Alien Crossroads

The year is 2272, and mankind has taken its initial tentative steps into deep space. The discovery of wormholes - just as Albert Einstein predicted more than three hundred years earlier, had opened up deep space to exploration. With faster than light travel - humans have now spread out nearly two hundred light years from earth. Establishing a few small colonies and trading posts across the vastness of space, mankind had now encountered half a dozen alien races. For many, this new era of exploration is similar to the seventeenth and eighteen centuries on earth, when the tall sailing ships plied the oceans in year-long voyages to the new world. Earth's Navy has been hard pressed to deal with the vastness of space, and its first military encounters with aliens are complete disasters. The generations of peace on earth have left the Navy and its admirals unprepared for alien encounters. The Navy and Marines were stretched thin even as shipyards on Earth began to rebuild and expand the Fleet. Commander Daniel Crew left Earth's Space Navy after the first disastrous battle with aliens, where the incompetence of the Admiral left the Fleet defeated and hundreds of Marines prisoners. Bitter from this experience and the unexplained disappearance of his girlfriend, Daniel takes a job as a limousine driver. What he didn't know, was that Lady Luck was just around the corner, and soon Daniel would have the chance to pursue his dreams as the Captain of a deep space freighter, the Star Ranger. Daniel outfits this reconditioned excess military freighter, pulls together a crew of ex-Navy personnel, and heads out for deep space, where dozens of small colonies desperately rely on civilian traders like the Star Ranger as their life line back to earth. Along the way he finds adventure, danger, and romance, as he must use all his wits and his crew to stop dangerous and aggressive aliens.