The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

discovery and excitement the news reports and novels on the datanet made out. The books had at least been an escape for the last year.
     
    Ever since the discovery of the shift drive, the spacefaring powers had been rushing to explore and map the dark matter that hung between the stars. The shift drive gave a vessel the ability to create a gravimetric anomaly around itself that allowed it to enter shift space. Entering shift space catapulted a vessel to speeds greatly exceeding the speed of light and so opened up the stars to humanity, with one catch.
     
    The anomaly couldn’t be opened in close proximity to other large gravimetric sources. Stars, planets, asteroids and of course dark matter, prevented the formation of the gravimetric anomaly or caused vessels already in shift space to revert to real space, often with catastrophic results. Scientists estimated that upwards of eighty four point five percent of the galaxy’s mass consisted of dark matter. Thus this dark matter, strewn between the stars in nebula like formations, limited the scope of humanity’s expansion into space. It was the job of HMS Drake and the one hundred and fifty other survey craft in the RSN to survey the dark matter nebulas and map out potential shift drive passages.
     
    After taking command of HMS Drake Commander Somerville had been tasked with exploring deep space around Cambridge. One of the most recently settled colonies of the growing British colonial empire, Cambridge bordered Chinese space. As a result there was a likely chance that a shift drive passage could be found linking British controlled space and Chinese. If such a passage could be found then the opportunities for trade would explode exponentially, both for the British Merchant Navy and for independent corporations.
     
    On the face of it, James realized his posting was a prestigious one. At twenty-seven he was the youngest Commander in the RSN, he had been given one of the newest survey ships in the navy and assigned to a key sector that could shape the future of the British colonies over the coming decades.  However, he knew better and this knowledge, coupled with the monotony of deep space exploration had slowly been wearing him down.
     
    Back on Earth the British nobility was a focal point for the general population. Their surge in power after the Meccan Incident and the subsequent Solar Expansion Period had thrust them back into the political and economic limelight. Despite over three hundred years having passed this relationship had not changed. The general populace looked to the nobility as a spring of hope for the future and yet also as a source of entertainment and even a punching bag when things went wrong. When once the monarchy had largely been the sole focus of the media’s attention now the entire nobility shared that privilege. Their business transactions, marriages, affairs, births and countless other activities had become the drama that the British populace loved.
     
    The result was that the nobility themselves had embraced their role as the custodians of the values and hopes of the British population. What had started out, as a patriotic opportunity to increase their power and wealth, became the altruistic fixation of the British nobility. The vast majority of the nobility had followed King William VI’s call to invest in solar real estate. In droves they had sold off their Earth holdings in order to finance Britain’s expansion into space, believing William rightly saw the future of the British nation in space. If the future was there then so too were the profits.
     
    However, they also followed William’s example in giving fair wages to all workers and fast promotion tracks to those who excelled in their various responsibilities. As a result the nobility provided the means for vast numbers of the British population to drag themselves out of poverty and into space. In this way the nobility contributed significantly to the reestablishment of the British