John Galbraith

# 1547

Name	John Galbraith
Faction	Free Republic of the Landreich
Race	Human
About	John Calhoun Galbraith is a possessive person who likes to take charge. He commanded a destroyer before he was assigned the FRLS Independence. He was rather young to be commanding a carrier and he owed this assignment to his father, Daniel Galbraith. Through the senior Galbraith's political influence John had risen through the ranks. People generally saw him as lazy and soft and not fit for combat command. He resented outsiders like Jason Bondarevsky and Geoffrey Tolwyn, who had been brought to the Landreich by Max Kruger to put the FRLS Mjollnir into service. The Mjollnir would replace the Independence as flagship of the Landreich fleet. The Landreich at the time was in political turmoil, and John hoped that when Kruger was voted out the outsiders would be sent home and he could have command of the FRLS Mjollnir himself. On 2671.019 the FRLS Independence with its battle group (including the FRLS Thermistocles) was sent to take out Zachary Banfeld's Guild base on Hellhole where they also found the Bonadventure. With Admiral Vincent Camparelli in poor health, John Galbraith was effectively in charge of the entire operation. He had the ships spread out to catch any privateers trying to flee. The ailing Admiral wanted to tell him to keep his forces together, but being sick and old he didn't want to tell Galbraith how to handle things. When the Highwayman and its pursuers, KIS Klarran and KIS Hravik, jumped into the system, Camparelli told Galbraith to get the battle group together and withdraw. But the Kilrathi were jamming communications and Independence couldn't get word to Kevin Tolwyn to pull back his flight wing. When Camparelli died in his quarters in the midst of battle, John Galbraith was given full command of the battle group. Despite protest from Mary Roth, he intended to abandon the flight wing and withdraw at once rather than move in to support the fighters, which would put the battle group at risk. That day the Independence ended up losing about a third of the craft it launched against the Kilrathi. On 2671.042 John Galbraith was relieved from duty by Max Kruger when he refused the order to head for Vordran with Independence.