Time Commander (The First Admiral Series)

by Benning, William J.

  The officers around the War Table, almost as one, began to protest. The tenets of sound military logic dictated that you did not split your forces in the face of an overwhelmingly powerful enemy.

  “Sir, that’s suicide!” Marrhus Lokkrien stooped down, trying to read Billy.

  “Marrhus, they’re most likely going to lose all their Eagles anyway, so let’s make best use of them.”

  “Gentlemen! To order, please!” Lokkrien said.

  “Sir, it’s madness to separate Third Fleet from its Eagles! You cannot split a command in front of a horde like that!?” A Third Admiral looked to his peers for support.

  “Take the fight to them, Gentlemen. The best form of defence is attack.” Billy outlined the situation. “If Third Fleet’s Eagles are raising blue murder amongst the formation of large ships, the Ganthoran is going to have to commit large numbers of his own fighters to protect his Carriers. That keeps the Ganthorans away from the vulnerable Fleet Carriers.”

  “Now, we’re getting somewhere.” Admiral Parbe’an smiled wolfishly.

  Like most Skaylars, Admiral Parbe’an relished a good fight. To Billy’s mind, this would indeed be a good fight, and it would, most likely, be a costly one. Admiral Parbe’an had more than enough fighting spirit and good grounded military experience to make the best possible use of his limited Eagle resources.

  “But, sir,” the Third Admiral said, “what if the Ganthorans just ignore our Eagles and attack the main body of the Third Fleet anyway?”

  “Well, Admiral, if your Fleet Carriers were surrounded by hostile fighters, what would your priority be?” Billy momentarily paused to let his statement sink in.

  “If the Ganthoran does attack the main body of Third Fleet whilst he’s trying to fend off our Eagles, he will have split his own force.” Billy smiled and folded his arms across his chest confidently. “We then bring in First Fleet, drive a wedge between the two halves of the Ganthoran Fleet, and crush them at our leisure.”

  It was a very high risk strategy, and Billy Caudwell, plus a few of the more experienced staff officers, knew it. The timing would have to be in the Alliance’s favour. Parbe’an would have to hold off the Ganthorans until First Fleet could get there.

  “Does that mean First Fleet will be coming to our support?” Admiral Parbe’an asked pointedly.

  “Yes it does, Admiral,” Billy Caudwell said, “and one small favour?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Try not to kill them all before we get there...First Fleet needs some target practice too.” Billy smiled, drawing a relieved laugh from the staff officers present.

  “Well then, sir, you’d better make best speed to get here.”

  The timing of this really would be of utmost importance and Billy wondered if he really could pull something like this off.

  Chapter 3: The Caudwell Home, Planet Earth

  Meanwhile, back on Earth, Billy’s mother, Elizabeth Caudwell read the letter for the dozenth time. It had been over an hour since she had returned to an empty home and picked up the large, neatly-addressed brown envelope with the foreign stamps in the top right hand corner. The stamps had borne the legend of the U.S. Post Office with the postal mark of New York City. Now, here it was in front of her, in black and white, an all-expenses-paid invitation to visit New York City and to discuss the possible publication of her new book. An invitation signed by the President of the publishing house himself; a signature she couldn’t quite make out, but the typescript beneath it read, Bertram Millinghouse the Third, President.

  Well, it looks like you’ve really arrived now Elizabeth, she considered, reading the text of the letter once more, part of her not quite believing that it was real, but the invitation to travel to New York City was very, very real indeed. The letter with the brash, multi-coloured letterhead that announced that it was from Millinghouse Publications did indeed invite her to a meeting with the Vice-President of Fiction; a Mister Lindstrom, seven days from the date of the letter. Looking at her watch, Elizabeth realised that the letter had taken three days to arrive. She had four days to make up her mind and get to New York.

  The decision to go was purely academic, and her publisher had said that it might be a good idea for her to do some book signings in the United States. Yes, but she wasn’t going to sign books, she reminded herself. Her plans in America had nothing to do with signing books. She suspected that her publisher wouldn’t be too happy about her speaking to a rival publisher, considering the investment he had made in her. No, she corrected herself, once she gathered her bearings, Elizabeth knew what to do: she would go to New York, but politely and firmly tell Millinghouse Publications that she was not looking for a new publisher. She would go to New York, see all the sights she had always dreamed of seeing, visit the big department stores she had read about in the glossy magazines, and then come home again.

  Well, at least, that was what she told herself as she excitedly dashed upstairs and began to pack her case.

  Chapter 4: The Star Cruiser Aquarius

  “Come on, Flight- hurry them up!” Billy called agitatedly to the Flight Control Officer from the side of the War Table.

  It had been almost an hour since the Ganthorans had crossed the Tergalian frontier, and it would be another fifteen minutes until the complement of Eagles was recovered to allow First Fleet to proceed to Third Fleet’s location.

  “We’re recovering the Eagles as fast as we safely can, sir.”

  They really had been caught on the hop at First Fleet. With most of their Eagle fighters either out on Security Patrol or running dogfight drills, it was going to take precious minutes to bring all the Eagles back to their Landing Bays. Then, they would have to be fitted out for combat, their pilots briefed for the mission, and the two minute dash from exiting the Trionic Web to get to Parbe’an’s location.

  As he waited for the Fighter Controllers to retrieve their Eagles from the various duties they had been assigned, Billy Caudwell called up the specifications and schematics of the Ganthoran fighting ships on the three-dimensional War Table.

  The first schematic to appear was what the database referred to as a single-seater Axe-Blade Fighter. Viewed from below, it resembled two large double-headed battle axes set one above the other. When in operation, the axe-blades which were actually the major moving component of an electro-magnetic propulsion system, would spin in opposing directions on the horizontal axis to each other at tens of thousands of times per minute. This generated the distinctive high-pitched ringing sound that characterised the Axe-Blade Fighter.

  Above the spinning blades of the fighter, the pilot of the single-seater craft sat in a clear, bubble canopy. The seating arrangement for the pilot pivoted in all directions in a spidery frame structure that responded to the changes in direction and attitude of the Axe-Blade. It was light, fast, highly manoeuvrable, and had a good deal of endurance. It did, however, also have some significant weaknesses. Like the Alliance Eagle, it had no form of shielding to protect it from weapon fire.

  The weaponry aboard the Axe-Blade fighter was quite advanced in comparison to the pulsar-bolt technology of the Universal Alliance. Having mastered the concept of the electro-magnetic field, the Ganthorans used this knowledge to create weapons for their military forces. The Ganthorans had discovered that electro-magnetic fields were very good at pushing against structures. This, however, was not a great deal of use when looking to develop a weapon. A weapon needed to inflict damage, not push it away. So, the Ganthorans had also experimented with sonic waves. The end result was, what some species who were able to hear sounds in the human ultra-sonic frequencies, called the “Screaming Death”.

  Using a combination of high-frequency sound to destabilise the structure of an enemy vessel, an electro-magnetic pulse would aid its delivery and also give the additional force on impact. It was a highly effective combination, but suffered from the weakness of being difficult to focus.

  On the Axe-Blade, three red teardrop-like structures were set on the metal co
llar at the base of the bubble canopy. These were the pods which fired the bursts of the sonic/electro-magnetic “Screaming Death”. When the three weapons were ready to fire, the collar would deploy the tear-drop structures on curved metallic arms. Each metallic arm made up one-third of the collar. The metallic arms were necessary for the firing of the weapon. The inability to properly control the focus of the Screaming Death meant that the tear-drop shaped pods had to be held away from the main body of the Axe-Blade.

  Looking at the Axe-Blade schematic, Billy Caudwell could see that the Alliance Eagle fighters would have no difficulty in a one-on-one dogfight with the Ganthoran single-seater. They would, however, have a good deal of difficulty dealing with the sheer weight of numbers of these small speedy fighters. The vulnerable Eagle, with no Force Shielding, in the snarling, scratching maul of a dogfight, no matter how good the pilot, could still find itself in the gun-sights of an Axe-Blade.

  Moving on to the next schematic, Billy focussed his attention on the three-dimensional image of the Ganthoran Destroyer. With a crew of forty, the Ganthoran Destroyer was more of a gunship or weapons platform. Once again, the Ganthoran Destroyer, like all Ganthoran warships, was driven by a huge electro-magnetic field generator. Looking at the large, slowly-spinning three-dimensional image, it reminded Billy Caudwell of a large shark with an open mouth.

  The large cylindrical core of the vessel contained three huge circular fans, which like the blades on the Axe-Blade fighter, spun at remarkable speeds. That the vessel did not shake itself apart was a source of astonishment for the Alliance Fleet Engineers. The electro-magnetic fields not only generated the movement of the vessel, but the carefully calculated spinning speeds counteracted the vibrations from the other fans. Yet, for all of their expertise in electro-magnetic technology, the Ganthorans had still not managed to develop any shielding for their warships.

  Down the spine of the Ganthoran Destroyer were three oval, blister-like structures. These were the Operations’ Bays of the Destroyer, set on top of the massive engine. Like the Axe-Blade, the red tear-drop weapon pods were deployed on extending arms to prevent any potential misfires wiping out the host vessel.

  Billy Caudwell then flipped the switch again. The three-dimensional schematic of the Ganthoran Destroyer was replaced by a much larger vessel; the Ganthoran Cruiser. Similar in design to the Ganthoran Destroyer, the Cruiser was built around a huge electro-magnetic engine. Once again the front view of the Cruiser reminded Billy Caudwell of the open mouth of a shark. The cylindrical core of the Ganthoran Cruiser carried six large rapidly-spinning fans that generated the electro-magnetic fields that propelled the warship. With a crew of over four hundred, the Ganthoran Cruiser carried twenty blister-like structures for the operation of the warship. Arranged in a regular pattern of three diagonals around the large cylindrical hull, the blisters carried the controls for all the systems aboard the Cruiser.

  Where the Ganthoran Destroyer carried three large red tear-drop weapons pods, the Cruiser carried nine. Once again, no form of shielding was present on the Ganthoran Cruiser. The tear drop pods were, like on the Destroyer, arranged in threes, at different points along the hull. The extending arms that carried the tear drop weapons pods were of a different length, to allow the tear drop pods a clear field of fire.

  Having looked at the Ganthoran Cruiser, Billy Caudwell flipped the switch once more and watched the schematic of the Ganthoran “Six Cigar” Carrier materialise in the image above the War Table. The “Six Cigar” Carrier derived its name from the distinctive tubular landing and recovery bays that surrounded the main engine compartment of the vessel. As with the other Ganthoran warships, the primary structure was the cylindrical electro-magnetic engine in the large cylindrical central structure. Once again, from a front view, it had the look of a shark or large whale with an open mouth.

  The “Cigar Tube” landing bays were attached to the Carrier with a scaffolding-like arrangement of narrow tubes that conveyed the power and host of other systems required to keep the Axe-Blade fighters in operational readiness. Like the web of a huge spider, the conduit tubing clung to the side of the huge engine compartment, and sprouted boldly outwards to the landing bays. To the untrained eye, the web of metal looked like a messy jumble of tubes, pipes and conduits. However, the Ganthoran engineers and warship designers had arranged the systems in such a way that the most important systems were shielded by the conduits for minor systems. Crew deployment, power, and the all-important environmental management systems stood at the heart of the jumble of metalwork.

  With a crew of over twelve thousand, the “Six Cigar” carrier boasted a complement of six hundred and fifty Axe-Blade fighters in every cigar-tube landing bay. This gave the Ganthoran Carrier a total capacity of almost four thousand Axe-Blades. The entire Ganthoran Frontier Fleet had a full complement of almost eighty-thousand single-seat fighters pitted against over four thousand Alliance Eagles.

  “Sir,” the voice of the Senior Weapons and Tactical Officer broke into his thoughts, “Third Fleet have launched their Eagles.”

  “Thank you, WATO,” Billy Caudwell said.

  In an instant, the three-dimensional image of the Ganthoran “Six Cigar” Carrier was replaced by a scaled-down representation of the battlefield.

  On the War Table image, Billy could see the two adversaries on their appointed positions. To the left of the image, the Ganthoran arrow-head formation was moving from left to right approaching the Alliance position. From the side view, Billy could see that the Ganthorans had layered their defences around the Carriers. The Carriers were lodged securely in the centre of the formation surrounded by Cruisers, which were in turn surrounded by Destroyers.

  That’ll be a tough nut to crack, Billy considered, as he swiftly turned his attention to the right-hand side of the image. The Alliance Third Fleet was in its standard defensive posture.

  The two immobilised Fleet Carriers were in the centre of the formation. Usually, the Star-Destroyer flagship would be at the centre, however, today, the Fleet Carriers were in desperate need of protection. Holding a box formation around the side of the Fleet Carriers were the four weakened Star Cruisers. The Fleet Carriers were unable to move, but their huge Force Shield generators would provide more than enough capacity to protect the vulnerable Star Cruisers. The Star Cruisers with limited Force Shielding were still highly mobile and still had fully-functioning Pulsar-Cannon Turrets. In the box formation, the Star Cruisers could produce over-lapping fields of fire to protect each other and the Fleet Carriers.

  The remaining Star Cruisers were forming another box formation around the two Fleet Carriers and the four vulnerable Cruisers. Eight of the remaining ten Star Cruisers set up the box formation facing the enemy, whilst the remaining two flanked the Star-Destroyer which sat above the rest of the vessels. Admiral Parbe’an knew that the Force Shielding of the Star Destroyer was the most powerful in his Fleet. If his smaller vessels became too vulnerable, the flagship could extend its shielding to protect them. However, if it came to a real crisis in the battle, Parbe’an could unleash the awesome power of the Trionic Cannon with a clear field of fire.

  On the three-dimensional image, Billy could see the tiny moving specks that were the Eagles of Third Fleet, shielded behind the larger vessels forming into their squadrons and groups for the attack on the Ganthorans. With another deft flick of the control, Billy magnified the area where the Eagles were gathering. For a few moments, he observed how the Eagle fighters flew in elliptical patterns away from their base ships as the newly launched pilots joined up with their comrades behind their leaders.

  Flicking the switch again, Billy changed the perspective to that of the Ganthoran Fleet. They were advancing in good order; a sign of well-disciplined troops. Looking at the Ganthoran arrow-head formation from above, Billy noted that the defensive screen was evenly distributed around the “Six-Cigar” Carriers. Scrutinizing the image closely, Billy could see, at least, one third of the Ganthorans’ fighting strength was deployed
behind their Carriers. Had he been the Ganthoran General, there would have been a small defensive screen behind the Carriers, with the rest of the vessels pushed up front to face the enemy. That was going to be a nominal advantage for Parbe’an’s Eagles.

  With significant combat power being wasted at the rear of the Carriers, the Eagle fighters would have less opposition to force their way through to reach their objectives of the “Six Cigar” Carriers. The Ganthorans were disciplined all right, Billy considered, but perhaps they were just a little too disciplined. Slavishly sticking to a uniform defensive formation like this arrow-head was indicative of subordinates who did not have much leeway to diverge from the Commanding Officers plan.

  “Compliments to Admiral Parbe’an, and ask him to note the deployment at the rear of the Ganthoran formation,” Billy instructed the Senior WATO.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, they’re a little bit too neat at the back.” The calm and professional voice of Marrhus Lokkrien broke Billy Caudwell’s concentration for a moment. “Very nice for fly-past reviews, but rather wasteful in combat.”

  “Yes, let’s hope that they’re as inflexible when the shooting starts,” Billy continued to study the image.

  Behind the line of larger Alliance vessels, Billy could see three formations of Eagles beginning to develop for their initial attack. Once again, Billy found himself in agreement with Parbe’an’s tactics. To launch one huge strike would simply offer up a huge number of targets to the Ganthoran gunners. Three attacks would divide their attention and their defensive gun-fire.

  “Response from Third Fleet, sir. Admiral Parbe’an says that’s more to kill and fewer to shoot back,” the WATO said.

  “You know, sir,” Lokkrien said, “I really do feel a little bit sorry for those Ganthorans.”