Last Drill at Ignis Prime

A Space Opera of Cadets, Fleet War, and SurvivalIgnis Prime Academy was supposed to end with a ceremony and a clean set of orders. For Cadet Mara Venn, it ends with alarms. Her class is sent on one last training run aboard the fleet's newest patrol ship, a live exercise meant to test discipline, teamwork, and nerve. No real enemies. No real stakes. Just the final drill before they earn their commissions.
Then the ship goes dark. A coordinated strike tears through the drill zone, fractures the formation, and leaves the cadets cut off from command. The instructors are missing. The comms are jammed. The nearest allied fleet is days away. Now Mara has two choices. Freeze and die, or take the chair no one trained her to sit in. With survivors counting on her and a damaged ship bleeding oxygen and power, she must keep a terrified crew moving through hostile space, make impossible calls with limited intel, and hold the line against an enemy that is not supposed to exist.
Because what hit them was not an accident. It was a test. A trap. And the opening move of a war the Alliance is not ready to fight. Graduation was the plan. Survival is the mission. Perfect for readers who love military space opera, academy to battlefield stories, fleet combat, and high stakes survival in deep space.