An Officer of the Union Space Fleet
No alien armadas. No galaxy-ending war. No chosen one. Just real people, hard problems, and the quiet competence it takes to fix what's broken — in the tradition of Star Trek's best episodes.
The Series
Competence fiction in the tradition of Star Trek's best episodes — the ones where nobody fires a weapon and the crew solves the problem by being good at their jobs. It follows Montgomery Hale, who fakes his way aboard the fleet's flagship at seventeen and rises, one hard-earned rank at a time, through a career he was never supposed to have.
The problem is never an armada. It's a water system on a colony that hasn't seen a supply ship in forty years. A first contact gone sideways. A crew member who just needs someone to listen. The kind of story that got left behind when every book started ending with the galaxy on fire.
“Every military sci-fi book on my shelf ended the same way — the galaxy on fire, the fleet outnumbered, some hero saving civilization in the last fifty pages. I got tired of it. I wanted the book about the guy who shows up on day one and doesn't know where the mess hall is. Nobody wrote that book, so I wrote it myself.” — Joe Durham
The Books
Montgomery Hale is seventeen, broke, and about to commit the biggest fraud of his life. He forges fleet credentials and fakes his way aboard the Union's flagship — flying a four-hundred-crew starship he was never trained to operate, on a mission to reconnect twelve colony worlds isolated for forty years. A kid who's good with his hands, bad with people, and learning he can't do it alone.
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He's an ensign now. For real. Almost. He's on the primary helm rotation and the captain trusts him — which is exactly when it gets dangerous. Every mission he flies well makes his forged record look more wrong, and then the Providence draws orders back to the station where he grew up. One person recognizing him could end everything.
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The Providence is sent to save Halen Colony, whose failing orbit is a math problem its elected council refuses to believe — they've voted that the fleet's warning is a manipulation and turned away every offer of help. Montgomery has six weeks, a seat on the diplomatic team, and a Fleet Advancement Review Board aboard, quietly pulling at the threads of every officer's record. Including his.
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Montgomery Hale has earned his lieutenant's bar — and his first people to lead. Then three problems land on one bridge crew across a single posting: a pathogen, a wreck, and a probe. They look like coincidence. They aren't.
Get the release alertAbout the Author
Joe Durham served as a mechanic for twenty years before trading wrenches for fence posts on a small farm outside Winthrop, Washington. He never went to college and never took a writing class.
He spent two decades reading every military sci-fi novel he could find — and he writes the kind he always wanted more of: episodic, character-driven, and mostly uninterested in galaxy-ending wars. An Officer of the Union Space Fleet is his series about doing the job well when nobody's watching.
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Contact
Questions, a note about the books, or a review-copy request — drop a line. Or email [email protected].