The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) (30 page)

“Go ahead Sargent,” Johnston responded.

“We have the prisoners sir. Of the thirty that were here when the Chinese attacked, we have recovered twenty-seven. The survivors say the Chinese army commander killed their leader as an example. Two others with technical expertise were taken away before the troop ship that attacked the planet left orbit. They think they were taken off world to be interrogated.”

“Good work Sargent,” Johnston commended. “And what of your causalities?”

“We have two dead including Lieutenant Albion and another three wounded sir, none serious.”

“Ok, get your wounded and the survivors to the shuttles and back to
Ghost
, she should be coming back for us in about thirty minutes. Unless our other teams find anything interesting, there’s no point us sticking around any longer than we have to.”

*

Aboard
Raptor
James was eagerly awaiting his first combat as the Captain of a warship. As things went, he couldn’t have planned a better first engagement either for himself or to meld his crew into a single fighting unit. The Chinese frigate was almost heading straight for them. She had to leave the system through the same shift passage they had come in through after all. To get close to the frigate he had ordered a slight course correction but that had been two hours ago. Now
Raptor
was cruising along with all her systems powered down and her engines shut off. Being only two years old, her stealth tech was even better than
Drake’s.
Thus,
even though it was much harder to hide a destroyer James was confident the frigate wouldn’t detect them until it was too late.

As far as he could tell, the bridge crew were as eager as he was for action, though he knew everyone was frustrated by not knowing what had happened at the mining facility.
Ghost
had turned back from pursuing the frigate over three hours ago and
Raptor’s
passive scanners had picked up shuttles returning to the destroyer from the surface. Other than that
Raptor
was in the dark as to the outcome of their primary objective.

Nonetheless the crew were focused on the task at hand. James watched as Lieutenant Romanov personally took command of the targeting computers for the main plasma cannons. Engineering had reduced their power for the first shots and Romanov carefully aimed each cannon at the frigates own plasma cannon and its two missile tubes that were facing
Raptor
. Already the RSN had captured a Chinese destroyer thanks to James and
Drake,
along with a light cruiser that had been damaged in the battle at Excalibur. James hoped to add another ship for the intelligence officers to pick over. When all the cannons had locked onto their targets, Romanov looked up at James. He simply nodded and Romanov pressed the button to fire. Four heavy plasma cannon bolts struck the frigate and although they were fired with minimal yield, the frigate still visibly shook.

Immediately Sub Lieutenant Ferguson was on the COM channel demanding the frigate’s surrender. “This is HSM
Raptor
, you have been crippled, surrender now or be destroyed. If you try to turn your other missile tubes to bear on us we will fire. I repeat we will fire. Surrender now. You have thirty seconds.”

As Ferguson continued to count down the remaining time, James waited patiently. The frigate was heading out of the system at 0.3c. He had maneuvered
Raptor
to be on a roughly parallel course to what he had expected to be the frigate’s route of escape. Yet, because he had had to stay in stealth, he hadn’t been able to get anywhere near
Raptor’s
top speed. As a result the frigate would be out of firing range less than forty seconds after the first shots had been fired. If they didn’t surrender, James would have to blow them up.

Ten seconds before their time was up, the Chinese frigate cut its engines. A cheer erupted on the bridge that James had to hush down as the Chinese Commander contacted James to officially surrender.
Raptor
powered up her drives and took off towards the frigate while the frigate began to slow its vector out of the system. As soon as the distances had reduced enough, the last of
Raptor’s
shuttles took, off bringing over a boarding party of marines and navy personnel. The intelligence types would be getting another ship to look at after all.

The greatest causality in war is always the civilian population. This was true in the Solar Expansion Era, the First Interstellar Expansion Era and the interspecies wars that gave birth to the Empire.

-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

10
th
May 2465 AD, HMS
Raptor
, Wi system

After the successful capture of the Chinese frigate, the morale of the crews of both
Raptor
and
Ghost
was high. The Chinese prisoners from the assault on the mining facility had been transferred to the frigate and a prize crew had been put on board to take her back to the Void and then to Earth. With renewed enthusiasm, both ships had begun the voyage back to Damang and then on to the Wi system. James was currently sitting on the bridge of
Raptor
watching the passive scans of the system. Discovered over fifty years ago, it contained two barely habitable planets. Humans couldn’t walk on the surface of either unaided. Both were just on the edge of the goldilocks range, one closer to the system’s star while the other was further out towards the edge of the system. With a bit of investment, the Chinese had managed to get colonies going on both planets but their size was limited. No one willingly came to either to Wi Li or Wi Liang as the two planets were called. Both environments were too hostile. Instead the Chinese used the planets as centers of research and mining. Together they boasted a population of half a million. That in itself demonstrated how much money had been invested into whatever the Chinese had going on here. Hopefully, thought James, they were about to ensure the Chinese got a very poor return on their investment.

The difficulty was in selecting what targets to hit. There were mining facilities scattered around the system’s outer asteroid field and a gas mining station at the system’s only gas giant. Obviously the two planets themselves presented juicy targets but it would be difficult to destroy anything vital to the Chinese war effort without spending a considerable amount of time in orbit carefully picking out their targets.

On top of that they had two more problems. The first was the system pickets. There were three frigates, two destroyers and a light cruiser patrolling the inner system. On their own, the two British destroyers could take any one of them out but together the Chinese ships would be too powerful to risk a confrontation.

The second problem was their orders from the Admiralty. They were only to attack targets owned by the Chinese military or directly owned by certain Politburo members. They also had to do everything in their power to prevent civilian causalities. Britain was already winning the public relations war and once news of the Chinese attack on the Swedish colony ship hit Earth, it would likely send a wave of sympathy through the populations of the other nations.

So, somehow, they had to identify the right targets and make sure they didn’t kill any civilians, all the while avoiding a squadron of Chinese picket ships. James was glad he wasn’t the senior commander of this mission.  Lightfoot would have to make the final decision on how they proceeded.

Thankfully, RSNI had managed to give them a rough break down of who owned what in the system so they weren’t going in completely blind. As he was reviewing the list of targets again, James’ thoughts were interrupted by a COM message from
Ghost
. Captain Lightfoot was grinning as his face appeared on James’ personal holo display. “Not as easy as we thought it was going to be is it?” he asked.

“No sir,” James replied, “After months in the Void and years out surveying the dark matter beyond Cambridge I’d forgotten how busy even a recently colonized system could be.”

“I can well imagine. The shipping’s not our priority though. If we can hit any freighters we can identify as legitimate targets all the better but it’s the system’s infrastructure we’re after. Here’s what I’m thinking at the moment. The system picket is the key. If we can destroy them or get the heavier ships to move away from the planets, we can make a quick run past them and take out any targets we can identify.

“I propose we go for the second option and try and force the Chinese ships to move away from the planets. We can revert back to trying to take them out if there is no other option. Ideally, I want to spend the next few months out here raiding Chinese space so the longer we can avoid a real fight the better. To that end I’m going to take
Ghost
into the system under stealth. I want you to prepare to make a micro jump along the edge of the system - as far as the dark matter will allow. Once you get as far as you can I want you to make a high speed run at these asteroid mining facilities.”

On James’ personal holo display a set of coordinates about forty degrees around the system’s outer edge from
Raptor’s
current location began to flash.

Lightfoot continued, “Those asteroids seem to be the biggest mining operation the Chinese have going on, apart from those on the two habitable planets. At the moment there is one frigate close to the asteroids protecting them and the freighter traffic loading ore there. Once they detect you coming I doubt they’ll stick around to put up a fight. Hopefully, the system commander will then feel he has to detach some of the inner system pickets to come to the frigate’s aid. I want you to try and take out as much of the asteroid mining facilities as you can as well as any freighters that come under your guns. But your main objective is to force some ships out of the inner system to come and face you. So just make as much of a nuisance of yourself as you can.

“I’ll take
Ghost
as far into the system as I can without being detected. If any holes in their defenses open as they move to confront you, I’ll be ready to take advantage. I don’t plan on taking any risks though. If things get hairy, I’m going to pull out and I want you to do the same. We have time on our side. Even if they send to New Shanghai for reinforcements, it’ll take days for them to arrive. If this plan fails, we can regroup and try again. I’m sending you three new sets of coordinates. They will be our rendezvous points in case we lose contact.”

“Aye sir,” James responded, already eager to get going now that Lightfoot had a plan. “I guess this time it’s my turn to say happy hunting.”

“Indeed, I’ll see you on the other side of the system. If this goes well, we’ll make our way to New Shanghai and see what trouble we can cause there,” Lightfoot replied as he nodded and switched off the COM channel.

When Lightfoot disappeared, James relayed the coordinates from his personal holo display to Sub Lieutenant Jackson who was the navigation officer on duty. “Plot us a series of micro jumps around the mass shadow to get us as close as possible to these coordinates. Then calculate a least time intercept course for the asteroid mining facilities. Aim for the largest one. I want an overall ETA until we enter firing range of the asteroids if we make our first jump in two hours. Send it to my personal computer in my office.”

James didn’t wait to hear the acknowledgement from the navigation officer but instead rose and walked out of the bridge. As he had been speaking, he had also keyed in a command for Lieutenants Romanov and Gupta to meet him in his office so he made his way there. After getting seated and manipulating the main holo display to show the latest sensor scans of the system, he waited for his Lieutenants to arrive.

Romanov was the first to enter the office, closely followed by Gupta. As they sat James began, “Lightfoot has decided our next course of action. He’s going to try and sneak into the system while we stir up a hornet’s nest further out and draw the Chinese forces to us.”

As he was speaking, his computer beeped to let him know the navigation officer had sent him the navigational data. Putting it up on the holo display James continued. “We’re going to wait two hours to let
Ghost
make her way in system then we’ll jump to here,” he said as he pointed to the last jump destination in Jackson’s planned route. “Then we’ll make for the asteroid belt at full speed. Every gravimetric sensor in the system will spot us so we’ll get everyone’s attention.”

James manipulated the holo display where the computer estimated the system pickets would be when
Raptor
came out of stealth. “Based on our observations of the picket ship’s patrol patterns this is how the enemy’s disposition should look. If the system commander reacts quickly, he can send this destroyer currently orbiting Yi Liang. It will not make it to the asteroids in time to stop us destroying most of them but it will prevent us from chasing down the freighters in the area unless we want to stick around for a fight. Dispatching the destroyer certainly seems like the best option for the Chinese Commander. With luck
Ghost
will be able to take advantage of Wi Liang being uncovered and make an attack on the planet before Captain Lightfoot can be driven off. Do either of you have any suggestions for the plan?” James asked as he looked from Romanov to Gupta.

Neither was quick to speak as they took everything in. Whether Romanov waited for his senior to speak or Gupta was just the quickest to come up with something, she broke the silence first. “What about if we were to make a run for the frigate instead? If we could close them down and destroy them, then we would buy ourselves more time to be able to pick off the freighters and swing round and destroy the mining facilities on the asteroids. It might even force the system commander to send in more ships to try and drive us off, giving
Ghost
more of a chance to hit a vulnerable target.”

It was Romanov who said what James was thinking. “I’m not sure that will work. If we jumped out of shift space and went to full acceleration towards the frigate they would see us coming a mile off. We could eventually overhaul and destroy them but the chase would bring us dangerously close to the inner system pickets. If we tried to slow down to come back for the asteroids we could get caught by the inner system pickets as they accelerated out to meet us. Destroying the frigate would be ideal but I can’t see how we do it without running the risk of biting off more than we can chew.”

Gupta was nodding in agreement as Romanov finished his last sentence. She had obviously already moved on from her initial suggestion and had another. “What about if we only make it look like we’re going for the frigate? That might still have the same effect, forcing the system commander to send more than the destroyer out after us but still enable us to keep out of danger and hit the mining facilities on the asteroids.”

Intrigued James leaned forward in his seat, “Explain,” he ordered.

*

Four hours later
Raptor
was cruising towards the asteroid mining facilities under stealth at ten percent of her maximum acceleration. She had slowly been building her speed up to 0.2c. As she reached the pre-planned speed, her main fission reactors were powered up to ninety percent and then her engines boosted up to ninety five percent of maximum thrust. With her reactors and engine working near their maximum
Raptor
had given up all attempts of being stealthy.

As she began to accelerate much more quickly, it only took a slight course correction to point her right at the Chinese frigate patrolling in the region of the asteroid mining facilities. James sat back in his command chair watching the main holo display. This part of their plan would take another forty five minutes and then things would get really interesting. At present all he could do was watch the feed from gravimetric sensors being displayed on the main holo display. The frigate was the first to react. Picking up
Raptor
from her acceleration on their own gravimetric sensors, the frigate immediately began to move away from the mining asteroids. Her starting speed had been rather slow as she had been keeping station with one of the asteroids and so
Raptor’s
closing speed gave her an advantage. Still, the navigation officer estimated that
Raptor
would not reach the asteroids for another two hours; the frigate had plenty of time to run.

Nothing else happened for almost five minutes but then the next ships to react proved to be the light cruiser and destroyer in orbit around Wi Li. Together they began to boost out of orbit and accelerate towards
Raptor
. Strange, James thought as he considered the situation, he could understand the Chinese Commander, likely on board the light cruiser, wanting to meet the threat in person. But why leave the planet completely unprotected? Soon the answer became clear. The remaining two frigates in the system turned and began to make for Wi Li. It must have been a prearranged plan for there had been no time for a light speed communication to be sent to the frigates. James was both pleased and slightly concerned about the developments. The movement of the two frigates opened up the door for
Ghost
to attack the system’s only gas mining facility around the gas giant, or Lightfoot could move in towards Wi Li. His destroyer should be able to easily cripple or destroy the two frigates. The planet would then be at his mercy, at least until the other ships returned. But with a frigate already in the vicinity of James’ target and a light cruiser and destroyer on the way, his side of the mission had just got a little tougher.  He was going to be hard pressed to pull off a successful attack and make it away in one piece. Still, for the moment, Gupta’s plan gave them the most options so he remained quiet and watched the plot of the system.