Jack of Harts

When Texas finally decided to go on the offensive and deal with the drug cartels on Mexican soil, Dyess Air Force Base joined them. Their B-1B Lancer bombers and C-130 Hercules transports quickly became the tip of the spear that drove into the heart of the cartels. The Lancers struck first, disrupting local defensive positions through the simple expedient of heavy explosives. “Shock and Awe” a previous generation had called it, and the Lancers rained it down with abandon. The Hercules squadrons carried entire platoons of men into the firestorms they left behind, often flanked by other Hercules modified for cybernetic warfare, direct ground attack, and numerous other missions. They overwhelmed one drug cartel after another, before moving onto the next targets as others secured the areas they had neutralized. Dyess AFB was the tip of the spear, and they struck deep into the underbelly of the drug cartels. Texas never forgot that, and when it came time to return to space, Dyess Spacebase was one of the Republic’s primary launching points.

Dyess Air Force Base’s C-130 Hercules transport aircraft were some of the oldest airframes in the Air Force inventory when the Second Great Depression hit. Most historians dismiss the idea that any of them were truly a century old, surmising instead that most of the craft were the Super Hercules subclass that was half that age. There is some question as to whether or not they were refits or new construction, but whatever the case, they were ancient by the standards of the day. There is no question at all that many of the crews and support personnel descended from men who had worked aboard various versions of the Hercules as far back as the Vietnam War. They were generational craft and crews, and the Air Force had long since embraced the concept of keeping men united with their family craft. Many of them had been stationed at Dyess AFB for five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years or more, working to keep their grand old craft flying as one planned replacement after another worked its way through the development pipeline and kept on failing to match the performance of their birds. When Dyess AFB stopped listening to the new President and aligned itself with Texas, most of the crews smiled and went back to work keeping their birds flying.

Dyess Air Force Base suffered from the same desertions that most other federal military bases did when the federal government began to fracture around the new President. His final budget slashed the funding Dyess AFB received, and without pay many of the personnel chose to simply go home and take what they could with them. That did not include large assets like aircraft, but many small arms and supplies disappeared before Dyess AFB managed to secure itself from internal dissent. Their commanding officer chose to side with Texas, and that caused more people who did not wish to betray their country to leave. A majority of the pilots remained on base, as did nearly all of the local support structure, but many of their highly-qualified technicians chose to go home for good and never come back. That would greatly reduce the number of aircraft Dyess AFB could maintain in flying condition, no matter how much money Texas sent them to recoup the lost federal funding.