A King's Ship (Empire Rising Book 2) (20 page)

“I have found dreams are often like a good battle plan,” James said. “They never survive contact with the enemy. The best we can do is to make sure we are doing the right thing. The rest is up to someone else.”

Detecting a hint of sorrow in James’ voice Suzanna took a guess, “You are talking about your princess?”

“Yes,” James admitted. “I thought we would be married one day. Now she is a Chinese Empress and all I have is the navy.”

“But you have made a name for yourself and from the news reports on the Void War you saved a lot of lives. Not to mention what you have accomplished here.”

“True,” James said. “The navy has a proud tradition and it is my hope to live up to it. But as I said, I can only look after my own actions. I can’t determine what happens after that.”

This time James squeezed Suzanna’s hand. “All you can do is make sure you are doing everything you can for your people. I really think becoming a British protectorate is the best way forward. And I’m not just saying that as a British naval officer.”

“Thank you James,” Suzanna said, she leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Our planet owes you a great deal.”

As she leaned back her COM unit gave out a beep. When she looked at it she saw she had a message from her station manager. “Denning is on his way. My manager couldn’t stall him.”

Before James could say anything the door chimed, alerting them that someone had requested entry. When it didn’t open loud voices could be heard from its other side.

Thinking quickly, Suzanna jumped onto James’ lap and pulled him into a deep kiss.

“Oh... em... sorry for disturbing you,” Denning said bashfully as he came charging into the room, causing James and Suzanna to break apart.

“It’s time for your tour,” he said with a bit more confidence, “I’ll give you a second to freshen up,” he added as he turned and stepped out of the room, avoiding the glare of the station manager who stood on the other side of the door.

“I thought I would enjoy that,” Suzanna said as she jumped up. “Come on, let’s get going before Denning decides he needs to report this to Maximilian.”

“Lead on,” James said, slightly confused but smiling nonetheless.

Before the discovery of FTL communication, naval Captains often found themselves months away from their commanding Admirals and solely responsible for their actions. Those Admirals would then analyze the decisions made with the benefit of hindsight. As a result, the rising star of more than one naval Captain came crashing down in ignominy when their actions met with disapproval.

-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

13
th
May, 2466 AD, HMS
Endeavour
, Haven system

“And that is going to be my recommendation to the Admiralty,” James said as he finished filling in his senior officers about the meeting with Councilor Rodriguez. “I hear a few of you had some fun on the planet while I was away, care to fill me in?”

“Well,” Chief Driscoll said. “I got a very interesting tour of one of the government’s experimental research facilities. It is where they are working on new versions of the shift drive. I have to say, they are certainly making progress. No doubt a lot of that has to do with the shift drives they captured from those freighters of ours. Even so, their technicians have a few interesting ideas. One in particular has me intrigued. They have been experimenting with a fixed jump station that is able to tear a hole into shift space for other ships to use. Their lead researcher believes that a series of such jump stations would remove the need for freighters to be equipped with shift drives, reducing their build costs. The benefit of having a fixed station open the tear into shift space means much greater velocities can be reached, reducing the travel time between systems.

“All in all it is an impressive idea. I was able to give them a few pointers to help improve the efficiency of the station’s jump drive but I still think it is a few years away from leaving the lab.”

“That sounds like an interesting idea,” James said, “it could certainly reduce the flight time between systems, especially if the concept was married with our more powerful shift drives.”

Mentally James filed the concept away for later. A ship’s velocity through shift space was determined by the mass of the ship and the energy discharged into the shift drive from the ship’s capacitors. It took
Endeavour
thirty minutes to charge her capacitors before she could initiate the shift drive at its lowest power. If she charged her capacitors for longer she could achieve greater speeds through shift space however it was rarely practical. Even the biggest of shift passages had many twists and turns and typically a journey from one system to another would consist of multiple jumps as the shift drive could only catapult a ship into shift space in one direction. To make a course change a ship had to exit shift space, charge her capacitors and then make another jump. In the long run it was usually quicker to just initiate the shift drive when the capacitors were charged enough to open the weakest of tears into shift space rather than wait for the capacitors to charge up more.

“What about you Ferguson, did you manage to find any useful information?” James asked.

“Not really Sir,” Ferguson replied. “Farks invited me to his family’s plantation in the countryside. I got to see more of the planet but every time I tried to turn the conversation to Haven’s history they changed the subject.

“Maximilian joined us for an evening, but even then all Farks and Maximilian did was try to impress me with their wealth. I think that if they thought they could get away with it, they would try and buy
Endeavour
from us. They are desperate for new technology.”

“Yes, I have gotten that impression,” James said. “I hope you put that notion out of their heads.”

“Of course Sir,” Ferguson said, but when James met his eye he looked away.

Dismissing the thought that came into his mind as silly, James pressed on with the meeting. “Anyone else find out anything more about Haven’s history and how they managed to get their colony ship here so quickly?” he asked.

When no one answered James nodded to Lieutenant Scott to present her findings. “In that case, let’s come to the real reason why I gathered you here.” James said before she got up. “
Endeavour
is battle ready again. We need to decide what we are going to do next. Sorting out Haven is important but our real priority now is the Vestarians. We need to decide what we are to do about them. To do that Lieutenant Scott has some interesting findings I want her to discuss with us.”

As James sat down Scott stood and powered up the holo display. “I have been analyzing the electromagnetic discharge from the Vestarian’s shift drives. As I reported earlier their tech is very primitive and inefficient. Their shift drives release a great deal of waste electromagnetic energy when they enter and exit shift space. As a result, it is possible to identify where and when a Vestarian ship initiated its shift drive, weeks after it made the jump. That is how we were able to confirm the Havenites story about the Vestarian attacks.

“Since then I have analyzed some of the wreckage we and the Havenites recovered from the alien ships. We found a partially damaged shift drive yet there was enough of it intact for Chief Driscoll and I to make a theoretical model of how it works.

“As a result, I believe I can predict the direction a Vestarian ship jumps in when it enters shift space. In short, we should be able to track the Vestarian fleet that fled Haven. To calibrate my predicative model we will have to find where the fleet exited shift space after it jumped away. Then I can correlate the shift space speed with the waste energy discharge. Once we have that information we will be able to follow the Vestarian feet wherever they went.”

“Really?” Becket asked. “That’s great, we can find their homeworld and see just how strong their fleet is.”

“Indeed,” James said. “There is one caveat though. How long will we be able to detect the waste electromagnetic energy?”

“Up to three months Captain,” Scott answered, “after that the energy becomes too dispersed to be able to backtrack it to its point of origin.

“So we have a limited timeframe. If we don’t go after this fleet now we will lose the opportunity. I’m inclined to take the chance but I want to hear other opinions,” James informed the rest of his senior staff.

“I say go for it,” Becket said with her usual enthusiasm, which brought a smile to James’ face.

“I agree,” Mallory said to James’ surprise. “
Endeavour
was built to explore. We’ve already discovered a lost colony, why not add an alien homeworld?”

Mallory was surprised at himself for speaking up; he knew that the recent battle had impacted him greatly. His experiences on the planet while James had been touring the system had told him that much. Yet he thought it had only been his admiration for James that had grown, now he found himself excited about the prospect of chasing after an alien fleet.
I guess not everyone is as excite
d, Mallory thought to himself as Ferguson weighed in on the conversation

“I know this is a great opportunity,” Ferguson said nervously, “but at what point do we overstep our authority? We were sent out to locate Chang. We have done that. We were not trained for a first contact situation. For all we know, following these aliens in a warship could make the situation far worse. I think we should return to Earth and await new orders.”

James knew Ferguson had a point but the fact that Ferguson still couldn’t look him in the eye troubled him. It was true the British government liked to keep a close rein on her naval commanders. They were meant to fight the Kingdom’s enemies, not dictate policy. Yet James also knew his uncle, the First Space Lord. Jonathan Somerville had strong views on how the Admiralty should be run and how Britain should face her enemies. In his view the Captain on the ground had a far better appraisal of a situation than some bureaucrats hundreds of light years away.
Plus
, James thought to himself,
it was Jonathan who got me into all those 18
th
century naval novels. In the age of sail before the invention of the telegram or radio communications it had been the norm for captains to find themselves on their own on the far side of the world making up policy on the fly. He can hardly blame me when I get inspiration from his books.

“Your point is taken,” James said. “But I don’t think we have time to return to Earth. I’m not suggesting we go and attack these aliens’ homeworld. All I want to do is locate it. Then we can hightail it back to Earth and let those higher up make the tough decisions.

“Any other objections?” he asked.

When no one spoke up James stood. “My decision is made then. We will break orbit by the end of the day and follow the Vestarians’ trail. As you all know I will be appearing before Haven’s Planetary Council to receive the People’s Recognition R

Award and the Haven military’s Star Cross. It is going to be broadcast live across the planet.

“To help Councilor Rodriguez’s efforts to undermine Maximilian I plan to make a scene. One I think you will all enjoy,” James said, smiling.

When everyone looked at him confused he pressed on, “Becket, I need you to prepare a stealth recon drone. I want you to fly it around the planet and locate the stolen freighters. I want to have visual recordings of the freighters ready to release onto the planet’s data net after I receive my awards.”

“No problem,” Becket said.

“Lieutenant Scott, how easy would it be to hack into the planet’s datanet?” James queried.

“Very easy Sir,” Scott answered. “The only thing that has stopped us so far is that it will be immediately obvious what we have done. If they have good technicians supervising the datanet they will be able to throw us out pretty quickly and make it hard for us to try again.”

“Ok then, once I begin my speech I want you and your team to hack into the datanet. According to Rodriguez the council debated whether or not to accept Chang’s request for asylum. I want you to see if there are any audio or visual recordings of that council meeting. If you can find any, steal them. We’re going to release them to the public too.

“It goes without saying,” James added. “If you can find anything about this Gift, get it too.”

“Yes Sir,” Scott said.

“Everyone else, get
Endeavour
ready to leave,” James ordered, dismissing the meeting.

When everyone left James went through the briefing room into his quarters. His steward Fox was already there laying out his dress uniform. “Time to look the part,” James said as Fox helped him get ready.

*

Three hours later James was standing on the First Councilor’s Podium listening to Maximilian. He was addressing the entire planet, his face and words being beamed throughout the system.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Council and citizens of the Haven Collective. It is with great joy that I address you this evening for we are gathered here to honor one of the greatest heroes in the history of our colony.

“Captain Somerville of the Royal Space Navy fearlessly led his ship into harm’s way in our defense. When he could have turned aside and left us to fend for ourselves he risked all on our behalf. His ship single handedly destroyed more than ten of the dreadful alien warships that tried to rain down death and destruction on everything we and our forefathers have labored to build here. Let us honor this man and his crew, each of us owes them our lives.”

Maximilian looked out over the assembled crowd, enjoying their attention. “I come before you now and on your behalf to present Captain Somerville with the People’s Recognition Award. Normally this yearly award is given to the citizen who has made an outstanding contribution to the development of our colony, but you, the people, have almost unanimously voted to honor Captain Somerville this year.

“Alongside the People’s Recognition Award, Admiral Harris will present Captain Somerville with the Haven Navy’s Star Cross. The highest medal for valor and bravery our government can bestow. No man has ever been awarded both but no man has ever deserved them more.”

As rehearsed, Maximilian stepped to the side of the podium and allowed James to step forward. As he stepped up a rapturous round of applause broke out from the assembled councilors and those gathered in the chamber. Turning to his right James bent over to allow Maximilian to place the People’s Recognition medal over his neck.