A King's Ship (Empire Rising Book 2) (12 page)

“It’s already being sent,” Harris answered. “May I ask, where is your ship? We can’t pick it up on our sensors. Are you close enough to help us before their fleet gets in range of our planet?”

James didn’t answer immediately. Instead he waited for Ferguson and Scott to go over the data they had been sent.

“I don’t see any other explanation Sir,” Scott began, “the particles from their drives and the readings we’re getting from their ships do not match anything humans have built nor any experimental technology I’m aware of.”

“I concur Sir,” Ferguson added. “Their ship designs are like nothing the RSNI has data on and the residual electromagnetic radiation from the outer system is consistent with Harris’s story about being attacked.”

James nodded before taking a moment to let the gravity of the situation sink in. Humans were not alone in the galaxy. Worse, already they seemed to be at war. Yet the British weren’t at war. Maybe the Havenites did something to start this fight and maybe the aliens would be happy to open peaceful relations with the other human nations. There were just too many unknowns.
And then
, he thought, what help can
Endeavour
be
? It looked like their technology was more advanced than the Havenites and these aliens,
but is it enough?
He didn’t know the answer to that question; nevertheless, he had to make a decision, that was the burden of command.

Taking a deep breath, he faced the recorder that would transmit his words back to Admiral Harris. “Ok, we’re in,” he said, “
Endeavour
is an exploration cruiser but we have some teeth. We’re currently closing in on the alien fleet from behind. We entered the system over six hours ago and accelerated up to our maximum speed. Now we’re in stealth mode closing on the aliens. What is the tactical situation?”

When he got the transmission Harris almost shouted for joy.
Plasma cannons,
he thought as he controlled himself.
Maybe we can win this.

When the Haven colony ship had left Earth over two hundred and fifty years ago Harold Maximilian had ensured that some of the best scientists on Earth came with the colonists. They had brought with them theoretical designs of the shift drive and although it had taken them nearly one hundred and fifty years to develop it, they had managed it.

When the first Haven ships had made contact with French vessels from Earth they had been surprised to find out that Earth had developed the shift drive over a century before them. Just as surprising had been the revelation that Earth warships were equipped with plasma cannons.

As Haven had begun to develop warships they had also come to the conclusion that long-range missiles were the way forward. However, they had also known that a shorter-range energy weapon would be very effective against warships. Lasers had been rejected for their effective range was severely limited by the diffraction of the laser and the current technical limitations on reducing the wavelength of the beam. Plasma cannons on the other hand were known to be theoretically possible and would have made ideal weapons, but their scientists hadn’t yet managed to crack stabilizing the containment fields for each bolt.

Since they had made contact with the Earth nations they had managed to procure a few working examples of hand held plasma rifles through the black market to reverse engineer, but as yet they didn’t have a working prototype to begin to equip their ships with. For the last week Harris had been cursing their failure to prioritize this for he knew they would have made a big difference in the coming battle.

Now at least we have some,
he thought.

“You can no doubt see their fleet with your own scanners,” Harris began. “They have forty nine ships. Twenty of their larger ones, and twenty nine smaller ones. We’ve designated the larger class of ships as cruisers and the smaller ones as frigates. The smaller ships carry four missile tubes on each of their bows. We haven’t seen what their cruisers carry but we suspect they will have at least ten missiles to each broadside. Their missiles seem to have an effective range of half a light minute so we have a slight range advantage but not enough to make a difference.

“Under my command I have a cruiser, three light cruisers, eight destroyers, and eight frigates.  There are another seven frigates currently harassing the alien fleet. They have managed to destroy two of the alien frigates. Their point defenses are good but our missile ECM is able to penetrate them.

“We also have two defense stations disguised as industrial nodes. My current plan is to wait for the alien fleet to get into optimal range of our missiles and fire everything we have at them. We don’t have any plasma cannons so my only play is to hope we can overwhelm their defenses and cause them enough damage that they break off.”

As James listened to the tactical situation he kept an eye on the sensor feed of the alien fleet. It was an impressive armada. He knew the Havenite weapons technology was at least two decades behind the other Earth nations, probably more like three or four behind
Endeavour’s
state of the art tech. The aliens appeared to be slightly behind the Havenites. Yet what they lacked in quality their fleet appeared to make up for in quantity. Even as he watched the seven attacking Havenite frigates veered into missile range and fired off a volley of fourteen missiles at the nearest alien cruiser. When the missiles entered point defense range hundreds of AM missiles shot from the alien ships and they took out all but one of the missiles. It managed to get a proximity hit on the large alien ship but the ship continued on, apparently able to shrug off the hit.

“There’s one more thing, Harris added. “The aliens have some form of directed energy weapon. You should have been sent the sensor feed of
Valiant’s
destruction; it will show you their effective range. My scientists believe it is some form of x-ray laser but they can’t understand how they have enough power output on their ships to be able to fire it over such long distances.”

“Thank you,” James said, “give us a few minutes to formulate a plan. I don’t think we have time to join you in orbit. We’ll have to engage the alien fleet separately and hope we can whittle them down enough for you to be able to manage them when they get to Haven.”

“Very well Captain, we’ll take whatever help you can give us,” Harris said.

After James watched the Admiral’s last message he opened up the small holo projector on his command chair and projected the current sensor feeds. James had seen more combat than he had ever imagined he would when he signed up to the RSN. Yet he knew he still had a lot to learn when it came to leading a ship into battle. The Void War had taught him that.
If we’re going to survive this and help the Havenites we need to use all of Endeavour’s strengths
, he thought to himself. Slowly, a plan began to formulate. When he was happy with it he sent it over to Lieutenant Ferguson’s command chair. “What do you think?” James asked Ferguson.

It was five minutes before James and Ferguson were happy that they had worked out all the details of the plan. When they were satisfied, James contacted Harris again, “I’m sending you our plan, please make sure your frigates are made aware of our approach. We will need them to coordinate their fire.”

“You will have our support,” Harris replied after the five minute delay in transmission.

Cutting the COM channel James then opened one to
Innocence
, “your mission is a go Commander. Once you have your target don’t wait around for us.”

“Aye Sir,” Gupta acknowledged. “Happy hunting Sir. I wish I was on the bridge with you.”

“Me too Commander, but you have your own hunting to do. Good luck” he added with a smile as he cut the transmission.

“Open a channel to the whole ship,” James commanded the COM officer. When she nodded at him to let him know it was open he addressed the crew.

“Men and women of
Endeavour,
I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that we are facing alien warships. They are headed straight for a human colony and it seems that their intention is to invade or bombard it. It may not be a British colony but those are our fellow human beings down there. We have a duty to protect them and who knows, if these aliens aren’t stopped here, it may well be a British colony they attack next. The Havenites have no tradition of warfare but they stand ready to fight these aliens. We know how to fight, so let’s show these aliens that Humans aren’t as easy prey as they seem to think!”

Nodding to the COM officer to cut the transmission, James turned to the navigation officer and said, “Power up the engines, let get this battle started.”

It’s an old saying, yet one that the history of space warfare has proven true; no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

- Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

1
st
May 2466 AD, HMS
Endeavour
, Haven system.

As soon as
Endeavour’s
four fusion reactors powered up and funneled energy into her impulse engines she became visible to everyone in the vicinity of the Haven colony. While the two fleets battling each other had been too busy to notice her first acceleration burn into the system she was now operating in an area that was being heavily monitored. Ignorant of the surprise on both the Havenite and alien warships at seeing a new ship appear so close to them, James was focused on his immediate goal.

“Ferguson, take command of the main plasma cannons, target one of their cruisers and hammer it until it’s destroyed. Tactical, wait until the Haven missile salvo passes us and then add our own. They should be targeting the two alien frigates on the edge of their formation.”

“Aye, Sir” Julius, the Third Lieutenant called from the tactical terminal. Ferguson didn’t bother answering; the bolts of super-heated plasma that shot towards the alien fleet spoke for him.

The first four bolts tore through the armor of the alien warship like it didn’t exist. There wasn’t any immediate sign that the bolts had done any serious damage but thirty seconds later, when another four bolts crashed into the ship, it tore apart and disappeared in a colossal explosion.

Satisfied that their plasma cannons were able to destroy whatever the alien ships were made from, James switched his attention to the Havenite flotilla of frigates. The seven small warships were once again angling towards the much slower alien fleet. They unleashed a volley of twelve missiles at the aliens. Becket timed her launch perfectly and
Endeavour
added eight of her own to the volley.

When the missiles got into range of the alien’s point defenses hundreds of AM missiles began to pour out of the alien ships, trying to intercept the larger ship killer missiles. Sensing the incoming AM missiles, the Haven and British missiles switched on their ECM and randomly altered their flight path, making themselves harder to track.

“Two missiles have been taken out,” Julius called. “Now three.”

“Penetrator missiles activating now,” she said several seconds later.

On the screen, James could see that ten more missiles had sprung into existence to confuse the alien’s point defenses. The penetrator missiles were ECM missiles that exchanged their thermonuclear warheads for the ability to fool even the most sophisticated human sensors. They had been one of the main reasons that the smaller British warships had managed to go toe to toe with the Chinese navy in the recent war. For the alien fleet with their apparently inferior sensors, the missiles played havoc with their point defenses. Only two more missiles were destroyed and fifteen locked in on the two alien frigates. Nine of them managed to get direct hits and two alien ships disappeared off the holo display in a haze of electromagnetic radiation from the explosions. When the sensors burned through the radiation they showed both ships tumbling out of formation, venting atmosphere from numerous holes.

“Very good tactical,” James said, “line up another broadside with those frigates, hit them again!”

“Damage report,” Second Lieutenant Mallory called over the open COM channel to the auxiliary bridge. His job in the auxiliary bridge was to oversee the internal systems and be ready to take command in case the bridge was damaged. “I’m getting reports that several of our point defense plasma cannons and AM launchers are damaged. No sign of any missile strikes, I’m not sure what happened.”

“Evasive maneuvers Navigation,” James called.

“Check the sensor logs,” he said to Mallory. “We believe the aliens destroyed one of the Havenite frigates with some sort of laser. Their range may be greater than we thought.”

“I’m on it Sir,” the Second Lieutenant replied.

“Any more damage?” James asked the bridge.

“Nothing yet,” Sub Lieutenant King at Sensors called out. “Lieutenant Mallory and I are reviewing the sensor data. There were several heat blooms on the outer hull just before the automatic damage reports began coming in. It looks like the Havenites were right, they must have some kind of directed energy weapon. Likely a laser.”

“Sub Lieutenant King is right,” Mallory confirmed over the COM channel. “I don’t think their weapons have the power to penetrate our armor at this range but they can take out the point defense and sensor blisters on the outer hull.”

“Very well,” James said, “we will have to keep up our evasive maneuvers.”

“Glancing hit Sir,” Becket called out, “We just got another heat bloom across our aft armor. It was only for a split second. No damage reported.”

“Third alien cruiser destroyed,” Ferguson shouted over the noise of the bridge. “The rest of their fleet is taking evasive maneuvers, it’s going to be harder to get hits from this range.

As he had come to expect from his previous combat experience James was beginning to lose track of the minor details of the battle. Drowning out some of the information being shared between the bridge crew he focused on the holo display to keep track of the big picture.

The alien fleet was still headed for Haven. Despite the impressive damage
Endeavour
was doing to them they were determined. The larger Haven fleet was in position around the two stations that Admiral Harris had identified as their concealed battlestations. The alien fleet had been reduced to forty four ships but James wasn’t sure they were doing enough damage. The alien fleet would be in range of the Haven ships’ missiles in another ten minutes and the aliens would be able to fire off their own shorter ranged missiles two minutes after that.

As he watched the main holo plot another of the cruisers fell out of formation, showing that Ferguson was still using the plasma cannons to deadly effect. Several seconds after the ship blew up completely a large section of the alien fleet slowly began to turn. Immediately James checked their projected course.

Seeing the same thing Sub Lieutenant King, manning the sensors station, called out, “Captain, the alien ships are reorienting, they are bringing their broadsides to bear on us.”

“I see it,” James acknowledged. “Navigation, you know what to do, pull us back.

The Havenite frigates had fired a second salvo and as
Endeavour
turned Julius fired another eight missiles to join them as they sped towards the aliens.

The alien ships that had turned responded with
thirty missiles of their own. As the missiles were projected on the holo display James cringed.
Endeavour
was designed to be able to defend herself against ten modern missiles. Even if Haven’s data was correct and these alien variants weren’t as effective as British tech, thirty was a lot of targets for her point defenses to take out. Thankfully
Endeavour
was equipped with two flak cannons, without them she wouldn’t have a chance.

Even as he thought of them, both flak cannons fired off hundreds of high explosive shells that detonated in front of the incoming missiles. They threw up a wall of shrapnel that the missiles had to fly through. At relativistic speeds it only took a glancing blow from a piece of shrapnel for the quickly accelerating missiles to be damaged or thrown off course. Space was a big place though and the flak cannons couldn’t hope to hit all the missiles. Twenty of the thirty missiles made it through the first storm of shrapnel and thirteen came through the second.

The flak cannons powered down as the missiles entered the range of the small point defense plasma cannons. Space between
Endeavour
and the incoming missiles was filled with green plasma bolts as the point defense gunners tried to hit their targets. Soon AM missiles launched from
Endeavour’s
racks to intercept the incoming missiles. Thirteen were reduced to eleven, then eight.

It’s still not enough
James thought as he watched helplessly. Everyone else had a job to do to defend the ship but all he had to focus on was the holo plot tracking the missiles getting closer and closer.

“Here they come,” Julius shouted. Before James could ask her what she meant, the plot around
Endeavour
lit up with over a hundred new contacts.

As soon as they appeared they shot towards the incoming missiles and nine became three.
Endeavour’s
point defenses concentrated on the remaining targets and the sheer weight of fire blew them out of space. 

Havenite AM missiles
, James realized as he scanned the holo plot to see the Havenite frigates had decelerated hard to fall into a defensive formation around
Endeavour
. 

“We’re clear,” Ferguson announced, “we’re beyond the missile range of the alien ships. It doesn’t look like they are turning to pursue us.”

“Good work everyone,” James said to the bridge and the Havenite frigates.

“Thanks,” a voice said from one of the small holo displays on James’ command chair. “We were just in time it seems. Admiral Harris sent us to give you a hand.”

“Indeed you were,” James said looking down at the frigate captain whose face had appeared on the small holo display of his command chair. “Your AM missiles are quite effective.”

“Not half as effective as your flak cannons,” the Haven Captain replied. “When I saw they had launched thirty missiles I thought your ship was history. I’d heard reports from your war with the Chinese but I didn’t think they were that effective.”

“Yes, they came as a surprise to the Chinese too,” James said with a smile. “I owe you a drink later Captain but for now let’s get back to business.”

“Agreed,” the Haven Captain said.

Lifting his voice, James addressed the bridge crew and the Haven Captain. “Ok, we’re out of plasma cannon range but we can still hammer them with our missiles. Julius, coordinate with the Haven Captain and take out as many of the alien frigates as you can before they engage the main Haven fleet.”

“Yes Sir,” she answered.

“I’ve sent some information to your datapad,” Julius added. “I think we might be able to pull off an old trick.”

“I’ll have a look,” James replied.

He grabbed his datapad and scanned the information Julius had sent him, pausing to watch as the next salvo of missiles launched towards the alien fleet. When he got to the end of the data he knew Julius was onto something.

“Communication, can you open a COM channel to Admiral Harris for me?” James asked.

“Yes Sir, channel is open,” came the response.

“Good work Captain,” Harris said when James’s image appeared before him. “You guys are giving them hell – I just hope it’s enough. They’ll be in range of our missiles in four minutes.”

“Thank you Admiral,” James began. “I may have something for you. Have you been able to study the history of naval warfare since your people have made contact with the other human nations?”

“To a certain extent. We’ve only been able to get information on specific wars and battles that were made publicly available at the time. I’m probably missing more than a few vital details,” Harris confessed.

“No problem, I can fill you in. I’m sending you over our sensor data from the alien ships,” James said. “If your tech guys look it over they’ll see the alien AM missiles use the same radar wavelength as their main search radars. We used to do the same before the Russians used it against us in the war over the French colonies. You’ll probably only get one shot at it but if you alter your missile’s ECM to detect the wavelength of the alien’s main search radar you will be able to predict their AM missiles’ seeker radar as well. If you can alter your missiles in time you can get them to project their own radar signals back at the AM missiles and confuse them.”