The Republic of Texas

by on January 11, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Texas Rangers have recruited the very best to their ranks over the centuries. Sometimes they have been elite warriors fighting the enemies of Texas. Sometimes they have been law enforcement officers. Sometimes they have been peace officers. At times they have even been disbanded entirely. The Texas Rangers have changed with the times, and the current version of them is a fusion of all the roles they have ever had. Their primary focus in the modern day is to promote the common peace in Texas and her various colonies. They enforce laws if the peace is broken, and are official law enforcement officers of Texas, America, and the Western Alliance under the various reciprocity agreements. And when the chips are down, they don their armor, draw their weapons, and do battle with those who threaten the common peace.

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The Republic of Texas

by on January 10, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Texas Rangers are the premier peacekeeping organization in the Republic of Texas and all of her colonies. They have been in existence since the first Republic of Texas, where they helped lead the fight against the Mexican Empire and served as keepers of the peace. The phrase “One Riot, One Ranger” came from that era, from a possibly-apocryphal incident concerning a riot in progress. The locals thought they needed more men to quell it. The Ranger disagreed and went in to deal with it by himself. He is the example Rangers have held themselves to ever since. The fact that they actually live up to it more often than not has reinforced the mystique of lone Rangers keeping the peace and dispensing justice in the wilderness for centuries.

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How the Future Flies

by on January 9, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’ve been writing in the Jack of Harts universe for over a decade now, and it is very close to our universe, with a few steps to the side that make it different. I had this idea of a dark future that collapsed into a Second Great Depression or Second Civil War approximately thirty years from now. What is this dark future I had written?

Massive deficit spending that stressed the economy to the breaking point. The Leader of the House of Representatives performing an Impeachment against the sitting President and Vice President in an election year. Followed by in-your-face election fraud to keep the President from being re-elected. Add yet ANOTHER Chinese pandemic and economic collapse and rioting in the big cities to the mix. That was my thought for what a dark future thirty years from now could look like.

Ahem. How the future flies. I’ve had people asking me what came next. Well… buckle up buttercup…

Really short term, there was rigorous prosecution of the previous President, along with those who enabled and/or supported him. Cleansing them from the networks, getting them fired from their jobs, and generally seeking to drive them from public society. There was the attempted arrest of the previous President and Vice President. That escalated into fighting in the streets as Texas fought Federal agents seeking to bring the previous President in. And the Vice President over in Virginia WAS arrested. Mass protests, looting, burning, and many big cities basically collapsing under their own weight. Numerous State governments had to evacuate their own capital cities, and not all of them were welcomed with open arms by the country bumpkin neighbors they ran to. Things escalated into numerous States effectively going into a soft-secession from the federal government. They were still American. But they didn’t accept orders from the federal government anymore. This by the way, all going on as the federal government defaulted on its debts, had many of its foreign assets confiscated by those nations it owed its debts too, and a massive Second Great Depression was engulfing the world.

Basically… really bad.

I used a Convention of States as my “giant reset” for the Jack universe and chose to take the “mostly good” version of the Convention, versus the “seriously bad” versions that some have worried would happen. Which helped us to generally build a world where we would like to live. Generally free. Generally prosperous. And with the visual of the Republic of Texas flying its flag OVER the American flag. And that being normal to them, not treason. They are Texans. AND they are Americans. Both.

I’ve always said Jack was a world where we got things mostly right. Jack grew up in an idealized Northern Minnesota for instance, where he fished and swam and went to school and did all the things normal small town and country kids get to do. It was heaven as far as he was concerned. All he wanted. But the background of Jack is that we only got there after going far darker than I would like to live through. I do not want to live through the short term of what I wrote. I really hope I don’t get to…

But oh, how the future flies.

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The Republic of Texas

by on January 8, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Republic of Texas Guard downsized the vast majority of its strength after War’s End. Older equipment and soldiers were once again released to retirement, including even their most advanced Pre-War equipment. The frontline militaries were retiring enough equipment to take over entire star clusters, literally, and the Texas Guard acquired everything it could hold and secure. Starfighters. Blue-water and even some black-water ships. Tanks. Mechs. Battle armor. The Guard acquired the very best War Era equipment for a fraction of the cost it took to build in the first place, and continued to use that equipment in the decades that followed. It is easy to find replacement parts or entire chassis for that equipment in the various boneyards that litter Alliance space, and every technician alive knows how to maintain it. That gives the Texas Guard an impressive readiness rating. Anyone approaching a Texas colony with ill intent must expect to receive a Texas-sized welcome.

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The Republic of Texas

by on January 7, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Republic of Texas Guard used many of the same designs as the frontline Texas military when The War came upon us all. Most of the designs were four to five decades old at the time, and had been through numerous upgrades and rebuilds. The frontline services often retired their oldest chassis, and replaced them with newly-built examples of the latest versions. The Guard happily accepted the castoff older models as it greatly improved their logistics. This allowed them to deploy with the main services when The War began, greatly increasing the amount of firepower that Texas could project into the stars. That left the older inactive reserves to take up the Guard’s traditional missions, which is why the Guard used sometimes-centuries-old equipment, and in many cases the original soldiers who used it, to defend Texas and her colonies throughout The War. Though it should be noted that the Peloran refit kits radically changed the capabilities they brought to battle.

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