by D. J. Holmes
The Void War
Empire Rising Book 1
D. J. Holmes
https://www.facebook.com/Author.D.J.Holmes
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Comments welcome!
Copyright © D. J. Holmes 2015
To all my friends and family who made this first novel a reality.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 – Loose the Dogs of War
Chapter 2 – Command
Chapter 3 – Discovery
Chapter 4 – Second Place
Chapter 5 – Riches
Chapter 6 – The Lion’s Den
Chapter 7 – Home
Chapter 8 – Subterfuge
Chapter 9 – Recruitment
Chapter 10 – Reunion
Chapter 11 – Borders Away
Chapter 12 – All Haste
Chapter 13 – First Blood
Chapter 14 – Aftermath
Chapter 15 – Superiors
Chapter 16 – Best Laid Plans
Chapter 17 – Incursion
Chapter 18 – Devastation
Chapter 19 – Uncommon Valor
Chapter 20 – Second Chance
Chapter 21 – A New Beginning
Chapter 22 – Friendship
Chapter 23 – Raiders
Chapter 24 – Lady Luck
Chapter 25 – Hunted
Chapter 26 – Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter 27 – No Mercy
Chapter 28 – The Cost of Peace
Chapter 29 – Burden of Duty
Chapter 30 – Blockade Runner
Chapter 31 – Sacrifice
Epilogue – HMS Endeavor
Prologue
July 11th 2456, Near Earth Orbit.
HMS Vulcan floated in high geosynchronous orbit over the British Midlands. With minimal maneuvering thrusters she wasn’t really a spaceship yet her designers hadn’t wished to break with tradition when naming her. If anyone asked, the explanation was that S stood for Shipyard.
Construction bay twenty seven was a hive of activity. For a number of months construction workers had been expanding its capacity to accommodate the latest designs for a new class of ship, the first British battlecruiser. A few thousand meters higher up in orbit, work was being completed on two identical giant structures, soon to be attached to Vulcan and designated bays twenty eight and twenty nine. Likewise, they too would be focused on churning out the new battlecruisers for the Royal Space Navy.
Once completed this retrofit and extension would simply become one more in a long list of alterations in Vulcan’s history. Initially constructed when Britain decided to invest heavily in interstellar expansion, Vulcan had been serving the RSN for over 200 years as its main shipyard. Once the shift drive had been discovered and the stars opened to humanity, interstellar exploration had taken off. Britain had banked a substantial percentage of her GDP on gaining a lead over the other space faring nations and Vulcan was the result.
With the discovery of Britannia this investment had paid off eighty years later. HMS Vulcan had hastily dispatched her third colony ship full of handpicked volunteers from all over Great Britain as well as her Moon, Mars and asteroid colonies. Britannia contained one of the rarest metals yet known to man. Named after its discoverer, valstronium was almost as revolutionary as the shift drive.
Officially classed as a metal, though the designation was still debated in the universities, it showed a remarkable ability to protect a spaceship from the wear and tear of space travel while blocking harmful cosmic radiation from injuring a ship’s crew. And, once fixed by a combination of electrical and thermal treatments, the metal actually flowed like a liquid in an effort to retain its original shape when damaged. This was a ship designer’s dream as it provided the perfect armor. With traditional armors, when a thermonuclear missile or a plasma bolt hit a ship it would have to return to a shipyard in order to have the damaged armor sections replaced. Armored with valstronium, a ship could take a number of hits and keep on fighting. These attributes, combined with its lightweight and the resultant gains in shift drive velocities meant that valstronium revolutionized spaceship design.
With the discovery of valstronium on Britannia, Britain gained a monopoly almost overnight. Along with this monopoly came the military power and diplomatic capital that allowed Britain to fuel its expansion beyond the Sol system and become one of the dominant space faring nations.
Despite over one hundred and fifty years having passed since the discovery of Britannia, and two hundred since the discovery of the shift drive, the exploration and colonization race between the major space faring nations showed no sign of letting up. Paid for through valstronium sales HMS Vulcan continued to churn out all kinds of civilian and military craft to further Britain’s interstellar empire. With the new construction bays about to be finalized battlecruisers would soon be added to that list.
Almost unnoticed among the hustle and bustle over bays twenty-seven, eight and nine a small ship slipped out of construction bay thirteen. Encased within its own valstronium armor HMS Drake made her way out into space for the first time. She was one of an ever-increasing number of RSN Survey Ships. With almost one hundred and fifty in commission they served the RSN by mapping the dark matter between the stars.
*
May 7th 2464. Beijing, China.
Almost eight years later Na Zhong turned from the large holographic display to face the other politburo members. As the minister for Exploration he was a junior member in the politburo and so tried to keep his head down in these meetings. Today that was impossible.
“And so you see,” Na concluded. “There are four habitable worlds and over fifty two other systems with varying degrees of resources. This is the find of the century.”
Most of the other members were still looking over his shoulders at the sphere the holographic projector was displaying. Within the sphere there were fifty-six white dots, four of which were flashing red.
Na looked over his fellow politburo members and started when he saw Chang staring at him. “Minister Na, what did your scout determine about the likeness of a shift passage into British space?” Chang Lei asked.
“As you know our scout vessel did not deem it wise to spend time investigating all the systems before coming back with this news. However, they did spend two weeks surveying the perimeter of the sphere in order to identify any passages that may lead to British space,” Na replied to the minister of Defense. “There is at least one passage leading off in the rough direction of British space, though of course without exploring it extensively we can’t know where, if anywhere, it goes.” This brought all eyes back to Zhong.
“Two weeks! You mean your Commander knew about this sphere of space for two weeks and didn’t think to come straight back to us?” Shouted the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
“I’m afraid not, but in his defense his mission was to seek out potential shift passages into British space,” Zhong said as meekly as possible, hoping to placate Fen’s anger.
“Calm down Fen,” the Intelligence Minister said as he lifted his hand towards the Minister for Foreign Affairs to stop any further outbursts. “This is useful, it may be a little later than we would have liked but at least we know the British may want to join our party. So what are our options?” he asked the room at large.
Chang Lei was the Intelligence Minister for the Chinese Communist Party and currently the power behind the President. Everyone knew he would make the final decision regarding this new discovery.
Fen was the first to speak, “Well we all know what we are expected to do. Those swine at the UN will want us to publicly declare this discovery first thing
tomorrow.”
Smiling Chang shook his head, “You all know our attempts to grow our space empire have been falling behind the other major powers. This is not an opportunity we are just going to let pass us by. We only have six habitable planets colonized so far; this is our chance to almost double that. What other options do we have? Options that will ensure China benefits from this discovery and not those lackeys at the UN.”
“Well, we could send elements of third fleet into this new area of space,” began the Minister of Defense. “Once we establish military bases on each of the habitable worlds we can declare our discovery and present them with a fait accompli. No power would dare go to war with us over these planets then.”
“Ha,” interjected the Minister for Development, Wen Xiang, “and how long do you think it would take the British to figure out where our ships were going. It seems that we can’t keep anything from them.”
Chang tried to hide a grimace. The Minister of Development was his closet rival and so did not fear his wrath. Whilst Chang prided himself in the power of his intelligence services both at home and abroad, it was undeniable that the British had managed to penetrate their government and military. Not that Chang liked being reminded of that of course.
“And don’t think the British won’t fight for what they think is theirs.” Wen continued. “Our military might out-mass theirs but whoever controls this new discovery will become the dominant power in our area of space, there can be no doubt about that. We need to present them with a fait accompli true, but one that cannot lead to war. As you all know we have one colony ship sitting in orbit waiting for just this kind of opportunity. We also have another two under construction. I suggest we rush their completion and get civilians on the ground as soon as possible. We can colonize three of the habitable planets and offer one to the UN. That way when the British demand it from the UN or us they will look like the bad guys. Plus there is no way the British will start a war over a planet already occupied by zealous Chinese nationals – even if they could win a planet from us they wouldn’t want to deal with the occupation.” Sitting back Wen looked over at Chang for his response.
Chang bowed his head in a begrudging sign of respect. “I think this will work. We will need a cover story for when we ask for colonial volunteers. I’m sure Minister Zhong and I can come up with something before your colony ships are ready to depart. How long until those under construction will be ready?
Wen picked up his datapad and quickly scanned through some documents. “Thirteen months,” he replied. “However, we can have the Henna, which is in orbit at the moment, prepped and ready to go in five. I suggest we load her up and send her off as soon as possible. If we can establish a colony on one of the planets then we can quickly move more people onto each of the others.”
“Very well,” Chang said as he stood and brought both his hands to rest on the table everyone sat around. “This is the discovery we need to ensure we overshadow Britain and Germany. If we can colonize and industrialize this cluster of systems we will be able to out produce anyone else.”
Everyone took this as a sign that the meeting was over and so began to stand up and leave. Chang then continued more quietly, “Minister Quin,” he said to the Minister of Defense, as he was about to leave. “Please remain behind, we need to discuss some other scenarios in case Britain doesn’t dance to our tune.”
Outside Na exchanged a glance with Wen-Chong, another junior member of the Politburo. It seemed their worst fears were coming true. When he had expressed an interest in going into politics his father had warned him that things weren’t quite as they seemed. The political minds of the upper echelons of the Community Part were changing, he had said. Over the last several of years Na had been able to see this for himself. As many of the Politburo members and leading Communist Party officials felt backed further and further into a corner by British and German expansion there had been a growing sense of isolation and hostility. China and her interests were of paramount importance. The rest of humanity could be dammed for all they cared.
This had been expressing itself in the growing border tensions with Britain and Germany, which, in turn, had spilled over into the public domain. Na knew that the Minister of the Interior spent many millions of credits each year on propaganda aimed at encouraging the general populace to see Britain and Germany as China’s natural enemies. Worse, the feelings of resentment and hostility held by the leading communists had also led to successive waves of military expansion. Even though the British economy was valued at roughly one hundred and thirty percent of the Chinese, the Politburo had thrown far more credits into building up its naval forces. Of course the Politburo had also ensured that only lieutenants who agreed with the party line concerning Britain and Germany gained advancement to the rank of Captain and beyond. Every time there was a border incident Na feared that it would erupt into war for the Chinese navy now had too many trigger happy Captains who were just waiting for the chance to fire a shot at the British.
Yet Na knew there were many who did not share this view, even within the leadership of the Party. Wen-Chong was one of them. When Na had first expressed his concern to him Wen-Chong had revealed his own fears. Even so they were both junior members of the Politburo. Actually doing something to avert the self-destructive path their leaders were taking them on had seemed impossible. Now, thought Na, it didn’t matter, there was no turning back, they had already travelled too far.
Chapter 1 – Loose the Dogs of War
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
15th 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 calculat
ion. 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.”