The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) (4 page)

All the missiles but those needed for the mock engagement with the cruiser had been removed from their magazines and were now being towed behind
Surprise
. They were all set to detonate simultaneously. With any luck the Chinese would mistake the explosion for their fusion reactors overloading. That was the plan at least.

As the Chinese ship entered range, ten missiles shot out towards
Surprise
. Lightfoot returned fire moments later to keep up the pretense of trying to land a knockout blow. The missiles were timed to reach the Chinese cruiser just as
Surprise
was going to detonate her towed missiles. Not for the first time Lightfoot prayed their missiles would disrupt the Chinese sensors enough for them to buy the fake reactor overload.

As the Chinese missiles entered counter missile range Lightfoot keyed the ship wide communications. “Everyone hold on, this is going to be a rough ride.”

He watched the holo-display as one, two, three and then four missiles were knocked out by the counter missiles. Then the point defense plasma cannons opened up. Two more missiles exploded taking direct hits. Four more still bore down on
Surprise
.

Five seconds from impact the missiles accelerated to attack velocity. Just as they went into overdrive Lightfoot hit the switch, telling the towed missiles to detonate. At the same time the charges on the remaining struts holding the cargo bay in place detonated and the ventral maneuvering thrusters went full burn for one second.

Behind
Surprise
a massive fireball erupted as fifteen thermonuclear warheads exploded. Everything on the bridge went dark as the explosion disrupted power across the ship. Two of the Chinese missiles dived straight into the expanding fireball and exploded, adding their nuclear power to the detonation. The other two had their seeker heads fried by the intense radiation given off and shot off into space tracking nothing.

Lightfoot had been knocked momentarily unconscious by the g-forces caused as the explosion shook
Surprise
. As he came to he immediately looked around him to see if his crew was all right. Everyone looked more than a little shaken up but they were all in one piece.

“Tactical,” he began, trying to keep the shaking he felt inside him from reaching his voice. “What is our status?”

It took the Sub Lieutenant almost a minute to get his console up and running again and to find all the relevant information. “Sir, it appears your plan worked. We are on a ballistic trajectory with a twelve degree rotation. All our engines are shut down and all nonessential equipment has been turned off. Our valstronium armor has been seriously fried by that explosion but most of the engines seem to be in working order. We won’t know for sure until we try to fire them back up.”

“Very good Lieutenant,” Lightfoot said with a smile. “And what is our Chinese friend doing?”

Again the sub lieutenant spent over a minute checking his console before replying. “Sir, most of our passive sensors have been badly damaged but it looks like he’s still heading for the freighter.”

“Even better,” Lightfoot said as his smile grew into a grin.

*

Zu finally allowed himself to relax. He had been worried that this second frigate would be a flak frigate like the first. If he had been forced to spend too long hammering another flak frigate into submission the last freighter might have managed to escape. Now his sensor officer assured him that the frigate was a tumbling ball of wreckage.

After reading through the damage reports from the last near miss he stared at the holo-display watching the distance count down to the remaining freighter. Ten minutes and he would be able to blow it to pieces. He was already beginning to compose his report to the Admiral, focusing on the successes of the mission and all the valuable intel he had managed to get about British battle tactics. Hopefully that would be enough to gloss over the loss of his sister ship.

Suddenly the sensors officer brought him back to reality. “Captain Zu!” she frantically called, “I’m picking up an energy spike from the wreckage of the frigate.”

“Show me the visuals immediately.” Zu demanded. He had a sinking feeling as the wreckage came up on the holo-display. The frigate was slowly rotating and even as he watched its main plasma cannon came into view. Quicker than he imagined possible it traversed to track his cruiser and opened fire.

Before Zu could call out any orders the twin plasma bolts covered the distance between the two ships and blew through the valstronium armor of his cruiser. By chance they managed to knock out the communication links between the bridge and the central firing control for the cruiser’s plasma cannons. The order to return fire never made it to
Yang Wei’s
weapons officer.

Within seconds two more plasma bolts ravaged the
Yang Wei
and then two more burst right through the ship causing her to explode in one more dramatic fireball.

Some say the roots of our Empire date back to the English Monarchy that arose after 1066. Whilst this is disputed, certainly the Empire can trace its development back to the rise of the English nobility after the period in Earth history known as The Troubles.

-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

21
st
November 2464. HMS
Drake,
in shift space beyond the Cambridge system.

Commander James Somerville sat in a dark mahogany desk chair. He was in his private office adjacent to his sleeping quarters. His feet were resting upon the matching desk with little regard for its age or quality. With a stretch he pushed on the desk and tilted his chair unto its back legs as he turned the page of the old-style book he was reading.

To anyone not associated with the pomp of the British nobility the scene would have seemed comical. On one hand the archaic
wooden
furniture and
paper
book sharply contrasted with both the modern styling of the Captain’s quarters and the modern synthetic Royal Space Navy uniform. Pure black boots met tightly fitted white trousers, which ran up to be overlapped by the blue tunic James wore. The tunic had two lines of decorative buttons up the middle, both sets were yellow, identifying James as a Captain of a starship. On his right shoulder was a single yellow star displaying James’s rank as that of Commander in the RSN.

Both the desk and collection of old style books had been a gift from his uncle upon his posting to command HMS
Drake
. Whilst he had little respect for the value of the desk and matching chairs, either financial or sentimental, the old style paper books had grown on him.

After a year of the monotony of deep space exploration, James had turned to the books as a last desperate attempt to hold back the depression he felt creeping upon him. Commanding a survey ship in the RSN was not the constant high paced life of discovery and excitement the news reports and novels on the datanet made out. The books had at least been an escape for the last year.

Ever since the discovery of the shift drive, the spacefaring powers had been rushing to explore and map the dark matter that hung between the stars. The shift drive gave a vessel the ability to create a gravimetric anomaly around itself that allowed it to enter shift space. Entering shift space catapulted a vessel to speeds greatly exceeding the speed of light and so opened up the stars to humanity, with one catch.

The anomaly couldn’t be opened in close proximity to other large gravimetric sources. Stars, planets, asteroids and of course dark matter, prevented the formation of the gravimetric anomaly or caused vessels already in shift space to revert to real space, often with catastrophic results. Scientists estimated that upwards of eighty four point five percent of the galaxy’s mass consisted of dark matter. Thus this dark matter, strewn between the stars in nebula like formations, limited the scope of humanity’s expansion into space. It was the job of HMS
Drake
and the one hundred and fifty other survey craft in the RSN to survey the dark matter nebulas and map out potential shift drive passages.

After taking command of HMS
Drake
Commander Somerville had been tasked with exploring deep space around Cambridge. One of the most recently settled colonies of the growing British colonial empire, Cambridge bordered Chinese space. As a result there was a likely chance that a shift drive passage could be found linking British controlled space and Chinese. If such a passage could be found then the opportunities for trade would explode exponentially, both for the British Merchant Navy and for independent corporations.

On the face of it, James realized his posting was a prestigious one. At twenty-seven he was the youngest Commander in the RSN, he had been given one of the newest survey ships in the navy and assigned to a key sector that could shape the future of the British colonies over the coming decades.  However, he knew better and this knowledge, coupled with the monotony of deep space exploration had slowly been wearing him down.

Back on Earth the British nobility was a focal point for the general population. Their surge in power after the Meccan Incident and the subsequent Solar Expansion Period had thrust them back into the political and economic limelight. Despite over three hundred years having passed this relationship had not changed. The general populace looked to the nobility as a spring of hope for the future and yet also as a source of entertainment and even a punching bag when things went wrong. When once the monarchy had largely been the sole focus of the media’s attention now the entire nobility shared that privilege. Their business transactions, marriages, affairs, births and countless other activities had become the drama that the British populace loved.

The result was that the nobility themselves had embraced their role as the custodians of the values and hopes of the British population. What had started out, as a patriotic opportunity to increase their power and wealth, became the altruistic fixation of the British nobility. The vast majority of the nobility had followed King William VI’s call to invest in solar real estate. In droves they had sold off their Earth holdings in order to finance Britain’s expansion into space, believing William rightly saw the future of the British nation in space. If the future was there then so too were the profits.

However, they also followed William’s example in giving fair wages to all workers and fast promotion tracks to those who excelled in their various responsibilities. As a result the nobility provided the means for vast numbers of the British population to drag themselves out of poverty and into space. In this way the nobility contributed significantly to the reestablishment of the British identity after the Meccan incident. This in turn led to the nobility becoming the focus of the public eye and over time an uneasy relationship developed.

The nobility knew they needed the popular support of the British people. Both to keep parliament on their side and to ensure there was a constant stream of patriotic volunteers for the RSN, its merchant fleet or for the various space and planetary colonies and industrial nodes the nobility had significant financial stakes in. As a result the nobility had to present a patriotic idealized face to the public if their position in society was to remain and so James Patrick William Somerville, Duke of Beaufort, found himself commanding a RSN survey ship over 60 light years from Earth.

Banishing thoughts of London’s high life James turned another page of his book. He enjoyed the rough feeling of the paper under his fingers and the weight of the book in his hand. Letting out a sigh he savored the moment. He allowed his free hand to return to twirling the long sideburns he had grown to match the latest trends in London. At least it was the latest trend when he had left two years ago! 

When he had turned to the old style books as a distraction he had raced through the first couple, flicking the pages in annoyance at the hassle but now each moment was precious. Turning the page allowed his mind to take in what he had just read or to just wonder aimlessly depending on his mood. This book was the last in the collection his uncle had given him. 

His uncle he knew had a vast array of ancient paper books, possibly the largest outside the British Library. Giving James thirty of them had been a major gift. Smirking, James knew that the term gift was too generous for his uncles’ actions. All the books had been 20
th
century novels depicting the life and times of British naval officers. The colonial wars of the 17
th
and 18
th
Century between Britain, France and Spain and the subsequent Napoleonic war had made for an exciting time in the navy.

Generous may have been going too far but manipulative may not. Idealized and overblown the characters and feats of some of the hero’s couldn’t possibly have been realistic. Yet James had to concede that the novels might have at least partially had their intended effect. After a year engrossed in the novels James wanted to be a hero. He wanted to emulate the men in his fantasies - if for no other reason than to allow him a route back into the high life of the nobility. For if the public embraced him as a hero, he would have to be readmitted into the inner circles of the nobility and once there his real desire would be within grasp.

Secretly James had to admit his desires had widened just a little. He wanted to be a hero in his own right. The characters from his uncle’s novels
were
inspiring, even if they were all fictitious.

Yet being a hero or returning to London just seemed to be a pipe dream. Command of a survey ship wasn’t the place to cover oneself in a cloud of glory nor had there been a shooting war between the major space faring nations in over twenty five years. James could feel the old depression welling up inside him. This was the last novel in his collection and his source of escape was about to end.

Before he could begin the next page his COM unit beeped. Tapping the control panel James’s annoyance at being interrupted showed in his sharp, “Yes?”

“Commander,” Sub Lieutenant Fisher began after a pause that showed her nervousness about disturbing her Commander, “we seem to have reached the end of this shift passage, it’s a dead end sir.”

“Ok, I’ll be out momentarily”

James tapped the COM unit rather aggressively before he stood to make his way to the bridge. Lieutenant Fisher’s nervousness irritated him. He had been on the ship for over two years now and she still had not gotten used to being round a member of the nobility. The RSN was one of the few places where the nobility and commoners interacted freely on equal terms. Acceptance into the RSN lunar academy was solely on ability and at least theoretically, advancement worked along the same lines.

Yet after two years Lieutenant Fisher still hadn’t overcome her awe at his presence. He knew he couldn’t entirely blame her of course. For a greater part of her childhood his family had been making the headlines in the British news outlets and reporters had been the bane of his life. As a commoner from a poor family he knew Fisher had grown up fixated on the nobility.  Now, in many ways she had found herself face to face with a larger than life character.

On top of that he couldn’t be the easiest Commander to serve under. He was the Duke of Beaufort after all, he should be spending his time among the most powerful of the nobility not skulking around in unexplored space in a small tin can. His irritability and occasional outbursts of anger may just as easily been the source of her nervousness he conceded, as he walked from his private quarters onto the bridge.

Upon entering the bridge James walked over to the sensors station where Sub Lieutenant Fisher sat in front of a large holographic display. Currently it was displaying a large worm like protrusion through space. The minor shift passage they had been exploring for the last week. The display said that it was just under half a light year long as it wound its way through the dark matter twisting and turning as it went. James grimaced. It would take a considerable amount of time to work their way back to the main passage they had been exploring for the last six months.

Reaching over Fisher’s shoulders James shifted the view of the display to zoom out. The main passage came into view. Like the minor passage they had just explored it twisted and turned through space. However, unlike their minor passage it had many offshoots. Civilians often likened such a display to the roots of a tree. Typically when they occurred, main passages through the dark matter between the stars were large and somewhat like a cylinder in shape. Each of these main passages had numerous smaller minor passages snaking off them.

More often than not both the minor passages and main passages led to dead ends but occasionally they intersected with the dark matter vacuums created by stars. Within these vacuums, sometimes up to a light week in radius, no dark matter existed. Where the passages through the dark matter in deep space intersect with these bubbles a starship could enter shift space and traverse through the passage to a new star. One end of the main passage James was looking at led back to the Cambridge system. For the other end, the navigational data ended near the minor passage they were currently located in - still waiting to be explored.

Switching the display back to where Fisher had set it, James studied their minor passage more closely. “How long will it take us to get back to the main passage?” he asked Fisher.

“Four hours forty seven minutes, sir,” Fisher replied as she looked up at him.

James had to repress a smile. It was a fact he liked to keep quiet back on Earth but he had done quite well in his RSN lunar academy exams, being seen as a swat among his nobility friends would have badly damaged his reputation.  His subsequent postings as a sub lieutenant and as a third lieutenant aboard HMS
Prestige
had further enhanced his talents.