First Admiral 02 The Burning Sun

  THE BURNING SUN

  The second book in the First Admiral Series

  Copyright © 2012 by William J. Benning

  Edited by Tara Williamson

  Cover Copyright © 2012 by Andrae Harrison

  Published by Malachite Quills Publishing at Smashwords

  ISBN-13: 978-1623750138

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  Prologue

  Planet Earth - 3.5 Billion Earth Years Ago

  Slowly, Inguz the Lame raised his head from the cool liquid of the stream. His instincts tingling, he sensed that something was wrong. What he had to do now was work out if it was some kind of threat to him. His three eyes darting anxiously, he scrutinised the yellow and pale green landscape for any sign of possible danger. Slowly, he scanned the bank opposite taking note of the patches of pale brown scrub in the dry, yellow dusty soil against the light green sky.

  Rising to his full height, Inguz opened the four-leaved fleshy covering that hid his all-in-one nose and mouth orifice to sniff the air for any clues as to what was troubling him. Scanning the terrain behind him, Inguz could see or smell nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, the feeling of unease could not be shaken from the back of his mind. There was something wrong; he just could not pinpoint it. Grasping the stone-headed club that he had fashioned with animal sinew from a fallen branch and a heavy rock, he switched his gaze to the shimmering horizon and still found nothing out of the ordinary.

  Nervously, he squatted back down to the stream and scooped some of the clear liquid into the cup of the four-fingered hand of his wasted left arm. Still alert, Inguz opened his facial orifice and allowed the refreshing liquid to run over his split tongue and down his parched throat. When he had been little more than an infant, his mother had rolled onto her baby son as she had slept. It was the accidental damage that she had caused that night that had condemned her son to a life of exile from the tribe. Despite having been driven from the tribe, for fifteen summers Inguz the Lame had survived all of the dangers that his world had thrown at him; but he would not survive this one.

  Out in the depths of space, the great Burning Circle, the Sun, had produced a massive solar flare. The super-heated plasma had seared across the emptiness of space devouring the second planet in the solar system before approaching the yellow and green marble of the young Earth. It was the massive disruption to the magnetic field that Inguz had sensed, but had been unable to comprehend. The other animals in the scrub-land, however, far more attuned to magnetic fluctuations, instinctively realised the danger and began to stampede.

  Having let the cool liquid quench the back of his throat and run down into his stomach, Inguz heard the first stirrings of the great flight. The faint rumble of the ground was confirmed by the growing cloud of pale yellow dust that slowly blossomed on the horizon. Inguz knew the signs and started to run towards his shelter; a cleft in the rocks close to the stream. But, Inguz was not destined to reach that sanctuary. As he ran, Inguz felt panic well up in his chest as the horizon changed from its normal pale green to the harsh vivid yellow of fire that dashed inexorably towards him. The distant crash of charging animals was replaced by the shrill howling shriek of something far more deadly. A great wall of flame moved with amazing speed consuming everything in its path. As the panicking Inguz ran as fast as he could for his shelter, he became aware of other beings around him.

  Predators and Jumping Creatures ran side-by-side, away from the screaming barrier of fire. Species mingled in their blind panic to escape the approaching cataclysm.

  Running for his life, Inguz, in sheer terror, ignored the sharp-toothed predator that sped past him; seeking the hoped-for sanctuary of the rocks. As the noise grew louder and louder, all Inguz could do was scream to relieve the pressure on his bleeding eardrums. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, Inguz saw the wall of flame was catching up with him far quicker than he could run for shelter. As he stared at it, filling the entire horizon, Inguz knew in his heart that he would not survive. However, the instinct for life, and animal fear, drove Inguz and all the other fleeing animals onwards. Behind him, the mass of fire consumed the surface of the planet like a great rolling curtain, vaporising all living creatures and surface material.

  With the last of his strength, Inguz drove himself onwards, discarding the stone-headed club to lighten his burden. But, it was all to no avail. With the heat from the great fire searing his flesh, Inguz stumbled. He landed on his back and began to dodge the panicked animals that trampled blindly past him. Trying to rise to his feet, Inguz saw the wall of flame bearing down upon him. The heat was intense, and Inguz had no time to feel the flesh being burned away from his bones before they too were vaporised.

  Two minutes later, the super-heated plasma had devoured the entire planet surface and was still consuming the atmosphere. When everything had been destroyed the great fire was extinguished, leaving the young planet Earth as nothing more than a charred cinder floating in space. All life on the planet had been snuffed out except for a few handfuls of microscopic bacteria buried deep in the charred and molten ground.

  Life on Earth would have to start all over again.

  Chapter 1

  The Terran System – Earth Year 1986

  In a blinding flash of brilliant, white light, the Black Rose slipped smoothly out of the Thionic Web from behind the red planet called Mars. Having emerged from the Web, well clear of the gravitational pull of the planet, Billy Caudwell initiated the stealth mode on his personal shuttle in case of a freakishly accidental discovery by the tracking and monitoring equipment that scrutinised Planet Earth’s nearest neighbour in space. There were still those on Earth who waited and hoped for the appearance of ‘little green men’ and Billy Caudwell was in no hurry to fulfil their wishes.

  Convinced that the Black Rose was invisible to all forms of terrestrial detection equipment, Billy set course for Planet Earth, the northwestern quadrant of the continent of Europe and a rendezvous with another stealthed spacecraft. With coordinates set, he let out a long sigh of relief and sat back on the solitary chair behind the central Control Pillar in an otherwise empty cabin and savoured the peace, quiet and solitude of the journey. It would take the two massive Thrust Engines of the Black Rose only two and a half minutes, at half-power, to drive the shuttle to Earth; but, it was still two and a half precious minutes of p
aradise for the pilot.

  After a long duty shift of almost twelve hours as Supreme Military Commander of the Universal Alliance Fleet aboard the flagship, the Star-Cruiser Aquarius, Billy was exhausted. He was starting to feel the pressure of the responsibilities that the burgeoning Alliance, he had formed less than a year before, placed upon him with a constant clamour for his time and attention. At the start, the fourteen-year-old schoolboy had thought that it would be a marvellous adventure with space travel, fighting aliens and commanding battle fleets. A year later, the fifteen-year-old Billy had discovered a very different reality; the biggest headache and drain on his time was the tedium of day-to-day administration.

  The myriad files, reports, budgetary constraints and projections weighed heavily on the teenage First Admiral. They were, however, a necessary evil with which Billy Caudwell knew he had to wrestle until the politicians got their act together and started to make the civil administrative functions of the Alliance work effectively. Until an Assembly of civilian representatives had been convened, there could be no legislature, no executive arm, no Supreme Council; and no President of the Alliance could be elected to carry the burden of civil governance. Until that day dawned, Billy Caudwell would have to operate as the de facto Head of State, working in cooperation with the dozens of planetary and system governments that made up the fast-growing but still fledgling Alliance.

  The blueprint for civilian government already existed. The last leader of the Garmaurians, Teg Maggor, had laid down the structure of the Alliance before his death from the virus that had wiped out the whole Garmaurian species. There was even a draft Constitution that almost fifty intelligent species had signed up to on their admission to the Alliance. But, it still required an Assembly of representatives to ratify this document. Officially and legally the Universal Alliance did not exist as a civilian body. It was purely a military institution at this point in time. That, however, did not stop governments and systems from seeking admission to this very powerful military club.

  From the former Garmaurian city on the planet Gardarus, now being called New Thexxia, the fledgling Alliance sprang outwards in all directions requiring greater and greater military resources to defend and police the rapidly expanding frontiers. To date, the Universal Alliance military consisted of only three fully-constituted Fleets plus a further two Fleets that were still works-in-progress. The warships were drawn from the huge gas nebula that hid the Garmaurian battle ships after their self-destructive civil war, and were crewed by a growing myriad of species that had to be integrated into the Alliance military infrastructure. It was a massive headache for Billy Caudwell; and the headache was getting bigger by the day.

  Still, as he approached the big blue marble of Earth, Billy still had time to pause and reflect on the sheer beauty of his home world from space. One day, he considered; when the human population was ready, he would be proud to sponsor Earth and Humankind into the Universal Alliance. But, not yet, he mused. They were not ready for the culture shock that would strike when they discovered that they were not alone in the universe. The human belief that they were the only intelligent species in existence was still too strongly embedded in the leaders and governments of the planet.

  If only they knew. Billy smiled to himself, setting the controls of the Black Rose to hold her in orbital position. The human race existed as an intelligent species only because of the genetic manipulation experiments carried out on their primitive ancestors by the Garmaurians some forty thousand generations before. And, ironically, after all of the work and experimentation, the Garmaurians had finally rejected humans as a viable and useful species for their colonial adventures. They had then turned Earth into a dump-planet for their other failed genetic projects. That was going to come as quite an eye-opener to the dominant species on planet Earth; and, one very tough sell for whoever had to tell them.

  It was a beautiful clear, summer night in northern Europe; the dark brown continental outline was clear and precise against the deep blue of the oceans. The major cities and population centres were clearly visible from the electric lighting that made them look like hundreds of stars in the sky. As the Black Rose drifted into position, the great shining orb of the Sun burst around the edge of the planet and cast a huge yellow-white halo into the depths of the darkness of space. The sunburst caused Billy to catch his breath and marvel at the sheer magnificence and power of the yellow dwarf star that allowed life to exist on his home world.

  Unfortunately, Billy did not have a lot of time for solar sightseeing. He had to get back to his mundane life as a schoolboy on the planet that stretched out below him.

  With the Black Rose safely established in orbit, Billy sat forward in the single chair of the shuttle’s Command Cabin and activated the signal button on the central Control Pillar that stood out from the floor. A stealthed Ranger Patrol vessel would receive the signal and know that the recent arrival was not hostile and would maintain its vigil over Billy Caudwell’s home planet. A few moments later, the Black Rose’s teleporter pad activated with a blinding flash to herald the arrival of another recipient of the signal. When the dazzling flash had subsided, Billy watched calmly as an identical copy of himself stepped away from the mechanism.

  “Good evening, sir,” the Billy look-alike, wearing denim jeans and a blue sweatshirt, announced his arrival from the planet’s surface.

  “Good evening, Jed,” Billy replied completely unfazed by the appearance of his exact double, “have I been a good boy today?” he asked as the twin altered his appearance, by deactivating the shielding on his Personal Environment Suit, and reverted to his true form in an Alliance pale blue uniform overall.

  Jedithram Prust, known to Billy simply as Jed, was a Thexxian who served in the Alliance Fleet as a Supply Technician. Shorter than the average adult human and possessing the olive skin of his species, Jed had the striking pink eyes and a single nostril planted firmly in the middle of his face. Watching the alien manifest in his own form, it still amazed Billy that all intelligent life in the universe followed the upright humanoid shape imposed upon them by millennia of Garmaurian genetic manipulation.

  “Yes, sir,” Jed replied as Billy handed him a clear glass-like data-sphere from a recess in the Control Column.

  It took a simple thought from Jed to activate the thousands of microscopic machines that swarmed to the data-sphere and began to download the memories and experiences of the ‘Billy Caudwell’ role that Jed played on Earth, directly from his memory cortex.

  “I’m very pleased to hear it, Jed,” Billy smiled watching as the nano-bots crowded around the contact point of the data-sphere; which began to glow a pale red.

  As part of his mission to act as Billy’s double, Jed had been ordered not to draw attention to himself. Billy Caudwell did not want Earth governments becoming aware of his double life and his access to the most advanced technology in the universe. There would always be unscrupulous people who would try to use his family as leverage to gain control of that technology. And, that was a situation that Billy Caudwell was determined to avoid.

  After a few moments the data-sphere on Jed’s sleeve returned to its usual clear appearance. The memories of the last twelve hours had been successfully transferred.

  “There you go, sir,” Jed announced handing the clear sphere to the human.

  “Here we go again,” Billy replied, taking the sphere and holding it against his own left sleeve, just above the large, single, gold star that indicated his rank.

  With his own simple thought-command, Billy activated the microscopic machines in his own Personal Environment Suit to download the data from the sphere into his own memory. It took a few moments for the tiny machines to congregate at his sleeve, but when they had gathered and formed a connection to his brain via the PES, Billy felt a sudden and firm jolt. The sphere flashed red for a few moments as Billy tensed up; the memories flowing directly to his cerebral cortices.

  When it was over, Billy gasped, blinked his eyes rapidly several tim
es and shook his head. Sighing heavily, Billy put the data-sphere back into the recess and wiped his face with his hands as the memory cortices integrated the data into his own recollections. The last thing he needed was to be found out because he had “forgotten” something important.

  “You all right, sir?” Jed asked, as he always did, when Billy was gathering his new thoughts and memories.

  “Yes; thanks, Jed,” Billy replied as the memory images flashed through his mind.

  It had been a good day for Jed/Billy down on planet Earth. Nothing untoward had happened. He hadn’t been in or caused any trouble that day. But, it did appear that his parents had argued again. They seemed to be constantly arguing and irritated with each other and that frustrated Billy. He had given them both the Mind Profiles of successful Garmaurians. They had no money worries now, so they shouldn’t be arguing, Billy conjectured. They should be happy and enjoying life; but all they seemed to do was fight and bicker. Billy Caudwell just did not seem to be able to comprehend why his plan was going so wrong.

  “What were you doing before you left?” Billy asked sending a thought command to his PES to initiate the jeans and sweatshirt image.

  “Algebra homework in your room,” Jed replied nervously as the First Admiral’s blue PES began to morph into the required configuration, “your father has been in the loft since he got home from work; and your mother is in the kitchen writing,” he reported.

  “Algebra,” Billy groaned, “oh, thanks a bunch,” Billy shook his head in dismay.

  He hated Algebra. Despite the fact that his mathematical knowledge was in the region of two centuries ahead of anyone on Earth, he still detested the subject, which had been his least favourite before the failed abduction that had made him First Admiral.