MissionSRX: Ephemeral Solace

by Matthew D. White

  Mission:SRX

  Part 2

  Ephemeral Solace

  By M. D. White

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used facetiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents Copyright © 2014 by Matthew D. White

  Cover source image Copyright © 2015 by Shutterstock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author.

  Dedicated to:

  The Raselys, who made me who I am today.

  The Mission:SRX series so far:

  1: Confessions of the First War

  2. Ephemeral Solace

  3. Deep Unknown

  Standalone works within the series:

  101: Before Space Recon, a short story

  Introduction

  In Medias Res…

  Welcome to the second installment of the Mission:SRX saga. To be honest, I had always intended this to be the very beginning. I wrote the first few chapters and expanded on a number of future events and conflicts long before changing gears and focusing on Confessions (which I originally hoped to return to at a later time).

  When it was clear Confessions was ready and needed to come first, I saw it through before returning back to where I started. I pulled out all my earlier work to look at what I had written before, promptly threw away every word of it and started from scratch. The concept still stood on its own, but let’s just say my earlier lack of experience was evident. Additionally, I had the humbling experience of finding my working title being taken verbatim by another author a decade ago. But all is as it should be. As it turned out, writing Confessions gave me the practice I needed to do the rest of Mission:SRX justice.

  My friends, as it was with part one, putting together Ephemeral Solace has been an incredible adventure and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing, the continuing mission of Commander Prime Jefferson David Grant, and his crew whom you’ve yet to meet.

  V/R

  M.D.White

  We’ll start at the beginning, where we left off and right in the middle of things…

  Prologue

  In the darkness of space, hardly beyond the orbit of the earth’s moon, a battle raged for a thousand kilometers in every direction. The remnants of a powerful alien fleet, the last survivors of their civilization, were giving the feeble human defenders the fight of their lives.

  With the majority of Earth’s forces fifty thousand light years away, there was little left to keep them from doing untold damage to the surface. Racing home at their fastest speed, the fleet was still days away. They might as well have been six months out; they’d have no better luck staving off the assault.

  However, out of the shadow of the earth, a glimmer of hope had arrived. A squadron of fighters made of the most ruthless, most dangerous, and most dedicated pilots in the service screamed in from the darkness. They were armed to the teeth and driving the greatest ships ever devised, the Space Recon Version Two, known amongst the community as the SR-2. They approached the battle in perfect formation, blood red paint eerily reflecting starlight from their surfaces as if Mars himself was riding to battle. They were the Crimson Elite.

  Out of the nearly fifty ships that remained, one stood out among the rest. Although they were each works of art in their own right, this one was special. Every line and surface was slightly modified, making it even more exotic. And exotic it was.

  It was the first ship designed using captured alien technology. Rapidly prototyped in mere months, it had already seen its share of battles across the galaxy and was no worse for the wear. With thousands of rounds expended and catching several as well, it didn’t have a single burn; not a scratch was to be found anywhere. But however exceptional the ship was, it was nothing compared to its pilot.

  The Commander Prime was, if nothing else, single-minded of purpose. Throughout his life he had fought on dozens of worlds, saved thousands of lives, led thousands more to their deaths, and had built a mountain from the crushed bodies of aliens who had dared to stand against him. Analysts had attempted to catalog the number of the deceased that had carried arms against the people of Earth, but their estimates varied by orders of magnitude.

  He was an instrument of warfare, a machine without mercy, and had already decided that he would not survive the day. As they glided silently through the vacuum, he reviewed the situation before him and addressed his squadron.

  “Alpha Leader,” he said, “scan the battlespace. What’s their force breakdown?”

  “Checking, Ssir,” Alpha Leader responded and paused while the systems processed the request. “Current estimate is fifteen battleships currently engaged against around eight hundred fighters with more launching. Earth Corps forces are down to eighteen percent operational. They’ve got three battleships left and two hundred fighters in the air but dropping fast.”

  The commander leaned his head back, the heavily armored helmet sinking into the black leather seat, and let the scanner fill in his picture of the field. While sufficient to defend the ground, Earth Corps was by no means equipped to protect the planet from above.

  “Which heavies are they using?”

  “F class. Not the latest and greatest but still enough to give us a pounding,” Alpha Leader replied.

  “No, they won’t even know what hit them,” he said, beginning to parse out the targets. “Listen up everybody: they’ve got nothing new. We’ve seen all this shit before.”

  He planted targeting markers on the two closest enemy battleships. “Command Flight Alpha, follow me, we’re attacking the first from pos. Z. Bravo Flight, take number two from Neg. Z. Charlie, Delta, you’re blocking. I want a thirty degree spread between you. The targets are the capital ships, but don’t spare a fighter if you get the chance. Carve up everything that gets in your way.”

  The commander led the way, flanking above the plane while Alpha Flight followed and the rest dove into the fray below.

  With sheer numbers on their side, the aliens could easily overwhelm the newcomers despite their inferior ships, but the Crimson Elite was not a place for men who couldn’t handle death. There were few casualties, but they tore the invaders apart, shredding their thin skins and turning the space into a mess of floating debris.

  Flying straight through the maelstrom, the commander leaned on the twin triggers of each control, sending a wall of tungsten shrapnel flying from the array of miniguns attached below the fighter’s fuselage.

  “Keep the speed up! Don’t let them draw you off!” he ordered, ducking in his seat as one of the alien ships exploded only meters above his head.

  Every man and alien continued to fight on. If the commander was fazed, no one would have known it; he continued to direct his forces with an inhuman precision. His efforts were not without effect; slowly but surely the tides begun to turn as the alien’s casualties crept into the hundreds.

  “Sir, we may have a problem out here.” Delta Flight’s commander radioed over. He had just engaged a large pack of fighters near the outskirts of the battle.

  “What have you got?”

  “I honestly don’t know. It’s a single ship but it doesn’t match any profile.”

  “What’s its size? Armament?”

  “Smaller than a carrier. So far it hasn’t engaged us with anything…Wait, it’s deploying something fighter-sized but they’re still out of range.”

  “Follow it. I’ll back you up.” The commander switched channels and called up the others. “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, finish up, we’r
e moving to help Delta. They’ve got something new out there.”

  The comm channel lit up from Delta. “Jesus, those things are fast! Their fighters; I can barely get a lock on them. Got one…what the hell? It’s still flying. Hey, these things aren’t even firing yet!”

  The commander kicked up the engines on his ship even faster, interpreting what he was hearing. “Stick with it. Don’t let them go!”

  “Taking fire! Taking fire!” one of Delta’s pilots shouted. “It just shot a probe into my ship. I can see it through the cannons to the right. Looks like it’s deploying antennas or something.”

  Other pilots keyed up their mikes reporting similar encounters. As backup approached, the communication channel for all of Delta Flight lit up like a blazing fire.

  “My screen’s dead! I smell something burning in the console.”

  “What the hell! My controls aren’t responding. I can’t move, can’t fire!”

  One by one, they lost control of their ships. Each one had the same experience. The symptoms were the same.

  They were fired upon by small, agile fighters. When struck by the probes, they lost all weapons functions followed moments later by their ships flying dead as if they were being drug along by an unseen force.

  Seconds later, the ships took their orders from someone else. They apparently turned on and engaged each other, beginning to shoot wildly trying to blow one another into oblivion.

  “Squadrons, they’re trying to take control of our ships. Keep away from the fighters; don’t let them tag you.”

  The commander gripped his controls tighter, thinking it could come for him at any time. For the first time, he felt fear. Things began to look bleak, but he refused to accept defeat even as more of his fighters were compromised.

  Rallying his force for a run, he lined up one more target. “Elites! We’re taking one shot at the new ship,” he roared over the radio, “full speed in, everything we’ve got!”

  The twelve survivors acknowledged and followed their commander around in an arc, right at the mysterious ship.

  The fighters now found themselves making a run straight at Earth, with the capital ship and the remainder of the battle flooding their view with burning shards of metal. More aliens lined up to take the thirteen survivors out, but they did nothing to slow the assault.

  More of the Elite lost their controls and the commander tried to work through their issues, trying everything he could think of to troubleshoot them while they screeched along their run. Through the blasts of friend and foe alike, the commander didn’t even see the black probe streak out of the darkness and implant itself square on his left wing.

  “Shit, I picked one up!” he shouted, gripping the controls tighter, subconsciously feeling them start to move on their own. From the corner of his eye, the commander could see antennas deploy from the probe. It was only a matter of time until he lost control. Regardless, he knew they needed a defense. “Get word back to the fleet about this! They’ve got to get a defense together,” he called out to anyone who could hear.

  “Sir, long range communications are gone!” Charlie’s commander radioed back.

  “I’m not going down like this. Do what you can to help. I’m taking that ship!” He kept on course and somehow retained full control. Glancing again at the probe on the wing, he saw it began billowing smoke. “The pod on me just caught fire.” Down on his console, the log opened, and a new entry appeared: Parasite detected. All threats eliminated.

  Whether it was luck or fate, the Commander Prime didn’t care. “I’m good to go. Commencing attack!” he shouted.

  All at once, as if preempting his action, every one of his infected wingmen changed course and opened fire in his path. Swerving back and forth, it was all he could do to avoid the blasts. The first shot got through the shields and impacted the hull beside his canopy. Screens dimmed inside the cabin as if shorted by an electrical surge while the generator struggled to recharge his defenses. Two flickered and never came back. From somewhere unseen the smell of ozone wafted out.

  He continued dodging the blasts until another ship came too close.

  “Look out!” one of his pilots shouted as his ship came about and opened fire.

  The commander swerved to the side with no time to spare. The shots slid right through the space between the canopy and the main sensor probe less than two meters above.

  “We’ve got to take that ship out!” he bellowed again. “We’re not backing out now!” The commander continued before ducking instinctually when two more of his ships collided head-on ahead of him. For the first time in ages, the veteran soldier was beginning to sweat.

  Bravo’s commander called in. “Sir, disable our ships. If we can keep them steady for a second, you can shoot out the engines! We’d just be left drifting.”

  The request hit home. From somewhere, he knew it was a possibility but didn’t want to face it. “If I miss I’ll kill you! That’s not acceptable!”

  “Since when would that stop you?! You’ve got to do it! It’s either you or us. We need that ship gone!”

  It was a bad idea, but he couldn’t think of anything better. The commander spun back around and relayed the message to the rest of the squadron. They concurred, did what they could to hold their ships steady, and he opened fire, planting shots directly into their engines.

  Their ships blinked out and powered down, and the commander roared by once again, straight into the strange alien craft. He let loose with every weapon that remained on his rails before pulling back and gunning his engines for all they were worth. Guns mounted to their deck tried to fire back, doing heavy damage to the single remaining fighter, but as it would happen humanity won out. The entire vessel exploded in a world-shaking fireball and hail of debris in all directions as he streaked past.

  In the momentary silence of the aftermath, he checked the scope centered on his console. There was little remaining of the alien fleet, and they were well within the skill levels of the Earth Corps regulars. From the darkness, too, the early responders from the rest of Earth’s fleets would soon be emerging. For the first time in forever the commander breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

  It was short lived. Looking across the screens in his cabin, the commander saw the remaining disabled ships take even more damage. From the blinking icons drifting on the scope, fires were spreading from the engines to life support systems. He called in vain to anyone else in the vicinity to assist, but got no confirmations. Even the Crimson Elite’s transport was on the far side of the earth and unable to mount a rescue, assist or even hear his cry for help.

  He tried again and again, getting nothing but nulls and communication errors, and could only watch the fires raging on other ships he passed by, blowing off panels from every section of their skins and turning the survivors’ cockpits into raging infernos.

  Shouting out again, the commander tried to tell them help was on its way, but there was little chance they heard him. Help was a pipe dream. He was useless to assist.

  The commander turned to make another run by. Before he could complete another thought, one last remaining ship slammed into the underside of his fighter on a suicide mission, scoring a direct hit on the ship’s twin booster engines. The strike was too much for even the advanced frame to sustain. Every system in the cabin went dark, leaving him powerless and in freefall down towards Earth’s surface.

  He tried the radio over and over while the ship tumbled towards the home planet and away from his forces, but all he got was static. As he dropped closer, Earth’s gravitational field got stronger and he picked up speed. Emergency systems kicked on but couldn’t muster the energy to restart the engines.

  As the fall became a tumble and as more systems failed, the commander struggled to stay conscious. The ship’s position indicator changed into an altimeter as they dropped and showed the approaching ground. Every warning light in the ship flashed as a plume of fire built up outside the canopy of glass. Thinking fast, he tried one more idea to lose speed
before slamming into the ground below.

  The commander pulled the lever for manual controls, spun his ship about, and rerouted all of the remaining power and fuel into whatever was left of the boosters. Everything shook as the damaged sub-light engines dumped their fuel, ignited a blast that resembled a nuclear detonation right as he flew straight through it. The roaring flare nearly overwhelmed the small craft but quickly subsided.

  The maneuver left the larger engines dead, but the lone fighter had decelerated by at least a few kilometers per second. The ship was flying somewhat straight, if not level, and the commander attempted to straighten the spinning craft out.

  The commander continued to fight the controls, cursing as they refused to respond. An isolated patch of desert lay before him; at least his location would minimize civilian casualties. He kept pulling back until he caught up with the ground, the ship slammed straight through a huge mound of rocks on an overlooking mountain, sent him sailing, and impacted the surface a klick farther down the plain at only a ten degree angle. The screaming exasperation from the ship gave way as he hit the ground, leaving only eerie silence.

  He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t think. His ears rung and his head spun. He was in tomb; all the commander knew was that he had to get out. Pushing up with all his might, he shifted the canopy aside and crawled out onto the baking, blood red skin. He tumbled down the side of the hull and landed hard on the ground below. The stabbing pain from the impact coursed through his body and he lay there a moment, collecting his thoughts.

  The commander prime couldn’t let death overcome him. Struggling up to his knees, he unlatched and pulled his helmet free and surveyed the damage. In his assessment, it was zero shots short of complete, total devastation for them and their alien enemy.

  With nothing else left to do, the man winced as he got to his feet and began hiking west, hoping to clear the lord-only-knew how many kilos between him and something resembling a Space-Corps base. He didn’t have much time to question it before he was greeted by a convoy of light trucks crossing the desert towards him.