Cowboy Nathan: Earth Protection League

By Dean Wesley Smith

Cowboy Nathan resigned himself at seventy-five years of age to spend his last days in Shady Hills Retirement Center reading old westerns and trying to stay in good enough shape to avoid adult diapers.

Widowed and with busy adult children, his tendency to fall at odd times made him too much of a burden. Right up to the night of his first mission with the Earth Protection League.

Suddenly he found himself young again and a captain of a fighter, with a new crew, going up against the alien Ticks as they swarmed over the border to take EPL planets.

He sure enjoyed popping Ticks and saving Earth at the same time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201883089

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

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INTRODUCTION

Cowboy Nathan resigned himself at seventy-five years of age to spend his last days in Shady Hills Retirement Center reading old westerns and trying to stay in good enough shape to avoid adult diapers.

Widowed and with busy adult children, his tendency to fall at odd times made him too much of a burden. Right up to the night of his first mission with the Earth Protection League.

Suddenly he found himself young again and a captain of a fighter, with a new crew, going up against the alien Ticks as they swarmed over the border to take EPL planets.

He sure enjoyed popping Ticks and saving Earth at the same time.

1

Cowboy Nathan kept thanking his lucky stars that unlike most of the other residents in Shady Hills Rest and Retirement Center, he didn’t have to wear adult diapers. At least not yet.

His name, Cowboy Nathan, had always gotten him attention, to say the least. It sort of floated ahead of him as one of the toughest of all captains in the Earth Protection League. But unless you added Captain to the front of it, his name just sort of sat there, whimpering.

He didn’t believe in whimpering, but Nathan was his name, had always been his name since dropping his last name of Schultz. Growing up in the wild suburbs of Boise, Idaho, his name had made him strong, so he was sticking with Nathan.

The cowboy part his family and friends had added because of his passion for collecting Old West stuff, and his even more intense passion for Old West history. Not sure if adding Cowboy made the Nathan part of his name better or worse, but at times he felt like he should be a cowboy, even though he had never ever ridden a real horse.

And he had actually only been to one rodeo and honestly hadn’t much liked it. To him, a cowboy was an attitude, a person who dared to take chances and lived outside the norms.

So for all of his adult life he had been known as Cowboy Nathan. He even signed legal documents that way.

And once he had his official legal name changed just to Cowboy Nathan, he had wanted to learn to ride but had always been too busy, first in the Air Force as a fighter pilot, climbing to the rank of commander, then raising a family and three kids, and keeping his wonderful wife Mary happy.

And during those wonderful family years they took all kinds of adventures, often into the Idaho mountains, exploring old Idaho history.

They got their three kids raised successfully and as far as Cowboy Nathan was concerned, with the right attitude of daring and survival. And he and Mary had taken all sorts of great trips together, trying all kinds of new and daring and wonderful things that kept their kids worrying about them most of the time.

Then Mary had died when he turned seventy and on the day after his seventy-fifth birthday, his kids had put him in an adult living center,