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Description
Burnaby
joined the British army in 1858 at the age of 16 and
resigned in 1885 to emigrate to Mars. When he
resigned he was a colonel in the Horse Guards, one
of the most fashionable regiments in the army, but
had managed to see considerable action during his
career. He has always been an aeronautics enthusiast
as well, having made numerous balloon ascents and
having built several aerial steam launches in the
early 1880s. The high point of his career was his
rescue of General Gordon from Khartoum by aerial
flyer in 1885. When the government decided later in
the year to place all aerial vessels under the
control of the navy, Burnaby resigned.
Burnaby was suffering from a heart ailment in
any case, and he decided to emigrate to Mars where the
slightly-lower gravity might help his condition. Upon arriving, he
built a powerful aerial steam vessel (the Penelope) and was
soon active along with the other Red Captains as an explorer,
privateer, and point man for British expansion on Mars. He is now
the most famous and respected of the Red Captains and has tremendous
influence with Her Majesty's government on Mars as well as many of
the neutral Martian princes.
Appearance: Burnaby is a remarkably big man, 1.93
meters tall, with a 120-centimeter chest (his height and massive
chest contribute to his popularity with the Martians, who often make
crude but good-natured jokes about the possibility of his having a
Martian ancestor). He is now 47 years old, and his dark-brown hair
is flecked with gray, but he is obviously still very strong (he was
widely-believed to be the strongest man in Europe when he was
younger and he sometimes demonstrates his strength by carrying a
pony under one arm). He has deep-set eyes and a serious face. He
generally wears an old, threadbare, black army patrol jacket and a
sun helmet and carries a heavy, four-barrel pistol in a holster at
his side. On his neck is a nasty, ragged scar, a souvenir of his
fighting in the Sudan in 1885. |
