Marine Aviation Group 41 was a reserve unit with six squadrons when The War began. We had the Devil Dogs, Cowboys, Rangers, Flying Nightmares, Moonlight, and Desperados. Each squadron was assigned different craft and had different missions. It was all on paper of course. Budget cutbacks had taken the entire group off the flight lines, and only a bare number of retired personnel maintained half-century-old craft to kept them ready for a war few people thought would happen. Then The War started and they had to recruit new pilots for the entire aviation group. That is how I first became a Cowboy.
An interesting thing is the first hypercapable mobile home park actually just grabbed an old abandoned colonization ship for their purposes. Colonization ships were a collection of structural girders wrapped around a large hyperdrive with some maneuvering engines bolted in place. Cargo containers would lock in place and the ship would take them to their destination before setting them loose for delivery. The problem was that the containers were less than half the size of a standard mobile home and the superstructure was designed for them. They had to take the structure apart and reassemble it for mobile homes, and numerous other design modifications were required as well.
Jane 2.0 quickly replaced her older version as the United States Army’s primary voice interface program. She was smarter and better in every way, and could adapt to the wishes of her soldiers far better than any other military program in the world. She was the best at what she did, and soldiers loved her enough that they stopped calling her Hanoi Jane. She served in units fighting against the Islamic Jihad for years, and performance reviews proved that she improved with time. But after three years, the Jane 2.0s in the most active units began to show odd quirks. Their soldiers thought it was just the odd little hiccups any military hardware makes that gives them uniqueness. They weren’t concerned. They should have been.
I did a little render for a contest where I had to use certain elements. I of course twisted it a bit and had fun making a whole scene out of it. 😉
This here is Jack and Jasmine. They are investigating something that other people don’t want them to investigate. There was no breaking and entering involved. Honest. The door opened when they arrived. It’s like the place wanted them to come in. Of course there seems to have been other people there already. There may have been some suggestions that our plucky heroes leave. There also may have been some statements about minding your own business. There may also have been some running. And maybe a locked gate in the way with no time to break it open. There may have been some rude comments before someone opened fire. But Captain Jack Hart is completely blameless of any wrongdoing of course. He is an innocent victim while following an official investigation. Honest. Check the computers. You’ll see the investigation is logged and approved.
Now Jack may be the equivalent of a super soldier but he still doesn’t enjoy getting shot. It sucks in fact. So he instantly tries to get whatever cover he can from the wall when the shooting starts.
Now Jasmine is a cybernetic intelligence who can hack into any computer system wearing a complete android body and usually carries around enough firepower to overthrow a third world government. And somebody’s trying to kill her human. Nobody kills her human, so she pulls her favorite Big Guns out from under holographic cover and charges straight into battle.
VMSB-413, The Flying Nightmares, began The War as a single squadron of twelve Marauders. Much like my Cowboys began with twelve Avengers. The Nightmares fought at Fort Wichita and took heavy casualties along with the rest of the fleet there. The Peloran adopted them along with the rest of Marine Aviation Group 41 during the buildup for the invasion of the Hyades. The Peloran built them and the other squadrons into full wing-strength formations that could take the fighting to the Chinese and their Shang allies alongside our rebuilt fleets, armies, and everything else we threw at the Hyades.

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