“Nobody is coming to save the day, John. It's just us.
Jackal to Captain John Price
Captain Sterling (Present)
Lieutenant Sterling (2009)
Anubis was orphaned soon after her birth with her mother dying due to childbirth related haemorrhaging and her father being killed instantly outside the hospital due to a pedestrian-vehicle collision a mere five minutes after her birth. Her mother lived long enough to give her the name Anubis.
She was shortly after placed in the care of a trusted friend of her father's, a man named Sergei Morozov(†) who brought her to his home which he shared with a British man named Alistair Montgomery(†) where they often took in young children who had nowhere else to go, particularly girls. Jackal's early life was experienced under the pretence that unwanted girls are in abundance, but women are resilient, strong and underutilised in military settings.
The home was under strict influence of the catholic church and a number of nuns were involved in aspects of her upbringing, although Sterling does not remember them fondly. With a few other orphans including Dusk Wood, she was raised under strict training and pressure to become the elite soldier the world was missing - Morozov and Montgomery believed that the lines between fiction and reality were closer than once thought, and could be blurred even further.
She learned her way around every weapon and fighting style the men knew about as a young girl, and grew to be abnormally tall for her age, giving her an advantage over the other orphans she trained with, but was a setback when the nuns took their turn in her education. The nuns taught her to speak 10 languages, how to ‘speak properly’ in English, and to dance ballet as an element of flexibility and elegance.
By the age of 16, Sterling was proficient in the use of most weapons, and hand to hand combat, at which point she was enlisted in the British Army. Her quiet, brooding demeanour left her initially unpopular, but her ability to follow orders was unmatched. It was during her time here that Anubis was able to explore her own personality for the first time in her life - this was where she discovered a nature for jokes and a talent for charm and rebellion. While rarely outright breaking rules, Sterling often learned to bend them, and follow them in the most ridiculous of ways.
While having nothing to prove, her childhood training and creative ways of following orders (while resulting in some similarly creative punishments) made her graduation of the Royal Military Academy as a commissioned officer although hard work, relatively smooth. Anubis proved her worth and shortly became known for her stealth, strength and adaptability, after passing selection for special service commando and being badged a member of the SAS.
Sterling is an expert translator speaking the 10 most common languages in the world, although she is not known for her ability to create and maintain relationships - she may be charming, but it clashes with her bluntness and abrasive nature, so in diplomatic situations is often relied on as a translator for those with more of a knack for it, such as Captain John Price.
Anubis was, however, an exceptional leader - her capability for both brutality and compassion, talent for lies and truth in tandem, and respectable morals making her someone her team as a lieutenant could look up to - many of them following to the new unit in 2011.
In 2011 she was promoted to Captain, alongside Price, becoming the leader of an elite unit known only as Unit Tango and was unofficially tasked with similar capture or kill missions, often alongside Captain Price as their team specialised in similar aspects.
She often (especially in the past) clashed with Price, as he can be impulsive and hates being tied down by the rules and can take drastic action against orders, where Sterling prefers to find a cleaner way around the rules that tie her team's hands. She is noted as being maternal, caring, fiercely protective and considerate, rarely failing to get a laugh from her teammates, and never failing to check up on them after a mission; she is also known to have a determined, merciless streak and is not afraid of ‘getting her hands dirty’ in the slightest.
As a Lieutenant Sterling had taken part in several off record missions, including high profile assassinations and sabotages with the support of Unit Tango consisting of the following members:
Sergeant James “Jaime" Fairfax(†) - AKA Tango 02
Sergeant Alexandra "Lex" Drummond(†) - AKA Tango 03
Sergeant Lewis "Lew" Hargreaves(†) - AKA Tango 04