Victor Golovkin

Victor Golovkin
Golovkin's identification photograph.
Biographical information
Real name	Victor Ivanovich Golovkin
Also known as	The Ace of Spades
Nationality	Mechanocratic Russia
Born	24 September 2122
Age	29
Physical description
Eye color	Red optical prosthesis
Hair color	Raven-black
Ethnicity	Machine Race
Height	202cm
Weight	122kg
Blood type	Military-grade synthblood
Career and family information
Affiliation(s)	MAF, Spetsnaz
Occupation	Colonel
Notable family	Ivan (father) Ekaterina (mother)

"Am I optimistic? Feh. I've come too far along in life to start spouting promises I know I can't keep. But now that you've made me think about it, the future does look rather bright. All I can hope for myself, for Elena, Tokarev, Marilova, for that poor bastard whose lover met her end by my hand, for Riva and Nathan, for everyone, is that it stays that way."

~ Golovkin writes in his diary about the Lenin Affair.

Introduction

Victor Golovkin is a Colonel in the Mecharussian Armed Forces and the commanding officer of the Special Purpose Guard Brigade's Alfa Group. A former skinhead hailing from Nizhniy Novgorod, he is also notable for being the love interest of General Elena Trotskaya and her second-in-command.

Background

Golovkin spent much of his early life in Nizhniy Novgorod, close to the capital territories of the Mechanocracy. He never saw much of his father, Ivan, who was away almost constantly with a secret state research project, leaving him in the care of his mother, Ekaterina. As she was a travelling populist, the young Golovkin would be surrounded by pro-Mechanocracy propaganda throughout his childhood. His earliest memory of his mother is of her reading Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? to him at bedtime, aged three. He would also frequent the countryside while Ekaterina preached to the settlements outside of the cities about the Mechanocratic ideology, becoming familiar with the ways of the wastes - and most importantly, with how to defend himself from mutants.

Acquiring his very first augmentation, an optical enhancement, at thirteen years old, the young Golovkin would be drawn to leading a skinhead gang when he returned to Novgorod. Like other skinheads and especially those of his age, he grew to despise people who consigned themselves to the local Organic Ghetto, believing that they were actively rejecting the gifts offered by the Machine Race and insisted on being racially-inferior wastrels. He and his group would frequent the Ghetto to attack and rob hapless organics unable to defend themselves against a group of angry cyborgs.

Golovkin's worldview, however, would change sharply following his experience of the violent Red Monday pogrom in 2137, when he was fifteen. Horrified by the sight of the supposedly-noble Machine Race beating down, raping and torture-murdering women and even children (the harassment, let alone killing, of children being a taboo in skinhead culture), he would become deeply disillusioned toward the Mechanocratic ideology. Upon revealing his concern to his mother, the two would have a heated argument and she kicked him out of the house. As his father was killed in 2133 by the traitorous general Anton Goremykin and his gang having disbanded after internal disagreement, he had little recourse but to join up with the Mecharussian Armed Forces. Using his experience in leadership and weapons skills to sign up for an officer course, he would excel at the course and become a fully-fledged Lieutenant by 2141.

Deployed along with his regiment to fight in the Trail of Bones campaign in the Second Russo-European War, his first taste of proper combat against Federation troops was the battle of Kosice - where he would, for the first time outside of propaganda, watch the legendary Red Tigress in action. He would eventually meet her in the fierce battle of Vienna, where she would rescue his squad after they were trapped in the city centre. Unbeknownst to him, his father had mentored her in the Chthonia Programme, and so Trotskaya would take him under his wing. Golovkin also became notorious among his regiment for inventing a game out of using spider-bombs to destroy Federal Schlachtross heavy tanks - because the tanks' ammunition storage was located at the bottom of the hull, they were known to fly very high if the ammo rack was exploded.

After the war, Golovkin learned that his father was responsible for mentoring Trotskaya from the woman herself, and of his death at Goremykin's hands. It was his own initiative to remain at the General's side as her loyal second-in-command, initially to learn how to be as strong a fighter as her. The purpose of this was so that he would never allow himself to succumb to the peer pressures that forced him to kill in Red Monday again. However, he and Trotskaya grew a strong emotional attachment to each other - he finally regained a purpose in life (to serve and help her any way he could in repayment for the compassion she showed him in the war), and she had someone with whom she was able to confide her innermost thoughts. Even so, they were able to keep their relationship platonic until 2151, where they finally professed their love for each other.

Personality

Golovkin has a personal moral code that he abides by to the best of his ability, the most important tenet of this being that everyone deserves a second chance. It is for this reason, and his bitter teenage experiences, that he shies away from needlessly harming and killing anyone - even going as far as to disobey orders if he believes that someone's death or injury will only cause more harm than good. In addition, he is fiercely defensive towards his allies, more than willing to sacrifice himself if their survival can be guaranteed. However, he has also demonstrated a capacity for recklessness that often hampers his ability to reason, a trait that makes itself most apparent when he is under pressure. It is also observed that he is unnerved by being around organics and particularly Frenks, likely a relic from his skinhead years.

Golovkin also performs medicine as a hobby, having been fascinated by cybernetics in particular since he was with his mother. He is so proficient at his art that his peers often comment that he would make a better doctor than a soldier - to which Golovkin's usual reply is 'why can't I be both?' - with many of the advanced augmentations in his own body being personally designed and implemented (with help from a Caretaker bot) by himself. On one occasion, he was able to jury-rig the arm-piece of a suit of 6B45 powered armour to use as a temporary replacement for a lost limb, and even constructed a functioning prosthetic leg from junk that was lying about.

Notable Appearances

Main Canon

• Golovkin appears as a deuteragonist in To Struggle in the Way of Allah, assisting Trotskaya with Operation Cerberus. After augmenting Mendoza and Radio, he returns to fight with the joint Frenco-Spetsnaz task force in the Battle of Tora Bora.

Alternative Canon

• Golovkin and Alfa Group make a brief appearance in PTFS In Chaos, where they are responsible for the capture of Synkomese technology for Mecharussian use.
• He is the Mecharussian protagonist in Access Violation, participating in Operation Darkhammer - where he leads the rescue of the missing Space Marines after the destruction of the MSS Vladimir Lenin dreadnought.

Trivia

• He has much in common with Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist: in addition to sharing a military rank, they are both good-natured characters who are burdened by regret for past atrocities. Golovkin also names the soldiers of Alfa Group after playing cards, referencing Mustang's titling his own close subordinates after chess pieces. He also shares a strong interest in mechanical prosthetics with Winry Rockbell from the same anime/manga.
• As he had his right arm reconstructed by the Sidh doctor Heinrich Krauss after he lost it during Operation Darkhammer, he (along with Tokarev, who lost his leg) technically possesses the most advanced augmentation in the entire Frencoverse.