Jack of Harts

Charles kept us Cowboys working after our commanders were blown out of the sky. He stepped up, took command, and managed to forge links with all the other units still defending Fort Wichita. The Shang had us on the ropes, but Charles took us out on a flanking maneuver that relieved the Peloran squadron. And that allowed the Peloran to pull out of the line and do what they did best. Hit and fade and hit again. And since we had hyperdrives, Charles got us brought into their datalinks so we could follow them. We about burned up our hyperdrives trying to keep up with them, but we helped them break the Shang’s flanks. That forced the Shang to reconsider their attack. They could still destroy Fort Wichita, but then we would cripple them. They chose to withdraw. That made us the victorious heroes and earned all of us some serious brownie points.

Charles came through at the Battle of Fort Wichita. The Shang had done a real good job shooting commanders all over the battle. It was chaos. The fleet-wide datalinks were down and the chain of command was totally compromised. Fort Wichita was coming apart. Most of the naval squadrons were smashed to one degree or another. And half our fighter squadrons were scattered as well. I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time because some really brilliant commanders were grabbing everything they could get a handle on and holding whatever lines they could establish. Those commanders ended up doing real good for us as The War went on. Charles included. I didn’t think he was up to it, but Betty made me give him a chance. Thank God she did. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to do his job.

Charles had plans the day I met him. To be fair, he’d been trying to make those plans work for a century, but people like me weren’t the only people who didn’t like him on sight. He wanted to work with the Peloran, you see, and the Peloran did not trust his Family at all. They were very smart not to. So for a century, he had been hitting a roadblock. But The War gave him an opportunity and he took it. He volunteered to fight because he knew it would get him closer to the Peloran. And the cybernetic intelligence that chose him did so because she did what nobody else ever did. Even me. She studied him enough to figure out that he was not his Family. He was better than them. He was worth a lifetime. It took me a lot longer than I should have to realize she was right about him. And his plans? They were pretty good too.