[El_Phil]

As the magical combination of alcohol and a late night come together it is time for some more writing. With no spell check to hand I apologise for any mistakes, but it should be OK. Without further ado:

Dawn Patrol
Picture a typical escort carrier, the ORS Hawk for instance. She's about 200 metres long, bridge at the front, engines at the back and inbetween all the hangars, ammo stores and other normal parts of a carrier. She's currently cruising along at the centre of a convoy, flanked by an escorting light cruiser and surrounded by merchant vessels. Now look closer at the spine of Hawk, at the rapid launch bays in amongst the point defence turrets and sensor arrays. Focus on the bay nearest the engines, bay 12, and look closer at the fighter inside. Up close you can see what it is, an old Lynx F.3D, almost as old as it's pilot in fact. Now imagine bright alert lights and a howling scramble alarms inside that bay...


'This is it! Combat at last.' Lieutenant Elizabeth 'Liz' Caine had been waiting for some action, any action, for the entire trip and now here it was. She rushed through the pre-launch checks, lifted the switch cover and hit the red 'launch' button.

The Lynx shot out of it's bay, accelerated at several dozen gravities by the large electro-magnets that lined the launch tube. Inside the cockpit Liz grimaed as the launch bay lived up to it's nickname of a 'Llama Bay'. It was spitting her a long way, but it was also giving her a hell of a kick in the back. Then, suddenly, the fighter was out of the launch tube and the acceleration vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. As Liz regained control of the fighter she instinctively looked at the top left corner of her HUD. The orders section was flashing, 'Case Epsilon'.

Her mind was a blank, what did that code mean? Then suddenly it came to her: Gunboat attack, backed up by fighters. That meant the quick launch section was on close escort of the merchant vessels. There was something wrong though, but she couldn't place it. 'But now's not the time to be distracted.' she thought

The small fighter, barely 4m long, turned rapidly to port and the twin plasma drive engines were pushed to full power. Out on the stub winglets the Firestreak missiles were electronically armed and the chin mounted autocannon spun up to speed as the weapon systems were prepared for combat.

Inside the cockpit the problem that had been nagging Liz made itself clear. The warning reciever, that should have been warbling away in her ears, was silent. She checked the radar, it was empty of threats. Just as the icy realisation started to drop into her brain the onboard comms chirped at her.

"All ships this is a drill. Repeat this is a drill. Stand down, stand down. All rapid launch fighters return for de-brief." The fighter control officer on Hawk carried on but Lieutenant Caine wasn't listening. She was far to busy inventing new curses.