Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel Read Online Free

slapped on to make them service worthy, but that was about all they had going for them. Compared to the Driscoll their hull could be easily compromised and the weather was especially chilly outside.
    On a whim, the Captain adjusted the Virtual Array to display the outside of the Driscoll. The folks responsible for constructing the Driscoll twenty-five years ago had a good artistic sense about them; he would give them that.
    The bulk of his almost completely black craft vaguely resembled a ram’s head with the curling horns, which contained the majority of the ship’s weaponry, curled up and behind the bow of the craft where they connected with the main propulsion system of the Driscoll, which was a state of the art Null Drive. The first models of which had allowed man to fully explore his own solar system and beyond. They were drifting now in a patrol ellipse at a cruising speed gifted to them by Newtonian physics in Normal Space, so the familiar purple glow of the engines was missing from the image.
    The Captain shifted the V.A. back to fore view and settled in to his chair to enjoy a few precious moments with his coffee.
    Alarms began to scream and screech from all of the duty stations throughout the bridge.
    While his well trained crew were busy manipulating the much smaller vid screens at their duty stations and attempting to ascertain the reason for the sudden and unexpected electronic cacophony sounding from all around them. Captain Sheff could plainly see the reason in ultra-clear resolution complements of the enormous screen in front of him.
    Jumping to his feet, the Captain’s coffee cup succumbed to the artificial gravity of his vessel as he involuntarily lost his grip on it due to his surprise and horror. His mouth, still slightly open from having tried to take a sip of the beverage now decorating his deck plating, was now opened fully agape in horror at what he was seeing.
    Already, two dozen Coalition vessels had jumped in, filling what had just been empty space in front of his battle group, and more ships continued to emerge from the brilliant violet Null Point behind them. Space itself bent and curved as one Coalition vessel after another dropped out of Null Space.
    Captain Sheff mentally calculated that he had already lost a good two seconds in response time due to his utter shock and disbelief before he told his inner monologue to shut up and let his instincts take over.
    "Battle stations!" he barked to his bridge officers.
    The Driscoll, old and battle hardened as she was, was one of the finest war ships in the Earth Republic Fleet and in the Captain’s opinion, it was crewed by the best trained men and women who had ever chosen the Fleet uniform, but she had only five cruisers for support and five cruisers to protect. No one had ever imagined the Coalition would actually manage to press this far into Earth space.
    Earth was a mere twelve jumps beyond this point.
    As the Driscoll's crew stood ready and awaiting orders to engage the enemy in the unavoidable battle, Captain Sheff assessed the Virtual Array, his eyes quickly darting between the target acquisition and information reticules that were displayed around the seven Coalition heavy battle cruisers. However, he didn't need the Republic’s fanciest movie theater to tell him what they were or that he was probably staring death in the face. Their grossly over sized arrow shaped hulls told him that.
    The Human brain is capable of collecting and correlating information at tremendous speeds; the speed of light in fact but before he had time to assess the remaining threats, he perceived the enemies “Hail” from the enemy’s own version of ceramic rail guns hurtling towards the Driscoll. The Coalition also insisted on using obsolete particle beam weapons which would have no effect on the Driscoll’s hull as the Deflection Array had already been powered to full when he gave the order for Battle Stations. However, their ultra white light filled the