First Admiral 02 The Burning Sun Read online

  “Fairly easy, sir,” Jed reported with a mischievous smile, “Simultaneous equations; should take you no more than a couple of minutes.”

  “Yeah, great,” Billy replied, “So, what are your plans for tonight then, Jed?” he checked that the image being projected by his PES was correct.

  “Back to the Officer Texts, sir,” Jed said matter-of-factly, “and catch-up on some sleep,” he added.

  Jedithram Prust was quite happy to use his down time to study to become a Supply Officer and further promotions. He was young and ambitious and knew that the fledgling Alliance would soon expand presenting him with greater opportunities.

  “Are you comfortable on the Ranger? I always thought they were cramped and untidy ships,” Billy asked.

  “No problems, sir,” Jed replied, “I’ve got my own cabin and the crew pretty much leave me alone.”

  “OKAY, then, I’ll try not to disturb you,” Billy promised, “but keep a watch on the Emergency Command Frequency in case I’ve got to come back in a hurry.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jed replied, knowing only too well that if some crisis arose then he would be back down on Earth in the First Admiral’s place in rapid order.

  Satisfied that the image was perfect, Billy stepped over to the teleporter and activated it through a thought command in his PES.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” Billy smiled, with a cheeky wink.

  Then, he disappeared in a blinding flash.

  Chapter 2

  The Imperial Palace, Bardan

  Lullina, the Grand Empress of the Bardomil, stared in shock and incredulity at the object on the small, circular, legless table hovering before her.

  “It’s...a rock!” Lullina said icily, her voice echoing around the cavernous Throne Room, to the two yellow-clad figures prostrate on the floor before her.

  “If it pleases Your Imperial Gloriousness,” one of the prostrate figures raised his head, smiling nervously to explain just exactly what this “rock” was.

  “This had better be good,” Empress Lullina replied haughtily still staring at the object.

  Sammut Claggit, of the Xanath species, tried to rise to his feet only to be brutally shoved back down by one of the two black uniformed Imperial Bodyguards who hovered menacingly over him and his young assistant, Bem. Raising himself up onto his elbows, Claggit realised that this was going to be a tougher sell than he had first imagined. Looking up at the Bardomil Empress, sitting on the green and white onyx throne, Claggit shuddered inwardly. She was a beautiful creature to look at, tall, slim, elegant and graceful. Her pale peach gown seemed to shimmer at her slightest movement creating a swirling pattern of various shades in the gossamer-fine material. Her face was almost angelic with the high angular forehead; created by binding her head when she was just an infant, to achieve that haughty superior expression. The golden skull cap, wreathed with the jewelled coronet, set off her pale grey facial features perfectly; even those sinister completely jet black eyes that stared malevolently at anyone who incurred her displeasure.

  That displeasure was something that Sammut Claggit did not wish to incur. Claggit was well aware that the Bardomil Empress was completely insane and the comparison to the infamous Tarselian Ground Frog was more than apt. The males of the species, during the mating season, would indiscriminately eject small, highly venomous spines from their skin to eliminate their rivals. In the frenzy of the mating season, all reason and sanity completely vanished from the male frog with their deadly spines killing anything and everything that got in the way. The Empress could be just as unreasonable in one of her towering rages, and equally lethal.

  “If it pleases Your Radiance,” Claggit began once again, “please do not be fooled by the appearance of the weapon before you...”

  “This...rock…is a weapon, Master Claggit!?” the Empress sneered, “do we have to hit our enemies over the head with it?” she barbed.

  “No, Your Graciousness,” Claggit smiled weakly, “this is, in fact, the perfect stealth weapon...if I may be allowed to demonstrate?”

  “Proceed,” the Empress waved languidly to allow the Xanath to stand up.

  “Thank you, Your Radiant Magnificence,” Claggit began, nervously eyeing the Bodyguard; who drew back, and rose to his full height of just over one metre, “if I may approach the...rock?”

  Like most Xanath, Sammut Claggit was short in stature, but possessed a mind and intellect far greater than most in the universe. His lank greying hair hung down in long ringlets around a sharp, pale blue, angular face that was marred by a deep, livid, red scar that ran from his forehead down to his chin.

  “Yes, yes...get on with it!” the Empress sighed with an edge of irritation in her voice.

  “If you will observe, Your Serenity...” Claggit began, nervously approaching the rock, and touched its surface.

  Instantly, the rock façade melted away to reveal a silver metallic sphere the size of a soccer ball.

  “No! No! No!” Claggit cringed, his hands raised high above his head as two dozen Bardomil weapons were charged, ready to fire, at the sudden transformation of the object.

  “Well, well, Master Claggit, you might just have something of interest there for Parlour Trick Magicians,” the Empress said slowly, moving to the edge of the throne, her attention suddenly taken.

  “Thank you, Your Greatness,” Claggit replied, nervously glancing at the dozens of weapons still pointed at him, “this is a small, self-contained Lissian Pulse Emitter,” he continued.

  Nervously, Claggit stretched out his hand towards the sphere, whilst still watching the Bodyguards, and pressed the side of the object. Rapidly, the sphere broke down into four leaves on a shallow dish base, showing an array of circuit boards and mechanical moving parts.

  “A Lissian Pulse Emitter, Master Claggit?” The Empress queried, “What does that do, exactly?”

  “Well, Your Perfectness, under normal circumstances,” Claggit began, “absolutely nothing, but in close proximity to highly conductive super-heated plasma it creates what is called magnetic reconnection.”

  “Which is, Master Claggit?” the Empress began to lose the thread of the description.

  “Well, Your Fabulousness, in simple terms, if you were to put it close to, say, for example, a yellow dwarf star, it would cause a super-charged extremely powerful solar flare. May I demonstrate?” Claggit asked.

  “By all means,” the Empress conceded starting to become bored again.

  “My assistant, Bem,” Claggit motioned for the other prostrate figure to rise up, “has created a visual representation of the weapon in action, for your edification.”

  “Do get on with it Claggit,” the Empress snapped, “our Imperial patience is wearing thin,” she warned, the novelty of this new distraction beginning to wear off.

  Bem, the assistant, nervously stood up. He reached just over one metre in height. He was several decades younger than Claggit, and fresh faced for a Xanath. His hair, darker than Claggit’s, was neatly shorn to expose long pendulous ear lobes. Nervously, Bem set down a small cube on the floor behind the hovering table and activated it. After a few moments of grainy static, a three-dimensional image of a solar system cleared to a crystal sharpness. At the centre a large yellow dwarf star burned, surrounded by eight planets. The sixth of the eight planets was the most striking, with a spectacular ring system around it.

  “Your Brilliance has asked me to design a weapon that would eliminate all life-forms on the third planet in this solar system,” Claggit began, the image focussing closely on a blue and brown planet with white clouds, “this planet, here, I believe it is called Terra or Earth,” he paused for effect pointing to the large image.

  “I would humbly submit,” Claggit continued as the image pulled out to show the whole solar system again, “that we send the Lissian Emitter,” the image showed a silver object approaching the yellow dwarf on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth, “and bring it into a safe orbit around the star in direct opposition to the p
lanet itself,” the image changed to an overhead shot of the spinning planets with the moving silver object being hidden from the Earth’s line of sight by the star.

  “Yes…go on?” the Empress said, her interest piqued again as she leaned forward in her throne.

  “At a time of Your Majesty’s choosing, the Emitter would send forth a highly concentrated pulse of Lissian radiation that would excite and destabilise the solar plasma creating a massive super-charged solar flare,” Claggit continued, with a graceful bow, as the image returned to a profile view of the system and a huge yellow mass shot forth from the surface of the Sun towards the Earth image.

  Rapidly, the yellow mass overwhelmed the first two planets in the system before slowing down. The image then cut back to the Earth close up as the yellow mass engulfed the blue planet.

  “The super-charged flare would take around two Terran hours to reach its target, but would effectively be unstoppable. All life on the third planet would be vapourised in exactly three minutes and fifteen seconds as the solar flare material, trapped by the Terran atmosphere and gravity, swept around the planet until the increasing heat finally burnt away the entire atmosphere,” Claggit intoned matter-of-factly at the simulated annihilation of a life-bearing planet, “The flare material would then continue to engulf the fourth, red planet, before running out of energy, leaving the Terran planet sterilised with no hope of life ever being re-established”, the image showed the planet Mars being swamped by the yellow mass before the image cut out.

  For a moment, the entire Throne Room fell into a hushed awe. Claggit and Bem eyed each other nervously as the Empress stood up and walked slowly towards them.

  “Master Claggit, we salute you,” the Empress smiled, approaching the opened silver sphere.

  “Thank you, Your Phenomenal-ness,” Claggit replied as both of the Xanath backed anxiously away from the slowly advancing Empress.

  “And, how do we get it past the Alliance Scanners?” the Empress asked.

  “We have disguised it as a simple space rock, Your Generosity; the Alliance Scanners will simply detect a lump of floating material with a high-metallic composition,” Claggit bowed low and slapped Bem on the side; to copy him, as the Empress began to slowly circle the table, “and, it can assume a liquid state to meld with passing objects as well as change colour to further blend in. In fact, it would be completely undetectable unless you were looking for this specific piece of equipment.”

  “Very clever, Master Claggit,” the Empress praised with her best insincere smile, “we are pleased with your work.”

  “Thank you, Your Marvellous-ness; we are happy to have been of service to you,” Claggit smiled nervously bobbing yet another bow.

  “We hereby decree and command,” the Empress began formally, “that you take your device to our scientists and show them how it operates. You will then be taken to the Imperial Treasury and handsomely rewarded before being returned in great honour to your home planet of Xanart.”

  “You are most generous, Your Terrific-ness, most generous indeed; thank you, thank you,” Claggit stammered, with relief. He grabbed the Emitter and closed it down whilst Bem grabbed the floating table and display cube.

  “We thank you for your efforts Master Claggit and assistant Bem,” the Empress smiled as the two Xanath were led away bowing, scraping, thanking and praising.

  “Sudrus,” the Empress beckoned the Captain of Bodyguards when the Xanath were out of ear-shot, “when they’ve showed us how it works, take them to the Treasury and then kill them,” she turned, striding toward her Onyx Throne.

  “Majesty,” the tall Bodyguard, uniformed in black, saluted, bowed and was about to back away when the Empress turned to him again.

  “But, don’t let them bleed all over the Imperial Jewels, Captain Sudrus; their Xanath blood is very corrosive,” the Empress added and dismissed the Bodyguard.

  Returning to her Onyx Throne, she sat down again, gracefully.

  “Those things are a nightmare to keep clean in the best of circumstances,” she sighed despairingly.

  Chapter 3

  Planet Earth

  “Emma!” the familiar voice of Billy Caudwell called out through the hubbub of the school corridor.

  It was ten-thirty, the end of second period, and the corridor was jammed with the shuffling feet of hundreds of students making their weary ways to whatever delights awaited them in third period. Teachers called out above the general mayhem to round up tardy students to their classes or to keep the corridors and passageways moving freely. Through the press of book-clutching uniformed bodies, Billy Caudwell forced his way breathlessly forward to speak to the tall, blonde, blue-eyed girl who was the object of his attention.

  With her back to the struggling, sweating Billy Caudwell, Emma Wallace winced. Too late, she thought, he’s seen me, so I can’t pretend I didn’t hear him and walk away; though that would have been her preferred option. The friend she had been walking along the corridor with smiled, nudged Emma on the arm, and walked onwards to her next lesson, her books clutched tightly to her chest.

  “Billy!” Emma Wallace turned and smiled nervously as the sweating and out of breath fifteen year old schoolboy finally managed to work his way to her through the crowd, “how are you?”

  “God, this place just gets worse!” Billy gasped breathlessly as the other students jostled and pushed their way past him to their own next lessons.

  He had dashed along three similar corridors to catch up with the beautiful blonde girl he had become enamoured of in the last few months. His second period in history was to be followed by a third period in Mister Laughlin’s German Class, which was two flights up, and another two corridors along. So, to speak to Emma, he had to move quickly to avoid the dreaded detention that was the sanction for lateness to classes.

  Oh God, he’s all horrible and sweaty, Emma thought as Billy gasped for breath amidst the press of bodies.

  Billy Caudwell, despite being a year younger than Emma, had really only appeared amongst her circle of “friends” since the beginning of that year. She used the term “friend” loosely as she was aware that Billy Caudwell probably harboured some romantic intent towards her. She had always had that instinct of knowing when young men were attracted to her, and she was quite prepared to utilise the knowledge to her advantage. They were male, and, hence, were only after one thing; therefore, she considered, it was entirely acceptable to make use of that attraction for her own benefit. Billy Caudwell, however, did not really rate in Emma Wallace’s estimation of potential boyfriend material. Billy was nice, kind and sensitive. He was also kind of cute in a little-boy-lost sort of way that some other girls found quite appealing. But, handsome and exciting, he was not.

  In the Emma Wallace ranking system of boyfriend material, Billy Caudwell was a “probably not”.

  But, like a few other boys she had assigned into the “probably not” category, Billy Caudwell had his uses.

  He was always a good listener when she was troubled and could always be relied upon to cheer her up. He was good at maths and history; and an aspiring fashion designer, such as Emma Wallace, had to have good grades at several subjects to get into one of the prestigious Art Colleges in Glasgow or London. The end-of-term exams were due in a couple of months and she was weak in maths; so she would have to rely on Billy’s expertise to get her through. These were the important pre-Qualification exams. If she made a mess of the actual final exam, then she could fall back on the pre-Qualification as the basis of an appeal.

  So, gritting her teeth in a weak smile, Emma Wallace tried her best not to show her distaste for the perspiring, red-haired boy who had stopped her in the corridor.

  “What are you up to then, Billy?” she smiled her best attempt at friendliness, hoping that she wasn’t going to smell that dreadful sweaty odour.

  “Just wanted to ask you about the school dance next week,” Billy gasped nervously, his pale, freckled face red-flushed from exertion.

  Oh God, he’s
going to ask me out, she shuddered mentally. Emma had hoped that the dreaded “let’s-just-be-good-friends” conversation would be able to wait until after the pre-Qualification exams. But, now it appeared that that particular occasion was drawing closer than she had anticipated.

  “What about the school dance?” she replied slightly on edge.

  “Well, if you’re not going with anyone,” Billy swallowed nervously, “would you like to go with me?”

  Well, there it is, Emma thought, the worm has finally developed enough backbone to ask me out.

  “Well, I don’t really know,” Emma tried to hedge her options.

  The school dance was only a week away, and suddenly she realised that to date, no one had actually asked her to go. The dance had not been high on her list of priorities, until now. But, it just wouldn’t do for a popular and attractive young woman with fashion design ambitions to turn up without an escort. After all, she wasn’t one of those geeky, bookish girls that fainted with expectation whenever a boy spoke to them.

  “Well, if you’re not going with anyone,” Billy Caudwell pressed his argument, his sweaty face visibly shaking with anxiety.

  “Yeah, okay, alright, Billy,” Emma replied interrupting his proposal a little more sharply than she had intended.

  Oh God, did I sound a bit desperate there, she considered. I hope he didn’t think I was actually keen to go with him. It’s just he’s going to have to do for the moment, Emma thought, I’ll push some of the better looking, older, hunky guys to ask me out later on. At least one of them might have a car, and hopefully the ability to keep his hands to himself, she shuddered.

  “Oh, fine, great,” Billy Caudwell smiled broadly his previously concerned face now wrinkling with relief, “I’ll meet you Thursday night then,” he added.

  “Yeah, looking forward to it,” she smiled with as much faux-sincerity as she could muster.

  “Sorry, but I’m off to Mister Laughlin’s for German,” Billy smiled and began to walk away briskly.