The Audacious Affair (Jack of Harts Short Story 4)

By Medron Pryde

In 2205, we learned the answer to one of the oldest questions of all time. Are we alone? They brought medicines with them that nearly wiped out diseases, and extended the human lifespan into the centuries. They helped us study advanced technologies, and expand our colonies hundreds of lightyears from Earth. It was a golden age that many thought would never end.

Jack grew up in that world at peace, his only interests, partying and girls. But then a sneak attack killed millions of Americans, and wiped out almost everything and everybody Jack knew. He signed up with the Marines to get some payback against the alien scum who’d started it all.

Now Captain Jack Hart of the Republic of Texas Marine Corps and his Avenger-class starfighters support the British Commonwealth fleet seeking to bring The War that has ravaged entire star systems to an end once and for all. All their enemies need to do is surrender the aliens that started all this destruction to Western Alliance justice. That isn’t too much to ask for peace, is it?

Some people call the idea crazy. Others idiotic. But some call it... audacious.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Medron Pryde
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005131203

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 twisted his stick and thrusters flared them around a few pieces of tumbling wreckage. Jack slammed the throttle forward, and engines roared tongues of blue fusion flame behind him. They accelerated towards the British vanguard, and Jack smiled with approval as their point defenses engaged every incoming enemy missile.

Jack found the Spitfire he was looking for at the very head of the vanguard. No surprise there. He tapped a button on his communications display to start transmitting. Hey, Lance, old buddy. You’re looking a little lonely out here.

Not lonely at all, Lance answered a second later, and his smiling face appeared on one of the displays. Ivan’s giving us a warm welcome, in fact!

What did I tell you about trusting Russian vodka? Jack asked as the range closed, pulling the throttle back to match speed with Lance’s squadron.

Displays flashed as Betty logged them back into the British networks. A whole new universe of fire plans and point defense options filled his cockpit. Laser turrets and missile pods realigned, thrusters burned to shift them into optimal angles, and gravitic cannons hummed to life as their capacitors achieved maximum power.

Don’t, Lance said with a chuckle. It can give you a real headache in the morning.

And then Jack’s little squadron of Avengers fired in time with the British vanguard. Grav beams and missiles reached out to smash one Russian ship, and wreckage filled his vision. Pieces of former warships drifted around them. Surviving point defense lasers fired at each other in fitful spurts of otherworldly destruction. Jack accelerated them through the flashing wreckage, trusting the deflection grids to deflect anything too small to dodge, trusting Betty to avoid anything too large to deflect, and really hoping none of those point defenses took a personal disliking to him.

We have incoming fighters, Betty reported, pulling his attention away from wreckage.

Jack glanced at the displays to see nearly a hundred Russian fighters closing with them.

Ignore them, Jack ordered and focused on the battleship he wanted so very much dead. Stay on target.

Staying on target, Betty acknowledged.

They shot out of the wreckage in time to the screaming duet of rock and roll guitars and opened fire with every weapon they had left.

By

Medron Pryde

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Books

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Forge of War

Angel Flight

Angel Strike

Angel War

Wolfenheim Rising

Wolfenheim Emergent

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Short Stories

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The Martian Affair

The Audacious Affair

The Thunderbird Affair

The Gemini Affair

The Audacious Affair

A Jack of Harts Short Story By

MEDRON PRYDE

Copyright © 2020 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, October 2020

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.

The Audacious Affair

Jack Hart’s fingers danced over the guitar strings and a song everybody recognized filled the British Commonwealth dreadnought’s pilot ready room. The pilots belted out the bawdy lyrics as they played cards, reveling in the true meaning of the song. From their perspective.

It wasn’t Jack’s fault that they were wrong. He was playing a great American patriotic tune.

Lance Evans dueled him with another guitar, representing the home team. The brown-haired wing commander had long since proven himself a guitar player equal to every challenge the visiting American blond had dealt out, and they were proud of him.

In their minds at least. Jack happened to think they were wrong on that point too.

Katy Reynolds danced around them, her blonde tresses whipping in every direction as music flowed from the fiddle in her hands. She could play the violin, but Jack thought she truly shone on the fiddle. And today her bow recreated an amazing rendition of a guitar grinding through the chords that separated the