Winston Chang (Wing Commander)

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Winston Chang is a fictional character in the computer game series Wing Commander, he is a fighter pilot with a "dark" past he wishes to leave behind and a wanderer’s spirit, reflected by his callsign "Vagabond". He appears twice, first in Wing Commander III - Heart of the Tiger and later in Wing Commander IV - The Price of Freedom.

[edit] Personal Biography

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Winston Chang was born in 2631, his homesystem somewhere in the Enigma sector. His past is mostly classified due to his involvement in more than one secret government project, like the demolitions experiments he worked on with Dr. Philip Severin (who would later develop the Temblor Bomb). During such researches on the planet of Pax VII a failed experiment caused the death of numerous civilians: the disaster was covered up and labeled as an accident. Feeling guilty for this event Winston Chang decided to enter the military and help the war effort in a manner where he could directly see and fight his enemy rather than accidentally cause massive civilian losses. He became a fighter pilot and took the callsign of Vagabond to reflect his nature of "man without any roots".

In spite of his irreverent manners and dislike for military protocol Vagabond soon adapted to life aboard a space ship and became an experiecend and reliable pilot. Chang's own vision of himself was of "a cool professional on duty and the Rec Room clown off duty". Vagabond's favourite hobby when off duty was to play cards and he never failed to show up with a deck of cards in his hands: usually it didn't take much time for the rest of the crew to find out he was an extremely skilled and lucky card player.

By 2669 Winston Chang was a Lieutenant flying off the Confederation carrier TCS Victory: during this cruise he lost many of his fellow pilots including Mitchell "Vaquero" Lopez a young Latino pilot Vagabond frequently flew with. The loss of so many friends was the reason why Chang decided to join Col. Blair "Temblor Bomb Raid" in spite of his disgust for the use of weapons who would cause civilians losses. Vagabond accompanied the other pilots from the Victory to the Kilrathi homeworld until his fighter was intercepted by an enemy patrol and shot down in the ensuing dogfight. However before his ship blew up he was able to eject and was later recovered.

In 2673, still a Lieutenant, Winston Chang was assigned to the TCS Lexington during the building of tensions between the Confederation and the Union of Border Worlds. Suspecting someone in the Confederation may be behind the acts of terrorism and piracy he witnessed, Vagabond decided to defect to the Border Worlds with the Lexington Captain Eisen in order to be able to shed some lights on what was happening along the frontier. Attempting to recover information that would help the Border Worlds prove the existence of a conspiracy, Winston Chang made use of his espionage notions and infiltrated a Confederation Comm station with Lieutenant Velina Sosa. During this operation he was forced to cover Sosa from an unexpected attack by the station's security forces and was killed in action.