The Thunderbird Affair (Jack of Harts Short Story 2)

By Medron Pryde

The alien Shang attacked us in 2304. They blew Yosemite Station out of Earth orbit and dropped it all over the western half of America. They obliterated Washington DC with a missile bombardment and brought nuclear winter to my home. We stood back up, we fought back, and we hit them in hundreds of systems from one end of known space to the other. And then we sent out the call to rally the fleets for a coordinated strike on their heart of power near Earth.

I am Captain Jack Hart of the Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Wing 112, the Cowboys. It was our job to protect the fleets from Shang spoiling attacks while they organized themselves into a cohesive assault force. It was our job to watch the flanks and keep the system secure. It was our job to be ready to investigate any unidentified contact entering the system.

Most of those days were boring. A faulty transmitter. Or somebody showing up ahead of schedule or long after they were supposed to arrive. And some days it was far more exciting than that. This was one of those days.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Medron Pryde
• Release date: Dec 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463876510

Medron Pryde

Hello, my name is Medron Pryde, and I am the creator of Jack of Harts.Jack of Harts is a place I hope you like. It’s a place where we did things right, where we built a world we would be happy for our children to grow up in. It’s not perfect. There is conflict. But by and large, we made the hard decisions, and we did what needed doing. We made a good world. I know today that stories tend to go much more dark than that, dystopian futures where we have destroyed our world or enslaved our populations. Places where even the Good Guys are more dirty and hairy than they are clean-shaven and happy. Jack of Harts is not like that. It’s not a world where somebody takes a step forward to fix something and gets knocked two steps back. I don’t like those worlds. I don’t want to spend a lot of time imagining them.Jack of Harts is based in many ways on what I grew up wanting. I was raised in a Christian home, told to do onto others as you’d have them do onto you. I watched Bonanza, where the Cartwrights helped anybody who came along needing it. On Superman, I watched the Big Blue Boy Scout (even if he was in black and white) fighting the Bad Guys each week for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. On Quantum Leap, a man lost in time always found a way to make the world he dropped into each week a little bit better. On Star Trek, a bunch of people I liked traveled through the stars to go places that no man had been to before...because it was there. In Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and Star Wars, the plucky outnumbered heroes came back swinging with a smile, a joke, and a hearty laugh, and they never gave up hope that they could find or build a better world to live in. These are the stories I grew up with. These are what I enjoy, and these live on in my optimism.In Jack of Harts, I try to capture that. The characters of Jack, Charles, and Aneerin, just to name a few, are all people who lived in a world before The War came. When that happened, they aren’t the people who crossed the border to hide from the draft, the people who gave up hope and found a bottle or a needle to hide behind. These are the people who stood up, walked into a recruiting office, and volunteered to defend their ways of life. They may cover it up by saying they’re just in it for the money, or because that person over there just needed taking care of. But don’t let that fool you. They are the best of us, a reflection of the true Big Damn Heroes who grab a rifle, a pistol, and a bulletproof vest (or maybe a fireproof suit) to protect our freedoms and our lives everyday.Jack of Harts is a place where I like to think these people would like what they see. It’s a place I enjoy going to when I write, with people I’d like to share a beer with. I’ll keep it that way. I hope it’s a place you’ll enjoy reading, and I hope you come back each day or maybe each week to read some more.So have a good one, and I hope to see you again.Medron Pryde

Book preview

Jack placed both hands back on his flight controls and stared at the Shang ships in the distance. They were not going to enjoy what he was about to do to them, and he had a few, short words he could aim in their general direction. A pithy little phrase for saying goodbye he’d learned in the last few years of dealing with real military minds.

For certain definitions of that term.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Jack said and bared his teeth in an expression nobody would call a smile.

Then gravity twisted sharply to the side as Betty fired all three of their gravitic cannons. Each one emitted a beam of twisted gravity hundreds of gravities strong and mere centimeters across that would cross the space separating him from the Shang in just over half a second. The Avenger’s eight laser arrays fired in full pulse mode a split-second later, and Betty followed that with a salvo of micro missiles from their twin missile packs. Jasmine’s eleven Avengers filled space around them with more death and destruction and Jack felt the vibrations go through his starfighter as Newton’s third law of motion made its lessons clear.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Shang were about to learn that lesson real good if Captain Jack of Hart Squadron had anything to say about it.

And then the Thunderbirds opened fire with dozens of capital-scale gravitic cannons that shook the very fabric of space around them. Powerful lasers and missiles thundered out in their wake and even their fighters joined in to lay down their own web of destruction.

By

Medron Pryde

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Books

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Forge of War

Angel Flight

Angel Strike

Angel War

Wolfenheim Rising

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Short Stories

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The Thunderbird Affair

The Gemini Affair

The Thunderbird Affair

A Jack of Harts Short Story By

MEDRON PRYDE

Copyright © 2018 by Medron Pryde

Smashwords Edition

Cover background designed by Stephen Huda under contract

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, December 2018

http://jackofharts.com

http://www.facebook.com/jackofhartsonline

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this story to everyone who has served in the Armed Forces. It is thanks to all of you that we are here now, to enjoy this form of entertainment in the safety of our homes. I would especially like to thank every Marine aviator of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 112, called the Wolfpack in World War II and the Cowboys in recent decades. The Cowboys in this story are named in your honor.

I would also like to thank everybody who has helped me write this story, from those who brainstormed with me, proofread it for me, edited it, created art to bring it to life, or simply declined to roll your eyes when I nattered on about this story I was writing. Whether family or friend, whether I have met you in person or only over the Internet, your help and support is greatly appreciated.

Thunderbirds

Fingers played over an acoustic guitar and an old, familiar song filled the Avenger’s cockpit as it drifted through the outskirts of the system scientists still called Psi Tauri. The song came from the shores of a hometown lake he hadn’t seen in five years. It had been longer still since he and two girls who’d meant more than life to him had last played it together.

They played a different version now. It was more polished, and an entire band played behind them on the galaxy’s largest stages before screaming crowds of a hundred thousand or more. They’d gone out and made their dreams a reality, and he was proud of them for that.

But a part of him would always wish they’d never left.

He played the old version with a single acoustic guitar, meant for only the closest of friends to hear, and the music soothed his soul. It was a song that reminded him of sunlight and sand on fresh spring mornings.