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

and twenty meters long. Their purpose was to go on solo missions and look for systems of interest for the fleet, usually that included scouting the unmapped trans-lanes. There had been many cases where a frigate would go through the unmapped trans-lane to a system that had no outgoing trans-lanes, in those cases they would need to come back to the fleet using hyperspace. Which depending on the length of the lane they went through could mean months or even more than a year of travel time in order for them to rejoin the fleet.
    The two mining ships were also of a new generation, with their own cargo shuttles and crew proficient at mining in space. Their usual targets were asteroids or small moons, but every now and then they would find a rich planet. When that happened, they would send miners down on the planet to collect samples. The mining ships purpose was to replenish the supplies of the fleet, but also to look out for rich systems and rare ores. All finds were cataloged and results sent back to the Empire. The Empire then sends people and builds facilities for a large scale mining operations.
    The Empire was in a constant state of expansion and needed every bit of resources in order to feed its growth. The Empire claimed almost all systems that had a large amount of ore, which had increased its territory tremendously. There were sixteen colonized systems in the Empire, systems where people of the Empire lived, and those sixteen systems were all contained within a sphere of some 60 light years. The Empire had presence in a lot more systems beside those sixteen, they had mining operations in suitable systems within 100 light years, and monitoring stations in others close to the Sowir border as well as in the systems marked for future colonization.
    In truth the Empire’s territory was an oblate spheroid some 100 light years wide and about and 80 high in reference to the galactic center. The Empire’s territory was below the galactic plane - the Empire used the galactic center as one of the points of reference for its maps, but the galaxy wasn’t a slim disk, it had depth, so they also used the galactic plane. A referential tool that split the galaxy in half.
    The three factory ships kept the fleet supplied with anything it needed, the large nine hundred meters long ships, each held large fabricating factories capable of producing everything the fleet needs, but also fabricating satellites, com drones, monitoring stations and even facilities for starting colonies. They were the reason why the fleet didn’t need to return to the Empire often. The supply ships carried all of their food processing and water refinement factories. The ships had few agroponics bays, but most of their food came from processing bio matter in the bio-fabricators.
    As for the warships, they were ships that had been built before the Empire was founded or just after. They were good ships, powerful, but the Empire’s technology had leaped forward in the last few decades, enhanced with the new technologies they discovered, acquired from the Nel, or those that Johanna brought back from Earth. The newer ships were bigger and far more powerful, the dreadnought Mk 2 class warships were the foundation of the Empire’s fleets, mush as the older class was.
    Johanna’s fleet of forty two ships was tasked with exploring the territory around the trans-route from Sanctuary to Earth, as the Empire’s main expansion was in that direction. The plan was for them to eventually bring their home system under the Empire’s control. Even with Earth ravaged and uninhabitable it was still humanity’s home. For now they had only a few small unmanned scanning stations that monitored the system looking for any signs of the Ra’a’zani return. The Empire was fueled by its rage towards the alien race, by the need to avenge the billions they enslaved and then slaughtered. Eventually they will encounter them again, and the Empire will enact its justice. Every resource that