The original Cowboy One was Lieutenant Colonel Mathew Johanson. He was one of the guys that…well…he was real nice, but real hard too. He had to be to get all of us into fighting shape and that wasn’t easy. We never really called him anything but Colonel, because…well…he was The Colonel. He died at Fort Wichita, like a lot of other pilots and ships did. That was a real bad day for us all. We never could have survived many more wins like it.
The Pleiades Star Cluster is home to over a thousand stars within forty lightyears of the core, and we’ve colonized thirty of them. All those stars interact with each other to make the Pleiades Gravitic Field one of the most annoying regions of space to navigate we have ever seen. Even worse than the Hyades. But buried deep inside it is the Alcyone quintuple star system, home of the most amazing natural phenomenon in all the worlds. The Taurus Gateway.
I find it interesting that so many humans strive to improve their conditions. Not all by any means. Not even most. But there are always those who look for a better way to peel a potato. Some want to get rich. Some just want to make things better. This is one thing that sets all the races of humanity apart from the non-sapient species of the galaxy. We are never content with the way things are, and we have the capacity to change the worlds.
While we colonized towards the Pleiades, the Chinese actually centralized much of their colonization in and around the Hyades Cluster. We avoided the Hyades, due to the way the chaotic gravity currents affected our hyperdrives. Even now, the Hyades slows us down when we enter, and we had little wish to deal with that area of space. So we left them alone to build an effective fortress in and around the Hyades. We would learn the error of our ways.
There have only been four Cowboy Ones since they reactivated the squadron for The War. We normally don’t change numbers. I will always be Cowboy Five, and there will never be another Cowboy Five. But there will always be a commander, a Cowboy One. The Colonel died as One. Charles and Christian survived to retire. I actually never served with the current commander, but I’m told he’s a good One. Of course, he’d have to be to get Aneerin’s support.
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