The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) Read Free Page A

opponent had done in the past.
     
    The only exception is when a ship wants to use anything close to its full acceleration. The impulse drives human vessels use for traveling through normal space produce huge levels of acceleration. Yet, in doing so, they create gravimetric disturbances that could be picked up instantaneously over long distances.
     
    Cursing, Lightfoot brought up the feed from the gravimetric sensors on his own console. Erickson was right; the Chinese were heading straight for the convoy. He transferred the data to the main holo-display and let the computer crunch the numbers.
     
    Lightfoot swore even louder. The convoy had been slowly heading into the mass shadow of the Damang system as they waited for Surprise to locate the stray freighter. A system’s mass shadow was the area of space where the combined mass of the system’s star and planets produced enough of a gravimetric disturbance to prevent ships using their shift drives. The Chinese had come out of shift space right on the edge of the mass shadow; almost exactly at the same position the convoy had entered the system. Even if the freighters went full burn on their drives they couldn’t reach a safe place to enter shift space before the Chinese ships got within missile range. Knowing Captain Turner he guessed what was about to happen next.
     
    “Sir,” Erickson called excitedly, “ Resolution and Renown have gone to full military acceleration, they are heading straight for the two Chinese vessels.”
     
    Nodding, Lightfoot had to push down the urge to rebuke Erickson for his enthusiasm. The boy really needs to grow up, he thought to himself. Battle was never a thing to get excited about!
     
    Instead he asked, “and what are our charges doing?”
     
    “They are beginning to accelerate now, wait, from their acceleration patterns it looks like they are scattering. Some are going for the mass shadow, others are diving into the system,” Erickson answered.
     
    “Have you been able to identify the two Chinese ships?”
     
    “The computer has a positive match now. Their acceleration rates are higher than anything we have ever seen from a Chinese ship before. They must be the new Yang Wei class. Only three have left the construction yards according to intelligence. One of them is bound to be the Yang Wei herself. ”
     
    Lightfoot ran the numbers in his head. Resolution and Renown could only put out a combined salvo of nine missiles. RNI estimated that the British missiles had better ECM capabilities than the Chinese but that wouldn’t make up for the disparity in numbers. The Chinese medium cruisers had thicker armor than Resolution, and combined, had a throw weight of twenty-two missiles.
     
    Turner was no fool. He must know the odds too. Lightfoot guessed he was hopping that Renown’s armament would cause enough of a surprise to allow Resolution to get in close. All human warships were equipped with plasma cannons. Short ranged weapons, they shot out super-heated plasma bolts that could shred even valstronium armor. If Resolution could get into plasma range she could cripple both Chinese cruisers with a single salvo allowing the rest of the convoy to escape. Resolution would never survive the return fire but she would go down fighting.
     
    Turning to First Lieutenant Cromwell, Lightfoot sought his opinion, “what do you make of all this?”
     
    “Well sir,” he began, “it seems the Chinese don’t want us in this system, or at least they didn’t want us seeing that fleet of theirs. We’re too far away to come to Resolution’s aid but if those two ships blow through Resolution and Renown they’ll be coming straight for us. I’m sure they will have picked up our gravimetric signature too.”
     
    Lightfoot nodded solemnly. “Agreed. Unless there has been a declaration of war since we left Earth those ships don’t want us reporting back what we’ve seen. There’s no good reason for them to have a fleet all the way out