The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1)

by D. J. Holmes

  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.

  Raptor reached her maximum speed of 0.35c after forty five minutes of acceleration. Gupta’s plan called for her to continue on their current course for one more hour until she got to the edge of the inner system. When the allotted time was up, James nodded to Gupta. She immediately began to give orders. “Navigation, bring the engines down to six percent acceleration then prepare to rig the gaseous shields. Then bring us onto a new vector towards the largest asteroid.” Moments later she had opened a COM channel to the engine room and was talking to Raptor’s Chief Engineer Hugo O’Neil. “Alright Chief you can power the reactors down, just leave us enough juice to run the engines up to six percent and maintain our gaseous shields. Be ready to bring the power levels back up in a hurry though in case we get into an unexpected fire fight.”

  James had been impressed with Gupta’s plan, especially the final point of using the gaseous shields. The shields were simply a mixture of ionized gases pumped out of the ship and held in place by electromagnetic fields. Originally they were used to help shield a ship’s crew from harmful cosmic particles when the ship was traveling at high speeds. They had been made obsolete with the discovery of valstronium, for it provided a far better protection and gave ships much greater top speeds. The RSN hadn’t done away with the shields though. Officially they been kept so that a ship that had its valstronium armor damaged could still travel through space. Unofficially, they could also be used to increase a ship’s top speed. Combining the gaseous shields and her valstronium armor meant Raptor could reach speeds of 0.38c. With the engines powered down to six percent, it would take another fifteen minutes to reach her new maximum speed. Crucially though, the Chinese ships would be expecting Raptor to be approaching at .35c. The difference wasn’t much but it would let them have a small element of surprise. Also, with her engines producing so little acceleration and her stealth systems engaged, now that her reactors were also powered down the Chinese wouldn’t be aware of Raptor’s change in vector. They would no doubt guess she had entered stealth to make a course change but they wouldn’t know where to.

  Gupta’s plan called for Raptor to remain in stealth until they reached the mining facilities. The idea had been to force the Chinese ships to make a decision between two options, either of which would be advantageous to Raptor and Ghost. Either the Chinese Commander would order the frigate back to the asteroid field, leaving it vulnerable to Raptor or it would flee back to meet up with the coming reinforcements, leaving Raptor’s target undefended. At the same time, the very fact that Raptor was now undetectable meant the approaching light cruiser and destroyer had to take precautions themselves. If Raptor managed to get close to them in stealth, they would suddenly find themselves being hunted rather than doing the hunting.

  Ten minutes passed before anything happened but when it did James cursed. Of all the possibilities, he hadn’t expected the Chinese Commander to get so spooked. Yet that was the only explanation. The light cruiser had begun to decelerate hard. Meanwhile, having a higher top speed, the destroyer had begun accelerating again, intending to meet up with the frigate and then rendezvous with the asteroid field. Suddenly James was faced with the worst of both worlds. The plot updated to show the new intercept times. Raptor would reach the asteroid mining facilities ten minutes before the destroyer and frigate. They would be able to destroy the asteroid mining facilities but at a price. They would be well within the missile range of the Chinese warships and would have to fight their way out of a missile duel. Meanwhile, the light cruiser would get back to Wi Li in time to stop Ghost causing too much damage.

  Suddenly another thought occurred to him. “Navigation project the likely position of Ghost given the last data we had on her flight plan.”

  The main holo display updated, showing an estimated plot of Ghost. It was expected she was still another two hours out from the gas mining facility around the system’s only gas giant. That had been their original target. A second dot appeared as the navigation officer called out. “This would be her expected position, if she had altered course towards Wi Li when the light cruiser and destroyer had boosted out of orbit towards us.”

  James studied the plot for a number of seconds. It looks possible he thought to himself. “Assume Lightfoot altered course again to try and intercept the light cruiser as it returns to Wi Li, where would he reach her?”

&nb
sp; This time a red dotted line appeared in front of the second estimated dot of Ghost’s position curving round to intercept the plot of the decelerating light cruiser. The cruiser had been heading for the asteroid field for almost two hours so it would take it that long to return to Wi Li. Ghost would intercept her an hour before she got there, long before the two frigates that had returned to Wi Li would be able to come to her aid. The question was, would Lightfoot risk it? If they could destroy the light cruiser, the threat of the Chinese defenders would be severely reduced. Alone, one of the Chinese destroyers couldn’t take on Ghost and Raptor. The remaining forces in the system would have to regroup and come at the two destroyers together. That would take time. Time the two British warships could use to cause a lot of destruction. But Ghost couldn’t hope to destroy the light cruiser alone, not without taking considerable damage. The new Crusader class destroyer’s stealth tech was good, even better than that built into survey and scout ships like Drake. However, Raptor was built to be a warship and even its more advanced stealth tech couldn’t hide all of its power hungry systems perfectly. The light cruiser would detect Ghost before she could sneak into plasma cannon range. It would be a missile duel to the end. If Ghost was severely damaged, she would have to return to British space for repairs and the mission would be over before it had hardly started.

  Then it occurred to him. If he was thinking Lightfoot might be tempted by the opportunity to hit the light cruiser, maybe Lightfoot was thinking the same about him. “Navigation, plot us a new course. If we turn to pursue the light cruiser can we catch it in time to aid Ghost?”

  “It’s possible sir,” the navigation officer replied. “It would be a close shave getting by the destroyer and frigate heading our way without being detected. Once we did, we’d have to ramp up our engines in order to arrest our current momentum enough to make the turn towards Wi Li. We could catch them but the light cruiser would know we’re coming.”

  “Thank you Sub Lieutenant,” James said instinctively, his mind already working out all the possibilities. If the Chinese cruiser knew they were coming what would he do? He could turn to face Raptor while the destroyer and frigate behind likewise turned and trapped his ship between two forces. But it would take time for the destroyer and frigate to decelerate. The light cruiser would be alone and would take a lot of damage. The other option was that the Chinese Commander could continue on to Wi Li and meet up with the two frigates there and then turn to face Raptor. It was a risk though. Letting Raptor so close to the planet would give James the opportunity to bombard whatever he wanted. Whoever was commanding the Chinese forces didn’t know the British warship’s strict orders concerning civilian causalities.

  James considered his options carefully. Going for the light cruiser was a gamble, but maybe one worth taking. If the Chinese Commander on board the light cruiser did fancy taking on Raptor alone then James would have to hold out for at least forty minutes before Ghost caught up with them. On the other hand, if he didn’t try it Ghost might end up taking on the light cruiser on her own.

  Banking on the fact Lightfoot and he thought alike, James made his decision. “Navigation engage your new course.” Looking over to Gupta, James added for her sake, “it looks like we might have bigger fish to fry, we’ll have to come back for the asteroid mining facilities later.”

  Chapter 24 – Lady Luck

  Luck, it may seem strange to find a discussion of luck in a history book but if we are to examine the rise of the Empire then Luck cannot be ignored. We all know the pivotal characters who contributed to the founding of the Empire yet, any cursory examination of their lives shows us just how fragile their contribution was. The wrong decision here, an unlucky system malfunction there and things could have been very different.

  -Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

  10th May 2465 AD, HMS Raptor, Wi system

  It was time to see just how good Raptor’s stealth tech really was, James thought. For an hour they had been slowly turning to head deeper into the inner system, towards the rendezvous point with the Chinese light cruiser that was heading back to Wi Li. They could not give away their position to the other ships in the system just yet, so Raptor had to change her vector by only using ten percent of her maximum thrust. Any more and the Chinese ships’ gravimetric sensors would pick her up. Now the problem was that she was getting close enough to the Chinese destroyer and frigate still heading to the asteroid mining facilities that they were likely to pick them up through other means. All ships vented electromagnetic radiation into space in the form of heat and other stray emissions from equipment on board. Raptor was designed with systems that allowed her to vent her heat radiation away from a certain direction so she couldn’t be detected. She also had a coating of radar absorbing material that would protect her from active scans, up to a point. Both systems worked well but they couldn’t make a ship disappear.

  In order to reach the light cruiser they were targeting Raptor had to pass very close to the Chinese destroyer and frigate. So close that if their vented heat didn’t give them away, the radar waves being sent out by the two ships as they overloaded the radar absorbing material around Raptor’s hull would.

  As James silently watched, the distance between his ship and the two Chinese ships got smaller and smaller. Just before they got to the point where he expected them to pick Raptor up he shouted. “Fire!”

  Second Lieutenant Romanov was waiting for the order and immediately six missiles erupted from Raptor’s starboard missile tubes. Starting so close to their target, the missiles only had a flight time of eight minutes. Initially, there was no reaction from the Chinese ships. Then, after almost thirty seconds, both ships brought up their main search radar and began frantically trying to lock onto the missiles. It took another minute for them to begin to turn to face the new threat but when they had completed the maneuver they both fired their own salvo towards Raptor. Their response had been slow though, too slow. By the time they had fired, Raptor had already passed them and the distance was rapidly opening up as both sets of ships rushed away from each other at their maximum speeds. While Raptor’s missiles were heading at a right angle towards the Chinese ships, the Chinese missiles left their tubes heading away from Raptor. They had to use their engines to overcome the momentum of their parent ship before they actually began to gain on Raptor.

  As a result, Raptor’s missiles crashed into the two Chinese ships long before their missiles caught up with Raptor. Crucially, they also struck before the Chinese ships could fire another salvo. James had decided it was unlikely they could take out the destroyer with one attack so he had targeted most of his missiles at the smaller frigate. Four homed in on the frigate while two targeted the destroyer in order to force it to focus on its own protection rather than helping its smaller consort.

  Raptor carried two of the new penetrator ECM missiles that had proved so effective since the outbreak of war but James had kept them for the showdown with the light cruiser. That meant the destroyer had no problem swatting the two missiles aimed at it out of existence. It took too long though for when her point defense switched to tackle the four aimed at the frigate they only took out one. The frigate had already managed to destroy two more but that still left one missile to enter terminal attack range. Despite the frigate’s ECM it managed to get a firm lock on its target. The missile hit the frigate’s midsection and penetrated through the thin valstronium armor before exploding. It must have hit one of the frigate’s fission reactions for two explosions spewed from the interior of the frigate and when they cleared there was no sign of the ship.

  As if in anger, the destroyer barked out with another salvo of missiles at Raptor. Then it began to turn again, pointing its nose at Raptor so it could bring its main engines back to full power and begin to decelerate along its original vector, reversing course to follow Raptor as she dove into the system after the light cruiser.

  As James expected, the light cruiser showed no sign of changing course yet. The Chinese Comm
ander was wisely waiting to see if the two missile salvos heading towards Raptor would do any damage before he decided whether or not to take Raptor on alone. That meant James could focus fully on the two missile salvos coming his way.

  The first salvo contained five missiles from the Chinese destroyer and two from the frigate, the second only five more from the destroyer. James nodded at Romanov, giving him permission to reveal Raptor’s final surprise. With a flick of a switch at his tactical console, a forward section of Raptor’s hull began to part and a weapon emplacement began to rise up. Along with the penetrator ECM missiles the British fleet’s biggest surprise for the Chinese had been their flak frigates. Construction on them had begun five years ago but they had been kept away from Earth and the prying eyes of Chinese spies. The older classes of British destroyers all had three twin plasma cannon turrets. The Crusader class had only been fitted with two. Officially, the story was that the destroyers needed the extra energy for their stealth systems. In reality, a flak cannon had replaced the third turret. Kept in a concealed compartment, James was confident that the Chinese intelligence services hadn’t figured out the secret even though they now knew about the flak cannons themselves.