First Admiral 02 The Burning Sun (6 page)

Completely transfixed by the image, Lokkrien watched as one of the older Bardomil placed a medal, on a brown and blue ribbon, around his son’s neck. He immediately recognised the diamond-shaped silver medal as a Vigilance Medal. Young Bardomil males only received such awards if they had successfully completed the military training element of their education to an exceptionally high standard. The award would mean that Gryeth Lokkrien would automatically qualify for Officer Cadet Training when he completed his schooling in two years time. Lokkrien himself had won such an award almost thirty years before. And, those proud memories flooded back into his mind, as he watched his son step smartly back and raise his right fist to shoulder level to salute the adult Officer.

The image then cut to a shot of an adult Bardomil female. Again, Lokkrien gasped. It was his wife, Senza, the proud mother watching her son receive his award. To Lokkrien she looked more beautiful than that first moment he had set eyes on her and fallen head over heels in love. The proud mother, Lokkrien wryly noticed, was wearing blue, not the traditional mourning red of the Bardomil widow. For a moment his heart sank down to his boot soles as he realised that to her he was dead. He had been listed as dead for many months now. But, life did go on, even for the widows of Imperial Fleet heroes on Bardan. As if to emphasise the point, an image of Lokkrien’s own stern face, surrounded by a red ribbon, appeared to emphasise the award-winners illustrious connections to a fallen hero of the Empire. The fallen hero image was replaced by the broad beaming smile of his son as he was mobbed and congratulated by his class mates before the image finally faded.

For several seconds, Marrhus Lokkrien sat in a deafening silence. A swirling cocktail of emotions swept through his body as he tried to comprehend what he had just witnessed, and fought, in vain, to make some sense of it. Only the uncomfortable shuffling of Karap Sownus drew him back to his present reality. Looking at the anxious and now embarrassed Intelligence Officer, Lokkrien spoke softly. With his eyes glistening as he fought back the tears and struggled to hold his composure, he dropped back into his formal mode.

“Thank you for this, Officer Sownus” Lokkrien said, his voice barely above a whisper in the heavily charged silence, “I’ll review it, and send you any relevant Intelligence details,” he added almost as an after-thought.

“Yes, sir, anything you can tell us would be much appreciated,” Sownus replied keeping up the professional pretence of the situation, and waddled slowly back to the door.

“Officer Sownus?” Lokkrien said with greater composure as the Thexxian reached the door.

“Sir?” the Thexxian responded and half-turned.

“Thank you,” Lokkrien said with genuine sincerity.

“Good night, sir,” Sownus replied, acknowledging that unspoken understanding that now existed between the two senior Officers.

Both Sownus and Lokkrien would never speak of it, even in private, but a bond was being formed between the two of them. It was not quite friendship, but it was beyond the normal boundaries of duty and professional respect. Billy Caudwell would have called it common human decency. Lokkrien, the grieving husband and father, and Sownus, the orphan who had lost his mother and father at an early age, had found a degree of common ground.

“Good night, Officer Sownus,” Lokkrien replied softly and operated the door mechanism.

When Karap Sownus had passed through into the corridor beyond, the opaque force-shielding returned Lokkrien to his thoughts. The most urgent of which was that the Alliance had to subdue the Bardomil Empire within the next three years. Gryeth had two more years of schooling, and then a year in Officer Training. After that, he would be commissioned to the Imperial Fleet and quite possibly sent to fight against the Universal Alliance. The very thought of his eldest son facing the Alliance’s superior military technology and Billy Caudwell’s strategic genius made Lokkrien shudder. He now had to double and re-double his efforts to bring down the Empress before he was forced to make the choice between his son and his loyalty the Alliance.

Activating the mechanism on the folio player, Marrhus Lokkrien re-played the images for the first of many dozens of times on that long night. He sat quietly, the tears streaming down his pale grey face, as he tried not to contemplate the horror of facing his own son in battle.

Silently, he prayed that Billy Caudwell would defeat the Empire before the nightmare of that particular day dawned.

Chapter 7

The Artreaus System

Two hours after the ignition of the emitter weapon, the Bardomil Empress waited patiently on her throne for the final act of the celestial drama that had unfolded before her. Slowly, and gradually, the yellow image of the advancing super-heated plasma had crept across the field of view on the fourth monitor.

For those two hours, the Bardomil Empress had sat quietly, eagerly anticipating the coming destruction and devastation. The tension and sense of dread and terror in the Battle Command Centre had, however, shown no discernible sign of decreasing. The faint murmur of communications traffic struggled to become distinct over the brutal hush of fear and intimidation. The crushing silence of the Battle Command Centre was broken only twice by the girlish shrieks of delight and dainty applause of the Empress as the super-heated plasma engulfed the second and fourth planets of the system. Both of these worlds were uninhabited, and now uninhabitable, but the Empress squealed like an overjoyed schoolgirl as the searing hot plasma scorched the already scarred and overheated surfaces of the two planets into a fiery oblivion.

With the fourth planet still being seared by the tail end of the super-hearted plasma flow, the Empress sat back on her throne with an air of malicious expectation. The next planet to orbit into the path of the plasma stream was Collizon. The peaceful, life-bearing planet was spinning slowly around to that side of the yellow dwarf star, filling the Bardomil Empress with a feeling of morbid delight and excitement.

It was all going exactly to plan, the Empress pondered as she watched the plasma stream edge closer to the orbit of Collizon. Just as the Xanart had predicted, the stream of super-heated plasma was able to emerge from the yellow dwarf star and cover the required distance to the intended target. It was a shame to have to kill Claggit and his assistant; they might have been of some limited value in future weapons development. But, the theoretical basis for the emitter weapon was now known to the Bardomil scientific community, which meant that bigger and more powerful weapons could be developed. And, more importantly, they could be developed without the risk of betrayal by aliens whose loyalty to the Empress was, at best, questionable. There would be no security leaks from the Imperial Ordnance Laboratories about this new emitter weapon.

The one remaining question was now whether the plasma stream would still have enough destructive power to wipe out everything on the inhabited planet. The scientists with their computer models and complex calculations had assured the Empress that there would be sufficient strength in the plasma flow to engulf Collizon three times over. The proof of the pudding, as the Empress well knew, would be in its eating. Computer models had been wrong before and costly mistakes had been made. But, this was one project the Empress was determined to see work. The scientists, like the senior military Officers were huddled at their stations hoping for a good outcome to the test. When the consequence of failure was a short trip out of an airlock, checking, double-checking and even beyond triple-checking became a way of life.

Silently, her black-orb eyes shining with anticipation, the Empress sat on the edge of the large throne. Scanning the four curved screens in front of her, she counted down the minutes and seconds until the super-heated plasma impacted with the atmosphere and surface of the planet. When it finally struck Collizon, the Empress stood up, her beautiful angelic face twisted in a snarl of evil delight. Fixing her gaze on the second screen, the Empress saw the live-action images of the destruction of a planet with millions of living creatures on it.

The first snaking tendrils of plasma swept in from the solar eruption and, for a few moments, it looked like the planet’s magnetic field was going to protect the vulnerable world from the scorching horror. But, to the delight of the Empress there was just too great a volume of super-heated matter. The initial fingers, deflected away by the magnetic field, flared up like huge white hot waves crashing against the seashore as they surged out into space. With her fists clenching and her face growing into a mask of anxiety, the Empress watched as the following waves of plasma overwhelmed the magnetic field and were drawn down by the planets gravity, through the atmosphere to the defenceless surface.

Within moments, the deep emerald green oceans began to boil and evaporate causing a huge billow of white steam to radiate away from the first impact site. Fractions of a second later, the following waves of super-heated plasma scattered the ocean steam as it began to lick voraciously at the golden land masses of the planet. The great waves of searing death splashed onto the surface of the planet, and within a few seconds were sending out a front of surging plasma that rapidly spread away from the impact that covered almost half of the northern continent. Like a puddle of white hot liquid being forced outwards by more liquid being poured into it, the plasma wave began to sweep around the planet.

On the planet surface, the humanoid Manuch and all of the other living creatures in the path of the scorching onslaught spent their final moments in abject terror before succumbing to the mercifully short sting of instantaneous incineration. From her throne, safe aboard the Taurai, the Empress watched in vicious delight as the great fiery puddle spread even further across the golden surface of the planet. The doomed planet, set on its course billions of years before, spun slowly and languidly into its own destruction.

Within a few more seconds the wave-fronts collided; a beautiful yellow rippling effect showed that shock waves were surging through the ever-spreading lakes. They quickly poured over the northern and southern polar caps and disappeared to devour the obscured side of the planet. The Empress, meanwhile, sat in awe of the devastation being wreaked on the unprotected planet as the wave-fronts splashed toward the eastern and western horizons devouring everything in their path.

On the planet surface, nothing survived as a huge wall of surging fire swept across the landscape incinerating everything that stood in its way. The lush vegetation ignited for a few brief moments before the great roaring and shrieking wave of destruction swept over grasslands and forests with the same indiscriminate ferocity. Rivers boiled and evaporated in an instant as the fleeing animals screamed and made their final futile attempts to outrun the terror that pursued them to a horrible destruction. Rocks and soil on the surface melted under the intense heat; fusing for a few brief seconds into a beautiful golden glassy substance that was incinerated with the passing wave-fronts that would finally leave black charred carbon in their wake.

Aboard the Taurai, the Empress watched the lake of fire that now engulfed the hemisphere of the planet that she could see. Greater splashes of plasma were now hammering into the inferno that pushed the wave-fronts onwards on the blind side of the planet until they finally met. The end of all life on Collizon was marked with a huge rippling shock wave that swirled and eddied over the entire yellow scorching surface of the now dead world. For a few more seconds, the planet of Collizon looked like a huge shimmering yellow pearl hanging in the darkness of space. To someone not aware of what had just happened, it looked just like a newborn star as more waves of super-heated plasma hammered downwards.

The final agony of Collizon finally came when the atmosphere disintegrated. The following waves of plasma seemed to flow over the shimmering yellow pearl that had once been a living breathing thriving planet like a river over a rock. As the great stream of super-heated plasma swept over the planet, the intense heat finally broke down the gravitational field. With nothing to hold the burning plasma onto the surface of the planet, the fiery lakes that had incinerated Collizon were dragged back out into space leaving a scorched, bright-red glowing cinder.

With tears of delight in her black-orb eyes, the Empress daintily clapped her hands and marvelled at the power to destroy that she now commanded. It was beautiful and magnificent she praised the weapon that had wrought annihilation to an entire world. The weapon worked, she now knew, and it had the power to destroy Billy Caudwell’s home planet. Sitting back on her throne, exhausted by the exhilaration of the demonstration, she began to outline in her mind the orders that would finally avenge the defeat suffered at Caudwell’s hands. She had seen Collizon annihilated, planet Earth would go the same way very, very soon.

For the Bardomil Empress, that day couldn’t come soon enough.

Chapter 8

Planet Earth

Jedithram Prust moved briskly along the corridor from first period Economics to second period History. Once again, the corridor thronged with the chattering press of students who were savouring the few minutes of liberty before submitting themselves to the classroom discipline required for their ongoing learning. The noise and bustle of the corridor was punctuated by excited shrieks and screams as well as the shouts and calls of horseplay and the flash of books being thrown around. Once more, overheated teachers attempted to impose some form of order onto the melee of young adult humanity that surged past the brown wooden sliding doors on the brightly lit corridor.

Smiling broadly, Jed was enjoying his mission to Earth. It had been almost a year since Senior Intelligence Officer Karap Sownus had approached him with the offer to double as First Admiral Caudwell. In that year, Jed had grown to enjoy his days and nights amongst the First Admiral’s species. His orders had been straightforward and easy to carry out. Do not draw attention to yourself, do not get into trouble and defend yourself only as a last resort. Being invisible in a school of nearly one thousand students was easy. Staying out of trouble was a little less simple, but with the First Admiral’s reputation, having brought down arch-bully Tim Reilly, there was no need for any form of violence or self-defence. So much so, that Jed had stopped using the force-shielding on his Personal Environment Suit for protection; it was now used simply to project the Billy Caudwell school uniform image.