Jack of Harts

“I’ve got your back, John,” Cassie said.

His displays flashed with recommendations and target locks.

“Never doubted it for a second,” Christensen said and sprang back to his feet. He lined the rifle in his right hand up on one enemy quad, waited a moment for the display to flash a target lock, and pulled the trigger. The secondary barrel glowed with electromagnetic energy for an instant before spitting out a single high explosive round that shot across the Martian landscape faster than the speed of sound. The kinetic energy alone was enough to breach the armor of anything but the heaviest enemy tanks. He would have needed a proper armor-piercing warhead to take one of them out, but the unarmored quad and its rider were an entirely different matter. It was akin to beating a piñata with a sledgehammer.

The other quads opened fire and rounds bounced off his armor or sent showers of red Martian dirt into the air all around him.

Christensen rode the recoil and turned away from the exploding quad. He stepped up onto the rim of the small crater, bringing the heavy rifle in his left hand to aim at another target. He pulled that trigger, kinetic energy flashed, and his second target exploded. He rode the recoil once more and brought the first rifle down on a third target. A stream of enemy rounds smashed into it and sparks filled his view. Powerful electromagnetic coils crackled their energy all over the Martian landscape. His display flashed red warning signs as the rifle fried itself to death in his hand.

***

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Smashwords

In 2205, we learned the answer to one of the oldest questions of all time. Are we alone? They brought medicines with them that nearly wiped out diseases, and extended the human lifespan into the centuries. They helped us study advanced technologies, and expand our colonies hundreds of lightyears from Earth. It was a golden age that many thought would never end.

Jack grew up in that world at peace, his only interests, partying and girls. But then a sneak attack killed millions of Americans, and wiped out almost everything and everybody Jack knew. He signed up with the Marines to get some payback against the alien scum who’d started it all.

Now Captain Jack Hart of the Republic of Texas Marine Corps and his Avenger-class starfighters support the British Commonwealth fleet seeking to bring The War that has ravaged entire star systems to an end once and for all. All their enemies need to do is surrender the aliens that started all this destruction to Western Alliance justice. That isn’t too much to ask for peace, is it?

Some people call the idea crazy. Others idiotic. But some call it… audacious.

***

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Eight years ago, Vice President Biden and Vice President candidate Ryan met in a debate. I went back to watch the first twenty minutes of that debate, just as I did the Trump-Biden debate of this week. For one, it was rather amazing to watch Biden walk around with a spring in his step. But it was also amazing to see how much was the same between then and now. His mannerisms. His reactions. And the way he debated.

Biden treated Ryan in 2012 much the same way he treated Trump in 2020. In the first twenty minutes, he interrupted Ryan multiple times. He accused Ryan of saying untrue things multiple times. Didn’t actually use the term “liar” as he did with Trump, and didn’t call Ryan a clown. But he did use the term “malarkey” multiple times, which means insincere, foolish, and deceiving. He also said that what Ryan said was just untrue. He mockingly laughed at Ryan throughout Ryan’s answers, and talked over him multiple times when the moderator was very obviously asking Ryan a question.

Now Ryan was a gentleman and did not respond in kind. And from my memories of that time, he was loudly declared to have lost the debate. That was eight years ago. Trump today is no gentleman to those who mock him. He is known to fire back when people attack him. He hits everybody, so it is truly no surprise to me how Trump reacted when Biden pulled the same tricks on him, only ramped up, as he did on Ryan eight years ago.

After watching the Biden-Ryan debate, I no longer wonder if Biden planned to start the insult and interrupt campaign during the debate with Trump this week. I now realize that it is his standard operational strategy. It is what he wanted. Though I would be willing to bet that he was surprised by just how down in the dirt and muck it got. All of us were, but perhaps more of us should have watched that old debate again. Then we would have recognized the signs earlier to know exactly what was going on.