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  Obviously the last two years of boredom had not completely dulled his wits. With just a visual inspection he had estimated it would take at least four hours and thirty five minutes to get back to the main passage. Not bad for a commander who had spent the last two years skirting the thin line into alcoholism. Strictly banned from the RSN it wasn’t hard for a ship’s commander to rewrite his personal food processing unit to create various beverages and then delete the records from its core. Twelve minutes off wasn’t a bad estimate from a solely visual inspection.

  Theoretically the shift drive greatly reduced the time to travel through space. Yet this was only true where the passages through the dark matter were straight. Entering shift space catapulted a vessel at great speeds in a single direction. However, once in shift space this direction couldn’t be changed. To change direction a ship had to leave shift space, re-orientate itself and re-enter shift space. To traverse back down the minor passage they were in HMS Drake would have to make four directional adjustments to compensate for the various twists in the passage. Between jumps it would take 30 minutes to charge the capacitors on the shift drive, thus to cover a distance that would take approximately two hours and forty five minutes in shift space would instead take the four hours and forty seven minutes Fisher had reported.

  “Ok, send your data over to the navigational station,” James said as he strolled over to Sub Lieutenant Hanson. Determined to start to break down some of the walls he had allowed to build between himself and his crew, after all, that is what the heroes in his books did wasn’t it? James placed his hand on Sub Lieutenant Hanson’s shoulder. To his credit, the sub lieutenant didn’t jump.

  “Lieutenant Hanson, I want you to plot Fisher’s course back to the main passage and as soon as the capacitors finish charging from our last jump, take us out of here.”

  “Yes sir,” Hanson eagerly replied.

  Looking over to Sub Lieutenant Graham, James called to him. “Prepare a communication drone to send back to Cambridge. Once we revert back to the main passage you can dispatch it with the details of this latest dead end we have discovered, and prepare a message to send to Lieutenant Gupta, I want her on the bridge when we reach the main passage. I’m going to retire for the night.”

  Sub Lieutenant Graham nodded to show he understood. Typically, a RSN ship had five Sub Lieutenant positions, communications, sensors, navigation, tactical and defense. This meant the larger starships had upwards of fifteen sub lieutenants onboard, five for each of the three watches.

  However, Drake had only nine, one for each watch in communications, sensors and navigation. Tactical and defense were not deemed worth wasting a sub lieutenant on for a survey ship that was not designed to see action.

  As a result, posting to a survey ship was highly sought after by sub lieutenants. Regulations stated that a sub lieutenant couldn’t be considered for promotion until they had served at each station for at least a year. The lack of a dedicated tactical and defense watch meant that the other sub lieutenants could fill in on these positions on their off hours and so increase their clocked station hours.

  In reality though simply clocking the required five years was a minimum requirement for promotion into the senior lieutenant ranks. The RSN largest ships were the Reliant class battlecruisers and regulations stipulated there be a maximum of five senior lieutenants. With up to fifteen sub lieutenants per ship throughout all the classes in the RSN there was a tight bottleneck that ensured only the stand out sub lieutenants progressed up the command tree.

  And this turned James’ thoughts back to HMS Drake’s second lieutenant, Georgia Ashan Gupta. A second-generation emigrant from India, Lieutenant Gupta had served on HMS Drake since she was commissioned 8 years ago. From his files and from slightly illegal searches of the datanet James had carried out before they left Earth, he found out that Gupta’s family had left New India to escape the strictly enforced caste system. When the previous Captain of Drake had been promoted two years ago Gupta had been his natural successor to take over command. James knew that his whirlwind promotion from third lieutenant to commander must smack of favoritism and the caste system Gupta’s family emigrated to escape.

  Under the circumstances Gupta’s barely hidden hatred of James was understandable and James certainly hadn’t done anything to ease the situation. When he had first assumed command James had been too caught up in his own troubles to care for a subordinate’s misunderstandings about the inner workings of the nobility. As a result their relationship had only soured as the months had rolled on.

  A solution had dawned on James a few months ago and his mood brightened up as he considered it again. Drake was scheduled for a maintenance cycle in three months and this would hopefully take them either to Britannia or Earth. Either way he could write a glowing recommendation of Gupta’s abilities and with luck get her reassigned before the end of the cycle. Nodding to himself James turned to walk off the bridge to his quarters. In mid step he turned back to Sub Lieutenant Hanson.

  “Lieutenant, as you are plotting our course back to the main passage you have the bridge, so take care of my ship.”

  This time James was unable to hide a smile from the bridge crew. Typically the sub lieutenant in charge of sensors took command of the bridge in a survey ship if the commander or the second lieutenant wasn’t present. The look of shock on Hansen’s face had been worth the slight risk to his ship. Hanson was the least experienced sub lieutenant on board and this would be his first time commanding the ship. But James knew Fisher would be double checking everything Hanson did so there wasn’t really a risk – and everyone had to start somewhere.

  As he walked out of the bridge James couldn’t help adding, “Oh and Lieutenant, I want you to plan out the next few jumps further into the main passage. You and Lieutenant Gupta can go over the details when she arrives on the bridge.”

  Chapter 3 - Discovery

  Analysis of the available records indicates that it took an average of twenty million hours of exploration to discover a new habitable world. Given the available survey ships each major power had during the first expansion era it meant that on average one planet was being discovered every five years. Anything more than that usually brought a dramatic shift in the delicate balance that was the First Interstellar Expansion Era.

  -Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD

  22nd November 2464. HMS Drake, the Void.

  James woke to a loud beeping noise coming from directly above his head. Groggily he reached up and banged around on the wall until he hit the built in overhead COM unit.

  “Yes,” he stuttered as he shaded his eyes from the COM unit’s display with his free hand, “what is it?”

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Gupta’s voice came across the speaker with no hint of remorse for waking her commander, “I think you better get up here.”

  “Ok, I’ll be there in a minute,” James replied as he swung his legs out of the bed. It was strange. Gupta usually avoided him at all costs, which meant that any communications came through a Sub Lieutenant. Why was Gupta waking him up personally? Did she just take a strange delight in knowing she had disturbed her commander’s rest or was there a real problem?

  Two minutes later James strode onto the bridge in his hastily donned uniform. After glancing at the clock he reckoned he had managed four hours of sleep. He had finished his novel before turning in, Drake must have made it back to the main passage and Sub Lieutenant Hanson’s planned exploration jumps should have been well underway.

  “So, what’s going on this fine morning?” James addressed the bridge crew on watch. Looking around, he noticed that Gupta had ordered tactical and defense manned by Sub Lieutenants. Something was obviously up so he turned to Gupta and waited expectantly.

  Meeting her commander’s eye Gupta began. “Once we got back to the main passage we began a series of micro jumps further into the passage as you ordered.”

  James nodded. A micro jump typically lasted no more than two minutes. It was standard pra
ctice for a survey ship to survey and map out the dark matter within sensor range then micro jump to the edge of its sensor range. There it would survey and map the new dark matter in range before completing another jump. Exploring shift passages was a simple, yet tedious and time consuming, combination of micro jumps and sensor sweeps.

  “After the fourth jump our sensors could only detect dark matter out to a range of point zero zero five of a light-year. We thought you might want to be on the bridge for this,” Gupta said with a rare smile.

  “A galactic bubble?” James asked with a strong hint of sarcasm.

  Scientists had theorized that bubbles should exist in the dark matter. If all of the Milkyway was as full of dark matter as the space humanity had explored then the galaxy should mass 20% more than it did. The upshot of this was that there should be significantly large pockets of space completely devoid of dark matter. But the galaxy was a big place and finding one was a dream more than an expectation. For all humanity knew, these bubbles wouldn’t intersect shift passages and so would never be discovered anyway.

  “Show me on the holo-display,” James commanded as he sat in the command chair Gupta had just vacated.

  In front of him a large 3D projection of the main passage they had been exploring appeared. The passage now extended point zero three of a light-year beyond the minor passage they had found to be a dead end. Drake’s sensors could detect and map dark matter up to point zero one of a light-year and so four micro jumps typically revealed just under point zero four of a light-year’s worth of shift passage. Where the passage should have continued along in its cylinder like shape the edges instead tapered off, curving out away from the center of the main passage. Its shape certainly looked like the outer edge of a roughly oval bubble.

  “Navigation, how long until we can make our next jump?” James asked.

  “Fourteen minutes sir,” Sub Lieutenant Becket replied. She was a petite blonde who seemed to love all things to do with Drake’s engines. When she wasn’t on duty on the bridge she seemed to spend as much time with the chief engineer as on her studies.

  “Ok, navigation, plot us a course right to the end of the shift passage, put us right at the edge of whatever this is. If we still can’t detect anything then we really may have a dark matter bubble on our hands ladies and gentlemen,” James said with a grin.

  The next fourteen minutes were spent in near total silence as everyone on the bridge watched the clock count down on the capacitors for the jump drive. When the clock hit zero Hansen looked over at his commander. James nodded and Hanson initiated the jump.

  The jump would take them a further zero point zero one light-year along the passage and would take two minutes to complete at their current velocity through shift space. Theoretically they could reach greater speeds as the velocity attained was a simple equation of the energy discharged into the shift drive from the capacitors divided by the mass of the ship. Drake couldn’t reduce her mass but the capacitors were designed to hold twenty percent more energy than was necessary to make the slowest jump into shift space. But, as it took longer to charge the extra 20% than it did to complete the current jump, there was no need to waste time waiting for the extra charge from the fusion engines.

  Exactly two minutes later the shift drive shut down, dumping HMS Drake back into normal space. Immediately the sensors began to update the map of the dark matter around the ship.

  Sub Lieutenant Fisher gasped. A few seconds later James saw why. When the holo-display in front of him updated with the same data Fisher was already seeing he too almost gasped. As far as the Drake’s sensors could see, the dark matter continued to curve away from the apparent end of the shift passage. What’s more, its curvature seemed to be consistent, implying that the dark matter continued to curve out, forming a bubble like shape.

  James thought to himself that the scientists might be right after all. But before everyone on the bridge got carried away he spoke up. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Navigation, I want to make a couple of jumps along the edge of the dark matter and see how far this curvature continues. We don’t know yet if it is uniform all the way around or if this is only a small abnormality.”

  “Aye sir,” Hanson replied and began to input the new commands.

  “Gupta, I want you and Fisher to estimate the size of the dark matter bubble based on extending our current projections. Work out how many systems fall into the bubble and begin long range scans of them. Cross reference your data with the interstellar data we have from Earth.”

  From Earth it was possible to detect planets orbiting distant stars but the science was imprecise. Small planets could be missed and estimations of the detected planet’s orbital paths were just that, estimations. Drake would be able to pick up much more information on the nearby systems but only a survey from within each system would reveal all its secrets.

  As Gupta and Hanson began to whisper together, James settled deeper into his command chair to wait. This was the life of a Captain of a survey ship. A few short bursts of orders followed by long periods of tedious waiting. Realistically, a student back at the RSN lunar academy could do his job. In a main or minor passage all he did was order Drake to micro jump along the center of the passage. Navigation and sensors would do the rest as they worked together to map out the passages and keep Drake in the center of the twisting turning tunnels through the dark matter. Even here, on the edge of one of humanity’s most exciting discoveries, all he really had to do was sit around waiting and watching as others worked.

  One hour forty-five minutes and three micro jumps later James gathered all his commissioned officers into the tactical room. The tactical room was simply a large holo-display with a series of seats arranged around it. Each seat was fitted with the same command and control functions as the tactical stations on the bridge. This way all the participants in a briefing could manipulate the holo-display and project their plans and tactics for all to see.

  “I’ve brought you all here because I want input from everyone,” James began. “This is the first time we have ever encountered a dark matter bubble and so all your thoughts will be useful.”

  “Lieutenant Fisher, talk us through your findings so far,” James said as he sat down in his seat. His sitting was a cue for everyone else to sit and so eight of the Sub Lieutenants and Second Lieutenant Gupta took their seats. Gupta was the only senior officer on board as survey frigates were only appointed a Second Lieutenant and a commander to oversee the rest of the crew.

  Fisher remained on her feet as she manipulated the main input for the holo-display. “At the moment we have called the dark matter bubble the Void for lack of any other suggestions. From our micro jumps around the edge of the Void it does seem that it forms an almost perfect sphere.”

  On the holo-display a large sphere appeared in front of her audience. This was followed by the main shift passage they had been exploring and a data point indicating that it would take just under three days to travel back along the shift passage to the Cambridge system. Next, a series of black and yellow dots appeared, interspaced throughout the Void. Finally, a dotted line started at the point where the shift passage to Cambridge began, it passed through the center of the Void and ended at the opposite end. The data projected along the line indicated that the Void had a diameter of approximately twelve light-years.

  “As you can see there are fifty-six solar systems within the void. Initial scans from Earth indicated that five of these systems contained planets within the goldilocks range. Lieutenant Gupta and I are pleased to confirm that four of these systems do indeed contain such planets.” At this point Fisher could no longer maintain her professionalism. “We have really done it,” she said with a beaming smile, “we have actually found four habitable systems!”

  This was met with cheers and whoops from the other Sub Lieutenants. So far the British survey fleet had only found eight habitable worlds in over two hundred years of exploration. It was an explorers dream to find a colonizable world.
It was pure fantasy to imagine finding four!

  Added to this was the prospect of prize money. The Admiralty offered a prize of a million credits per crew member to any ship that discovered a habitable world that resulted in a British colony. For two of the Sub Lieutenants this wasn’t a great sum of money. Sub Lieutenant Hanson came from a rich shipping family whilst Sub Lieutenant Robson was from a noble family who had a considerable stake in the Oxford colony. But for the rest of the Sub Lieutenants, a million credits was a sum to balk at. Fifty years on a Sub Lieutenant’s pay wouldn’t even stretch to a million credits and the Admiralty didn’t skimp when it came to salaries; they wanted to attract the best.

  Shouting over the cheers James attempted to bring the meeting back on track. “How have you labeled each of the planets Lieutenant Fisher?”

  Fisher blushed at her earlier exuberance but a single tap at her console brought up a list of numbers beside each of the black and yellow dots. “We have designated each of the systems V1 through to V56. As you can see the four yellow dots represent the systems with colonizable worlds; V2, V17, V31 and V48 respectively.”