Ken was my wingman back when we first started. He was Free Japanese. His great grandparents made it out before the fall, and he grew up surfing the California coasts. We called him Buckaroo Banno. But you probably know this already if you read our diaries. He was a good man, a good friend, and I will always miss him. He will forever be known as Crane, as Cowboy Six, and to me as one of the many friends I owe my life to.
Orbiting the Alcyone system’s fifth star, Gateway was the first Western Alliance colony in the Pleiades Cluster. It was also the farthest colony from Terra we’d ever built. Designed to act as our embassy to the Peloran, we constructed it as a monument to Western civilization and sent our best and brightest on the four-year flight to the system. They built a colony we could all be proud of, a veritable Garden of Eden in the distant frontiers of space.
When The War ended, everyone came home. Soldiers, sailors, spacemen, and marines. After twenty years of War, all of our warriors came home. Old New York partied for an entire year, a celebration that never ended. Ticker tape parades, concerts, and more. As all things do though, the celebrations came to an end, and we all had to learn how to live again. That was the most difficult mission we ever committed to. Life after War.
The Persians are a powerful non-aligned power. They are one of the most ancient civilizations on Earth. They say the oldest. They have ruled the known world, and been ruled by it. They have seen civilizations rise and fall. They have survived every occupation of their land, Greek, Mongol, and even Islam, and risen again. Other young upstarts come and go with the wind, but Persia will stand for all time. They are the superior culture. Such is their mindset.
The Cowboys named me Jester. It was a good name. I earned it. Then the Peloran named me Hart. It took a while for us to make the change. We felt they were trying to take our real names. In time, we realized that the names fit us, often better than the names we were born with. I stopped using my old name altogether. It became the past, the person I was before The War. I am Cowboy Five, and I will be until the day I die. My name is Jack Hart.
The Martian Affair on Amazon
Forge of War on Amazon
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