Jack of Harts

Contact with the Peloran made the Republic of Texas Space Force’s primary heavy fighter obsolete overnight. But Texas had been building it for over a decade, and the tools to maintain them were expensive and omnipresent on Space Force installation. So they chose to upgrade the Fury with gravtech rather than build an entirely new design. The upgrade process was quicker and cheaper than designing from scratch, and it re-entered service a full year before the F-1 Starfighter completed building trials. But the F-1 had already received its designation as the first of the new generation of starfighters, and the United States Department of Defense was not interested in allowing a jumped-up refit to steal their well-earned thunder. That is why the first gravtech fighter deployed by an American State was the F-2 Star Fury. And Texas never let their counterparts forget it.

The Republic of Texas Space Force’s primary mission before Contact was the defense of the permanent Texas colonies and bases in the Sol and Dallas star systems. They also defended Texas interests in other systems, but those smaller deployments only counted for a fraction of their total combat power. They racked up the majority of combat time Texas saw in those days, though. Space superiority fighters made up the majority of their deployed force, with a smaller number of attack craft filling out most of the remaining fleets. The rarest, but most powerful, elements were the bombers, even if a purely terrestrial force never would have recognized them. Rather than carry dumb bombs around in space, the bombers sported reinforced hard points that carried rockets powerful enough to crack even warship armor. With enough fighters and attack craft to clear the space around enemy warships, the bomber squadrons could sweep in and break them. The Texas Space Force proved that again and again in the various little turf wars that most nations did not admit happened out in the colonial regions in those days.