A King's Ship (Empire Rising Book 2) (21 page)

Turning to his left James faced Admiral Harris, who stepped up with the Star Cross. As he reached up, James held up his hand, stopping Harris from getting any closer. Instead James turned back to the assembled council.

Suddenly an overwhelming desire to turn and run came over him and to hell with the consequences. He hated public speaking, especially in front of so many important people. His father had forced him to make a number of addresses to important gatherings as he had been growing up and every one of them had been a horrible ordeal. On more than one occasion he had simply run away before he was due to give his speech.

Despite his years in the RSN and the numerous times he had addressed his crew, this felt like something different. But then he thought back to what Suzanna had said about him. He knew he had changed, he wasn’t the running away type anymore. And if he was going to return to Earth and fulfil his role as a Duke of England he was going to have to get used to addressing important councils and gatherings. Taking a deep breath, he found Suzanna and fixed his eyes on her to calm himself.

“It is my honor to stand before you all today and receive the People’s Recognition award,” he began as confidently as he could.  “I and my crew would be willing to sacrifice our lives and our ship a hundred times over to protect you and your planet. That is the Royal Space Navy’s tradition. In the days since the battle I have had the opportunity to see your beautiful colony and marvel at all you have accomplished. I take your thanks seriously and you honor me with this award.

“However, I will not accept anything from your government.” James said and a deathly silence descended on the chamber. Before anyone could interrupt him James went on. “Your First Councilor along with some of your elected representatives have been engaging in open piracy against freighters belonging to Earth nations. Let that sink in,” James stressed as he poured contempt into his next phrase, “your leaders are pirates. They would steal and destroy in order to advance their own goals. I thought your forefathers left Earth to escape such men.”

Before anyone could force him off the stage he pressed on with his speech. “Worse, your entire Planetary Council voted to take in and harbor a wanted war criminal. Former Politburo Intelligence Minister Chang Lei is wanted by the UN and the British government for war crimes. He was responsible for starting the Void War, for the bombardment of a British colony, an unprovoked attack on a defenseless colony ship and the death of over ten thousand civilians.

“The very things the Vestarians tried to do to you, Chang did to the British Star Kingdom. Yet your government welcomed him to Haven with open arms. My ship is releasing all the proof you will need to corroborate these claims onto your datanet. You will be able to see for yourselves who really rules you. I for one want nothing to do with such men. I gladly accept the people’s thanks. But I will take nothing from your government.”

When he stopped speaking it was as if everyone had broken out of a trance. A great commotion broke out in the chamber as everyone began shouting at each other and at James. Maximilian was fuming and as James looked at him and smiled, he thought the First Councilor was about to punch him.

When he didn’t move, James turned and stepped away from the podium.

“Wait,” a voice called over the others and James recognized it as Suzanna’s. She had activated her booth’s speakers.

“Where are you going Captain? Haven still needs your protection,” she asked.

Wanting to reassure her James turned back. “While your politicians scheme and plot I go to find the alien’s homeworld. We defeated them over Haven, that’s true. But if we don’t end their ability to wage war they will be back. Their actions have already proven they are willing to destroy entire planets to get their way.
Endeavour
won’t let that happen.”

With that James spun on his heels, and quickly made his way off the podium and out of the council chamber. Just through the doors Major Johnston was waiting with a squad of marines. They weren’t armed but anyone would be a fool to try and tangle with them. A shuttle from
Endeavour
was landing outside the council chamber. It was against all their regulations but James didn’t want to risk Maximilian getting any ideas.
Endeavour
could blow what remained of the Haven fleet out of space easily but the First Councilor probably wasn’t thinking straight at the moment.

As the group set off down the corridor towards the exit an angry voice shouted after them. “What do you think you are doing?”

James turned to face the First Councilor. “Ending your political career,” he said. “Next time you want to harbor war criminals and pirate our freighters you had better be prepared to deal with the Royal Space Navy. And this is only the start, the RSN will be back, that I can promise you.”

Without waiting for a reply he spun on his heels and left Maximilian in a rage. Outside, the shuttle was hovering next to the stairs that led to the Council Chamber. Its plasma turrets were open and actively tracking the few security guards who were standing outside watching it.

When James appeared, it dropped to the ground and four marines in combat armor jumped out, hefting their plasma rifles threateningly. Jumping onboard James made his way to the front of the shuttle and sat down beside the pilot. “Take us back to the ship,” he ordered.

As soon as the shuttle set down in
Endeavour’s
hanger bay James opened his COM and contacted the bridge. “I’m back safe and sound, take us out of orbit.”

“Yes Sir,” Ferguson acknowledged.

James’ COM beeped, informing him that he had a personal message from the planet.

Good luck.

James broke into a large smile as he made his way to the bridge. He was pleased Suzanna approved of his performance.

Tachyons are strange particles, even now we know so very little about them.

-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.

29
th
June, 2466 AD, HMS
Endeavour,
unnamed system.

James sat in his office peering at the holo map of local space, wondering what to do.
Endeavour
had spent the last six weeks following the trail of the Vestarian fleet. Things had gotten off to a good start. They had found where the fleet had exited shift space after their first jump and Scott had been able to refine her predictive model. They had then set off in hot pursuit of the alien fleet.

Their main problem had been that they were forced to slowly make their way along each shift passage mapping out the dark matter.  As they didn’t know the length of each jump the alien ships were making they didn’t know how far it was safe for them to jump
Endeavour
along the same route. Mapping the dark matter was taking a significant amount of time. Time James had known they didn’t have.

They had discovered eight new shift passages and seven new systems. Ordinarily such discoveries would be monumental but now they were just obstacles. Each day spent traversing systems or mapping dark matter had allowed the alien fleet to get further and further away. Each time they reached a point where they detected the tell-tail signs of a Vestarian jump into shift space, the signal was weaker.

Yesterday they had come to a dead end in the shift passage they had been traveling down. That meant they had passed the point where the Vestarian fleet had exited shift space and made a course change, yet they hadn’t detected any sign of them. Part of the problem had been Scott’s assessment of the Vestarian’s shift drive. The first jump away from Haven had been down a particularly long and straight shift passage. This allowed the Vestarians to charge their shift drives to their full capacity to traverse the shift passage quicker. The extra energy released from the jump to shift space had therefore been greater than the subsequent jumps they had been tracking, making them harder to detect.

Now James had a decision to make. He could take
Endeavour
home. There would be no shame in that. He would be coming back with a number of new systems discovered and at least a part of the way to the alien homeworld mapped out. It would give the Admiralty somewhere to start looking with the fleet of exploration ships they would doubtless send this way. Yet he wanted to find the alien system. If for no other reason than he wanted to head home with his mission completed. Heading home now would feel like only doing half the job.

With a sigh James put his head in his hands. He only had one real option. Without a firm lead they could spend years exploring shift passage after shift passage and get nowhere.
There is nothing else for it,
James thought to himself.
Time to head home.

Just as he reached for his COM unit to contact the bridge it beeped at him. “Captain, I think you will want to come up to the bridge,” Ferguson said. “Lieutenant Scott seems to be excited about something.”

“On my way,” James said, hoping it was going to be good news.

When he stepped onto the bridge there was a hive of activity around the science terminal. One of Lieutenant Scott’s ensigns was at the terminal but Scott and two other researchers were leaning over the terminal as they studied its read out.

“What exactly is going on?” James asked when he got close enough to look at the terminal.

Scott jumped in fright at hearing her Captain’s voice so close.

“Sorry Captain,” she said a few seconds later as her face reddened from embarrassment. “I didn’t hear you come onto the bridge.”

“That’s ok,” James said, “you’ve obviously found something that has caught your attention.”

“Yes Sir,” Scott said, her face lighting up again. “Tachyons! Our sensors detected a brief tachyon burst that zipped past the ship.”

“Tachyons?” James asked.

“They are theoretical particles that astrophysical scientists have long posited exist in our universe.” Scott answered. “For over four centuries we have been looking for them though we haven’t detected any and we are still at a loss as to how to artificially generate them ourselves.”

“That’s all very good,” James replied. “I’m sure you’ll get to publish a very interesting paper from this data but how do they help us on our current mission?”

“Tachyons can travel faster than light Sir,” Scott said excitedly. “That means they can be used for FTL communication. The beam of particles that passed by our ship was travelling at over two thousand times the speed of light.”

“Amazing,” James said impressed. Yet he still wasn’t sure what this had to do with finding the Vestarian’s homeworld. Yet the implications of artificially generating such particles were staggering. “If we could produce our own Tachyon beam we could send a message from Earth to the Alpha system in just under five hours,” James calculated.

“Yes Sir,” Scott agreed, “it would revolutionize our society. Almost like the invention of the radio in the early twentieth century. There is more though. I don’t think the Tachyon particles we picked up occurred naturally. The beam was too narrowly focused. I believe it was artificially produced by another intelligent race.”

“The Vestarians!” James said.

“Perhaps,” Scott said, happy that the Captain was following her. For the last few weeks she had been almost depressed. As it had become obvious that her initial calculations regarding their ability to follow the Vestarian fleet hadn’t been accurate she had felt the weight of her failure growing.
Endeavour
had been traveling further and further into the unknown and as each day passed their ability to follow the Vestarians dwindled. It had begun to look like the entire venture to follow the Vestarians would prove to be a failure. One that would have been her fault, yet now the tachyons changed that, they had a new lead!

“The Vestarians seem to have a strange mix of primitive and advanced technology,” Scott continued, “so it’s certainly possible. Though this is an order of magnitude greater than any technology we have seen yet. It’s possible that this beam was produced by another race.”

“Another intelligent race,” James said out loud as his mind ran through the possibilities. “The Vestarians did say they were being attacked by another race. Maybe they are the ones with the advanced technology. That would explain how the Vestarian tech is so diverse. Their ships could be a combination of their own tech and stolen tech from their enemies.

“Either way,” James said looking back up at Scott. “Can you trace this beam to its point of origin?”

“Yes Sir,” Scott answered. “We were working on that when you came in. Can you put it on the main holo display?” she asked one of her ensigns.

Nodding, the ensign switched the science terminal’s display onto the main holo display.

“We can trace both the point of origin and the intended destination of the beam. That’s what tipped us off that it was artificial. It is just too accurate to be random,” Scott said once the holo displayed a map of local space.

“The beam originated in a system only five light years away. Its destination is a system over one hundred and fifty light years away from us, further out into unknown space. I think we have just found the first two worlds inhabited by an alien race,” Scott said excitedly.

“Guessing from the shift passages in this area of space it could take anywhere up to two months to reach that far away planet even if we had all of the space between here and there mapped out,” James concluded. “I’d say this nearest planet is the Vestarian homeworld. The other planet could be their enemies. Ferguson what do you think?” James asked his First Lieutenant.

“I agree Sir,” Ferguson said. “There was what looked like a fork in the shift passage we are in about a day’s journey back that suggested it led in the direction of this new system. I suggest we back track and explore it. If this system was the alien’s destination there has to be a shift passage that leads to it somewhere nearby.”

“Navigation, plot us a course back to Ferguson’s shift passage. Take us there at best speed,” James ordered.

“Lieutenant Scott, I want you to continue to analyze the data you got on that Tachyon beam, see if you can decipher any form of communication embedded in the particles.”

“Yes Sir,” Scott said eagerly.

*

6
th
July, 2466 AD, HMS
Endeavour,
unknown system.

A week later and
Endeavour’s
bridge was crowded with all the senior officers except Mallory, who was in the auxiliary bridge. After locating the fork in the shift passage James had taken his ship towards the planet where the Tachyon beam had originated from. After a couple of dead ends they had finally found a small shift passage that led to the system. In thirty seconds they would be exiting shift space four light hours from the system’s mass shadow.

Technically,
Endeavour
could exit right on the edge of the mass shadow created by the planet’s star but doing so would give their arrival away to any ships that were patrolling that region. James was taking every precaution so they were going to exit shift space a long way from the inner system and cruise in slowly under stealth.

“Exiting in five, four, three,” the navigation officer called out.

As soon as they jumped out everyone who wasn’t manning one of the command stations focused on the main sensor plot and the gravimetric plot.

“No ships appearing on the gravimetric plot,” Ferguson reported. The gravimetric sensors were able to pick up the gravimetric waves given off by ships that were quickly accelerating or decelerating and could therefore give an almost instantaneous view of what ships were operating within a system.  

“The planet is in a binary star system and I’m picking up six planets orbiting the two stars,” Sub Lieutenant Malik said from the sensor terminal. “There’s one gas giant and one planet in the habitable zone.”

“Acknowledged, focus our passive sensors on the habitable planet,” James ordered. “Navigation, angle us towards the habitable planet. I don’t want any acceleration though. We don’t know if they have any gravimetric sensors or how sensitive they are if they do. Let’s just coast in using our velocity from exiting shift space.”

“Yes Sir,” Sub Lieutenants Malik and Jennings said.

“I’m picking up a lot of residual electromagnetic energy emanating from the edge of the system’s mass shadow directly in front of us. It looks like a lot of Vestarian ships have been jumping into shift space in this area recently,” Scott reported.

“I guess we’re in the right system after all,” James said.

*

For the next two hours
Endeavour
cruised up to the mass shadow of the system’s star. By then James had a much clearer picture of what was going on in the system. There appeared to be a small asteroid mining complex on the edge of one of the denser asteroid fields in the outer system. Apart from that and the habitable planet, the rest of the system appeared devoid of alien activity. Even the habitable planet was strange. There was one large satellite in orbit and what looked like a number of smaller ones. Yet there was nothing to suggest whoever lived on the planet had the technology to build a fleet of warships. Or even had the kind of space based civilization that needed FTL communications.

On the planet itself there appeared to be a number of major cities that were giving off all kinds of electromagnetic energy, suggesting that whoever lived on the planet, there were certainly lots of them.  One city dwarfed all the others and at its center there was a massive structure. Everyone on
Endeavour’s
bridge had been mightily impressed. Even Earth’s largest structures weren’t visible from this far away in space.

“Continue to take us in,” James said to the Navigation officer. “We’re not going to solve this mystery unless we get a close look at what’s going on.”