Before Space Recon: Mission:SRX, #101

By Matthew D. White

An unwitting sacrifice. A spark to ignite the galaxy.

Ten years before Commander Grant and his SR-X experimental fighter left the ground, the U.S.C. Defiance became the flashpoint for humanity’s First Contact War. While unprepared for the devastating assault from an alien race that was by all previous accounts peaceful, the crew will need to band together if any are to have any hope of survival. Forging within them a steadfast determination, they must go beyond their capabilities and stand united not as mere technicians, but as soldiers of humanity.

With the only hope of a rescue light-years away, will they hold on long enough to warn the fleet of the war that is to come?

A short story and introduction to the Mission:SRX universe.

11,100 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew D. White
• Release date: Mar 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524281595

Book preview

1

And we’re out, the Defiance’s pilot reported to the rest of her crew as they made the transition from the warp back to real space. Navigator’s reporting a clean transition. Drift of eighteen percent detected from nominal. Within parameters.

Thank you, Ensign Meyers, replied Lieutenant Commander Warren Hughes, Captain of the Ship, from the comfort of his seat at the rear of the bridge. Although the Defiance was his first opportunity to command a vessel of his own, it was far from what he had imagined.

Rather than some grand battleship used to protect entire systems, the Defiance was little more than a modified, first-generation civilian freighter. They had bolted a few batteries of defensive cannons to the skin, added secure communications equipment, christened her a vessel of the United Space Corps and expected her to be as popular as any other ship in the fleet.

In the end, however, she was a cargo tug and everyone knew it. They regularly hauled supplies to the various colonies and habitats spread between Earth and Sol Bravo, the first system discovered that contained sentient alien life, and little more. Since First Contact with the Aquillian race, his ship had occasionally interfaced with teams of alien linguists bent on establishing diplomatic relations, but those encounters were quickly losing their luster for the commander; he usually fantasized about what would be coming next.

Hughes looked between the workstations ahead of him and out to the darkness on the far side of the screen above. It was all part of the experience, he reminded himself. He was barely thirty and had at least half a career left to work his way to more glamorous assignments. Another year or two and he’d be on his way to being a frigate or battleship captain. It would mean real responsibility—responsibility for more than the thirty or so members of his current crew. There would be the opportunity to keep the peace and defend humanity against the unknown. He smiled at the thought while he gazed across the field of nameless stars beyond.

Front and center of the semicircular room sat his pilot and navigator, Meyers and Taz. Most of the command crew’s members had call signs; Taz had been given his straight out of the academy under more than suspicious circumstances. He went by it so often, it was unlikely half the ship even knew his real name.

To their right was stationed the pair of weapons operators, Gunner and Breaker. Like Captain Hughes, they spent the preponderance of every mission bored out of their skulls with nothing to shoot at. The left side of the room was populated by the more active members: Dove, Toto and Lieutenant Gray, representing Communications, Avoidance Sensors and Engineering. Unlike the weapons operators, Gray was stretched significantly thin and was always running between the decks putting out rhetorical fires to keep the aging vessel flying.

All systems are go. Proceeding to calculate next jump.

Fifty years ago, devices like their sublight engines would have been sorcery. Today, they had already become a headache. Due to the algorithms the systems employed to punch a hole through the fabric of space-time, they often landed the ships significantly off course from where they were intended. This turned most long-distance voyages into a series of small puddle jumps to constantly calculate new paths along the way toward their destinations lest they get lost in the