Angel Flight (Jack of Harts 2)

By Medron Pryde

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.

Then their enemies brought War to us all. We gave them a belly full of it. We drove them out of Alpha Centauri, rebuilt the losses they inflicted on us, and assembled the largest, most powerful fleet that had ever flown under Terran banners. Third Fleet was our best hope to defeat them and bring a quick end to The War.

But not everyone agreed on how to use it. Alliance leadership wanted to see it in action immediately while our allies stressed caution. The demand for results won out over caution and that is where we came in. Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Wing 112, the Cowboys. We were sent to support the fleet and to watch out for anything the enemy might throw at us. I honestly thought it would be a cakewalk. I mean, who would ever attack something the size of Third Fleet? That would be crazy...

First Edition, May 2014
Revised Second Edition, May 2015
Revised Third Edition, May 2017

This novel is offered DRM free so you can view it wherever you want.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Medron Pryde
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370059249

Medron Pryde

Hello, my name is Medron Pryde, and I am the creator of Jack of Harts.Jack of Harts is a place I hope you like. It’s a place where we did things right, where we built a world we would be happy for our children to grow up in. It’s not perfect. There is conflict. But by and large, we made the hard decisions, and we did what needed doing. We made a good world. I know today that stories tend to go much more dark than that, dystopian futures where we have destroyed our world or enslaved our populations. Places where even the Good Guys are more dirty and hairy than they are clean-shaven and happy. Jack of Harts is not like that. It’s not a world where somebody takes a step forward to fix something and gets knocked two steps back. I don’t like those worlds. I don’t want to spend a lot of time imagining them.Jack of Harts is based in many ways on what I grew up wanting. I was raised in a Christian home, told to do onto others as you’d have them do onto you. I watched Bonanza, where the Cartwrights helped anybody who came along needing it. On Superman, I watched the Big Blue Boy Scout (even if he was in black and white) fighting the Bad Guys each week for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. On Quantum Leap, a man lost in time always found a way to make the world he dropped into each week a little bit better. On Star Trek, a bunch of people I liked traveled through the stars to go places that no man had been to before...because it was there. In Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and Star Wars, the plucky outnumbered heroes came back swinging with a smile, a joke, and a hearty laugh, and they never gave up hope that they could find or build a better world to live in. These are the stories I grew up with. These are what I enjoy, and these live on in my optimism.In Jack of Harts, I try to capture that. The characters of Jack, Charles, and Aneerin, just to name a few, are all people who lived in a world before The War came. When that happened, they aren’t the people who crossed the border to hide from the draft, the people who gave up hope and found a bottle or a needle to hide behind. These are the people who stood up, walked into a recruiting office, and volunteered to defend their ways of life. They may cover it up by saying they’re just in it for the money, or because that person over there just needed taking care of. But don’t let that fool you. They are the best of us, a reflection of the true Big Damn Heroes who grab a rifle, a pistol, and a bulletproof vest (or maybe a fireproof suit) to protect our freedoms and our lives everyday.Jack of Harts is a place where I like to think these people would like what they see. It’s a place I enjoy going to when I write, with people I’d like to share a beer with. I’ll keep it that way. I hope it’s a place you’ll enjoy reading, and I hope you come back each day or maybe each week to read some more.So have a good one, and I hope to see you again.Medron Pryde

Book preview

Break, Jack ordered and pulled the controls to the left. Thrusters flared and the formation of Avengers exploded into a chaotic mess of individually maneuvering fighters. Or so the complicated maneuver was designed to look to outside eyes. In reality it was a complex plan designed by the collective intellect of seven cybernetic intelligences, randomized by six Marine fighter pilots, and thrown into the teeth of the enemy missiles by seventy-two Avenger-class starfighters. The AIs inhabiting the Shang missiles never saw it coming.

The Avengers scattered, spinning to sweep over two hundred gravitic cannons across the missile swarm. Over a hundred missile batteries spat their vengeance as fast as they could reload and over five hundred lasers sent coherent beams of deadly light through the exhaust gases filling space. Missiles died by the scores, by the hundreds, but nothing could stop the missile swarm from engulfing them.

Everywhere Jack looked he saw and felt missiles, exhaust, explosions, and death. There was no safe place to be but he let his mind go blank and just moved whenever he got the urge to move. He had a lot of urges to move and his hands twitched on the stick and throttle. Missiles exploded all around them and a warning light alerted him to the near hits clawing at their deflection grid. Another display came up, showing armor damage on the port wing. An Avenger ahead of him exploded and another missile flew by close enough he could have stepped onto it if he’d wanted to.

By

Medron Pryde

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Books

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Forge of War

Angel Flight

Angel Strike

Angel War

Wolfenheim Rising

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Short Stories

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The Gemini Affair

ANGEL FLIGHT

A Jack of Harts Novella By

MEDRON PRYDE

Copyright © 2014-2017 by Medron Pryde

Smashwords Edition

Cover background designed by Stephen Huda under contract

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published in the United States of America

First Printing, May 2014

Revised Second Printing, May 2015

Revised Third Printing, May 2017

http://jackofharts.com

http://www.facebook.com/jackofhartsonline

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this story to everyone who has served in the Armed Forces. It is thanks to all of you that we are here now, to enjoy this form of entertainment in the safety of our homes. I would especially like to thank every Marine aviator of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 112. The Wolfpack in World War II, the Cowboys in recent decades. The Cowboys in this story are named in your honor.

I would also like to thank everybody who has helped me write this story, from those who brainstormed with me, proofread it for me, edited it, created art to bring it to life, or simply declined to roll your eyes when I nattered on about this story I was writing. Whether family or friend, whether I have met you in person or only over the Internet, your help and support is greatly appreciated.

Angel Flight

Table of Contents

Enterprise

Durango

Los Angeles

Eclipse

Recovery

Author Afterward

Angel Strike Preview

When I was a kid, the only things that interested me were girls and parties. We never thought about war. Who would ever attack us? Then the Shang struck Yosemite Yards and dropped them all over the western half of the United States. We all volunteered after that, expecting a Short, Victorious War against the alien menace that had seriously underestimated us. Instead we got War Without End. You learn the measure of friends in times like those. True friends stand beside you, and you beside them, in the eternities of boredom and instants of terror that fill a War.

Enterprise

Two pair, Swan said with a smile and dropped her cards on the table.

Jack scowled at her two kings and flung his cards down in disgust. The other four Cowboys groaned as well, scattering their failed hands on the table while Lieutenant Dawn DeMarco gathered up her winnings. The bottle caps clattered against each other, and Swan bestowed a look on her opponents that reminded Jack of her namesake. She sat tall and erect, a true daughter of the Outer Colony world Camelot, with a lithe beauty even the unisex standard Marine duty uniform couldn’t shroud. She surveyed the field of battle before her and turned the eyes that were much older than her twenty-some year old face to challenge the other Cowboys. Another hand? she asked.

Jack chuckled and swept the cards up with a deft motion. He began to shuffle, smiling as their eagle eyes watched to make certain he didn’t load the deck in anyone’s favor. He chuckled again and shook his head.

What? Cat asked from her side of the table, peering at him suspiciously. He met her gaze, fingers flickering between the cards in a blur as they passed between his hands. Captain Kathleen Reynolds was night to Swan’s day, unruly hair forever rebelling from any attempt to control it. She had the undeniably rumpled air of an Iowa farm girl stepping out of the barn after a long day of work. Or a night of far too much fun. Her eyes were just as old as Swan’s, though, and Jack knew they had over a century of flight time between the two of them. Jack wondered again at the vagaries of the universe that left him of all people in command of a pair of such veteran pilots.

It’s just good to have the band back together, Jack said with a waggle of his eyebrows and the cards fluttered from one hand to the other.

I’m just glad to have space to stretch out in again, Snake returned, the slightly too-large eyes and oversized head of a native Martian scanning the ready room as if looking for a lawsuit he could file. Appropriate since Louis Mattioli was a lawyer in his day job before The War. Jack had to give credit to the man, though. He was a lot nicer than the stereotype of the soulless lawyer would suggest.

Jack followed the man’s gaze, eyes running over the snarling wolf symbol hanging on the bulkhead. It belonged to the Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Wing 112. They'd been founded as the Wolfpack during the Second World War, then moved to Texas and changed their name to the Cowboys, but they kept the old symbol in memory of their roots. His eyes flitted over to the flag of the United States of America hanging on one bulkhead. The larger single-star Republic of Texas flag hung above it, bringing up the old joke about everything being bigger in Texas. I do love Cowboy Country, he echoed Snake’s assertion.

The other Cowboys stopped examining the shuffling cards in his hands to look around their ready room. Twelve hatches opened into the personal sleeping quarters pilots enjoyed onboard fleet carriers like Enterprise, while everything a squadron needed to be ready to fly filled the room itself. A small wet bar on one wall gave them access to any drink they wanted, as long as that wasn’t alcohol. A screen they usually used for playing movies dominated another wall, while the amazingly comfortable recliners filled most of the room. The table they sat around was officially a map of the kilometer-long rectangular carrier deck. The location and readiness of the dozen or so fighter squadrons and numerous other craft currently embarked on the warship peeked out from under the cards and bottle caps. It made for a real nice poker table for a half-dozen pilots who hadn’t seen each other since the Alpha Centauri Campaign.

It was good to be together, even if it meant taking the long trip out to Epsilon Reticuli. Jack suppressed a scowl at that thought, wondering again why the Alliance was gathering so many warships so far from the heart of the fighting. Oh, there were some major Chinese and Russian colonies to hit out here, but he couldn’t think that any of them rated the entire Third Fleet to take down. Western Alliance leadership just wanted to show their enemies that The West was still in The War to win all the marbles, and they were looking for something to hit. Admiral Aneerin had tried to talk them out of it, but they were adamant. This was where Jack and his merry band of Cowboys came in. Aneerin wanted someone he trusted on the spot if everything hit the fan, and if that was the excuse it took to get the band back together Jack would smile and run with it.

Jack snorted and glanced towards Fox and Crane. Jesse James owned a farm in Kansas, though the hint of roguish eyes gave a slight twist to his weatherworn face. The face of Buckaroo Banno was plastered all over California surfing magazines, first as a surfer and then as the owner of the Samurai Surfing stores, but Ken Banno was a Free Japanese through and through. Jesse and Ken were his oldest new friends in this new Post-Yosemite world. They’d met during the rushed pilot training designed to throw new pilots into reactivated fighter units like the Cowboys, and Jack could read them like an open book. They were ready to fly, ready to fight, and ready to party, whichever came first, second, or last.

Swan and Cat had joined the Cowboys during the Alpha Centauri Campaign to fill out losses in the original Cowboy Squadron, which he supposed was why he thought