First Admiral 02 The Burning Sun (18 page)

Sharing the first two periods of Biology with Billy, Emma knew exactly where he would be going and moved rapidly to intercept pushing through the traffic streams. Catching Billy just before he entered the classroom, Emma barged Billy aside and pushed him into the well beneath the stairs.

“Look, Mister Billy Caudwell, I know I’ve messed up and I’m sorry!” Emma said determinedly.

“Go away, Emma, I’ve told you before…” Billy remonstrated with her at the same time causing a huge distraction amongst the puzzled students.

“Oh…fudge!” an exasperated Emma finally conceded the row, threw caution to the wind and grabbing Billy’s tie; she pulled his head towards her, as she planted her lips squarely against his.

Locked in a passionate kiss, Billy was taken completely by surprise and unable to resist. His eyes bugging wide with astonishment, Billy found himself in the embrace and unable to escape. Flapping his arms weakly, he held his breath and tried to make sense of what was happening.

In the corridor, students were cheering, yelling and applauding. “You go, grrrrl!” a female voice called out as Emma pulled Billy closer.

“Come on you two, take it home with you tonight!” a male teacher barked, interrupting the kiss.

Gasping for breath and blushing to his hair roots, Billy stared in astonishment at Emma.

“What…” he gasped, unable to form a coherent sentence let alone an explanation in his own mind.

“Come on, Billy; I know I messed up big time, but just give me a chance, please?” she begged.

For a moment, Billy was torn. Part of him wanted to push her away whilst another part wanted her to kiss him again. With a defeated sigh he nodded his acceptance and tried to speak.

“Just shush, and get into class, we’ll talk about it later,” Emma whispered, with a smile, pressing her forefinger up against his lips to silence him.

“Come on you two lovebirds, get a move on!” the teacher jostled Billy away from the stairwell.

Half turning to speak to Emma, the teacher moved Billy on towards the traffic stream. And, as Billy struggled towards the Biology lab door, Emma cheekily pinched his bottom.

“Hey!” Billy protested, smiling broadly.

“Move it, sweet cheeks,” Emma whispered seductively in his ear.

“Come on, get in here or I’ll send you to detention,” the female Biology teacher called from the classroom door as Billy stumbled into the lab.

Taking his seat at the end of the front bench in the Biology Class, as the other students straggled into the room Billy turned a quick glance to Emma and winked craftily. Emma, sitting at another bench, smiled broadly and replied with her own cheeky wink making Billy smile and blush. He felt the surge of heat on his face as he diverted his attention to the attractive young woman who was to teach this days’ first lesson.

“Right come on, settle down,” the young, petite blonde woman in the white lab coat barked in agitation at the tardy students still chattering and meandering their way into her classroom.

Mrs Sheena Collier, Billy speculated, could be no more than twenty-five or twenty-six. He had seen an old school orchestra image of a younger version of her taken only eight years before. Assuming she had been eighteen at the time, he could calculate her age and how long she had been teaching at the school, if this had been her first post.

“Come on, Angela, we haven’t got all day,” Mrs Collier scolded one of Billy’s dawdling classmates as she finally found her seat at the back bench of the lab.

When the last of the students had straggled their way to their appointed places, Mrs Collier strode up to the oblong chalkboard and began to write.

“Today, we will be continuing with…” she began, as she wrote the letters P-H-O-T, the chalk squealing against the slate board, “Photosynthesis.”

Almost as one, the class groaned, good-naturedly. Mrs Collier was a popular young teacher; the boys, including Billy, fancied her, whilst all the girls wanted to be like the stylish, confident young woman.

With a deep sigh, Billy glanced at the clock next to the door, it read nine-oh-five and the class would be in the lab until ten thirty. Mentally, he resigned himself to the hour and a half of being spoon fed how plants made food and oxygen out of carbon dioxide and water. Quietly, he smiled to himself wishing he could show Mrs Collier some of the plant species on other worlds that could move around, communicate, and eat flesh. But, that part of his double-life had to remain secret and that meant that those botanical delights would be hidden from the young woman.

It was at that moment of Billy’s resignation that seven blinding flashes shattered the early morning tedium of the laboratory.

Instinctively, Billy Caudwell knew the materialisation flashes from the Teleport and his mind recoiled in shock from the realisation that his carefully constructed cover was about to be blown.

A moment later, three blue and four black uniformed figures materialised from the blinding flashes.

Three Fleet Officers and four Landing Troopers, the standard Security Detail, had materialised in the middle of the classroom. Billy immediately recognised Marrhus Lokkrien and Karap Sownus with a young, female Thexxian Intelligence Technician. The Landing Troopers, the close combat specialists of the Alliance, were a pair of Thexxians and two tall reptile-like Icharians.

A chorus of stunned gasps, screams and cries of astonishment greeted the new unexpected arrivals.

“First Admiral…” the anxious figure of Marrhus Lokkrien, standing in front of him at his bench was the first to speak.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sheena Collier blustered as she strode determinedly from in front of the chalkboard.

The Landing Trooper closest to her, sensing her hostility and aggression, raised the spindly butt of the seven-barrelled pulsar-rifle to violently pacify the advancing teacher.

With his lizard face set in a determined stare the young Icharian Landing Trooper prepared to knock the teacher to the ground.

“TROOPER! Stand down!” Billy barked, his cover now well and truly blown.

Instantly, the Trooper snapped to attention with Sheena Collier cowering nervously against the chalkboard, her arms crossed in front of her face. Billy had to admit that the young teacher did have courage, but a reptilian soldier brandishing a weapon had taken the wind from her sails.

“This had better be good, Admiral Lokkrien,” Billy hissed viciously.

Over the last year, he had taken considerable care to ensure that his other life would remain hidden and now Marrhus Lokkrien had managed to destroy all of that effort in the blink of an eye.

“What’s going on here, Caudwell?” Mrs Collier asked nervously from the chalkboard starting to regain her normal stance.

“Just…just…just stay where you are and be quiet, Miss,” Billy said firmly in a tone that brooked no arguments.

Glancing over to Emma, he could see her staring back at him in astonishment and terror. Closing his eyes, Billy banged his fist down on the bench-top with frustration and anger.

“Now, explain Admiral,” Billy turned his attention back to the three blue uniformed Fleet Officers as the Landing Troopers took stations covering the door and windows.

“Sir,” Karap Sownus stepped forwards, “my apologies, but we had no choice but to interrupt you,” Sownus began, “we have to get you away from this planet quickly.”

“What’s happened?” Billy asked anxiously, knowing that the solid, reliable and level-headed Karap Sownus did not press the panic button without very good reason.

“Sir,” Lokkrien intervened, “we believe that the Bardomil have activated a weapon in close proximity to your Sun and that a massive solar flare has been released that will destroy this planet.”

“Marrhus, are you quite sure?” Billy replied not quite able to believe what he was hearing.

“Yes, unfortunately we are, sir,” the young Intelligence Technician, Marilla Thapes, entered the conversation, “we had suspicions that such a weapon had been created, but it was only within the last hour that we have had positive confirmation when the weapon was activated.”

“And, this thing will destroy the entire planet?” the hard-headed part of his mind that was Teg Portan came crashing to the fore.

“Yes, sir,” Marilla Thapes replied, “we estimate in less than two hours the super-charged and super-heated plasma will enter the Terran atmosphere.”

“Okay, how do we stop it?” Billy asked starting to grasp the enormity of the situation.

“The simple answer is that we can’t, sir. I’m sorry,” Lokkrien replied.

“No, Admiral, my family and everything that I know and love is on this planet; there has to be a way,” Billy said his jaw set firm with determination.

“We can evacuate you and your family, sir,” the ever-realistic Lokkrien said.

“Unacceptable!” Billy Caudwell barked again, “I will not abandon this planet with everyone on it and skulk away like a coward!”

“Sir,” Lokkrien countered, “we cannot afford to lose you, I’m sorry, sir, but we cannot save this planet.”

“No, I will not hear of it,” Billy replied, “we have the ability to shield and protect New Thexxia; we can do it here!” Billy said adamantly rising from his stool and stabbing his forefinger onto the bench top.

“The planetary defences around New Thexxia were built by the Garmaurians along with the facility; it would take us weeks to set up a similar defence system on this planet and we have less than two hours,” Lokkrien tried to reason with the distraught Billy, “I’m sorry, sir, it can’t be done.”

“What about shielding?” Billy grasped at straws, “bring in the big Star-Destroyers and throw a shield over the planet.”

“Sir,” Marilla Thapes answered, “the Engineers Corps calculated that the suspected test firing of the weapon in the Artreaus system produced an energy release in the region of one hundred million billion of your Hiroshima-type atomic weapons.”

“The Star-Destroyers themselves would be very lucky to survive that kind of blast,” Lokkrien added.

“But, they might survive?” Billy grasped at another straw lifting a pencil from the bench top.

“Sir,” Lokkrien insisted “you have to be realistic about this…”

“No, Admiral, we have to explore and exhaust every possibility!” Billy snapped in reply, “and that’s an order!” he added snapping the pencil in his frustration.

“Yes, sir!” Lokkrien snapped to attention, as Billy caught sight of the snapped pencil in his hand.

For a moment Marilla Thapes stared at the pencil point in Billy’s hand and a strange idea sparked in her head.

“And, what do we do about these civilians, sir?” Sownus asked quietly drawing Billy out of his thoughts.

“We take them with us,” Billy ordered, “We can deal with the fall out if the planet survives.”

“Yes, sir,” Sownus responded, “I’ll teleport them to the Containment Cells and…”

“They are not prisoners, Karap,” Billy interrupted, “take them up to the Observation Deck and give them the VIP treatment.”

“Sir,” Sownus replied and signalled the waiting vessel in orbit above the planet.

“Marrhus,” Billy turned to Lokkrien, “lock this place up just in case, no one will come looking for another hour and a half and if we haven’t stopped this flare by then there probably won’t be anyone to look anyway,” Billy instructed, “Crisis Conference in the War Room.”

“Sir,” Sownus acknowledged and relayed the instructions.

Turning to Emma, Billy smiled weakly to the astonished schoolgirl who looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and horror. With a shrug of resignation he shook his head slowly and disappeared in a blinding flash of light.

As the students and their teacher waited for whatever fate the classmate they knew as Billy Caudwell had decided for them, the Sun at the heart of the solar system erupted. The huge outpouring of super-heated plasma spewed forth from the surface of the yellow dwarf star like huge fibrous burning tendrils that snaked and slithered their way towards the defenceless planet just over one hundred and fifty million kilometres away.

A distance it would span in less than two hours.

Chapter 24

Planet Earth

For John Caudwell, the high-pressure spray of the shower smashed onto his exhausted body like the Niagara Falls. The cascade of cool refreshing water seethed and flowed remorselessly over every square inch of skin; washing away the stresses, aches and weariness of the last twenty-four hours that he had spent in his loft workshop. His body was aching, and even his short fair hair felt weary, but his head was still spinning from the elation of what he had just achieved.

The proto-type beam that he had initially thought to be a piece of pure science-fiction had actually worked. Up in his loft, there was a standard red concrete house brick with a gaping black-rimmed and scorched hole torn from the centre of it. Still too hot for the human hand to touch, John had abandoned the brick to cool down whilst he took a shower and tried to clear his head. He had developed what could be a weapon with potentially awesome power and destructive potential. And, in the wrong hands, that power could be used for evil and malicious purposes. John knew that he had to be careful with what he did with this mechanism. He knew that he had to think.

The obvious solution would have been not to have built the machine, but the scientist and engineer within John knew that if such a device could be built then he had to build it. Now, he had a prototype weapon on his hands, and a great deal of further work to do for the weapon to become functional anywhere outside his own loft. There were so many issues to resolve with the mechanism before anyone could even consider deploying it in the field.

The principle of the prototype was simple enough. John had designed an energy discharge device that took a small laser beam and caused the frequency of the light to rapidly fluctuate. A basic laser beam, at a steady frequency, was harmless, and even the most powerful lasers could cause no damage. However, John had installed a cheap and simple condenser behind the lens of the laser beam. With a few simple modifications, the condenser temporarily stored the laser energy and stimulated the particles of the beam to rapidly modulate their frequency through a cycle of narrow frequency ranges. This frequency modulation gave the beam, when it was eventually discharged, the pulsing effect that John had theorised. It was this pulsing effect that made the beam so destructive.