Stand Into Danger: Empire Rising Book 0 Read Online Free PDF

this end.”
     
    “Very well, you may jump immediately. We will be half an hour behind you. Happy hunting. Achilles out,” Somerville said as he closed the COM channel.
     
    As Clara disappeared off Achilles’ sensors Somerville set a timer. They didn’t want to appear right behind the freighter. The idea was to let Jensen get away whilst still threatening her. Five minutes before the timer reached zero he called his ship to battle stations. Then, when the time came, Achilles jumped into the Cartier system after the freighter.
     
    Everyone on the bridge was silent as they waited for the sensors to update the main holo display on what was happening in the system. The first thing to appear was Clara . She was further into the system, accelerating at more than her maximum safe limit, screaming out on every COM channel for help. Somerville didn’t have to listen in to the COM signal to know what was being said. He didn’t speak Russian so he couldn’t understand it anyway.
     
    Corporal Weir had been the best Russian speaker they could find among Achilles crew and so she had remained on board Clara with Jensen. At the moment she was shouting in her thickest Russian accent about a British destroyer that had attacked the system picket force in Ouvea and bombarded the planet. With any luck, she would be able to trick whatever warships were in the system into thinking Clara was under Russian control and had just managed to escape from Ouvea.
     
    As the sensors continued to update the bridge on what was happening further into the system, he guessed that their ploy was working. The gravimetric sensors showed two ships accelerating from Cartier’s inner system towards the fleeing freighter. Judging by their acceleration profiles one was a light cruiser while the other was a destroyer. Larger than the frigates they had engaged at Ouvea the destroyer would have four or five missiles and the light cruiser seven or eight on each broadside. Alone, they would be no match for Achilles , together they could give her a run for her money. If Somerville’s plan worked that wouldn’t be a problem he would have to worry about.
     
    If they believed the report from Clara that Achilles was only a British destroyer, they would be in even more trouble. In order to help the ruse Achilles had many of her systems powered down and one fission reactor switched off. To anyone looking at the levels of electromagnetic radiation coming from her she would look like a smaller warship. Everything was set for the Russians to walk right into their trap.
     
    Further into the system things were harder to make out. None of the planets were habitable and so there was no colony with its orbital industry. Nevertheless, because of the strategic importance of the system, the French had set up a military base in orbit around the sixth planet. It was a gas giant and they had also built a gas mining facility to extract He3 to fuel the fission reactors of their ships. The military station and gas mining station were both clearly still intact as they were radiating heat into space. Around each station there were numerous ships, picked up by the gravimetric sensors as they maneuvered about. Many of them were only appearing briefly and then disappearing off the plot as they used their engines sparingly to alter course or enter orbit.
     
    “Sensors, I know it will be hard but try and identify as many of those ships around the gas giant as you can. If we deal with these warships we need to know what else might be coming after us.”
     
    “Yes sir,” the officer acknowledged.
     
    “Ok, navigation, time to play our part. Take us after Clara , remember, not too fast. We don’t want to catch them before they get to the Russian ships.”
     
    *
     
     
    For the next two hours Achilles and Clara raced into the system, one behind the other. On an opposite course, the two Russian warships charged out to meet the British warship. To further aid the deception, Clara begun