Jack of Harts

The Audacious Affair

by Medron Pryde on October 7, 2020 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

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.

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The Martian Affair

by Medron Pryde on October 6, 2020 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

“I’ve got your back, John,” Cassie said.

His displays flashed with recommendations and target locks.

“Never doubted it for a second,” Christensen said and sprang back to his feet. He lined the rifle in his right hand up on one enemy quad, waited a moment for the display to flash a target lock, and pulled the trigger. The secondary barrel glowed with electromagnetic energy for an instant before spitting out a single high explosive round that shot across the Martian landscape faster than the speed of sound. The kinetic energy alone was enough to breach the armor of anything but the heaviest enemy tanks. He would have needed a proper armor-piercing warhead to take one of them out, but the unarmored quad and its rider were an entirely different matter. It was akin to beating a piñata with a sledgehammer.

The other quads opened fire and rounds bounced off his armor or sent showers of red Martian dirt into the air all around him.

Christensen rode the recoil and turned away from the exploding quad. He stepped up onto the rim of the small crater, bringing the heavy rifle in his left hand to aim at another target. He pulled that trigger, kinetic energy flashed, and his second target exploded. He rode the recoil once more and brought the first rifle down on a third target. A stream of enemy rounds smashed into it and sparks filled his view. Powerful electromagnetic coils crackled their energy all over the Martian landscape. His display flashed red warning signs as the rifle fried itself to death in his hand.

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Trump 2020

by Medron Pryde on October 5, 2020 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

Okay. Fess up. Who had “Trump contracts the Wuhan Virus” on your 2020 bingo card?

I know the media is saying he asked for it, and continues to lie about him calling it a hoax. So of course he deserves it in their eyes.

But here’s the thing. He’s had the best social distancing team in the world for months. They’ve kept him in a bubble, and tested everybody who enters that bubble for months. He’s had the best doctors and the best testing, and this bug still got through everything they did to try to keep it away from him.

In the end, this is proof of just how easy it is to get this bug. It’s a mobile little bugger, and if it can make it to the leader of the free world, it can basically make it to anybody.

My goal right now is to hold it at bay long enough by cleaning my work space and keeping people at a distance so that when I do finally get it, there will be an approved and inexpensive cocktail of drugs designed and ready to fight it. All while I’m taking the vitamins that seem to be good at fighting it to begin with based on all the studies we’ve seen.

It’s a dual approach, I grant you. And I’m really hoping it works, because I have an elderly mother at home and I really don’t want to expose her to this thing before we really know what we are doing with it.

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The Audacious Affair

by Medron Pryde on October 4, 2020 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

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.

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The Martian Affair

by Medron Pryde on October 3, 2020 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

We were alone in 2080. It was a new age of space exploration that would forever change humanity. Our probes traveled to every planet in the system, and manned missions blanketed the inner system. Our permanent colonies in Earth orbit, on Luna, and Mars pointed us to a new future in the stars.

Then an unknown objected entered Martian space, crashed through a Chinese satellite, and impacted on the Martian surface. Official reports called it a random piece of space junk. Conspiracy theorists claimed it was everything from a precursor to alien invasion to an embarrassing industrial accident.

Time marched on, and a legion of questions about the incident were never answered. Mars became a booming center of new industry, and eventually a comfortable home for humanity as we terraformed the surface. We forgot about the incident entirely as the years turned into decades and then centuries.

But now we know the truth, thanks to the recently declassified diaries of the man who watched that object arrive with his naked eyes. His name is Sergeant John Christensen, United States Marines Corps. This is his story.

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