Bio

A stocky, compact, powerfully-built man with a face-full of hair. He also has an eye-patch – a circular model of reflective gauze affixed permanently to his left eye.

Often seen with a cigar in his mouth and rattling a set of dice in his free hand, even when working on a ship’s drives, Blaxton is a natural mechanic and a talented engineer.

He tends to play down his minor celebrity status, from ‘Regina High Guard’, a set of holo-vid documentaries made a while back about the subsector navy and aired many times since. He made a colourful figure early in the series and became notorious amongst its fans for his love of the dice, his constant working of ‘the odds’ against this or for that – and his equally-frequent big scores and catastrophic losses. This experience led to many useful contacts and to picking up some valuable skills.

Another thing he plays down is his combat experience, much later in his career – serving on a capital vessel in a notable engagement against Vargr corsairs. In 1103, he was with the 214th Fleet as first engineer to the colonial cruiser Luuru, detached from her CruRon and tasked to make a frontier sweep in the Aramis subsector. The Luuru and her close escorts arrived insystem at Lablon (0301) to find a large squadron of Vargr raiders refuelling at the gas giant. Outnumbered four to one, the Luuru immediately initiated hostilities, diving into the heart of the Vargr formation and deploying her escorts to the flanks to pick off fleeing corsairs. While all three of her escorts were crippled and the Luuru herself badly damaged, the raiders were scattered with the loss of half their number destroyed and half the remainder striking their colours. Four surviving corsairs jumped outsystem with half-empty fuel tanks; their fate was never discovered. Blaxton was injured and lost an eye when the Luuru, her hull glowing from multiple energy weapon strikes, suffered an overheat to her life support system and her water purification plant blew. Had he not been mostly shielded by an open access-shaft hatch, he would have been shredded by shrapnel. He was mentioned in despatches for staying at his post until relieved. About this incident, he says only, “It could get damn hot on those Kinunir-class cruisers!” He still carries his access-shaft maintenance key on a chain around his neck, as a goodluck charm.