Jack of Harts

Most State Navies in Jack’s youth had at least token frigate or destroyer squadrons, often in the form of obsolete designs retired from the US Navy. Richer States sent at least a cruiser squadron or three into the black and they could toss some light carriers around when they felt like it as well. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is famous for having enough destroyer and cruiser squadrons that they could hand out flag ranks to any well-connected officer capable of buying one. Battlefield qualifications need not apply there. And the entire New England Federation owned multiple battleship and fleet carrier squadrons. They were not alone. Other State alliances, like the Republics of California and Texas, or the Confederation of Dixie, had battleship or fleet carrier squadrons of their own that could stand toe to toe with anything the Federal Navy could deploy. The Federal government asked the States to send as many ships as they could spare to serve in the Federal Navy after the Shang attacked. The States agreed with remarkably few complaints. The Shang had killed millions of their fellows, after all. They needed to learn the error of their ways.

The United States Space Force shone bright on their own when The War came from Earth. Their forts held station over all of our colonies and their fighters and bombers patrolled the orbitals for any enemy. Anyone who wanted to attack our colonies had to break through the Space Force first, and few enjoyed that experience. But the Space Force was not limited to defensive operations. They went on the offensive as well. When the Navy was running short on warships to fill out their naval squadrons, they used Marauders to reinforce them. Most of those Marauders actually belonged to the Space Force. The Navy doesn’t like to talk much about that, you understand, but the fact is that they owe partial credit for most of their victories in the Hyades Cluster to the courageous and daring Space Force crews that brought their bombers around again and again to face enemy warships that outmassed them by entire orders of magnitude.

The United States Space Force commissioned the Marauder and Avenger projects to give them hyperspace combat capabilities, and they flew both designs during The War. But it was the Marines who first tested each design in actual combat. The Marauder was a huge craft, approaching the scale of actual frigates due to the massive hyperdrive, and it bristled with built-in weapons and hard points for additional equipment. The Marines loved it. They first tested it nearly a decade before The War began, and quickly adopted it into permanent deployment. Its primary weakness was maneuverability, due once again to the size of the hyperdrive, and the reactors required to power it and the various weapons. Which is where the Avenger came in. Both the Space Force and the Marines wanted a smaller hypercapable fighter, and it took nearly another decade of miniaturization to make that possible. The Avenger was still massive for a fighter, but was much smaller and sleeker than the Marauders. The Marines took them for testing as well, and it was Jack’s squadron who fought the Shang with them after The War started. All because the Marines also always looked for new weapons to throw at their enemies. Sometimes literally.