Two Weeks

by on March 7, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Two weeks ago, Ukraine had plains, trains, and automobiles. They had high rise apartments and indoor plumbing. They had smart phones and easy internet and social media access. They had nice coats and baby carriages. These conveniences are all things we equate with the modern Western world we built in the last century. Two weeks ago, Ukraine was a near-modern European Western nation. It had some serious corruption problems, and the government wasn’t very popular, but that often goes with the territory. Today, many of their cities are bombed out ruins, and over a million civilians have evacuated to other countries. Never think this can’t happen where you live. They did not think it would happen to them. And now we see the difference two weeks can make.

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Jesse

by on March 6, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Jesse James blames himself for the death of his first wingman early in The War. He could have saved her, you see. It just would have killed him. He has always wondered if he saw how to do it at the time and just didn’t because he didn’t want to die. I did not recognize his doubts at the time, but I pulled him onto my wing, along with our good buddy Ken Banno. The two of them covered my butt rather well and I was quick to give him good marks on all the paperwork we had to do. Then we managed to recruit some replacements for our losses at Alpha Centauri, and he got a new wingman. Louis Mattioli. He passed all of my tests, and everything suggested he and Jesse would be good wingmates. They were. Jesse commanded him well all the way up to Epsilon Reticuli. Yeah. Epsilon Reticuli.

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Jesse

by on March 5, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Jesse James tested out well enough to become one of our original flight leaders back when we all thought we were going to remain a ground-based reserve squadron in Texas. They actually put Drew Keawe, a true First Princess of Hawaii under his wing. He never forgave himself for letting her die. But he shouldn’t blame himself. I was there. And I reviewed the footage. He did nothing wrong. She… was just surrounded by wrong places to be at the wrong time. He always says he should have done something to change that. To give her a chance. Don’t believe him. I know where he was, and I know what he could have done with the perfect vision of twenty-twenty hindsight. I doubt he saw it at the time. I know I wouldn’t have back then. And I know it would have killed him. I don’t blame him, and neither should anyone else.

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Jesse

by on March 4, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Jesse James was lucky in cards, but very unlucky in flight training. He was actually the first of us to breathe vacuum by accident. His training craft suffered a catastrophic malfunction that resulted in every flight surface locking open, every maneuvering thruster lighting off, and the main engines going to full burn. Then the cockpit opened wide a split second before the ejection seat kicked in and sent him flying off into the void without an emergency beacon. His flight suit’s air and energy reserves ran out before we tracked him down, and he spent the better part of an hour breathing vacuum. He was not pleasant looking when we dragged him inside, let me tell you, and any normal human would not have survived. But we Ageless are hard to kill all the way, so he healed up as good as new in a few days. That is when we started calling him the Flying Dutchman. Dutchman for short. Because we care like that.

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Jesse

by on March 3, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I first met Jesse James in Texas during our basic flight training course. It was a consolidated program, geared towards giving us basic ground combat and flight training, no matter what our final Military Occupational Specialty was going to be. We were all Ageless. That meant they could push us way harder than any normal training group. Which meant that we partied harder than the rest during our rare times to rest and relax. Not that we got much rest, you understand. Now Jesse’s favorite past time was cheating all the rest of us in card games. That is where I met him. The cards practically teleported into his hand and he knew where every card was when he dealt them out. I paid up after three hands, chalked it up to a learning experience, and told him I was never playing him with real money ever again. He accepted my declaration with good humor, and then saved the money to his “rebuild the farm” account. That was well played.

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