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  First Admiral

  The First Novel of the First Admiral Series

  Copyright © 2012 by William J. Benning

  Cover Copyright © by Andrae Harrison

  Edited by Tara Williamson

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  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, businesses, and incidents are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual places, people, or events is purely coincidental. Any trademarks mentioned herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks used are specifically in a descriptive capacity.

  First Edition

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  Chapter 1

  The Present (Earth Year: 2020) - close to the planet Maltor.

  The tension in the air of the brightly-lit War Room deep within the Alliance Star Cruiser Aquarius was unbearably and brutally oppressive. The silence in the battle centre hung over the occupants like a dark stifling fog. Many of the officers paced anxiously around the cavernous War Room, lost in their own personal thoughts and prayers as the faint whisper of Voice-Comms traffic drifted quietly, and generally un-noticed, above the crushing silence. The older, more experienced, officers present showed a calmness that hid the true tension of these agonising final minutes. Whilst some of the younger, less experienced junior officers fidgeted and shuffled around the room as the symbols on the large timekeeper, suspended above the harshly illuminated War Table, laboured with cruel slowness towards the appointed hour. All that was left for them was the waiting, the awful, gut-wrenching, agonising waiting, waiting for the enemy to fall into the First Admiral’s carefully set trap.

  The First Admiral, the commanding presence in the cavernous room, sat alone at the head of his War Table. Eyes closed, he reclined in his chair, his hands behind his head, his fingers laced together. He was the very picture of calm, relaxation and confidence. The First Admiral knew the value of setting an example to the more nervous of his officers in times of crisis and tension like this. This, he knew, was the most significant crisis he had ever faced in his life with The Fleet. This was going to be his last battle. Even before he had been given this mission, he had decided that he could do more with The Fleet. With the last few intelligent species of the universe being drawn into the Universal Alliance, there were planned budget and resource cuts looming for the Alliance Fleet. Even as the revered Supreme Commander, the First Admiral knew there was very little he could do to protect The Fleet and the future military security of the Alliance. His future vocation, he had decided, would be in politics, to make sure that his beloved Alliance stayed strong.

  It was not just his career and personal pride that was at stake above the planet of Maltor. The stakes in this final battle for the First Admiral of the Universal Alliance could not have been any higher. The fate of an entire species rested in his hands. The survival of billions of innocent beings on the large yellow and brown planet, only a few hundred thousand kilometres away, depended on his judgement and experience. The survival of this Alliance Fleet, and, perhaps, his own personal survival, would also depend on his skill this day. Not that this would be the first time he had ever risked his own life during his career. He had always played the percentages in terms of his own survival in such situations, and had always just managed to come out on top. Now, he was gambling as close to the margin as he dared, without being reckless.

  Around him, the large computer-generated graphic charts, projecting up from the floor, showed the current positions of the three large battle fleets. They were converging neatly on the point where the Alliance blue icons were waiting anxiously for them.

  The soft whisper of Voice-Comms traffic was still just barely audible over the savage silence of the room. Around the War Table, row upon row of technicians sat, in the burning light, at banks of terminals and screens. They watched, waited, updated and monitored the enemy fleets’ movements, and then fed their information into the View Screens.

  A small group of senior officers had gathered around the Synthesiser, and were partaking of some stimulant drink. They whispered quietly to each other and broke into the odd bout of loud and strained laughter that shattered the crushing silence of the War Room for a few seconds. Other officers stood alone with their thoughts, and fidgeted nervously, as if their boots were filled with pebbles. The First Admiral, annoyed, wished they would sit down and be still. From his seat, he watched some of the younger officers still pacing around anxiously, knowing just exactly how they felt at that moment. The First Admiral had spent over thirty years creating the finest fighting machine the universe had ever known, and pre-battle tension was a reality that he had grown accustomed to over the years. With an almost paternal pride, he watched them in the depths of their mental agonies.

  The Fleet was the only family he had left, and he watched, silently, as they twitched and shuffled away the final minutes in their own personal mental purgatories. It was at times like these that his mind would drift off into memories of a time and place many years ago, and many billions of kilometres away. His mind had been straying from the present back to those days of the past more and more often in the last year or so. This was strange for the First Admiral, as he had never really had the time or the inclination to consider his own past. Now, he found his own long-dead family silently slipping into his thoughts, like thieves in the night.

  Shaking his head slowly, the First Admiral reached for the aged, scorched and creased remains of a photograph from his one piece uniform breast pocket. His simple thought transferred to the thousands of microscopic machines woven into the fibres of his Personal Environment Suit, or PES, which kept his body and mind at optimum performance levels, and opened the seamless pocket to allow him to retrieve the photograph. It was his one memento of his former life on a beautiful, small blue-green planet called Earth. He looked wistfully at the fading image of a young teenage version of himself, with his mother and father, beside a new light-blue family car. The young First Admiral and his family had smiled at the camera with hope for a better future, and it still made him choke back the rawest of emotions. The remains of the photograph, like his memories, had lain undisturbed in a folder in a locked drawer of his storage unit for over thirty years. It had taken him almost half a lifetime to be able to face what that picture represented; the deaths of two-and-a-half-billion humans, including his entire family, and the near destruction of Earth.

  The First Admiral, returning the photograph to his breast pocket, which sealed itself seamlessly at his mind’s command, looked over to one of the large View Screens and caught sight of his reflection.

  The years had been kinder to the First Admiral than nature had originally been. He was still medium height, and not in bad shape for some
one of his age. He had the physique of a tall Landing Trooper, as his Chief of Staff and friend, Marrhus Lokkrien, had described him. He had smiled, rather flattered, at the description. The tough, squat, muscular black-overalled Landing Troopers, experts in boarding enemy ships using close-quarter and hand-to-hand combat, were the elite of the Universal Alliance military. The First Admiral was still fit, muscular and active, but, as a child, he never seemed to be able to shake off the excess poundage, rather, annoyingly, additional weight had seemed to be attracted to his youthful frame like iron filings to a magnet.

  He was in his fiftieth year, after thirty-five years of distinguished active service in The Fleet. He was not what anyone would have called handsome, though the bright, flaming red hair of his youth had calmed down to a more sober and dull sandy colour with flecks of grey around the temples that some might have described as distinguished. His uniform certainly did not reflect any elegance that he may have possessed. He still insisted on wearing the standard green PES overall issued to more junior officers and knee-length black boots. The overall, he considered, was far more comfortable to wear than the tailored and fitted uniforms favoured by some of the more showy officers in The Fleet. The only nod of recognition to his senior rank was the Officer’s insignia on his left-collar tab and the large, single golden First Admiral star on his sleeve cuff above the two broad gold bands of his Admiral rank.

  With a deep sigh, he took note of the relative fleet positions on the View Screens and once again pondered the political and diplomatic mess that had brought them to this battlefield. The details of that diplomatic disaster area languished within a dark green folio file on the edge of his War Table. The Historical Briefing File told him of a sector where two species; the Pritern and Maltorians, had lived uneasily with each other for centuries. The Pritern were aggressive and expansionist, the Maltorians, hard working, industrious and peaceful. Into this mix was added the Traing; a combination of mercenaries and pirates, who protected the Maltorians in exchange for bribes taken by raiding the Maltorian trade routes and colonies. The uneasy peace would have survived had not the Maltorians’ neighbours; the Sarmesians, joined the Universal Alliance. Suddenly, the Traing found that the rich pickings from the Sarmesian trade routes were starting to dry up with the arrival of the battle hardened Universal Alliance Fleet. The Traing had begun demanding larger and larger bribes from the Maltorians, and their raids on the Maltorian trade routes and colonies intensified. In desperation, the Maltorians had sent a punitive military mission to the Traing Badlands, which had been all but wiped out. This left the Maltorians no choice but to seek the protection of the Universal Alliance, and the Traing to find themselves a new ally in the Pritern.

  With the Universal Alliance on their borders, the Pritern Government had been worried.

  For almost two days the Pritern Presidential Council had sat in secret session to work out a political solution to the situation. When one of the Presidential advisors suggested taking the entire Maltorian population as hostages, it formed the nucleus of a plan.

  It was a very high risk strategy, but the alternative was to do nothing and be gradually swallowed up by the Alliance. Under the pretext of occupying several disputed star systems, the combined Pritern and Traing fleets could mount a surprise attack upon, and capture, the planet of Maltor itself. The population could then be held as hostages; forcing the Universal Alliance to negotiate for their release. Unfortunately, the Universal Alliance did not give in to intimidation or negotiate. And, as the Traing looted and murdered their way through the now undefended Maltorian outer colonies, the Supreme Council of the Alliance had ordered the First Admiral to eliminate both the Pritern and Traing threat to the Alliance.

  In the Intelligence Report that lay beneath the Historical Briefing the First Admiral found that he had to achieve this mission with a task force consisting of four full Alliance Fleets; almost eight thousand vessels. The initial military reports from Alliance forces in the sector indicated that the situation was far more precarious than the politicians might have imagined.

  A planet of almost eight billion people was virtually defenceless. In terms of fighting vessels for the battle, the combined Pritern and Traing fleet outnumbered the Alliance over nine to one. The Alliance, on the other hand, had the advantages of tactical surprise and new battle shielding. The new battle shielding was a radical departure from the old force shielding employed by larger Alliance warships. The old force shielding used a high energy deflective force shield generated by the main proto-star matter reactor system which put a heavy drain on the ships energy budget. On the other hand, the new battle shielding system worked by generating a Trion field around the vessel. The Trion was the fundamental particle of the Universe. Through manipulating the frequencies at which Trions resonated, various properties could be exploited which had produced instantaneous travel and instantaneous universe-wide communications. Alliance scientists had discovered that at certain frequencies, the bonds between Trions became stronger when exposed to high levels of energy discharge. So, in effect, the harder the enemy hit the battle shielding, the stronger the shield became. The First Admiral desperately needed that battle shielding to work in combat. Publicly, he expressed every confidence in the engineers and the new shielding; privately, he had very serious doubts and ordered it tested and tested again.

  On the plus side, the ever-efficient Karap Sownus, his Senior Intelligence Officer and long standing friend, had indicated that the Pritern planned to combine with the Traing fleet and attack Maltor. At least the First Admiral knew what the enemy’s intentions were. The First Admiral also knew from the Intelligence Report that his greatest headache would not be the outcome of this particular battle. If he lost, then his career, maybe even his life, would be over. However, if he won, he had to consider that, if he did not neutralise the entire Traing Fleet, they would disperse and resume their old pirating ways. It could potentially take years, maybe even decades, of military occupation and millions of needless deaths to root out and defeat the last of the Traing. He did not wish to leave that kind of legacy as his retirement gift to the Universal Alliance, even after so spectacular a victory.

  So, here he was, once again, out on a limb, with little support, an outnumbered fleet with unproven battle shielding technology and the lives of tens of billions hanging in the balance because the diplomats and politicians couldn’t get their act together.

  Yes, he thought cynically, politics was a dirty game; he closed his eyes to think of better things.

  Chapter 2

  “Sir! It’s time,” a gentle shake on the shoulder pierced through the darkness of his reverie, and brought him back, with a start, to the painfully bright real world.

  Irritated, he wanted to snap at the officer to tell him to leave him alone as he was entirely comfortable in his own private universe. Still squinting from the harsh light of the War Room, the close proximity of Marrhus Lokkrien, his Chief of Staff, registered in his brain. As his vision cleared, he smiled softly, and nodded his acknowledgement to his old friend.

  Marrhus Lokkrien was a Bardomil, a species that had caused endless trouble for the Alliance in the early days. That, however, was the past. Marrhus had not only proven unswerving loyalty to the Alliance, time and again, he had also been a good friend to the First Admiral. In his eightieth year, middle-aged for a Bardomil, he too was beginning to show signs of his advancing years. His dark hair, over his slightly grey face and green almond-shaped eyes, was now tending to a snowy white and the proud upright stance of his youth was starting to stoop a little. The First Admiral had also noticed, the limp in his injured left leg was definitely worsening. Lokkrien’s mind, though, was still as sharp as a tack. However, he appeared unduly distracted these days. His eldest grandson would be going into combat for the first time today with First Crusader Squadron Commander Nerla Daelstar, and like any parent or grandparent would be, he was worried. The First Admiral had offered his friend a Staff position for the boy aboard the Flagship, but Marrh
us had refused. He wanted no special allowances for the Lokkriens.

  “Sir, the enemy fleets are entering the Operations Zone,” the Chief of Staff reported.

  With an effort of will, and a quiet, drawn out, sigh, the First Admiral rose stiffly to his feet. Immediately, the officers in the room fell into a hushed silence, ready to respond to his commands in an instant.

  Walking over to the centre Tactical Screen, he could see the various yellow Traing and white Pritern icons now within the area defined by the red boundary that he had previously dictated to be the Operations Zone. On the View Screen, the yellow Traing fleet indicated a movement from left to right. They were heading, the First Admiral knew, towards a pre-planned rendezvous with the white Pritern fleet. From the far right of the screen, the white Pritern were slowly moving towards the rendezvous point. Between them both, sat the blue Alliance fleet. The scene was now set for the showdown. The preparations and planning were over and it was time for the soldiers to decide the final outcome.

  “Send out the bait,” The First Admiral intoned, almost absent-mindedly, staring, arms folded across his chest, at the yellow Traing triangles on the screen.

  It was done, he thought, he had finally set the wheels in motion, and he felt a huge degree of relief for having done so. Fate would decide whether his plans and actions would be deemed worthy of victory or defeat. All he could do was to wait for the battle to unfold and react accordingly.

  The effect of those four words on the anxiety-ridden officers in the War Room was almost magical. Orders were issued, and brief, sharp, precisely controlled acknowledgements from recipients flowed through the communications networks. On his View Screens the First Admiral saw the blue icons begin to move in their designated directions. As smoothly as any microscopic single-cell organism reproducing back on Earth, he watched the pattern of blue icons split into three large groups and one significantly smaller group, and head off on their appointed courses towards their yellow or white adversaries.