MissionSRX: Confessions of the First War

by Matthew D. White

  “We’ve got to take that ship out!” I stated. “We’re not backing out now!” I ducked in my seat as two more of my pilots collided head-on ahead of me. For the first time I could feel my forehead begin to boil and sweat.

  Captain Johnson called in. “Grant, you need to take out our ships. If we can keep them steady for a second, you can shoot out the engines! We’ll just be left drifting.”

  “If I miss I’ll kill you!”

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

  I was out of ideas. I spun back around and told the remaining pilots myself that I was going to disable their fighters to finish the mission. They concurred and I opened fire on them from behind, blasting away at their engines. Their ships blinked out and powered down and I roared by once again, straight into the strange alien craft. I let loose with every weapon I had loaded. They fired back, doing heavy damage to my single fighter, but I won out.

  The entire thing exploded in a hail of debris as I flew past. I looked back towards earth and admired my handiwork. The remainder of the alien fleet was being mopped up by the other humans far and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was short lived. I looked back around and saw the remaining ships from my wing began to catch fire. I called out to the command ship to get rescue crews out as fast as they could but I was too late. I still didn’t have communications that far out and I could see the fires spreading from the engines, blowing off panels all over the skin and turning the survivor’s cockpits into raging infernos. I shouted out again that help was on the way, but I doubt they heard me.

  Before I could even inhale, I felt a deep jolt from under my ship. A massive chunk of debris slammed into my engines and dealt far more than it could sustain and I was in free-fall towards the surface.

  I tried to radio again and again while I slipped away from the rest of my forces, but all I got was static. I picked up speed again as I was pulled in by earth’s gravitational field.

  “Space Corps, this is Commander Prime Grant. I’ve got massive structural damage and I’m getting pulled down to earth! I’ve got multiple system failures. I need some help out here now!!”

  As the fall became a tumble and as my systems failed around me, I struggled to stay conscious. My position indicator changed into an altimeter and showed the approaching ground. Every warning light in the ship was flashing as a plume of fire built up outside. I knew I’d be cooked if I didn’t lose some speed. I pulled my ship around and dumped all of the remaining fuel into whatever was left of the sub-light engines. Everything shook as I shot out what looked like a mushroom cloud right before me and proceeded to fly straight through it. I squinted, trying to block the flaring light but quickly it subsided and I now had decelerated at least a few kilos per second.

  At least I was now flying somewhat level. The g-corrections were completely gone and I pulled as hard as I could to get my approach angle to something survivable.

  As luck would have it, I was able to aim myself a tiny bit, towards the desolate landscape of White Sands, thus minimizing the risk of human lives. I was able to pull out of the dive a great deal, slammed straight through a huge mound of rocks on an overlooking mountain and impacted the surface at only a ten degree angle. The noise blasting from the ship gave way as I hit the ground. It still felt like I broke my neck and sent a ton of sand high into the air all around.

  I couldn’t think much after the crash. I crawled out of my beautiful ship and got to my feet. It would be hours before I come across a base, so I started out on foot. I was met not ten minutes later by a convoy of three Humvees roaring across the desert.

  Six men disembarked and stood in a semicircle around me. “Commander Prime Jefferson Grant?” The leading officer inquired.

  I nodded. “That’s me. What do you want?”

  “I’m sorry sir,” he answered.

  I never saw it coming. Every single other member of the squad drew their stun guns and drove the leading barbs into my chest. I barely remember the sting of the charge and the shock of hitting the sand before everything went dark.

  43

  I woke up in the dim cell that I am sitting in now. A man at least ten years my senior sat on a short protrusion from the wall across from me. “What the hell just happened?” I asked as my eyes tried to adjust to the light.

  “You’ve been detained, Mr. Grant.” The well-dressed bureaucrat spoke with all of the heart of a synthesizer.

  “What?” I was still in a daze.

  “While your efforts in the defense of earth were indeed heroic, Space Command feels that your haphazard and reckless assaults were uncalled for, and you have been charged with the deaths of more than a dozen men under your command and hundreds more indirect.

  “Do you care to elaborate?”

  “Mr. Grant, you put your forces in harm’s way unnecessarily and your ship clearly recorded multiple occasions in which you deliberately opened fire on vulnerable areas of their fighters.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I think you’re missing part of the story. It had to be done, they were under the control of-” he stopped me before I could finish.

  “I don’t think so. You are the sole survivor, no data recorders were found intact. Nothing indicates that you were up against some supernatural force that made you attack the men under your command in the course of duty. You murdered them in cold blood in a fit of rage manifested over your family’s passing,” he paused and looked into my eyes as cold as I had ever done myself. “You’re meeting with the rest of the justices in two hours for a hearing of your crimes,” he looked with disdain at my charred and torn black armored suit. “You should probably clean yourself up,” he stated then gestured to a suit hung on the wall behind me. I just shook my head.

  The hearing lasted only a few minutes. I guess when confronted with a list containing dozens of war crimes, following a brutal campaign across the galaxy, the execution of multiple soldiers under one’s command, and my questionable actions in the annihilation of the inner system didn’t give me a lot to stand behind.

  They threw me back in the cell for 24 hours while they decide my punishment, which is where I find myself now. I have 40 minutes to go before they take me back out and probably have me executed. As far as I’m concerned, they shouldn’t even bother waiting. I’ve lived longer than I wanted to anyway.

  Out of nowhere, and with minutes to go, Dr. Jacobs appeared on the other side of the bars. His previously exuberant expression was now sullen. He spoke before I could even acknowledge him.

  “I came as soon as I heard. I’m so sorry to see what it has come to.”

  I nodded slightly. “It is what it is. Next time they can do it themselves.”

  “That they can,” he paused. “You should know I resigned this morning.” The statement caught me off guard. I saw nothing but truth in his eyes. “There’s more. Admiral Heddings did the same.”

  “Why?”

  “Upon our retirements we each made an appeal for your life.”

  “You did that for me?” I asked.

  He nodded, smiling slightly. “It seemed like the right thing to do. The two of us have everything to do with your getting in this situation so it’s only fair.”

  “You shouldn’t have, but thank you.” I responded, and shook the doctor’s hand through the bars.

  “No, thank YOU,” he answered before checking the door. “I’ve got to be going. Best of luck to your future; remember, we will persevere!” He added before walking out, leaving me in the cell. Once again, I was truly alone.

  I can only hope that this story makes it out as a different perspective on the war, as a warning to the patriots who would follow me, and a warning to those who would seek to question humanity’s rule of the galaxy. There will always be someone willing to do what is necessary to ensure the survival of mankind. Far away from me, at this very moment, the forces of earth are returning home to what they left behind. If the darknes
s comes for us again, I know they will be there to answer the call.

  Brave and deserving as they are, I find myself on death row. How did my decisions bring me here? I heard before that the greatest heroes of any conflict are the ones who make the greatest sacrifices. I never wanted to believe it, but now that cold truth is staring me in the face. All I have left is the hope that humanity is worth saving.

  All that I have written here is a factual account to the very extent that my memory allows.

  -Commander Prime Jefferson David Grant

  Epilogue

  “Are you still recording this?” The technician had been staring at the transmission filtering through a spectrum analyzer for what seemed minutes without blinking.

  “Of course. Has South Station confirmed?” Another man responded as he ran amongst several other pieces of equipment. Screens and processing units were perched precariously on top of each other with dozens of cables stretched between them and across the walkway. The scientists were clearly unprepared for the massive data collection but were making the best of what they had.

  The two men were sitting in the control room of a lunar research station; part of a skeleton crew who monitored communications, interference, and other deep space transmissions. Several hours prior, it had been just another day. It all changed, however, when multiple alien ships appeared around earth and razed her defenses.

  An operation of this magnitude had never been seen before in earth’s orbit. It even paled the size of the force encountered during Earth Strike. Fear was in the voice of every man and woman on the communication channels. The battle was nothing more than an exercise in attrition and one by one the voices went silent as the human ships were disabled.

  Communication traffic spiked again when the additional human forces from Sol Charlie arrived. The team heard references concerning events, locations and military units that they never before knew existed but things were still only getting started.

  They easily recorded exchanges with multiple squadrons of fighters and the battleships, but when the commanders were willing to declare victory within grasp, every scanner in the station lit up. From the far end of the battlefield, the last remaining alien ship started broadcasting incredibly powerful signals across every band.

  “South Station is seeing the exact same thing. Can we get a visual confirmation of the source?”

  “I’ve got a request in with a scope. They’re moving it now to our projected coordinates. I’ll bring it up on the main screen when it’s in position.”

  “This is a ton of power for anything. If it gets much higher we’re going to start burning out receivers.”

  While switching displays for the feed from the telescope, the tech glanced over at his partner hovering over screens showing a dozen graphs. “Any chance you can decode it?”

  “Not at all.” The other responded. “I’ve never seen any kind of signal structure or encryption like this ever before. The best thing we can do is pass it along to the intelligence guys back home and see what they can do with it.”

  “We’ve got the video feed!” The first tech announced. They both peered at the massive monitor as a picture came into focus. Debris and noise filled much of the screen but in the center they could make out the form of a strange alien ship. “What the hell kind of…”

  The man didn’t have a chance to finish the thought, for as he pointed at their target, the ship exploded into a hail of sparks and fire. Every feed from their antenna array went blank in an instant. The two looked at each other as the realization of what they had just witnessed sank in. “Call Headquarters.”

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