A native of southern Kansas, Aaron Whittaker wanted nothing more out of life than a modest living and a family of his own. He inherited his family's farm at age twenty-two, after his parents died in a fire, but faced bankruptcy a year later thanks to the Crash of 1929.

Using the meager proceeds from the sale of the farm, he started a ranch in northeastern Oklahoma. Drought plagued the ranch initially, but the final blow was delivered from the air: an unidentified air patrol used Whittaker's animals and home for target practice, shattering his ranch, killing his wife, and destroying his dreams. Whittaker claims the pilots were Texas Rangers, though this has not been proven.

Regardless, Whittaker repaired one of the few pieces of equipment he'd saved from the farm—an old, under-powered cropduster—and outfitted it with armor and a pair of machine guns. He attacked Texas Rangers wherever he could find them, launching a one-man vendetta against his enemies for six months. His attacks did little more than annoy the Rangers, and soon Whittaker found himself penniless and nearly starving, with the Texas Rangers hunting him. "Marshal" Bill Redmann, an ex-Ranger turned mercenary and pirate leader, found Whittaker and offered him a real chance at "justice against Texas."

Redmann improved Whittaker's plane—the Avenging Amy—though he kept his new pilot on a short leash. Whittaker accompanied Redmann's gang on several sorties against Republic of Texas and Confederation of Dixie shipping.

Whittaker soon realized that Redmann's idea of justice was worse than the atrocities that had been inflicted on his home and family. Aaron Whittaker is one of the few pilots to quit Redmann's band and live. Flying north (into the People's Collective) for as long as his money and his plane held out, he reached an airfield in Omaha, where he applied for a position as a mechanic. The local militia commander, testing the young pilot, was amazed at how well Whittaker could handle his beat-up old cropduster. Instead of a mechanic's position, Aaron Whittaker was offered training on a patched-together PR-1 Defender. In his first battle, defending a grain zeppelin from Lakota renegades, Whittaker tore into the opposing squadron with skill born in his desperate days of flying an inadequate aircraft against better-trained men and women.

He put the PR-1 through paces even hardened veterans had never attempted, claiming three "kills" and an assist. That pattern repeated itself over the next several years, as Whittaker pulled out all the stops in defending his new home. Though the People's Collective generally disapproves of pilot nicknames (believing that all men are equal comrades under the Collective's laws) they occasionally allow a commanding officer to bestow such a distinction. His superiors dubbed Whittaker "Easter" after his twentieth kill, commenting that Whittaker had shown "more surprises than a child's Easter basket. And certainly he's walked his way out of several graves up there. Our Savior watches over us all, but it seems He takes a special hand in Aaron's life."