Jack of Harts

Procyon was the key to our first offensive campaign of The War. The Russians had decided to involve themselves in The War with the Shang and their Chinese puppets, and so the Western Alliance decided to show them how bad an idea that was. Louis Mattioli was right there at my side through most of that offensive. We argued about everything from politics to religion. Star Trek or Star Wars. Whether a proper sky was blue or red. You name it, we argued about it. But when it came to shooting Russians, we were always in sync. And one of the things he’d picked up on Mars was a fluency in Russian that was impressive. He could pass for a native speaker, and he used that more than once to confuse the enemy. Can’t tell you how many times he got onto their command channels and ordered some poor Ivan out of position before taking advantage of the momentary confusion. The man was an artist at confusing our foes, and it was a pleasure to watch him work.