Adam Andrews

For other uses of the name Adam, see here.

Adam Andrews
Adam as a child in February 2531.
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Arcadia
Born:	2523
Spouse(s):	Dan (husband)
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Male
Political and military information
Affiliation:	Optican
Rank:	Chief executive officer

Adam Andrews is the CEO of Optican, a human megacorporation involved in medical technologies. As a child, Andrews was orphaned during the Covenant attack on Arcadia, leading to his inheritance of the Optican corporate empire from his parents.

Biography

Early life

As a child, Andrews and his family would often travel to Arcadia on holidays. On February 9, 2531, the family were present in Arcadia City during the midst of an attack by the Covenant. As a child, Adam had a habit of wandering off alone throughout the city to visit the various museums, chase drymanders, and watch Banta-class transports in the city spaceport—something which meant he was separated from his parents when the Covenant attacked the city. During the battle, Adam hid inside the Arcadia City train station with the hopes of trying to find a train to transport him away from the fighting—though was ultimately found by Sergeant John Forge of the UNSC Marine Corps and transported to evacuation. When initially found, Adam was trapped in the train station due to the failure of the doors, and as a child was not strong enough to manually open them. Forge characteristically made his presence known to Adam by offering to perform a magic trick—before prying the doors open and putting Adam in the passenger seat of his Gauss Warthog. Adam asked Forge if he had any other magic tricks, to which Forge replied that the next would be stalling the Covenant and getting everyone offworld. During the drive to the evacuation transport, Adam noticed the ace of spades card nestled in Forge's shoulder pauldron. Due to Forge never having introduced himself formally, he would stick in Adam's memory as "the magician" long after the battle was concluded.

During the evacuation, Adam's parents had boarded transport Cargo 3—a vessel which ultimately attempted to evacuate too early in the battle—and was subsequently shot down by Covenant Oghal-pattern Banshees. Adam was spared this fate and had been taken to a different ship. Once the fighting was over, Adam found himself an orphan, and was instead adopted by his aunt and uncle. His newfound parents had difficulties with raising Adam as they had never intended to have children of their own, though Adam noted later in life that despite that, they did care for him well. During the time immediately after the battle, Adam was treated well, though eventually the special treatment stopped as the trauma of losing his parents faded into memory. In this time, Adam would wonder what it had been like for his parents in their final moments, and would sometimes get angry that they had never attempted to look for him. However, as he grew up and learned more about the battle, his position on the matter shifted as he realised there was no realistic way that anyone could have fought through the crowds to get to an evacuation shuttle. Instead, he felt an inescapable guilt that although his wandering had allowed him to survive, it meant his parents' final moments were filled with worry for their missing son.

CEO of an interstellar megacorporation

The other outcome of Adam's survival was that he had inherited the Optican corporate empire, originally founded by his parents. This pushed him into an academic career, in which he went to university while at the same time learning how to manage a company. Around 2541 he had an interest in an undefined sport, though not for a particular team—his interest was fuelled by the engineering work done by the people behind the scenes to advance the health and safety of the sport, and realised that an Optican sponsorship deal would be appropriate. By the age of 22, he still faced pushback from the Optican board of directors—who were reluctant to have to work for someone so much younger than them—though his majority stake in the company meant that they could put up little actual resistance. The loneliness that he experienced as a result of having to balance university studies with managing an interstellar corporation eventually saw him establish a romantic relationship with his then-roommate Dan, who he would later go on to marry.

After the end of the Human-Covenant War in 2552, Adam continued to use Optican as a tool to help in the rebuilding of humanity. With a new Unified Earth Government initiative pioneered by President Ruth Charet to rebuild the UEG's infrastructure and a health plan for the survivors of the war, Optican (and Adam) was front-and-centre. This saw him dealing with subjects as varied as artificial limbs, advanced wheelchairs, instant-application medigel, physical therapy, mental health, and the study and treatment of diseases from dozens of worlds—all of which had been spread thanks to the immense movement of refugee populations in the war. Unusually however, one of the very first partnerships Adam invested in following the war's conclusion was a partnership with Misriah Armory—a military-industrial corporation usually known for building weapons for the United Nations Space Command. The Optican-Misriah partnership had resulted in the creation of the EV-44 Nightingale—a tiltrotor aircraft and brainchild of Adam Andrews, originally intended as a purely medical support aircraft though eventually turned into a highly customisable airframe that could support "the best of both worlds."

In 2560, Andrews was involved in the writing and recording of an autobiography, Not Far from the Tree: The Autobiography of Adam Andrews. During the recording sessions for the book, Andrews found it difficult to recall some of the earlier and more painful memories of his life. These included his experiences during the battle of Arcadia in 2531, and his rescue by UNSC Spirit of Fire forces, and triggered several flashbacks to memories of his childhood. The recording sessions for the audio book kept Adam awake for over thirty-six hours at a time.

Adam's recollections of his evacuation from Arcadia had also brought with it a curiosity about the battle itself, and the "magician" that had saved him from the Covenant. As such, throughout his adult life, Adam began to research Spirit of Fire and her mysterious disappearance following the conflict on Arcadia—even sending scout teams to the planet itself to scour the glasslands in search of evidence of who had been present in 2531. One such scout team deployed to Fort Deen ultimately led Adam to a region of Arcadia that had escaped glassing during the Covenant return to Arcadia a decade later—a Forerunner ruins complex located deep in the jungle. During the original battle in 2531, the location had been the site of a Spirit of Fire firebase deployment, and the destruction of a Covenant R'awuw-pattern Scarab assigned to defend it. Thirty years later, the site remained hidden and untouched, with the detritus from the battle left to rot.

The re-emergence of the New Colonial Alliance and their raiding in the Outer Colonies in mid-2559 served to convince Adam that the UNSC was no longer able to defend the worlds it was sworn to protect. As such, he began to pivot Optican's military-industrial relationship towards helping colonies defend themselves. This was done primarily through applying Optican's specialisms towards the research and creation of home-grown supersoldiers inspired by the UNSC's Spartans. In September 2559, he began to establish contacts with a number of organisations on Venezia, seemingly including the Yonhet power broker M'raad, who had begun his own program of Janissary supersoldiers for mercenary use. Around this time he was also put into contact with Nor Fel, a Kig-Yar smuggler active in the post-war galaxy. Adam's relationship with Nor Fel would prove fruitful the following year; in exchange for the defunct Arcadia Scarab's powerful focus cannon, Adam would be provided several crates of highly illegal rumbledrugs—improvised "super soldier serum" originally used by insurrectionist forces decades earlier. With the UNSC's infrastructure dismantled during the Created uprising and so many of humanity's defenders now missing in action, Adam felt that it was his place to step in and use the resources he had access to to begin filling in the gap.

During Adam's black market dealings at the Scarab site, SPARTAN-II Team Omega were deployed to covertly infiltrate the region. Following Adam's departure, they assassinated the three Kig-Yar who Adam had dealt with, with the goal of allowing Nor Fel to think her representatives had simply been waylaid - and Adam none the wiser.

Personality and traits

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Production notes

Adam Andrews first appeared in Halo Wars as a civilian character in the level Arcadia City, albeit without his surname. His appearance originated from a contest sponsored by 7-Eleven and Mountain Dew; the prize was the opportunity to provide some voice acting for the game. The contest's adolescent winner and his mother visited the Ensemble Studios offices in December 2007. However, legal requirements around voice acting for adults led to the mother recording voice lines instead. Subsequently, in Halo Wars, only Adam's mother can be heard, calling out for Adam and asking others if they have seen him. The achievement The Real Winner—the name likely a reference to the contest—requires the player to save Adam by interacting with a console for the tram system station, freeing him, and escorting him to Cargo 2. Adam has very low health and dies almost immediately if he is shot or damaged by any enemy, making his survival one of the more difficult achievements to unlock.

Gallery

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  A stylised silhouette depiction (back) of Andrews behind Omega Team on the cover art for Halo: Hippocratica.

List of appearances

• Halo Wars (First appearance)
• Halo: Hippocratica
• Halo: Venezian Sonata