Jack of Harts

Many people think that the Hyades Cluster was The War. That is not as correct as many think, but also not as wrong as some say. What we found there was very important. It ended The War. But it was an exhausting fight. The Chinese had spent a century fortifying the Hyades. It was their fortress in space, scores of worlds scattered around a single small cluster of stars near enough to each other that they could actually reinforce planets that were under attack. And their defense grids were some of the best I have ever fought against. We spent ten years in the Hyades Cluster engaged in some of the dirtiest fighting I have ever seen. I hope I never see the like again.

America’s space forces became as mixed as our ground forces during The War. We reactivated ships from boneyards, upgraded militia ships, and even scavenged the collected remains of old battles. We refabricated anything that ran on gravtech, and upgraded many older designs to use it. The result was very interesting to historians. Modern armored wedge gravtech designs fought next to old cylindrical rocket ships that had used rotation to generate gravity before their upgrades. One of my many operations involved an old Republic-class light carrier. She still had her rotating gravdeck, though the crew locked it in position. Modern gravplating made it unnecessary. What I loved about that ship was that everybody underestimated her because they “knew” what her class was capable of. She proved many people wrong.