Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) by Ivan Kal

table and stood. She walked around her table and gestured with her hands for Resaani to take a seat at one of the couches in the room. Resaani nodded and took a seat on one of the new couches designed with a hollow to accommodate Nel tails, Johanna took a seat across from him.
    “Report.” Johanna said once they settled. She had already read the Ship Master’s report, but she had learned early on that subordinates don’t always put everything they think into writing.
    Resaani took a deep breath and then started. “As you know, we arrived in an unexplored system four days ago and started conducting the usual survey of the system. Inspecting the planets, scanning for life and anomalies. A day into our survey of the system we detected an outgoing trans-lane, as per the regulations, I dispatched a probe through the lane.
    The probe’s travel time through the trans-lane was nine hours, and after it arrived in the next system it relayed its position – which was a system about fifteen light years from the Gracious’ position, it then started taking passive scans of the system. The scans didn’t reveal anything unusual at first, but then as its scans progressed deeper into the system it detected something strange. We studied the scans, and I decided to let the probe get closer and allowed it to take active scans of the anomaly.” Resaani then grew quiet, but Johanna didn’t say anything. She knew the Ship Master well enough to know that he was simply organizing his thoughts. “The scans revealed that the anomaly was in fact a debris field, and according to the scans it was a result of a battle. By our estimates the battle happened sometime in the last month.” Resaani said, and Johanna nodded.
    “Thank you Ship Master Resaani.” Johanna said dismissing him, she will need to take the fleet to take a closer look at the debris field. The Empire had learned its lesson from what happened to the Voyager when they first encountered the Sowir, and they knew that the galaxy was a dangerous place.
     

 
    Chapter Seven
    July; Year 30 – Sanctuary
     
    Laura Reiss Fleets Master of the Empire walked down the corridor of Fleet Headquarters on Sanctuary’s moon – Thanatos. The entire moon belonged to the Fleet. The moon itself didn’t support life, but the Empire had the technology and was able to build facilities with their own artificial atmosphere and gravity. Laura turned a corner, and reached her destination. She entered the meeting room and found that everyone who was supposed to be there had already arrived. Immediately after entering she started the meeting, she had known people inside for a lifetime, and there was no need to waste time on greetings.
    “The Emperor had finally sent the word, from about an hour ago the Fleet is officially on the imminent war footing. We don’t know when the attack on Nelus will begin, but we need to be ready. You all know the plan, as soon as the Sowir fleet gets committed to sieging Nelus, our fleets will attack the Sowir Dominion’s territory. Until that happens we need to focus all of our resources on figuring out what we can expect from the Sowir, their capabilities, numbers, and anything else that may impact the war. We will also increase our ship building efforts. The more time the Sowir take to commit to their attack on Nelus, the more time we will have to build new ships, train crews, and upgrade our existing ships. Questions?”
    Oswald Mein Commander of Fleets was the first to comment. “We are really going to leave Nelus to themselves? We are going to sacrifice them to defeat the Sowir?”
    Laura shook her head. “There is another plan concerning Nelus, if they hold out long enough or Sowir take too long before they attack we will help them. The key to our plan is that using our trans-travel capabilities we will be able to move faster through Sowir territory. If most of their fleets are committed at Nelus we will be able to smash through any other defenses they have and