Malte and Von Speer are the two people Voelkel considers his personal mentors and people to whom he owes most thanks for the development of his career since his rise to an NCO rank. August von Speer was the leader of the branch in which Voelkel was trained for the usage of fighters, thus he learned most of his knowledge regarding spaceships from the Vizeadmiral. Von Speer and Malte were the only superiors of Voelkel whom he never even secretly disrespected, despite the hardships to amend to the military regulations after his troubled adolescence. Voelkel thinks of their absence as a great deal of loss affecting the Rheinland military.
Henrik Drum
Henrik Drum was a former wingman and best friend of Alec Voelkel, but following Drum's secret relationship with Alec's sister, Tanja, the relations of the two persons deteriorated. Drum is believed to have been affected by nomad influence and liquid cardamine, which enhanced his feelings for Tanja, whom Alec fiercely protected. Drum became a victim of fierce paranoia and attempted killing Alec by nuking his gunboat, the Hansa, however as Alec survived the blast by jettisoning the weaponry in time, Drum deserted and left Rheinland.
Months later, Henrik Drum was apprehended again by Generalleutnant Felicia Drum who executed the deserter while escorting him to the Moselle's cell block. Voelkel was finally relieved that Henrik Drum is gone, but Felicia was almost prosecuted for killing the prisoner without a proper interrogation.
Tanja Voelkel
Alec has always been fiercely protective of his sister, Tanja Voelkel (#39), who also enlisted into the Rheinwehr. Alec did everything to prevent Tanja from choosing a similar fate, financing her education and training, but especially his caring for Tanja made her think of him as a substitute for the father they lost. Following her brother's footsteps, she enlisted in the Rheinwehr, eventually reaching the rank of Oberfeldwebel. Tanja's fragile personality makes Alec the most worried whenever she signs in for a patrol, no matter how skilled of a pilot and commander she is.
Evangeline A. McDowell
McDowell and her childish actions sparked intensive distaste from Voelkel, making him think of her as a menace to the Rheinwehr and an example of corruption. Even though most of her actions are not outright harmful, Voelkel wants to rid her of her uniform and the exceptional status she enjoys just because she's baring the child of Admiral Gunther Rall.
Libertonians
Voelkel radically hates everything of a Liberty origin, although he was taught to restrict his anger, even despite the war. He has made several attempts to amend the regulation of Liberty vessels to an outright ban, but most of his attempts failed. He continues to instruct his men to mistreat Libertonian shippers and communicates with all Liberty affiliates in a harsh and denying manner. Voelkel refuses to acknowledge even larger-scale defeats suffered from the Liberty Navy and their fearsome elite pilots, the Gold wing, thinking of such occasions as minor setbacks towards total victory.
Rheinland revolutionaries
The Rheinland revolution, he thinks of as something that was inspired by the influx of communism originating from the resurgent Coalition, which he considers the biggest menace Rheinland is there to face, eating the House internally. Countless political debates led Voelkel to give up on reasoning with most revolutionaries he encounters, especially when leading a wing. Often enough, he's quick with ordering his wingmen to dispatch such threats, usually attempting to engage in talks with the last surviving enemy. He treats every Rheinlander revolutionary as a communist, often employing the term "bolshevik" to counter their unjustified use of the term "fascist" when they are referring to loyalist forces.
Junkers
Formerly Voelkel has shown a great degree of despise for the Junkers, but ever since his meeting with McDowell, he tuned down his feelings. His proposal to storm Kreuzberg Depot and turn it into an ALG base has never been approved.
Kusarians, Bretonians, other foreigners
Due to his fierce loyalty to Rheinland and the nationalistic ideas he pursues, he behaves with natural, stereotypical distrust towards all foreigners (aka. Ausländers). In his opinion, the foreign powers and their hostile or indifferent behavior during the crisis situations in which Rheinland has been during the past two decades, leaves something to be desired. Despite all that, he understands the importance of Bretonia's assistance in the Omega sector, and he retains a neutral tone when the need of communication is dire.
There has been a change in Voelkel's recent mentality due to the escalation of conflicts Rheinland is there to face. It became more and more apparent to him that foreigner assistance is needed if Rheinland is to efficiently resolve such issues as the Omega crisis or the Liberty war. Since a personal meeting with Emperor Jien Kogen of Kusari, he formally phrased an agreement to tighten cooperation with the Kusari government and military forces.
Awards and Decorations
- Iron Cross
- Liberty Veteran Medal
- Knight's cross 1st class
- Ace Nachrichtendienst Medal
- Internal security decoration
- Leadership excellence decoration
- Ambassador badge
- Ace service medal
- Berlin’s shield decoration
- Dreadnaught destruction badge
- Reconnaissance badge
Ships
- Tiger Shark light fighter.
- Wraith very heavy fighter.
- Bergelmir bomber.
- The RNC-Hansa, a Rheinland Gunboat.
- The RNC-Seydlitz, a Rheinland Cruiser.
Related Rheinwehr personnel
- Major Philip Mauser, first officer of the RNC-Seydlitz.
- Hauptmann Michael Wittmann, first officer of the RNC-Hansa.
- Agent Ansgar Freyberg, occasional colleague, Rheinland Marinenachrichtendienst.
- Anna Kirsch, secretary of Admiral Voelkel.
- Feldwebel Laszlo Rajk - KIA - former wingman.
- Feldwebel Nikolai Sovok - KIA - former wingman.
- Gefreiter Yelena Vollkegel - KIA - former wingman.
