The Thunderbird Affair

by on January 5, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Hyperspace flickered and rippled, sending out whips of rainbow light in every direction as it fought normalspace for dominance. Jack couldn’t count the number of ships he’d seen entering or leaving hyperspace, even with his boots off, but very few of them had generated a lightshow this impressive. The ship emerged from hyperspace slowly, like a great whale feeling its way to the ocean surface, taking care to keep from breaking anything like a hapless ship that might be too close.

Jack wondered at the thought that had wandered through his mind as he watched the ship come into focus. One last blast of petulant hyperspacial rainbows flashed out in protest before falling back to where they belonged, leaving Jack alone with one of the largest ships he’d ever seen in his life. His eyes rebelled against the visual scale of the ship, unwilling to admit that its apparent size could be accurate. It couldn’t possibly be that large.

But then he began to pick out individual weapons turrets on the ship’s flanks and it almost began to make sense. And if he thought of those engine pods and other odd protuberances of similar size running up its flanks as heavy cruisers that were just bolted on, he began to understand the true size of the leviathan. It wasn’t as large as Columbia, but Jack had seen very few ships larger than this new arrival.

“Jack?”

“It’s not them,” Jack said, before feeling the oncoming storm strengthen in the back of his mind. “But they are involved.”

“Update the drones. Flag ‘Bogey White’ and ‘Bogeys Yellow.’ Send one.”

Betty and Jasmine nodded to each other and seemed to relax as the drones began to flash between “Bogey White” and “Bogeys Yellow” on the display. Unknown starship in the area. Hostile action improbable. Unknown starships in area. Hostile action probable.

Jack’s eyes flicked over to watch the drone with his own eyes. It turned, flashed out through the rainbow, and Jack’s message to Sunnydale was on the way.

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The Thunderbird Affair

by on January 4, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Fingers played over an acoustic guitar and an old, familiar song filled the Avenger’s cockpit as it drifted through the outskirts of the system scientists still called Psi Tauri. The song came from the shores of a hometown lake he hadn’t seen in five years. It had been longer still since he and two girls who’d meant more than life to him had last played it together.

He played the old version with a single acoustic guitar, meant for only the closest of friends to hear, and the music soothed his soul. It was a song that reminded him of sunlight and sand on fresh spring mornings. Memories of relaxing in cool water on midsummer nights flitted through his head. There was singing and dancing around a crackling bonfire under bronze autumn sunsets. They’d been kids living life to the fullest as they rushed to make the most of their youth and enjoy the first flowers of adulthood before winter’s cold set in.

They’d all been innocent in that golden age, living each day with all the energy they had and looking forward to the next one. They’d never noticed the storm fronts on the horizon. They’d missed the thunder rumbling in the distance.

“Jack?”

Jack opened his eyes and came out of his fugue state of fusion with the guitar that had become his world. His fingers had stopped moving in response to Betty’s single word, but he remembered every note he’d played. They were dark and foreboding, foretelling pain and suffering to come.

His eyes snapped to Betty as he suddenly understood.

“Someone’s coming.”

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The Thunderbird Affair

by on January 3, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The alien Shang attacked us in 2304. They blew Yosemite Station out of Earth orbit and dropped it all over the western half of America. They obliterated Washington DC with a missile bombardment and brought nuclear winter to my home. We stood back up, we fought back, and we hit them in hundreds of systems from one end of known space to the other. And then we sent out the call to rally the fleets for a coordinated strike on their heart of power near Earth.

I am Captain Jack Hart of the Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Wing 112, the Cowboys. It was our job to protect the fleets from Shang spoiling attacks while they organized themselves into a cohesive assault force. It was our job to watch the flanks and keep the system secure. It was our job to be ready to investigate any unidentified contact entering the system.

Most of those days were boring. A faulty transmitter. Or somebody showing up ahead of schedule or long after they were supposed to arrive. And some days it was far more exciting than that. This was one of those days.

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The Thunderbird Affair

by on January 2, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Jack placed both hands back on his flight controls and stared at the Shang ships in the distance. They were not going to enjoy what he was about to do to them, and he had a few, short words he could aim in their general direction. A pithy little phrase for saying “goodbye” he’d learned in the last few years of dealing with real military minds.

For certain definitions of that term.

“Alpha Mike Foxtrot,” Jack said and bared his teeth in an expression nobody would call a smile.

Then gravity twisted sharply to the side as Betty fired all three of their gravitic cannons. Each one emitted a “beam” of twisted gravity hundreds of gravities strong and mere centimeters across that would cross the space separating him from the Shang in just over half a second. The Avenger’s eight laser arrays fired in full pulse mode a split-second later, and Betty followed that with a salvo of micro missiles from their twin missile packs. Jasmine’s eleven Avengers filled space around them with more death and destruction and Jack felt the vibrations go through his starfighter as Newton’s third law of motion made its lessons clear.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Shang were about to learn that lesson real good if Captain Jack of Hart Squadron had anything to say about it.

And then the Thunderbirds opened fire with dozens of capital-scale gravitic cannons that shook the very fabric of space around them. Powerful lasers and missiles thundered out in their wake and even their fighters joined in to lay down their own web of destruction.

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Happy New Years

by on January 1, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The year 2018 has been an interesting one. It’s been mostly good for me, personally. I can say that I’m in a better position now than I was at the beginning of the year. I honestly had trouble writing last year, which is one reason my productivity in that department was low. I can’t tell how many times I sat down to write something and just sat there, looking at the screen, with nothing coming. I finally managed to stubborn my way through it by just forcing myself to write something. I had more rewrites and changes than I think I’ve ever really done before, and it took a long time to find a story that I loved. But I got there, and now the muse is flowing again with more ideas than I’ve had in a while. I just need to track down the ones I intend to actually follow. I feel good, I feel balanced, and I feel ready to welcome the New Year with new stories and new ideas.

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