by D. J. Holmes
Nodding James continued his questioning. “Assuming your projection about the Void being a sphere is correct how long would it take us to survey the Voids outer edges and confirm them?”
Fisher looked back down at her command console as she typed a number of keys. “Just over three months sir,” she answered.
“And how long would it take us to survey all the solar systems, assuming we can reach them all?”
Again Fisher looked down at her console. “Approximately sixty four days sir.”
“Ok,” James looked around the briefing room, “Suggestions anyone?”
Becket was the first to speak up. “Surely we can’t spend the next three and a half months out here surveying the entire Void. Anything could happen to us in here and if it did it could take the admiralty months or even a year or two to send another survey ship up the shift passage from Cambridge.”
Sub Lieutenant O’Rourke countered her argument. “But if we go back to the Admiralty now what are we supposed to tell them? We think this Void is real? We think there are four colonizable worlds out here?”
Becket looked as if she was about to respond but instead she folded her arms and began to look around the room, happy to let someone else speak up.
Fisher chimed in with her thoughts. “Whatever we do, surely telling the Admiralty has to be our priority. What we have discovered is a game changer. Four habitable worlds, all within a few hours travel of each other, not to mention another 52 systems that may provide all sorts of useful resources. The Admiralty will want to know about this as soon as possible so that they can factor it into their long term plans.”
James slowly eyed each Sub Lieutenant. Tapping his fingers on the armrest of his seat he was happy to let the open conversation continue.
Hanson was staring at the ground but as James looked at him he brought his head up. “What about the territorial borders. How close is the Void to British and Chinese space?”
Gupta smiled and reached over to the controls on her seat. After a second, two colored bands ran across the holo-display. Each band dissected the Void, splitting it into three.
James watched Gupta’s smile and wondered if she had caught onto what he was doing. After reviewing Gupta and Fisher’s data James had already decided what his next course of action was. This meeting was simply an opportunity to let the Sub Lieutenants flex their wits and decision making abilities in a real situation.
Sub Lieutenant Hansen had just asked the million dollar question. What would the Chinese do if they found out about the Void? Or maybe they had already discovered it! The red band on the display representing space that fell under Chinese influence covered roughly one tenth of the Void. Only two of the solar systems fell into the band, neither of which contained a habitable world. The blue band representing British controlled space covered about fifteen percent of the Void. However, twenty-three systems fell into the band two of which contained planets within the goldilocks zone.
When the two bands appeared on the holo-display Hanson nodded his head. “I’m not an expert in Chinese relations but the longer we take to report this to the UN’s Interplanetary Committee the more of an uproar the Chinese will make. If they even suspect we tried to keep this from them there’ll be trouble.”
Nodding, James stood up to take over the briefing. As he did so Fisher sat down. “He’s right, you all know there has been no love lost between us and the Chinese over the last few decades. Getting this information back to the Admiralty is of paramount importance. They can decide if and when they want to tell the UN but we should at least give them the opportunity to do so as soon as possible.”
Looking over at O’Rourke, James lifted his fingers in recognition. “Of course we want to be able to actually report some concrete findings to the Admiralty so here is what I propose.”
Stepping over to the main control station James tapped a single command to upload the plan he had already formulated. “We will survey the four habitable planets and bring back a full report on each to the Admiralty. They’ll need that much data if they are going to register the planets with the UN. So we’ll start with V2 then jump to V17. Once we have finished there I propose we jump out to the predicted edge of the Void that is diametrically opposite the shift passage back to Cambridge. If the Void is a perfect sphere confirming its other end should be enough for the Admiralty for now. Then we’ll work our way back, surveying V31 and V48 before we head for home.”
James looked over to his second in command. “Lieutenant Gupta, do you have anything you think we should add?”
“Yes sir,” Gupta began. “I would suggest we enter each system under stealth. If the Chinese have already found a shift passage that leads to the Void there’re not likely to take kindly to visitors. Especially if they have neglected to inform anyone else about their discovery,” she responded.
“Agreed,” James replied. Begrudgingly he had to acknowledge Gupta had a point. “You, Hanson and Thirlwall plot our next jumps and prepare the ship for stealth mode.” Thirlwall was scheduled to take over navigation from Hanson for the next watch. With long thick curly brown hair she always seemed to be attracting the stares of the male Sub Lieutenants. Yet their attention never seemed to register with her. Instead, like Fisher, she seemed to have a little too much interest in her commander – in James’ humble opinion at least.
“And I want tactical and defense fully manned until we are back in the shift passage heading for Cambridge.”
Strolling out of the tactical briefing room James made his way to his quarters. The capacitors would have another handful of minutes before they fully charged. That and the hour it would take to reach V2 would give him time to start his report to the Admiralty.
Minutes later at his mahogany desk James felt the subtle shift in the internal compensators indicating Drake had jumped into shift space. Accessing his COM unit, he set his personal timer to inform him when they should be approaching V2.
Chapter 4 - Second Place
While many of the tactics and weapons of naval warfare employed during the rise of the Empire were crude by our standards one tactic remains the same - stealth. If a ship can sneak up on an opponent or, better yet, lie in wait for it, then the ship has a decisive advantage. Missiles and plasma bolts fired from close range are almost impossible to defend against.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD
22nd November 2464. HMS Drake, the Void.
Just under an hour later James walked onto the bridge. His personal COM unit beeped once and then went quiet. Seeing Gupta removing her hand from her own unit James smiled. He had set his personal timer to allow him to make it to the bridge before Gupta should be informing him they were approaching V2. It was never a bad thing to keep your subordinates guessing as to your whereabouts.
“Status report?” James queried.
Gupta vacated the command chair for James. “Two minutes until we reach the outer detection range of V2 sir,” she replied. “The ship is in stealth mode. All non-essential electronics are switched off. The fusion reactors are at minimal output and our active sensors have been powered down.”
“Good,” James said. “Now the fun begins.”
Entering and exiting shift space created a gravimetric pulse that was detectable out to one light hour away, at least by known human sensors. Standard stealth practice was to exit shift space one point five light hours from the mass shadow of a star so that no ships patrolling the shift limit could detect their arrival. Stealth mode also meant that most of the ship’s heat signature was being directed away from their angle of approach. Whilst it was almost impossible to mask a ship’s heat signature the RSN survey ships were designed to double as surveillance ships in times of war and so Drake had sophisticated stealth capabilities, allowing her to vent her excess heat in any given direction.
Immediately after feeling the subtle shift in the internal compensators from returning to normal space, James looked at the holo-display. Within a few seconds the display began to updat
e itself with information on the system. When she was built Drake had had the most powerful sensor system in the RSN. Eight years later it was still better than anything outside the survey fleet. However, in stealth mode it counted for nothing. Drake’s active sensors would immediately alert anyone in the system to her presence and so she had to rely on passive sensors.
“Propulsion, how long until the shift drive capacitors are charged enough for us to jump out?”
Sub Lieutenant Julia Shannon who had taken over navigation while Drake had been in shift space, replied, “Approximately three hours at current rates sir.”
Drumming his command chair with his fingers, James considered his options. The problem with being in stealth mode was that Drake’s two fusion reactors had to be almost switched off. It meant that if they ran into trouble they couldn’t escape in a hurry. Jumping into the system under full power would have allowed them to jump out again in thirty minutes. Of course anyone who would intend them harm would eventually learn of their presence. With both fusion power plants at full Drake would light up like a mini star even with her stealth capabilities. Whilst it would take two and a half hours for their heat signature to reach the planet, if there was someone in the system they would eventually know of their arrival. “Fisher, any sign of anyone else in the system?”
James had allowed Fisher to continue manning sensors despite her watch having ended. He wanted her to have the privilege of carrying out the first scans of what was sure to become one of the newest British colonies.
“No sir,” she replied. “There are no signals or sign of industrialization from any of the planets in the system. I’m also not picking up any ship drives or reactors.”
Nodding, James continued to sit in silence. No signs of a ship just meant there were no ships in the system several hours ago. The infrared signals the ships sensors were currently picking up had left the system hours ago and, traveling at the speed of light, had only reached Drake’s position now. A ship could have entered the system in the last few hours and they wouldn’t know about it. Also, anyone in the system lying in stealth wouldn’t be giving off much heat radiation in the first place. They could be in stealth mode just as Drake was. And that was the dilemma. All RSN ships were designed to operate under stealth for prolonged periods, if they had too. Even the missile and plasma cannons were designed with energy cells that would allow them to operate for two minutes without drawing on any energy from the reactors. Combined with the passive sensors’ ability to easily track ships with their reactors and drives lit up, it meant that a ship in stealth mode could cause a real problem. From a good starting position a ship in stealth could maneuver close to their target and unleash a volley of missiles or even rake their target with plasma cannons before anyone even knew they were there.
Drake had almost come straight to V2 from the shift passage to Cambridge. If a Chinese knew about the Cambridge passage then Drake’s current position would be the most logical one for a British ship to exit shift space. The next logical move would be to head straight for the habitable planet. James silently berated himself for not thinking of this sooner. If he were a Chinese Captain tasked with keeping the Void a secret he would position his ship between where a British ship would enter the system and the habitable planet. Lying in stealth he could wait for the British ship to move into the system and then fire a spread of missiles as they passed. He should have taken Drake to the far end of the system and entered it on a completely unpredictable route! The Void made such a maneuver easy for there was no dark matter to limit where he could go with the shift drive. The tactics book would have to rewritten if war ever broke out here.
“Navigation, plot us a course that will round the fifth planet in the system and then take us in toward the habitable world. And take us there with 20% thrust.”
In her space trials Drake had been able to reach 25% of her maximum thrust before the heat radiating off the ship was detectable. James didn’t want to take any chances.
“Sensors, dispatch two stealth recon drones. The first one is to go on a direct path to the habitable planet. The second is to follow the path we’re going to take into the system, use the fifth planet’s gravity to sling it towards the third planet,” James ordered.
The habitable planet was the third planet in the system. With luck a detour around the fifth would keep them from being detected by any ships expecting them to head straight for V2.
“Yes sir,” Fisher replied.
Normal recon drones were fitted with small impulse engines similar to the missiles Drake carried. Outfitted with their own active and passive sensors they allowed starships to scout a system without entering the mass shadow of a star.
James didn’t want to take any chances though. If there was another ship out there, he didn’t want to warn them of their presence. Like normal drones stealth drones were fitted with passive and active sensors. However, their engines had been removed, by default their active sensors were switched off and additional passive sensors were loaded in the extra space left by the engines.
They were fired from Drake’s single forward missile tube. Essentially a long railgun, it allowed missiles to be accelerated to high velocities before they had to engage their own engines. The stealth drones were designed to be fired from the longer forward tube rather than Drake’s shorter side tubes, as the drones had no engines of their own. With their active sensors turned off and no drives to give them away stealth drones were very hard to detect.
Their only drawback was that they were severely limited in the amount of information they could send. Designed to report back to their mothership in burst communications that mimicked background radiation noise, theoretically at least, their transmissions were impossible to detect. However, in mimicking the background radiation only small amounts of data could be transmitted at a time.
Before Drake began to move towards the fifth planet Fisher launched the first stealth drone down their original course, the combined speed of Drake and the acceleration of the rail gun sending the drone off at 0.2c. Once Drake was lined up on her new course she fired off the second, tracing out their line of progression into the system.
After watching both drones being dispatched into the system James sat back in his command chair and prepared himself for a long wait. Drake had a maximum speed of 0.31c. Her valstronium armor protected her crew from the cosmic particles and radiation she would encounter at that speed. Technically, Drake was also equipped with gaseous shields that allowed her to reach a top speed of 0.35c although this was only for emergencies.
Gaseous shields were a holdover from the days before valstronium had been discovered. When starships had been made entirely out of nano-carbon composites they needed extra protection in order to reach speeds anywhere near the speed of light. They worked by venting a charged gaseous mixture into space. Electromagnetic fields projected by the ship would then form the gases into a cone shape in front of the ship, giving additional protection from cosmic particles.
The techs of the RSN were constantly working on the armor configurations and shielding technology to try and increase a ships’ max speed. The most recent RSN ships were able to get 0.35c without their shields but that tech hadn’t existed when Drake left the construction yard eight years ago.
Including the time it would take to reach 0.31c using only twenty five percent of her maximum acceleration, Drake would pass the fifth planet in eleven hours. If he wanted to enter orbit around the third planet they would have to start decelerating for a further two hours. James however, just wanted to pass the planet, use Drake’s survey scanners to have a look at it and then move on to the next system. Even so, it would take them almost seventeen hours to pass the planet and exit the system’s mass shadow again. He therefore wriggled into his command chair and prepared for the long wait.
Three hours later Fisher’s sensor station began to beep. “Sir, the first stealth drone is indicating it has picked up some ionized particles,” Fisher reported. “Stand by, the next dat
a package will come through in ten seconds.”
Moments later she turned to the main holo-display. “It’s confirmed sir, there seems to be a trail of ionized particles running roughly parallel to the path of the drone.”
On the main holo-display the track of the drone appeared with a faint blue line roughly parallel to it two hundred thousand kilometers off its port bow. As the next data package came in Fisher updated the bridge. “The drone’s passive scanners are picking up a faint gravimetric signature. It could be from the mass of a spaceship sir but it is faint.”
“Will the drone be able to reorient its visual scanners in time?” James asked.
The stealth drones had maneuvering thrusters but using them would guarantee detection. To avoid this they had the ability to redistribute some of their internal mass, causing a slight spin. By shifting its internal mass again it could halt the spin and thus bring their most powerful visual scanners to bear on anything they detected.
“I’m not sure sir,” Fisher replied. “The drone will pass whatever it has picked up in twenty seconds so we’ll know soon enough.”
