by D. J. Holmes
Hoping Lightfoot wanted to speak to him about some other personal matter, he began to read. A sense of relief flooded through him. Lightfoot had received orders from the Admiralty to join Admiral Cunningham’s fleet as it prepared to leave the Sol system. Lightfoot didn’t elaborate on where Admiral Cunningham was going with his fleet, but James knew there was only one option. As he read on, James saw why Lightfoot had chosen to inform James of their new orders in private.
In my mission report I recommended in no uncertain terms you be allowed to retain command of Endeavour. As my orders from the Admiralty make no specific mention of you nor your ship, I’m going to assume Endeavour has been assigned to my squadron. I’m glad someone at the Admiralty is able to see sense. My rank of Acting Commodore has been made permanent. It will be a pleasure to have you in my command Captain. Commodore Lightfoot.
James couldn’t help but smile, he knew there were some in the Admiralty who were out to get him. With his uncle as the First Space Lord his position was relatively safe, all the same, it was good to know he had a few other friends. With the touch of a couple of buttons on his COM unit he opened up a COM channel to Mallory on the bridge. “That last message from Lightfoot was to inform us of new orders from the Admiralty, as we guessed, we will be joining Admiral Cunningham’s fleet. Lightfoot plans to decelerate his squadron in ten minutes. We will loop around Venus and link up with Cunningham’s fleet as it heads towards the shift passage to the Alpha system. I’ll be out presently to let you compose your own message to be sent back to Earth, until then follow Lightfoot’s instructions.”
“Will do Captain,” Mallory responded, placing more emphasis on the word Captain than he needed to. James could just imagine the First Lieutenant grinning as he sat on the bridge.
Switching off the COM channel, he quickly composed a message congratulating Lightfoot on his promotion and then went back to his letter to Suzanna. When he was finally happy with it, he uploaded it to the ship’s computer to be sent to Earth along with every other message his crew wanted to send to their loved ones. Once the computer signaled the message was ready to be transmitted, he stood and headed back to the bridge to relieve Mallory.
*
Ten Downing Street, London.
“Prime Minister,” one of Fairfax’s aides said as she entered his office. “You wanted to be alerted if there was anything in the communication dispatches sent from Commodore Lightfoot’s squadron?”
“Yes, what do you have for me?” Fairfax asked.
His aide handed him a datapad. Curious, Fairfax began to read.
My dearest Suzanna,
I cannot tell you how much I have missed you and long to hold you in my arms. I’m sure you have spent the last weeks thinking I was dead. I am so sorry for the pain I have made you feel. I really thought I wouldn’t see you again. When the Indians almost trapped our fleet in New Delhi I saw no other option but to turn and engage them. I had to buy the rest of our fleet the chance they needed to escape. I know I put us and the future we hope to have together in jeopardy. My darling, I hope you will forgive me but I saw no other way. Even then, I had to push every thought of you aside. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to do what the situation called for as I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you.
Thankfully, Captain Foley and the British ships that were most at risk from the Indians followed me. They sacrificed their lives so the rest of the fleet could escape and, one day soon, Haven may be free. Gupta and I only survived because Captain Foley ordered us to stay in stealth as we closed with the enemy. It has been hard to live knowing it was my decision to turn that lead to all their deaths. I will never forget each and every one who gave their lives that day. I’m sure the Admiralty will honor them, but if you could, it would mean a great deal to me and to the families of the Captains who gave their lives if you could visit them and explain just what their sacrifice means.
I want you to know how much I love you and long to get home to see you. As you know better than me, the path of duty is a difficult one. It breaks my heart to know that we will not be reunited yet. Already I, Lightfoot and Gupta have been ordered to join Admiral Cunningham’s fleet. We both know its ultimate destination. I expect the fighting will be intense once again.
I hope you’re keeping well, and if you can, I would love to hear from you. If you’re quick, a message from Earth should reach Endeavour before we jump out of the system. I am sorry for what I have put you through. I hope you can forgive me.
You are utmost in my affections,
Your loving husband,
James
“This is perfect,” Fairfax said. Technically his office wasn’t supposed to have access to the private messages of navy personnel. However, Fairfax had requested MI6 supply his staff with messages from the naval ships involved in the attack in the Indian colonies. The British Star Kingdom’s premier intelligence agency had managed to get Fairfax the information he wanted without the RSNI finding out.
Since the messages had started coming in forty minutes ago, Fairfax had assigned a number of his trusted aides to look for items they could leak to the public to help turn public opinion back in favor of the war. “I want it leaked to The Times and the Herald this afternoon. They should be able to have it on the Datanet by the time people are clocking off work. Captain Somerville is already a hero for making it back to Earth. This will be the icing on the cake.”
He had already leaked parts of the mission report Lightfoot and the other Captains in his squadron had sent to the Admiralty. With his discovery of Haven, Vestar and Kulthar, and his recent court martial, Captain Somerville had been in the center of the public eye for the last several months. When Rear Admiral Rooke had returned with his ships the public had mourned the loss of Captain Somerville. As the news had broken earlier in the day that Somerville was actually alive, the public had been ecstatic. This is just what I need, Fairfax thought, this will silence our critics.
Chapter 24 – Stealth Cruise
A fleet is only as good as its scouts.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD
29th October, 2467, HMS Endeavour, edge of the Haven system.
Eight hours after jumping into the Haven system, James was still on Endeavour’s bridge watching the sensor display like a hawk. In stealth, both Endeavour and Discovery had cruised past the Indian picket ships patrolling the shift passage from Independence. Now they were approaching Haven itself in preparation for Admiral Cunningham’s arrival.
Though months had passed since James had last been in the system, it looked almost as if nothing had changed. Admiral Kumar’s battlecruiser was still in orbit around Haven accompanied by a small group of warships and troop transports. Quite a few of Haven’s orbital stations looked like they were still powered down. The Havenites had abandoned them when the Indian invasion fleet had arrived. It looked like Kumar hadn’t been able to convince any of the workers to return. There were several small space stations under construction. An analysis of the visual sensors suggested they were defense stations. Individually, each one looked like it might be powerful enough to dissuade a ship of Endeavour’s size from approaching the planet when they were completed. However, the combined British fleet would have nothing to fear.
Endeavour and Discovery’s first job was to survey the Indian fleet dispositions and warn Cunningham if there were any nasty surprises waiting. So far everything was as expected. The Indians had pulled a few of their warships out of Haven to reinforce their fleets at New Delhi. As it looked like Cunningham would have no problem dealing with the Indian ships, James and Gupta had continued into the system to be in position to carry out their part of Cunningham’s plan.
Though James couldn’t see Discovery on Endeavour’s sensors, he and Gupta were keeping in close contact through a laser COM link that had been set up between the two ships. Discovery was less than a light second off Endeavour’s port bow and they were able to talk in real time.
“Captain, I’m picking up a few st
range readings from the optical sensors. I’m not sure what to make of them,” Sub Lieutenant Scott said from the sensor terminal. James had been impressed with how quickly she had advanced under Becket’s watchful eye. When they had left the Sol system he had taken her out from under Becket’s supervision and put her in charge of the sensor department during the second watch.
“Let’s see what you have got,” James responded.
Taking his question as permission to take over the main holo display, Scott projected her strange readings for everyone to see. “The computer alerted me to the fact the optical sensors were picking up some objects that are blocking starlight.”
“That’s not entirely unusual,” James said. Endeavour was covered in optical sensors that scanned the starscape around her. They were looking for objects that passed between Endeavour and the light from distant stars. Often the only way to passively detect a warship in stealth was to ‘see’ it as it passed in front of distant stars and cut off their light for fractions of a second. That Scott wasn’t alerting him to the possibility of a new contact suggested the computer had detected something else.
“No, especially in a system that has seen a lot of fighting,” Scott replied. “The computer usually classes such things as space debris. However, in this case, the anomalies appear to be too regular to be debris.”
“So I see,” James said after he had studied the optical data. “What do our other sensors say is out there?”
“That’s just the thing,” Scott replied. “If there were space debris out there, we would expect our passive electromagnetic sensors to pick up something. To all intents and purposes that area of space looks empty on every other sensor we have.”
“Maybe the Indians are deploying some kind of detection grid around Haven. They could be small stealth satellites designed to pick up a ship in stealth as it passed between them,” Mallory suggested.
“In that case we might already have been detected,” Becket said.
“Not if we haven’t passed through the grid yet,” James answered. “If it is a grid, it will be set up to detect ships coming from the shift passage to the Indian colonies, not back to Independence. Plot all the anomalies you have detected on the main holo projector,” James requested.
“It doesn’t look like a sensor gird,” Becket said as the plot updated to show all of Scott’s anomalies. Whilst there appeared to be some order to them, it was not nearly uniform enough. “Some of them appear to be too close together to be sensors. It would make no sense to have them operating in such close proximity to each other.”
“Perhaps it is a trial run, or they are being stored there until they can be deployed to more appropriate locations,” Mallory suggested.
“Show me all the ships we have detected in the system, backtrack their movements as far as the computer can estimate them. Let’s see if any ships have visited the area,” James ordered.
Scott obeyed James’ request and a maze of new contacts appeared on the main holo projector. “I’ll focus in on the area of space we are interested in,” Scott said.
As the holo plot zoomed in on a small area of the system, everyone on the bridge who didn’t have any pressing duties scrutinized the display.
“There,” James said. “That ship, contact 0034, it was heading back to Haven when we jumped into the system but it could have been coming from our series of anomalies. It looks like some kind of freighter. I’d say you may be right Mallory, the Indian’s are depositing something out there. But what I wonder? If it is a sensor grid, it is a strange one.”
“Should we alter course to investigate?” Scott asked.
“What do you think Sub Lieutenant?” James responded.
Scott screwed up her face as she thought. “No, it would be too risky,” she answered. “If it is a sensor grid, it might detect us before we can figure out what is going on. We should be able to risk a stealth drone though, we could send it through one of the larger gaps in the grid. Unless the Indians have some advanced detection capabilities we don’t know about, they shouldn’t detect a stealth drone.”
“Very good,” James said. “You may prepare a stealth recon drone.”
As Scott busied herself preparing the drone, James composed a short text message and sent it to Gupta informing her what they were up to. It was possible Discovery’s sensors had detected more of the anomalies.
“Ready to launch the stealth drone,” Scott announced a couple of minutes later.
“Proceed,” James ordered.
After he watched to make sure the drone got away without incident, James read Gupta’s reply. After querying her ship’s sensors, she had identified a couple more anomalies Discovery hadn't picked up, but the additional data didn’t shed any light on the situation.
Twenty minutes later, the recon drone passed through the cluster of anomalies. “We should be getting the first burst transmission from the drone any time now,” Scott informed the bridge crew. “Ah, here it is,” she added.
“Well,” James prompted nearly thirty seconds later; Scott hadn’t said anything more.
“I don’t know what to make of it. Whatever is there is covered in some kind of stealth coating,” she replied. “The optical sensors on the stealth drone couldn’t see anything. It is impervious to optical detection. We can only spot them when they block out the light from distant stars.”
“They sound more and more like some kind of stealth sensors,” Mallory said.
“I’m starting to agree with you,” James responded. “I don’t know what else the Indians would be doing way out here. We are still more than a couple of light hours away from Haven.
“No matter,” James said after a moment’s pause as he made up his mind. “We have more pressing concerns, once we drive the Indian fleet out of the system we can return and actively scan the area. For now, let’s get back to our main objective. Scott, keep a track of any more anomalies we detect but I want your focus on the Indian fleet.”
“Aye Sir,” Scott said.
*
Endeavour and Discovery were in position thirty light minutes from Haven. They were far enough away from the planet that they were relatively safe from being detected by the patrolling ships. Yet they were close enough to act when the time came.
“Make sure everyone gets a hot meal over the next half an hour. Have it sent to those who can’t leave their stations,” James ordered once Endeavour came to rest relative to Haven. “I’m going to take a short nap in my quarters. Alert me if there is even a hint of a problem.”
“Yes Sir,” Second Lieutenant Julius said as James stood. She had taken over from Mallory to allow him to get some rest an hour ago.
When he got to his quarters James set his COM unit to wake him in forty five minutes. He longed to get more rest but Cunningham was scheduled to arrive in system in just over an hour. He wanted to be back to the bridge by then. As soon as his head hit the pillow he drifted into a fitful sleep.
A groan escaped his lips as his COM unit woke him up. It seemed like he had just closed his eyes. Shaking himself, he jumped out of bed. Even if it hadn’t been the most satisfying sleep, he knew he would appreciate it later. The coming battle was likely to last the rest of the day and even after the Indians had been driven off, there was still the ground invasion to participate in.
Smiling to himself, he thought back to his first experience of real combat. When he had taken Drake into the V17 system and dodged past a number of Chinese patrol ships he had been on the bridge for almost twenty four hours straight. The young, inexperienced and nervous James had been unable to sleep at all. At least now he was able to switch his mind off for short periods.
As he stepped out onto the bridge it looked like nothing had changed. A quick glance at the main holo projector showed none of the Indian patrol ships had come any closer to Endeavour and Discovery.
“Anything to report Lieutenant?” James asked Julius.
“No Captain,” she replied. “Everything has been quiet.”
/> “Good,” James said as he sat down into his command chair. “You can call the crew to battle stations, things are about to get a lot livelier soon.”
“Aye Sir,” Julius said as she turned to punch a few of the buttons on her command chair, ordering the crew to their battle stations. “I’ll take my position on the auxiliary bridge.”
“Very well,” James said. “Let’s hope you won’t have too much damage to have to deal with.”
“Indeed,” Julius said as she walked out of the bridge.
Ten minutes after Julius had left the bridge, exactly when James had expected them, several alarms blared as the gravimetric sensors detected a whole host of new contacts.
“Admiral Cunningham has arrived,” James said as soon as it became clear the new contacts had all appeared at the edge of the shift passage to Independence.
For the next five minutes Endeavour’s bridge crew watched as the fleet formed up and accelerated towards Haven. “New contacts,” Malik shouted from the sensor terminal, having taken over from Scott. “There are three new ships accelerating away from Cunningham’s fleet.”