First Admiral 02 The Burning Sun by William J. Benning Read Free Book Online Page B

silence, “I’ll review it, and send you any relevant Intelligence details,” he added almost as an after-thought.
    “Yes, sir, anything you can tell us would be much appreciated,” Sownus replied keeping up the professional pretence of the situation, and waddled slowly back to the door.
    “Officer Sownus?” Lokkrien said with greater composure as the Thexxian reached the door.
    “Sir?” the Thexxian responded and half-turned.
    “Thank you,” Lokkrien said with genuine sincerity.
    “Good night, sir,” Sownus replied, acknowledging that unspoken understanding that now existed between the two senior Officers.
    Both Sownus and Lokkrien would never speak of it, even in private, but a bond was being formed between the two of them. It was not quite friendship, but it was beyond the normal boundaries of duty and professional respect. Billy Caudwell would have called it common human decency. Lokkrien, the grieving husband and father, and Sownus, the orphan who had lost his mother and father at an early age, had found a degree of common ground.
    “Good night, Officer Sownus,” Lokkrien replied softly and operated the door mechanism.
    When Karap Sownus had passed through into the corridor beyond, the opaque force-shielding returned Lokkrien to his thoughts. The most urgent of which was that the Alliance had to subdue the Bardomil Empire within the next three years. Gryeth had two more years of schooling, and then a year in Officer Training. After that, he would be commissioned to the Imperial Fleet and quite possibly sent to fight against the Universal Alliance. The very thought of his eldest son facing the Alliance’s superior military technology and Billy Caudwell’s strategic genius made Lokkrien shudder. He now had to double and re-double his efforts to bring down the Empress before he was forced to make the choice between his son and his loyalty the Alliance.
    Activating the mechanism on the folio player, Marrhus Lokkrien re-played the images for the first of many dozens of times on that long night. He sat quietly, the tears streaming down his pale grey face, as he tried not to contemplate the horror of facing his own son in battle.
    Silently, he prayed that Billy Caudwell would defeat the Empire before the nightmare of that particular day dawned.

Chapter 7
     
    The Artreaus System
     
    Two hours after the ignition of the emitter weapon, the Bardomil Empress waited patiently on her throne for the final act of the celestial drama that had unfolded before her. Slowly, and gradually, the yellow image of the advancing super-heated plasma had crept across the field of view on the fourth monitor.
    For those two hours, the Bardomil Empress had sat quietly, eagerly anticipating the coming destruction and devastation. The tension and sense of dread and terror in the Battle Command Centre had, however, shown no discernible sign of decreasing. The faint murmur of communications traffic struggled to become distinct over the brutal hush of fear and intimidation. The crushing silence of the Battle Command Centre was broken only twice by the girlish shrieks of delight and dainty applause of the Empress as the super-heated plasma engulfed the second and fourth planets of the system. Both of these worlds were uninhabited, and now uninhabitable, but the Empress squealed like an overjoyed schoolgirl as the searing hot plasma scorched the already scarred and overheated surfaces of the two planets into a fiery oblivion.
    With the fourth planet still being seared by the tail end of the super-hearted plasma flow, the Empress sat back on her throne with an air of malicious expectation. The next planet to orbit into the path of the plasma stream was Collizon. The peaceful, life-bearing planet was spinning slowly around to that side of the yellow dwarf star, filling the Bardomil Empress with a feeling of morbid delight and excitement.
    It was all going exactly to plan, the Empress pondered as she watched the plasma stream edge closer to