The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) (28 page)

Turning to face the man standing in the entrance to his personal quarters, James realized he had completely forgot that a Captain of a warship was meant to have his own attendant to cook for him and look after his needs. Typically stewards had free range of a Captain’s quarters and office so it wasn’t rude for him to just come into his office without permission. Standing, James strode over to take Fox’s hand. “I’m sorry Arthur, I had forgotten that I would have a steward, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s ok sir, I quite understand,” Fox said as he looked at the ground, not meeting James’ eyes. “I would understand if you already have your own steward from your previous command. I already have Captain Hooker’s things packed and stowed, ready to be taken off the ship. I can arrange passage for myself with them, if you wish.”

“Nonsense,” James said worrying he had gotten off on the wrong foot with his steward. “I didn’t have a steward on my last command. It was only a survey frigate. I’m sure I’ll be delighted with your services. In fact I think I’ll take a strong black coffee to help get me through the data files I’m reviewing. After that you can arrange to transfer my things from
Drake
. To be honest I hadn’t thought about them yet. If you like, you can take a shuttle across and oversee the transfer yourself.”

A look of relief passed across Fox’s face. With a simple nod he scurried back into James’ quarters and towards a door that James guessed led to his own personal galley. Clearly he was happy to have something to do and so James left him to his own devices. Turning back to his data files he began to read again, he had six hours to the memorial service.

*

Sitting in the shuttle for the short flight over to
Ghost,
James had a few minutes to reflect on the memorial service and his reading. He hadn’t said anything at the service but had been content to sit at the side and observe. He hoped the crew had welcomed his presence and appreciated that he had given them space to reflect on their lost crew members. From his reading he had quickly realized that Captain Hooker had run a tight ship. Before the battle the crew’s fitness reports were exceptional and in simulations
Raptor
had always performed well. Despite losing some good personnel with the failure of the inertial dampeners, the crew had come together and worked hard over the last two days. The fact so many holes in the command structure could be filled so efficiently, spoke of how well Hooker had trained his crew.

Before he left James had approved a number of promotions Lieutenant Romanov had made and then submitted the list of the replacements
Raptor
needed to Rear Admiral’s Jensen’s aide. Most of the losses among the lower ranks would be filled with crew members from
Drake
but the NCO’s, Sub Lieutenants and Lieutenants would have to come from all the ships in Excalibur. Those in line for a promotion that couldn’t be given aboard their current ship, would get a chance to join
Raptor,
a step higher up the ladder.

Within minutes of landing on
Ghost,
James was shown into Captain Lightfoot’s office. Lightfoot looked just as James remembered him from the testimony he had given before the UN Interplanetary Committee. Short black hair, a black moustache and a thick neck that ran down to two square shoulders, all reminded James of a wrestler he had followed growing up. Lacking some of the fear factor, Lightfoot’s six foot five frame still inspired an air of respect.

Despite his formidable appearance, Lightfoot’s smile was genuine as he welcomed James into his office. “Welcome aboard
Ghost
Captain. It is good to see you again. I must apologize for the last time we met. RSNI had already scheduled further debriefs with me and so I had to rush off.”

“That’s quite alright sir,” James began with a hint of relief. He had feared Lightfoot would be upset about him being over an hour late for their scheduled meeting. “RSNI ushered me back to my ship within minutes of ordering a drink so I didn’t get to see much of New York myself. I apologize for my lateness. I hope my Third Lieutenant passed on that we were having a memorial service for the crew members
Raptor
lost. The service was already scheduled before I took over command and I thought it demanded my presence.”

“I understand. May I call you James by the way, when it’s just the two of us of course?” Lightfoot asked.

“Certainly sir.” James said, “I get the impression we’re going to be working closely together.”

“Indeed we are and you can call me Patrick,” Lightfoot responded with a knowing smile. “I take it you have read the most recent reports about the Chinese attack at Cook?”

As James nodded, Lightfoot continued, “Well I can tell you a bit more than the reports can. The damage to the shipyard at Cook means it is a total loss. It will take at least three years to rebuild the station and then another two to get production back to full speed. When I left Cook, the Admiralty hadn’t yet heard about the outcome of the attack but I expect they will be furious. Though they won’t be surprised.”

Pausing for a second, Lightfoot let James ponder that before continuing. “You see RSNI got a tip off from a high ranking Chinese official that the Chinese Politburo had decided to step the war up a notch. They knew an attack of some kind was imminent and so a warning was able to get to Cook just before the Chinese carried out their attack. Even with this warning things were bad. In retaliation the Admiralty has decided to carry out raiding attacks in Chinese space. As the two Captains of
Crusader
class destroyers we’ll be spearheading the raiding attack through the Void. The four other
Crusader
class destroyers will be moving up into Chinese space via Earth and the Beta colony. Their area of operations will cover the older, more established colonial worlds. We’ll be hitting more backwater locations. Our targets won’t be as fancy but there will also be fewer defenders so we have more chance of coming through this mission with the paintwork intact.

“Interestingly, along with the tip off about the Chinese attack we got information on the Politburo members who are championing this war. I’m reading between the lines here but I think the Admiralty is gunning for regime change among the Politburo. All our targets are either military or are owned by one of the leading Politburo members in favor of the war. So while it seems we are going be raiders for the next few months, we are to be raiders with a conscience. Tell me; is
Raptor
up to an extended long-range mission?” Lightfoot finished by asking.

James delayed his answer as he took a few seconds to take everything in. The British government and the Admiralty would only want a regime change if it were likely to bring peace. They must be hoping to target the more bloodthirsty Politburo members. If the plan worked, the targeted Politburo members would then either have to end the war to protect their personal wealth and power or else watch themselves topple as they lost prestige and influence. It was a long shot but it might just work.

“Yes sir, we are still waiting on replacement personnel but if they arrive in the next twenty-four hours we should be ready to leave. It will take a while to get everyone working together smoothly but we will have to make do,” James answered.

“Granted, but you will have to do everything you can to speed up the process. We’re likely to see action sooner rather than later so
Raptor
needs to be ready. Having said that, I have been given some leeway on how we approach our targets. The Admiralty has ordered us to hit the Wi system, the New Shanghai system and to liberate our mining station at Reading. After my tussle with Admiral Zheng at Damang, the Chinese sent a small force in to take over the station in case we used it as a resupply base. There’ll be nothing there that is useful to us now but the Admiralty wants our people back. RSNI believes they are still being held captive on the base.

“Given your ship’s situation, I’ve decided we’ll hit Reading first. It’ll take us a week to work through the shift passage from the Void to Damang and another three days to reach Reading. That should give you enough time to cement your new crew members in and be ready for whatever faces us there.

“Now,” Lightfoot said as he stood and handed a datapad across the desk to James, “here is the latest RSNI info on our target systems. I would like your thoughts on how we should approach each objective.”

*

Four hours later James finally set the datapad down. He was exhausted. He felt he had covered every possibility he could think of, given the data in front of him. James was pleased that Lightfoot and he had worked so well together. They had modified Lightfoot’s original plans in a number of places. James now felt confident that their plans were as good as they could make them, without actually jumping into each system and laying eyes on what was really happening in each one.

After thanking James for his assistance as an afterthought Lightfoot added, “oh, I’m sending over the commanding officer of my marines to liaise with your men. He will get your boys up to date and then return to
Ghost
before we leave Excalibur. I think you have already met him, Major Johnston.”

James was momentarily surprised; he had thought the Major had intended to return to his wife as soon as the mission to capture the Chinese destroyer at Excalibur had been completed. What could have changed his mind?

Serving in the navy often forged friendships that would last a lifetime. Being assigned to the same ship for years would lead to many crew members thinking of themselves as family. Even so, it was rare that officers got to develop such connections. They had to remain aloof from their subordinates and as they moved from ship to ship more often than other crew members they rarely built deep lasting friendships.

-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

21
st
April 2465 AD, HMS
Raptor
, Excalibur

Stepping off the shuttle back onto
Raptor,
James paused to say farewell to Major Johnston. Back when Johnston had taken passage on board
Drake
to attack the Chinese destroyer, he had thought he had gotten on well with the Major. In the brief flight over to
Raptor,
James could already tell things had changed. Johnston hadn’t been the most talkative marine he had ever met but he had barely said a couple of words during the flight. It seemed all he was interested in was the Reading mission. When James had asked about his wife a look of pain had crossed his face before he had regained control and fixed a steely expression in its place. James had waited for an answer but when none had been forth coming he had given up.

As he turned to say farewell to the Major a familiar voice distracted him. “Major Johnston, it’s good to see you again sir,” came the feminine voice of Georgia Gupta across the shuttle bay.

The Major grunted a reply before walking off in the direction of the marine barracks aboard
Raptor
. James on the other hand swung round. “What are you doing here Georgia? You’re meant to be commanding
Drake
.”

Instead of answering him she held out her hand, “Welcome back Captain and congratulations on your promotion. I’m sorry I didn’t get time to call over the COM and congratulate you before now.”

Taking a step back she smiled at James, “Do you like my new uniform?”

Only then did James notice the extra Silver Star on her shoulder, the mark of a First Lieutenant. “When the list of open spaces was sent around the fleet I applied for the open First Lieutenant spot, Rear Admiral Jensen assigned me here immediately based on you evaluation of me.”

James was momentarily speechless, “But, you’re meant to be commanding
Drake
. If you take her back to Earth and oversee the repairs, the Admiralty is bound to give you a promotion to Commander. That’s why I wrote the evaluation for you.”

“I know that James,” Gupta said, smiling again as she used his first name and enjoyed the confusion that was all across his face. “But if I did that I would be sitting out the rest of this war on the side-lines. Britain is my home too and I intend to fight to protect her. Besides,” she began as she turned and started to walk away, forcing James to follow her, “you seem to lead an interesting life as far as this war goes. I’m betting that if I stick close to you, I’ll see plenty of action and get lots of chances to prove my worth to the Admiralty. Come to the bridge and I’ll show you what Lieutenant Romanov and I have been doing in your absence.”

James began to follow. By the tone of Gupta’s voice it was obvious she already had a growing respect for the newly promoted Second Lieutenant. Given that their family backgrounds were so similar, they were likely to have a lot in common. Both were certainly good officers. “What about
Drake
, who has Jensen put in charge of her now?” James asked as they walked.

“Before I made my request I checked in with Sub Lieutenant Fisher,” Gupta explained. “She has made a better than expected recovery from her injuries aboard the Swedish colony ship. She had already put in a request to be reassigned back aboard
Drake
. I simply approved her request and then included a recommendation that she take over responsibility for getting
Drake
home if my transfer was accepted.”

Seeing wisdom in Gupta’s decision, James simply nodded. Some independent command experience would do Fisher the world of good. She still lacked a bit of self-confidence. And it would also do her chances of making Lieutenant no harm at all. There wasn’t many Sub Lieutenants who got the chance to put command experience on their file. She would never be able to keep command once she reached Britannia but even a couple of weeks of experience would look good.

As he strode onto the bridge James realized he was humming to himself. The weight of getting
Raptor
ready in time and finding enough personnel to replace those injured or killed had been weighting heavier on him than he had appreciated. Suddenly the weight had lightened a great deal.

Sitting down in the command chair, he listened to Gupta and Romanov detail how they planned to fit all the new crew members into the existing watches. Once they were finished he approved their plans and, with a few moments of peace, he turned his attention to something that had been bothering him. On his console he opened up Major Johnston’s personnel file. After briefly reviewing it nothing seemed out of the ordinary. After completing the mission to board and take the Chinese destroyer he had returned to Earth for a lengthy debrief. Rather than dismiss him, the Marines had decided to retain Johnston until the end of the war. He had then been posted to Cook. Why Cook though? Then James remembered. Johnston had once said that he had sent his wife to visit relatives in Cook in case the tensions between Britain and China spilled over into war.

With trepidation James accessed the details of the Chinese attack on Cook. He searched the list of deaths from the attack on the orbital shipyard and battlestations but Johnston’s wife wasn’t there. Then he spotted a secondary file marked ‘collateral causalities.’ As he read, he realized that as the shipyard in orbit around Cook had been destroyed it hadn’t simply exploded. Too large to be completely destroyed by the smaller missiles used by the attacking missileboats, it had broken up. Several large chunks had broken through the planet’s atmosphere and struck the surface. None had been large enough to do any serious damage but one had impacted the ocean. The collision had been near a series of villages that were being set up as fishing villages to provide food for the growing population of a nearby city. As he searched through the dead he found the name he was looking for. Noelle Johnston. Selecting her name brought up some additional details including her maiden name. Looking back at the list of collateral causalities, James saw other people with the same last names. Noelle’s family in Cook must have been involved in setting up the new fishing villages. Many of them had been killed as a tsunami, caused by the section of the shipyard that had impacted the sea only a few miles from their village, had swamped the area.

Searching through some more files, James tried to find out where the Major had been when this happened. He was horrified to find out that he had been in the Cook system. He had just arrived hours earlier and had been in orbit aboard a passenger freighter when the attack had taken place. A few more seconds found that the freighter had attempted to contact the villages to warn them of the approaching danger. While everyone else’s attention had been focused on the battle unfolding in orbit around Cook, one man’s attention had been on the planet. The major cities all had their own missile defense systems to protect against invasion and any debris falling from orbit. The villages did not. Johnston’s warnings had allowed the other villages to be evacuated just in time but the one his wife had been in was just too close to the impact. 

Suddenly, James felt a new weight on his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine what Major Johnston had gone through. To watch his wife die before his very eyes, the very wife he had told to go to somewhere he had thought was safe. Forgetting the other duties that were pressing upon him, James tried to think of how he could help the Major but when Gupta returned twenty minutes later needing his approval for another personnel change nothing had come to him.

*

Twelve days later
Raptor
and
Ghost
dropped out of shift space on the edge of the Reading system. They had stopped off in the Damang system to carry out some exercises and observe any Chinese shipping that was passing through on its way to V17. Admiral Cunningham’s blockade of V17 was meant to keep the Chinese fleet locked up so it couldn’t carry out any further attacks. Normally, when blockading a system it was easy to stop any ships getting in by simply patrolling the shift passages. In the Void this was impossible as a ship could approach from any angle. That meant the Chinese were able to run as much supplies and reinforcements into the system as they wanted. The only caveat was that once in the system it was difficult to leave. Any ships trying to make their way to the edge of the mass shadow were easily spotted, allowing Admiral Cunningham to get a blocking force in place.

Before they left, the latest intel from the Admiral had been that the Chinese were running supply convoys into V17 at a rate of about one every two weeks, although the gap had been slowly expanding. RSNI operatives imbedded with the Admiral’s fleet suspected the Chinese were having problems finding enough freighters to keep sending into V17 when so few were returning.

By the time
Raptor
and
Ghost
had left Excalibur another convoy was expected and so they had waited in stealth to watch the convoy pass through. A light cruiser and a destroyer had been escorting it. As they had been too far away to sneak into close range under stealth, Lightfoot had decided to leave it alone. A long range shooting match with a light cruiser and destroyer would likely leave one if not both British destroyers damaged and unable to continue.

Now in the Reading system, both ships came to a stop on the edge of the mass shadow. Every passive scanner was focused on the inner system. “The gravimetric sensors are not picking up any ships at high acceleration sir,” Sub Lieutenant Becket called out from her place at the sensors console. She was another of the crew from
Drake
who had been assigned to
Raptor
. James was pleased to have her.

Over the next ten minutes Becket and the other bridge officers worked to analyze all the data that was coming in. James purposely didn’t watch the live feeds. He wanted his bridge crew to learn to work without his oversight.

After spending some time with Becket, Romanov switched on the main holo display. He also configured it so that the holo display on the auxiliary bridge would show the same image. All RSN military ships were fitted with auxiliary bridges that could take over the control of the ship in the event that the main bridge was damaged. When at battle stations, the First Lieutenant was assigned to the auxiliary bridge and was to be prepared to take over in a moment’s notice. James was still getting used to the idea of having Gupta aboard and yet not on the bridge where he could pick her brains.

With a COM channel opened between the two bridges, Romanov gave James and Gupta a breakdown of his findings so far. “Captain, the mining station is definitely still operational, it’s radiating heat into the third planet’s atmosphere like crazy. The levels are actually higher than our safety or environmental regulations allow. I suspect the Chinese have expanded the mining operation or are running our equipment at full capacity. We’ve also been getting intermittent electromagnetic radiation from orbit around the planet. It wasn’t enough to ID a ship but there’s something in orbit. If it’s not a ship it must be some kind of automated station.”

Before James could respond the Sub Lieutenant manning Communications announced that
Ghost
had established a laser link and Lightfoot was on the line.

“Captain,” James said to acknowledge that he was now receiving the visual of Captain Lightfoot. “My officers believe there to be a ship in orbit around the third planet. Probably keeping station above the mining facilities.”

“As do mine, Captain Somerville,” Lightfoot replied. “I’ve decided to go with plan gamma. You may begin transferring your marines over to
Ghost
immediately. We’ll depart as soon as they are on board. Happy hunting Captain.”

“You too sir,” James replied as the visual of Lightfoot disappeared. Plan gamma called for
Ghost
to move into the system and assault the mining station while
Raptor
waited near the mass shadow to pick off any ships that tried to leave.

Typing in a series of commands, James sent orders for the marines to prepare to embark onto
Ghost
. Then he ordered the crew manning the auxiliary bridge to stand down. It would take hours for
Ghost
to creep into the system under stealth and he didn’t want his crew to get worn out before the real fun began.