MAJOR DEEJ UNIVERSE

Terry McCormick was born in Scotland into a life where nothing came easily.

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His early years were shaped by scarcity, hard work, and the sharp awareness that a broken machine could mean the difference between survival and disaster. In the communities Terry knew growing up, vehicles were not luxuries. They were lifelines. A working truck could bring food. A working boat could bring income. A working ambulance could decide whether someone lived long enough to reach a doctor.

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Terry became fascinated with machines because machines mattered.

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As a boy, he took apart anything he could reach. Bicycles, radios, engines, heaters, generators, farm equipment, broken appliances, and tools all became lessons. If it had moving parts, wiring, fuel, pressure, or a frame, Terry wanted to know why it worked and why it failed. He was not content to repair things by copying instructions. He wanted to understand the logic underneath them.

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That curiosity became talent.

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That talent became obsession.

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As a destitute teenager, Terry came across a stalled car on a remote road. The engine would not turn over, and the driver was suffering a heart attack. With no cell coverage and no nearby help, Terry repaired the engine quickly enough to drive the man to the hospital. Doctors later said the old man would have died if Terry had not acted.

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The man was Edward Dalton, a retired millionaire with no close family left in his life. Grateful and deeply moved, Dalton gave Terry a chance at a better future. He sponsored Terry’s education, opened doors to private schools and colleges, and became a surrogate father figure. Dalton once told Terry that if he had ever had a son, he would have wanted him to be like Terry.

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When Dalton died, Terry learned he was the sole beneficiary of Dalton’s estate, worth over 25 million Euros.

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Terry did not use the money to vanish into luxury. Remembering his own childhood, he sold the mansion, built a group home for orphaned children, and invested in scholarships for technically gifted students who lacked the money to pursue engineering education. He later earned a doctorate in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating summa cum laude.

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Terry went on to create patented technical designs, advanced vehicles, sensors, and aircraft systems. His work made him wealthy again, but his greatest personal pride was the Dalton Academy, a school and institute created to give young people the kind of chance Edward Dalton had given him.

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That dream was destroyed by Perry Dalton.

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Perry, Edward Dalton’s disowned son, arrived at Dalton Academy with members of The Exterminators, an evil paramilitary organization that targeted, killed, and dissected super-powered people. Perry had originally come searching for a mutant child, but when he discovered the academy’s connection to his father and learned that Terry had received what Perry believed should have been his inheritance, he exploded in rage.

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The attack became a massacre.

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Perry and his associates opened fire on staff and students, set the academy ablaze, and killed over 120 people. Terry arrived to find the buildings engulfed in fire and the grounds filled with death. When he learned Perry had escaped in a high-performance car Terry himself had built, Terry pursued him in another experimental vehicle.

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The chase became brutal and public, ending along the Scottish coastline. Terry rammed Perry’s vehicle off the road and into the sea. Perry survived, and Terry chose to rescue him rather than kill him, though he did not do so gently. GUARD personnel led by Rupert Reinhold arrived soon after and took Perry into custody.

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The aftermath nearly destroyed Terry.

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He attended every funeral. He gave what money he had left to the families of the dead. He created a memorial park where Dalton Academy once stood. Penniless and overwhelmed by grief, Terry reached the edge of suicide on a Scottish cliff overlooking the sea.

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Rupert Reinhold found him there.

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Rupert talked Terry down, convinced him to hand over the gun, and offered him a place in GUARD. Terry agreed, but only on the condition that he be trained like everyone else. He would attend GUARD Academy, earn his place, and then bring GUARD vehicle designs that would make even legendary engineers pause.

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Terry did exactly that.

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After graduating from GUARD Academy in half the usual time, he was assigned by Zhuo Cho to Transportation Command. From there, Terry and his teams began creating some of the most advanced vehicles in the world and beyond: aircraft, rescue transports, armored vehicles, specialized craft, ships, submarines, and eventually space-capable systems such as the GS-1 Aurora stealth fighter and Terracer-class starships.

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But Terry’s personal life carried its own wreckage.

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After his marriage, Terry had a drunken one-night stand with Fiona Kerr. He later learned that Fiona had given birth to a daughter, but by the time he tried to find them, both mother and child had disappeared. Terry carried the knowledge that he had a child somewhere in the world, but he was never able to locate her.

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That daughter, Maisie Fiona Kerr, survived a hard childhood. Fiona later died from a drug overdose, leaving Maisie to push herself forward through intelligence, discipline, and academic excellence. Maisie eventually earned a scholarship to GUARD Academy, unaware of the full importance of her connection to Terry. Only GUARD Academy's Commandant Marilyn Morse and the GUARD Resources Command, Zhuo Cho, currently know Maisie is Terry’s daughter.

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Terry later married Eileen Fraser, who became Eileen McCormick. She was the emotional counterweight to his mechanical intensity: steady, loving, sharp when needed, and patient enough to understand both his genius and his flaws. Together, they had two sons, Callum and Duncan.

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Then Eileen died.

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Her death was tied to a preventable rescue/transport failure — the kind of failure Terry could never forgive. A delayed response, poor vehicle readiness, bad conditions, weak systems, and mechanical failure combined into a tragedy that convinced Terry, permanently, that transportation failure is never abstract. It has names. It has faces. It leaves children without mothers and husbands without wives.

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After Eileen’s death, Terry did what he often did when pain became too large.

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He went to work.

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He buried himself in designs, inspections, rescue systems, safety standards, maintenance doctrine, and GUARD mobility programs. But while he was building better vehicles, his family was breaking behind him.

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Callum, his eldest son, grew to hate him. In Callum’s eyes, Terry had disappeared into engines and schematics while the family needed a father. That bitterness eventually pulled Callum toward the black-market organization CANIS, where movement, vehicles, stolen systems, and illegal distribution became twisted reflections of Terry’s life work. Callum became part of the very kind of system Terry despised: mobility without ethics, transport without mercy, machinery in service of greed.

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Duncan, Terry’s younger son, fled the family pain in a different direction. He moved to California and began living what he called “the high life,” chasing money, image, parties, and distance. Duncan is not evil, but he is avoidant. He does not want to become Terry, and he does not want to become Callum, so he tries to become untouchable instead.

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Terry sees both sons as unfinished rescues.

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One may already be too deep in the wrong world.

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The other may still be reachable.

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Through all of this, Terry continued to rise in GUARD. He became Commander of Transportation Command / TRANSCOM under GUARD Resources, Logistics & Infrastructure Division. Under his leadership, TRANSCOM manages the systems that allow GUARD to move: ground vehicles, aircraft, VTOL craft, ships, submarines, spacecraft, rescue platforms, armored transports, emergency evacuation systems, hangars, launch support, and fleet readiness.

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His command philosophy is direct:

If GUARD cannot move, GUARD cannot respond.
If GUARD cannot respond, people die.
If the machine fails, the mission fails.
If the mission fails, someone does not come home.

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Terry’s codename, “Gearhead,” began as an obvious joke about his obsession with machines. He accepted it immediately. He liked it because it was honest. He is a gearhead. He loves engines, thrust, torque, lift, pressure systems, hull shapes, landing gear, maintenance crews, and the beautiful ugly music of machines doing exactly what they were built to do.

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But inside GUARD, the name means more.

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Gearhead is the man who moves GUARD.

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He builds the vehicles that cross impossible terrain. He maintains the aircraft that beat storms. He upgrades the ships that carry aid into war zones. He helps design spacecraft that reach orbit and lunar transports that survive dust, vacuum, and distance. He demands that every vehicle have a purpose beyond looking impressive.

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To Terry McCormick, mobility is mercy.

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A rescue craft arriving in time is mercy.

An evacuation convoy escaping collapse is mercy.

A field team being extracted under fire is mercy.

A medical transport crossing a ruined city is mercy.

A lunar rover finding stranded personnel before oxygen runs out is mercy.

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He does not always say it poetically. He is more likely to grumble about fuel lines, suspension tolerances, faulty seals, and idiots who ignore maintenance schedules.

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But the truth remains.

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Terry McCormick builds machines because machines can save lives.

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And in GUARD, that makes him indispensable.

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