Matthew Lehman

Biography
Matthew Victor Lehman is an Imperial-aligned freelance bounty hunter. Though not particularly patriotic, he generally favors the Empire and has been known to defend some of its more controversial practices.

Lehman is in his mid-thirties and has been a member of the Pilot's Federation for roughly a decade. He grew up on a non-descript Imperial Earth-like planet along the Federation border. He has never divulged the exact location of his home, but has revealed that it was a former Federal world that was lost to the Empire. He had an uneventful childhood, his loner personality shaped by the rural upbringing he had with his parents.

Upon graduating, Matthew (known commonly as "Matt") was yearning for a life beyond his placid upbringing. He enlisted in the Imperial navy, and to his chagrin was assigned to duty as a dock technician. He served in several different locations during his enlistment term, never liking his job but swiftly growing attached to the ships that came and went. Early in his time in the navy, Matt began to save his earnings to pay the tuition for Pilot's Federation academy, even eschewing some of the more traditional debauches common to sailors on leave.

Upon earning his pilot's wings, Matt embarked on his career as an independent pilot. He struggled to find work that his Sidewinder could handle, however, and fell into a pattern of data running. While abundantly available, this low-paying work barely allowed him to keep his ship flying. Upon suffering a malfunction in the Eravate system, Matt was forced to scavenge some illegal rebel transmissions and sell them on the Ackerman black market. Though successful in doing so, he was astonished to see how much more profit there was in illegal behavior than legitimate. The experience also gave him his first underworld contact: Rax.

From then on, Matt performed a mix of legal and illegal jobs, working his way into an Eagle and then a Viper Mk III. From a relatively early point in his career as a pilot, Matt discovered that he had a talent for combat and tracking, leading him to become a bounty hunter. Despite his success, he was never fully comfortable with the morality of killing for money, even if the targets in question were criminals.

His skill as a combat pilot eventually drew the attention of the Chapterhouse of Inquisition, who sent Gideon Hathaway to recruit Matt into their ranks as a de facto assassin. Despite initial misgivings for working for an Imperial senator (a stint as a private auxiliary for Denton Patreus had left him extremely disillusioned with Imperial service), Matt accepted the offer and continues to work for the Chapterhouse on a freelance basis.

As a pilot, he has had several significant adventures. One of these resulted in an unlikely romance: his chance meeting with Kyndi McCaskill, a smuggler who partnered up with Matt on a hunt for an alien artifact. Though the two were able to locate and acquire the artifact, she betrayed him, leaving him paralyzed and stranded after a false seduction. After tracking down her apartment, he confronted her only to find out that she was unable to complete the retrieval job, being forced to jettison the artifact after it caused mass system failure on her ship.

Reluctantly, Matt again teamed up with Kyndi to complete the mission. This time, they were able to deliver the artifact and sell the ship of the criminal underling who had in turn been hunting Kyndi. Awash with credits, the two celebrated with Matt's friends (including Rax, the one who gave Matt the job of finding the artifact in the first place) and retired to a luxury hotel suite, where they made love and- in Matt's mind, at least- laid the foundations of a future partnership. However, when he awoke she was gone, leaving only a cryptic note. Despite the seeming finality of the way that Kyndi left, the two have had several subsequent adventures together, gradually increasing their emotional and romantic bond while conspicuously avoiding most forms of conventional commitment.

Matt has also worked with other figures, including: Nova Cassidy, with whom he teamed up to perform a salvage job and ended up in the midst of a corporate conspiracy; Cassius Fox, a commander with Lavigny's Legion who gathered the Imperial support necessary to rescue a Kumo-held slave depot, and Tanith Low, with whom he partnered (reluctantly, after suffering a disabling mishap reminiscent of his first time with Kyndi) to bring down a particularly dangerous criminal.

Most recently, Matt has found himself increasingly involved in the toxic power politics of the Pegasi sector. This is most notably observed in his relationship with Marrakech Morgan, the daughter and heir of the infamous Rabat Morgan. Sent as an unofficial envoy by the Chapterhous to cement relations with a local pirate lord, Matt found himself unwittingly married to Marra through participation in a grisly local Chun warrior-mating ceremony. As time went on, Matt and Marra grew to partially trust each other, their time ending on a note of romantic tension.

As time passed, Marra grew in power within the ranks of Black Omega. Eventually, she was able to project this power across the bubble, tracking down and threatening Matt after a romantic night with Kyndi. Marra was able to leverage his affection for the purple-haired smuggler to compel him to return to Pegasi. There, he performed some dangerous wetwork for the outlaw, further cementing her hold on power. Throughout the ordeal, their relationship developed into a volatile mixture of distrust, manipulation, and sexual tension. In the end, Marra got what she wanted but was able to rationalize a way to keep Matt on the hook, virtually guaranteeing that the two haven't seen the last of each other.

Personality
Matt is combination of the cocky machismo typical of bounty hunters and seldom-revealed emotional introspection. He is also known for his tendency to make irreverent light of even dire situations. Though generally comfortable within his own skin, he continues to fight a losing inner battle against his moral demons. Outside the cockpit, his pursuits are typically of a straightforward, carnal nature: red meat, Old Sol whiskey, and paid companionship are some of his more well-established post-bounty-hunt habits.

With the job-to-job lifestyle typical of freelance pilots, Matt has a way of sometimes impulsively following his whims. The most notable of these times was when he abandoned Denton Patreus's expeditionary force the day before it was scheduled to jump into Pegasi in favor of responding to a cryptic message from Kyndi. Other times, his impulses are the result of a crisis of conscience, as when he took an impromptu leave of absence from Chapterhouse work to search for a little girl who he had personally displaced while in Patreus's service.

Though not a dedicated lady's man, Matt sometimes finds himself in romantic dalliances with his female partners- Kyndi being the prime example. He has also found himself in amorous company with Nova Cassidy and Jemine Caesar, with whom he had a one night stand after a near-run bounty hunt. Interestingly, he also maintains a sexually tense relationship with Marrakech Morgan, whom he simultaneously fears, distrusts, and is attracted to.

Overall, Matt is a man who generally tries to do the right thing, even when he finds himself in morally compromising situations. That being said, he isn't above a benevolent lie when he believes that it serves a noble purpose (as when he falsely reassured Nova that they hadn't killed any innocents during their Lysenko adventure). In the same vein, Matt is also not without his dark side and share of self-doubt. He is especially leery of spending time in Pegasi, feeling the lingering appeal to his darker tendencies even after he's returned from the sector.

Owned Ships

 * Fer-de-Lance - Inevitable Betrayal
 * Vulture - Hand of Blue

Sold Ships

 * Viper MKIII - The Professor
 * Eagle MKII - Green Salsa Avenger
 * Sidewinder - Goddamn Hell-Bitch

Notes and Trivia
- Matthew V. Lehman and the writer of the Reaper Diaries have almost the exact same name. The author had no idea that writing would become the hobby that it did, and so named his Inara account after his in-game account, which in turn was his real-life name.

- The author's real-life middle name is "Virgil". He lampoons himself in Redemption, where Matt is given the alias "Virgil Titmouse". Several characters mock the ridiculousness of the name.

- There are several Star Wars references in the dialogue, especially Han Solo lines.

- Matt's last two ships, the Inevitable Betrayal and the Hand of Blue, are Firefly references.