Jack of Harts

Dad retired so he could settle down and raise a family. Live the good life he had fought for so long to make sure other people could live. He wanted the American Dream. A house on a lake, a loving wife, a son that would make his hair turn grey, and days spent tossing a lure into the water. Don’t get me wrong here. He was by far the most dangerous man I knew growing up. It was obvious even to my young eyes. The thousand-yard stare they still call it. Sometimes he’d get it. And sometimes I’d see him looking at someone like he was measuring them up for a pine box. He never started a fight that I saw. But the few fights I saw others start he absolutely finished. No one ever won a fight with him until the day the Shang dropped a space station on him.

Dad officially retired from the Marine Corps over a century before The War. Not that anyone really stops being a Marine you understand, but there’s paperwork and all the official stuff that says you don’t work for Uncle Sam anymore. He officially spent the next century traveling all over the worlds and seeing the sights. He was actually working for the Cybernetic Council, doing all kinds of things that really shouldn’t be public knowledge. More interesting places and people and the like. What can I say? He did things and saw people, and a lot of good people are alive today because of it. And a fair number of the bad ones aren’t. He always tried to make the worlds better when he left. That’s what he told me while I was growing up. That was the real mission.

Dad was a genuine Space Marine for a century, and he did his best to live up to the reputation of the Corps. There were a rather large number of brothers and sisters in the mix before I was a twinkle in Mom’s eye. Some families would make a point of calling them half-siblings, but ours didn’t. Even the youngest were grown adults when I was young, so they were more like aunts and uncles to me. I saw them at reunions and holidays, and they’d come by to visit sometimes. Mom always had a guest room set up for them. Two once Dad helped me build my own little home away from home. They were always welcome, but they never stayed long. They had their own lives. Jobs and professions that always wanted them back as soon as possible. Dad didn’t have lazy kids.