Time Commander (The First Admiral Series) (14 page)

With the enormous energy of the impact, the Carrier had no chance of survival. For a split-second the doomed Carrier seemed to fold in the area it had been struck, and then it exploded in an enormous fireball.

The Carrier stationed at the five o’clock position was consumed by the massive explosion and avalanche of flying debris. No one from the two Carriers would survive the holocaust of flame and destruction.

In his silent frustration and rage, Billy Caudwell cursed the misfortune of the Ganthoran crews and silently urged their commander to capitulate. The Ganthoran General, not blessed with the gift of telepathy, was not quite ready to give up the ghost. The Carrier stationed at the one o’clock position in the formation was the most fortunate of the vessels hit thus far. The first bolt struck clean and true on the lower rear hull, tearing great shards and gouts of metal from the vessel into a huge red and orange flame, whilst the second bolt missed entirely and sped impotently off into the depths of space.

The Carrier at the two o’clock position was hit squarely on the underside of the hull; one forward, and one to the rear. Once again, it looked like someone had kicked the vessel twice with heavy boots as it lurched forwards from its station and spewed debris and people from its underside out into space.

It was the second Star Cruiser that was to finish the battle. Following on from the first, the second Star Cruiser opened fire on the damaged Ganthoran Carrier at the nine o’clock position. The badly damaged and flame scorched Carrier, with an already weakened structure, shuddered violently under the two direct hits. The two pulsar-bolt hits slammed mercilessly into the rear of the Carrier, starting the chain-reaction that tore the vessel apart in a massive explosion. Shattering into large fragments, the disintegrating Carrier showered the area with wreckage and flame. The Carriers in the immediate vicinity of the explosion were sufficiently distant to avoid the worst of the disaster. However, as the huge fragments began to drift away from the initial explosion, the Carrier at the eight o’clock position, moving slowly away from the Alliance Star Cruisers, found itself moving into the path of the larger falling fragments.

Struggling desperately to change the direction of the massive Ganthoran Carrier, the crew watched, helplessly, as their vessel failed to respond quickly enough, and the large fragment of the destroyed Carrier began to slowly move towards them. Of the tens of thousands aboard the Ganthoran Carrier, only a few hundred very lucky ones managed to make it to the Life Pods after the Captain’s order to abandon ship. For the rest of the crew, there was the agonizing wait for oblivion, as the huge chunk of warship ploughed slowly into the top of the Carrier as it tried to evade the collision. Like a ragged blade slowly striking into the flesh of its victim, the shattered edges of the chunk of warship pierced the top of the hull of Carrier. Stripping back and shearing through bulkheads, decks, and equipment, the leading edge ploughed deeper into the doomed Carrier. With the forward momentum of the Carrier, the collision scraped and sheared even greater damage from the dying vessel.

With agonising slowness, the leading edge of the chunk gouged deep into the Carrier and ploughed remorselessly into the power plant. With the power plant ruptured, the entire vessel disappeared in a great, cataclysmic explosion. In the space of only a few minutes, five of the Ganthoran Carriers had been completely destroyed. A further three were so damaged that they could not move from their stations, whilst another three Carriers were being consumed with flames as their gallant crews struggled bravely to save their ships- and their lives.

With over half of his Carriers destroyed or out of commission, and the rest of his fleet all but wiped out, the Ganthoran General signalled for a cease fire. The battle was over, Third Fleet had been rescued, the invasion had been routed, and the Tergus System was safe in Alliance hands once more. First Admiral Billy Caudwell had won another battle.

Looking at the image on the War Table, the victorious First Admiral surveyed the wreckage of his latest victory. Third Fleet had lost over ninety percent of its Eagles, with over three thousand five hundred pilots dead. Five of fourteen Star Cruisers had been lost; another ten thousand lives. First Fleet had lost eighty-six Eagles, with twenty-four pilots killed. The numerals on the War Table image indicated that the Alliance had also suffered over twelve thousand injured; some of whom might also die. The Ganthoran invasion fleet was now scattered, as space debris over thousands of square kilometres. The loss of lives would number in the hundreds of thousands. The Ganthoran injured would number in the tens of thousands. First Admiral Billy Caudwell turned away from the three-dimensional image, and with his arms folded across his chest, he covered his eyes with his left hand.

For Billy Caudwell, there would always be that very human emotion of guilt and regret. The adrenaline that had coursed through his veins and sharpened his perceptions and clarity of thought through the Personal Environment Suit now abated. The intensity of the experience faded rapidly when the danger and stress were past. Like a drug user coming down from a particularly good high, Billy now felt the crashing despair of the low. The PES magnified adrenaline that had kept his mind sharp and focussed, now receded, leaving him able to see the consequences of the battle. The ringing cheers of the War Room, and the messages of congratulations, pronounced yet another brilliant Caudwell victory.

Once again, to Billy Caudwell it felt horribly like a defeat.

In Ganthus City, the news of the defeat of the Frontier Fleet was received with an angry silence by a stone-faced Grand Adjudicator Bellor.

Bellor had smiled, politely, and had courteously dismissed the shame-faced Frontier Fleet messenger who had informed him of General Grobbeg’s disastrous defeat. However, in his mind, Grand Adjudicator Bellor was blazing with anger.
The fool, Grobbeg
, Bellor had raged in the quiet seclusion of his private apartments in the Imperial Palace. The stern faces of long-dead Emperors stared down at him from the wall; like the parents of a particularly stupid child, scolding him with their rigid, silent expressions.

As if things weren’t difficult enough, the idiot Grobbeg, looking for his chance to claim a Candidacy for the Time Warrior ritual, had taken on this new Universal Alliance, and had lost almost three-quarters of his Frontier Fleet in the process. The Terganian Frontier was now virtually undefended, and Bellor knew that he would have to order elements of the other Frontier Fleets to plug the gap left by Grobbeg’s stupidity. But, worst of all, Grobbeg’s attack had implemented a clause in the Ganthoran Empire’s Imperial Decrees; the closest thing that the Empire had to a Constitution, that created a state of war between the Empire and this Universal Alliance. At this moment in time, the Ganthoran Empire did not need a major war. The Imperial Decree required that the other Frontier Fleets should avenge Grobbeg’s defeat. That would mean pulling resources away from the other Frontiers, and, more than likely, sustaining even greater losses than those caused by Grobbeg. If this Universal Alliance had shattered Grobbeg’s Fleet, then they would certainly do the same to any other force that the Ganthorans sent against them.

It was the harvest season on the fifteen planets of the Laeridian sector that provided Ganthus with the food and water that it needed to sustain its population over the forthcoming year. The Frontier Fleets would be needed to patrol these supply lines to protect the vital convoys from any marauding Bardomil ships that could slip over the frontier to disrupt the food and water supply.

The Plain of Ganthus itself was a dry barren planet that had once been a tropical paradise, until the Garmaurians had chosen it as a training ground for their military in hostile environment battle situations. Billions of cubic kilometres of water were locked in the core of the planet, but even the finest engineering minds of the Ganthoran Empire had still been unable to free this tantalizing treasure that lay below the surface. With a harsh, dry and dusty climate, Ganthus was unable to feed its own population, making the cities and towns of the planet reliant on imported food and water from conquered worlds. At a time when food and water supplies were at their lowest; before the harvest, Frontier General Grobbeg had launched some foolish glory-hunting expedition that now threatened to jeopardise the entire future of the planet.

Grand Adjudicator Bellor, sitting in his opulently furnished private apartments, could have wept with anger and frustration. All the years he had struggled to hold the Empire together and Grobbeg was threatening it all after a few hours of vainglorious lunacy.

His wife, the Lady Gildran, knew that at a time like this, it was best to leave her husband alone for a few hours to let him work the anger from his system. She could see that he was beginning to suffer under the pressure and stress of the great responsibility that the late Emperor had placed upon him.

There were times that she felt it was so unfair upon her husband to have to fulfil the final, dying wishes of a long-dead Emperor. The Emperor should have married and had sons and daughters to found a dynasty to take over the burden of the Imperial mantle. Fate, however, had decreed otherwise and the Emperor had died childless. Bellor had done all that he possibly could to keep the Emperor’s dream alive. However, there was only just so much that a Grand Adjudicator could do without real Imperial power and authority. The compromises had been struck, and clandestine political deals had been made. With every passing day, the Lady Gildran had seen the light of enthusiasm slowly dim in her husband’s increasingly wearied eyes. Now, he was starting to buckle under the strain of what he considered to be his duty to the late Emperor.

He was trapped by the circumstances that he had created with his compromises and politicking. Looking at her husband’s sleep-deprived eyes and slumped shoulders, Gildran knew one day it would all be too much for Bellor. The Empire needed a new ruler before the responsibilities crushed Grand Adjudicator Bellor into an early grave.
The new Time Warrior Candidate looked more like a juvenile than an Emperor-in-waiting
, Gildran considered. He was an alien, and as an alien, Gildran was automatically suspicious of him. In her youth, she would have hated the fiery-haired human with a vengeance. However, he had shown himself to be polite and respectful as well as brave. Those were qualities that would make a fine Emperor.

Looking over at her husband, Lady Gildran sensed that this might be the last Time Warrior Candidate to attempt the ritual before Bellor succumbed to his burden. If Caudwell won, then there would be an alien Emperor; the first in Ganthoran history, and every fibre in her body rebelled against that idea. Lady Gildran was Ganthoran to her very heart and soul, but she was also a wife and mother who loved her family. As she watched her exhausted husband, she decided that she would prefer an unknown alien Emperor over a dead husband.

First Admiral William Caudwell sat alone in the darkness of his Private Quarters, and his mind was troubled.

Laying in front of him on the lazy-S shaped table was the report from the Universal Alliance Diplomatic Corps, and it did not make for pleasant reading. The Ganthoran invasion of Alliance space had precipitated a declaration of war from the Imperial Palace in Ganthus City. Ganthoran Law had been quite strict and clear upon the matter; Grobbeg’s attack had precipitated a state of open hostility between the Universal Alliance and the Ganthoran Empire. To Billy Caudwell it was sheer lunacy. He had shattered Grobbeg’s Frontier Fleet, and was perfectly capable of doing the same to any other Ganthoran force that attacked the Alliance. The Diplomatic Corps were less than pleased. Grobbeg’s attack had undone months of careful diplomatic manoeuvring and overtures.

Now, Billy Caudwell was faced with a decision. With the Ganthorans having been pushed into this war just as unwillingly as the Alliance, they were now legally and honour bound to launch further attacks on the Alliance to avenge Grobbeg’s defeat and to re-instate their own self-respect. Billy could have screamed with frustration at the stupidity of it all. When he least needed the distraction, Billy was now required to focus his energies and military resources into defending against another Ganthoran attack. This left First Admiral William Caudwell with two choices: firstly, he could sit on the Terganian frontier and wait for the Ganthorans to mass their forces and launch an attack, or he could be more proactive and launch what was known as a “Decapitation Strike” against Ganthus itself.

The Decapitation Strike involved leading a stealthed Task Force to the home planet of the enemy, overwhelming the planetary defences and forcing the Government to capitulate before the military could fully respond. It would certainly put a stop to the ridiculous state of war that currently existed, but it did not answer the question of the Frontier Generals. Each Frontier General was effectively an independent warlord, controlling their individual frontier, nominally answerable to the Adjudicators back on Ganthus. If the planet of Ganthus fell, then there was no guarantee that the Frontier Generals; like Grobbeg, would also capitulate. The Frontier Fleets were powerful, and would take time, materials and lives to subdue. This was an option that Billy Caudwell could neither risk nor countenance.

The Universal Alliance simply could not afford to begin a costly and protracted war at this time, since the Alliance was too new and fragile. The political structures were still being defined and ratified by the civilian leadership of the member planets, and they were unlikely to send millions of their soldiers to a long-term war of subjugation with a species most of them had never even heard of. It would strain the fragile Alliance beyond breaking point.