New Dawn

Lieutenant Commander Dawn Delight, known to DD to her friends and rather less flattering names to her enemies, paced restlessly up and down the floor of the cramped cabin that was her home on the Fury, a recently refitted frigate that was her pride and joy. Having completed three tours of duty, first as navigator, then twice as tactical officer on the same ship, the last also as acting first officer after the death of Lieutenant Commander Abram from sudden heart failure, Dawn had had her commission confirmed. The Fury's skipper, Captain Alan Pears, had given her the highest commendation before retiring at the end of the tour, and the Admiralty had decided to give her command of the Fury, though they did not give her a promotion to captain due to her only having just received the promotion to Lieutenant Commander. A certain amount of politics had abviously occured in the background to this but Dawn remained ignorant of the details.

But what mattered was that she now had her own ship. One look at the resentment in Lt Commander Abrams eyes told her that there would be more problems on the way. No doubt the son of Fleet Admiral Abrams was one of the reasons she had not received the usually automatic promotion to captain. Abrams had probably thought the captaincy would be his, but Dawn's scores in all the tac exercises were so far ahead of anyone elses, no one could justify denying her the place.

Dawn looked again at her first orders, delivered the old way on actual paper. It was marked top secret. Dawn could see why. She did not know if this was a privilege or if someone wanted to kill her, but either way, she had her orders.

The Empire of Man spanned several star systems. Every planet in the home system was colonised. Of the 3 neighbouring systems, one had only the Sol wormhole, and no other way out, and several thriving colony worlds. One other route led to a succession of nebulea with no planets. And the final route led to 3 interconnected systems with a large collection of colonised planets. No non humans had ever been seen.

Or so Dawn had thought. What she did not know, until now, was that an alien race had been encountered several months past. A hostile race. A colony ship, reported lost in an asteroid belt had in fact been destroyed. No news had been released of this to avoid panic. But a major rearmament and refitting programme had been undertaken.

Dawn was in one of the first frigates that was truely a frigate and not just a scout. Her mission was to explore and find the aliens home system. A suicide mission some might say.