The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) (2 page)

The First Interstellar Expansion Era began in 2203 with the discovery of the shift drive. Tensions between the space faring powers were always strained and often frayed as one power sought to cut off exploration routes from another.

-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

15
th
November 2464, HMS
Surprise
, the Damang system.

Commander Lightfoot sat in the command chair of
HMS Surprise
as his ship exited shift space. As an Archer class frigate
Surprise
was just a baby among the fighting ships of the RSN, which meant she was assigned all sorts of menial tasks. Lightfoot had already tired of his current mission on the outward journey to their destination. Now that they were finally heading back to Earth he was beginning to look forward to his next assignment with a bit more hope.

As the sensors began to update the holo-display Lightfoot could see that almost all the ships in the convoy had excited shift space in formation.
Surprise
, along with the Lancer class frigate
Renown
and the light cruiser
Resolution
were escorting a convoy of nine freighters. They had made the five week journey to the British mining colony in the Reading system and were now on their way back home. Typically freighters would make their own way to their various destinations but Admiralty regulations stipulated that all freighters had to be escorted to and from Reading.

Thanks to a quirk in the UN Planetary Allocation Act, Britain had been awarded the mining rights to the Reading system even though it was only accessible by passing through Chinese territory. Given the past scuffles between China and Britain and the rising border tensions, the Admiralty had set up a convoy every three months to Reading in order to deliver supplies and pick up processed ore from the system. As a commander of a frigate in the RSN these kinds of tasks always seemed to fall to him.

Sub Lieutenant Samson, who was manning the communications console of the bridge, turned to speak to his commander. “Sir, Captain Turner is hailing us from the
Resolution.”

As Lightfoot nodded Samson put the feed onto the main holo-display. Impeccable as ever Lightfoot thought, as the Captain appeared in front of him, though he was careful to keep his face impassive. Captain Turner was from a wealthy noble family back on Earth and he always seemed to be immaculately dressed and turned out no matter what the occasion or hour.

“Commander,” he began, “it seems we have lost one of our charges again. The Captain of the freighter
Jackson
has signaled to say that he picked up a shift space exit off his port bow. I’m sending you the coordinates now. No doubt someone made a miss calculation. I’m sure the freighter will start radiating heat as soon as they bring up their main drives so it won’t take you long to find them. We’ll wait here with the rest of the convoy until you return.”

Lightfoot replied with a simple, “Yes sir,” before switching off the feed from
Resolution
and turning to his navigation officer. “Avery, do you have the coordinates?”

“They’re coming through now,” Avery replied without turning round to directly address his commander.

“Very well, take us there at eighty percent thrust,” Lightfoot ordered.

Two hours later
Surprise
had opened up a distance of twenty light minutes from the rest of the convoy. They had just picked up the freighter on their thermal scanners and sent her a message ordering her to make for the convoy when a message arrived from
Resolution.

Sub Lieutenant Samson scanned over it before addressing his commander. “Sir,
Resolution
has just picked up a fleet dropping out of shift space. Based on the readings they obtained from the re-entry patterns they think they are Chinese.
Resolution
estimates there is a battleship, a battlecruiser, three heavy cruisers and at least thirty other ships that they can’t make out yet, though they think some are freighters. They are reporting one more large vessel that they can’t identify. It isn’t a battleship but it seems to be in the same mass range.”

Lightfoot grimaced. Ordinarily the opportunity to see a Chinese fleet maneuvering would provide priceless intel. Yet, ideally, he would like to get the information while lying in stealth, not while escorting a convoy that would be lighting up every sensor within a light day. Britain and China might be at peace but being out in the open so far from home made him feel a little nervous. Not to mention the battleship. The Chinese only had one of the mammoth ships in their fleet. What was it doing out here?

“Tactical orientate our optical and heat sensors towards these new comers. Let’s see what our Chinese friends are doing with themselves out here in the back end of nowhere.”

It would take over fifty minutes for the heat and optical data to travel from the Chinese fleet to
Surprise
, twenty more than it would take to reach the convoy. Yet getting so much information back to the Admiralty and the Royal Space Navy Intelligence would be priceless.

*

Aboard the Chinese medium cruiser
Yang Wei
Captain Zu was just receiving a communication stream from his admiral. “Captain, you know the importance of our mission and the importance of secrecy. Those British ships cannot be allowed back to Earth. You command our fastest ship, I’m detaching the
Yang Wei
and her sister ship the
Chao Yung
. I want you and Captain Kuang to destroy that convoy. Don’t leave a single ship alive. I know you didn’t sign up for these kinds of missions but it is essential that the British do not learn our fleet was here. No word can be allowed to get back to Earth. I’m going to jump on to our next destination once we have charged our jump drives. You are to follow once you have finished here. Understood?”

“Yes sir, they will all be turned into space debris.”

The Admiral smiled as he clicked off the communication. He had handpicked his Captains for this mission because he knew they would follow him no matter what. He had just ordered his subordinate to fire on friendly naval vessels and unarmored freighters and he hadn’t even blinked! Fifty years ago such an order would have been unthinkable but the British were about to find out that things had changed in China. He knew the ultimate responsibility would fall on him for what was about to happen but he did not care. That, he suspected, was why he had been chosen for this mission. His superiors knew he would do whatever it took to ensure China acquired the four habitable worlds they had discovered.

*

“Sir,” Sub Lieutenant Erickson said with alarm from his tactical station aboard
Surprise
, “two of the Chinese ships have gone to full acceleration. They are heading straight for the convoy.”

Ordinarily ships could only be detected by the radiation they vented into space. They, therefore, did everything they could to prevent any radiation escaping but when it came to heat radiation it was almost impossible. With fusion reactors and impulse drives operating at even sixty percent a ship lit up in the cold dark expanse of space like a firework in the night’s sky back on Earth. 

However, as radiation only travels at the speed of light, ships were effectively limited to looking into the past. Over short distances this didn’t cause a problem but for anything over a light minute away it meant that a Commander was always reacting to what his opponent had done in the past.

The only exception is when a ship wants to use anything close to its full acceleration. The impulse drives human vessels use for traveling through normal space produce huge levels of acceleration. Yet, in doing so, they create gravimetric disturbances that could be picked up instantaneously over long distances.

Cursing, Lightfoot brought up the feed from the gravimetric sensors on his own console. Erickson was right; the Chinese were heading straight for the convoy. He transferred the data to the main holo-display and let the computer crunch the numbers.

Lightfoot swore even louder. The convoy had been slowly heading into the mass shadow of the Damang system as they waited for
Surprise
to locate the stray freighter. A system’s mass shadow was the area of space where the combined mass of the system’s star and planets produced enough of a gravimetric disturbance to prevent ships using their shift drives. The Chinese had come out of shift space right on the edge of the mass shadow; almost exactly at the same position the convoy had entered the system. Even if the freighters went full burn on their drives they couldn’t reach a safe place to enter shift space before the Chinese ships got within missile range. Knowing Captain Turner he guessed what was about to happen next.

“Sir,” Erickson called excitedly, “
Resolution
and
Renown
have gone to full military acceleration, they are heading straight for the two Chinese vessels.”

Nodding, Lightfoot had to push down the urge to rebuke Erickson for his enthusiasm. The boy really needs to grow up, he thought to himself. Battle was never a thing to get excited about!

Instead he asked, “and what are our charges doing?”

“They are beginning to accelerate now, wait, from their acceleration patterns it looks like they are scattering. Some are going for the mass shadow, others are diving into the system,” Erickson answered.

“Have you been able to identify the two Chinese ships?”

“The computer has a positive match now. Their acceleration rates are higher than anything we have ever seen from a Chinese ship before. They must be the new Yang Wei class. Only three have left the construction yards according to intelligence. One of them is bound to be the
Yang Wei
herself. ”

Lightfoot ran the numbers in his head.
Resolution
and
Renown
could only put out a combined salvo of nine missiles. RNI estimated that the British missiles had better ECM capabilities than the Chinese but that wouldn’t make up for the disparity in numbers. The Chinese medium cruisers had thicker armor than
Resolution,
and combined, had a throw weight of twenty-two missiles.

Turner was no fool. He must know the odds too. Lightfoot guessed he was hopping that
Renown’s
armament would cause enough of a surprise to allow
Resolution
to get in close. All human warships were equipped with plasma cannons. Short ranged weapons, they shot out super-heated plasma bolts that could shred even valstronium armor. If
Resolution
could get into plasma range she could cripple both Chinese cruisers with a single salvo allowing the rest of the convoy to escape.
Resolution
would never survive the return fire but she would go down fighting.

Turning to First Lieutenant Cromwell, Lightfoot sought his opinion, “what do you make of all this?”

“Well sir,” he began, “it seems the Chinese don’t want us in this system, or at least they didn’t want us seeing that fleet of theirs. We’re too far away to come to
Resolution’s
aid but if those two ships blow through
Resolution
and
Renown
they’ll be coming straight for us. I’m sure they will have picked up our gravimetric signature too.”

Lightfoot nodded solemnly. “Agreed. Unless there has been a declaration of war since we left Earth those ships don’t want us reporting back what we’ve seen. There’s no good reason for them to have a fleet all the way out here, even if we are at war. We can’t help
Resolution
so we’re going to have to think only of ourselves, as hard as that is. Getting this information back to the Admiralty could be more important than all the ships in our little convoy. Given how far into the system’s mass shadow we are I don’t think they’re going to let us get to use our jump drive, I do have a few ideas though.”

Cromwell leaned in closer to his Commander to hear him outline his plan.

*