I was looking for a new military space opera type series and I happen to get an email from Mr. White asking if I’d read his short story and maybe that would lead to me reading his follow-on three book series. I usually don’t read short stories, but I took the chance just because I didn’t want to miss something in the start of the series.
This short story is pretty concise. An Earth military cargo hauler is in route to a colonized Earth planet. The crew is military in that Earth, but expected this mission to be a “milk-run”. Earth has encountered another spacefaring race called the Aquillians, but so far, they have been pretty docile.
The U.S.C. Defiance is using Earth warp drive to conduct it’s mission. The drive is the first invented by humans and it doesn’t work all that well, in that the longer the jump, the more of an error in destination is created. So, they have to make rather small jumps, re-caclulate their location, and jump again. Their last jump put them in a strange part of empty space where their navigation went haywire. They didn’t know where they were and were attempting to try and figure that problem out when they spied an Aquillian vessel not far from them.
What happens next will make your blood boil. I immediately volunteered for the United Space Corps. The Aquillians apparently want a war, and we’re going to bring it to them. “Remember the Defiance!”
The follow-on three books are; Confessions of the First War; Ephemeral Solace, and Deep Unknown.