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Jacobi was always trying to live up to his Air Force Recruiter Father’s idea of what a GI Joe should be. He was never really good enough for him, though he tried to join the ROTC at one point. Unfortunately, his eyes were just barely bad enough to disqualify him from flying, but he found a job in research and development after graduating from MIT. He also had a knack for building things and making things that break other things - missiles and such. He liked breaking things.

He was the project lead when a detonator went off too early and two people were killed. Jacobi was fired and the Air Force essentially made him unhirable from there on out. Two years later, he meets Warren Kepler at a bar. Kepler recruits him to Goddard Futuristics. They work together for years, with Kepler training him up to be an elite agent, capable of following orders, any orders, and doing the job in front of him to the best of his ability. Eventually, Kepler introduces him to Alana Maxwell. Jacobi instantly warms to her, and the three of them (Kepler, Maxwell, Jacobi) quickly become one of the best SI-5 teams at Goddard.

While working for Goddard, Jacobi does all that he’s asked to do. Their missions enable Goddard to build roads, develop clean energy facilities, repopulate the rainforest, while killing people, torturing them, blackmailing them, and, at one point, even blowing up a hospital.

They are called to the Hephestus, a space station circling the star Wolf 359. En route, they spot Doug Eiffel's, comm’s officer of the Hephestus, destroyed ship freely flying through deep space and intercept it, rescuing Eiffel. They reunite Eiffel with the crew of the Hephaestus, then proceed to repair the heavily damaged station. Kepler takes over as commanding officer and demotes Minkowski to navigations officer. When Eiffel tells him that he's working for a psychopath (Cutter), Jacobi, Maxwell, and Kepler all agree that they know and that they don’t mind. This causes tension between the two teams.

They start working towards the “contact event,” the contact between The Listeners, the aliens who are using the star as a transport, and the Hephestus crew. When they are working on a module outside of the Hephestus, Eiffel, Jacobi, Maxwell and Lovelace are locked together during an electrical storm. Jacobi comes in from the outside and they all begin to play cards. They hear a sound outside and an internal comms call. When they answer it, it sounds like Jacobi is asking to come inside, only Jacobi is inside. They soon figure out that if the Listeners can copy voices (which they have in the past), then maybe they can copy people, too. Jacobi demands that they leave it outside, but the storm will kill it. Jacobi even pulls a gun on them to force them to keep it outside. Maxwell makes him see reason. Eventually, they decide to let it in, but Lovelace had already disabled the doors so that they couldn’t open them. The comms stay open and they listen to the copy who thinks that it’s Jacobi, with all of Jacobi’s memories, dying in the electrical storm outside. Jacobi begs them to turn off the comms, but they don’t.

During this time, Eiffel, Minkowski, Lovelace, and Hilbert begin planning a mutiny against the SI-5 crew. The insurrection occurs hours before the contact event, led by Eiffel's plan. Jacobi and Maxwell capture Eiffel and Lovelace, and Kepler uses them to push the other team to surrender. Kepler threatens to shoot one of them if Minkowski and Hilbert did not give up. He points a gun between Eiffel and Lovelace and begins to choose which he would shoot with "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe". About to land on Eiffel, Lovelace interferes. She mocks Kepler and he changes his mind and threatens Lovelace's death to Minkowski. Minkowski does not surrender, and Lovelace is shot and killed. Maxwell is killed by Minkowski in retaliation for Hilbert’s death in an explosion, orchestrated by Jacobi. Kepler and Jacobi are eventually apprehended and brought to the funeral Eiffel held for Lovelace, Maxwell, and Hilbert. During this, Lovelace comes back to life, and Kepler reveals that this was not the original Lovelace but a “copy” of Lovelace created by The Listeners. These copies have all the memories of the people they copied and believe that they are those people. They also essentially...cannot die. This knowledge causes a rift between Kepler and Jacobi, who thought he knew all Kepler's plans. After the events of the funeral, Kepler begins to talk to Eiffel, eventually taunting him about his daughter. Eiffel, enraged, punches Kepler. Eiffel pauses for a moment, before continuing on with two more punches in quick succession. Kepler uses that moment to overpower Eiffel and grab his gun, then takes him as a hostage to try and convince Minkowski to free Jacobi. Lovelace then appears behind Kepler, and Kepler loses his advantage.

Jacobi eventually grows angry at Kepler, blaming him for Maxwell’s death. He takes command of the Hephaestus while Eiffel is outside the station. Claiming that he’s planted a bomb on the engine, he lures Lovelace into the engine room and seals her in. He forces Minkowski to bring Kepler to him. Kepler, thinking that this is their plan B to get free, doesn’t know what Jacobi really has planned until Jacobi tells Minkowski to point the gun at Kepler and shoot him between the eyes. She refuses and eventually turns the gun on Jacobi. Jacobi counts down until exploding the ship and Minkowski plays Russian Roulette with him until they both admit that they were each bluffing. Jacobi never planted a bomb and Minkowski had emptied the bullets.

They realize that Eiffel has disappeared outside the ship and set about to finding him. Before they can, however, Cutter finds them. When Cutter takes command of the Hephaestus, Jacobi is brainwashed with most of the crew and saved only by Lovelace’s blood. He joins with Minkowski, Lovelace, and Eiffel to form a plan against Cutter. After Kepler's death, Jacobi traps Riemann, a high ranking but unofficial black ops member of Goddard, and kills him in an explosion.