The Ganthoran Gambit (The First Admiral Series) (5 page)

Turning the volume up higher, until it felt like the cries and screams of the Guards were bouncing from the walls of the small and compact Control Room, Kallet closed his eyes to better experience the anguished cries of the doomed Guards. As if listening to some hellish, depraved orchestra, Kallet began to gently conduct the screams and pleas of the dying.

The Junior Lieutenant, seated clumsily on the floor, covered his ears and rocked backward and forward, the tears streaming freely down his darkened green face. The contradiction couldn’t have been more stark and revealing. Kallet; lost in his world of joy and delight at the suffering of others, and the young Junior Lieutenant; lost in his own hellish, nightmare world of the pain and suffering that he had caused.

For Avavid Kallet, the mental torture of the Guards’ Officers didn’t last long enough before the physical effects of the gas started to take effect. At first, some of the older officers began to clutch at their throats, and loosen their uniform collars as the irritant effect of the gas caused their air passages to constrict. Kallet especially enjoyed the ones who tore at their throats with their bare hands as if, somehow, that would help them to take in fresh air. He especially enjoyed the range of harsh guttural choking and gasping sounds that the older officers started to make as their ravaged air passages began to close down. And, the maniacal Frontier General was especially looking forward to the latter stages of the gas; where their tongues would begin to protrude from their mouths. He had grown to hate these senior officers who had looked down upon him when he was just a young hopeful conscript.

The younger and fitter officers began to choke and gag as they pounded uselessly at their locked doors.

Well, at least they’ve got some spirit
, Kallet thought, watching a young Captain begin to hammer at the stubbornly locked door with a small bench-like chair.

The Captain coughed loudly and sharply in long hacking gasps as he expended his final energies trying to attract the attention of the Jailers, who were powerless to release him from his cloying, and choking, white-misted hell. Some improvised makeshift masks from strips of torn uniform soaked in water. But, to no effect, they were simply delaying the inevitable, if only by a few more seconds. For Kallet, it was simply more for his own personal entertainment and delectation. The more they struggled, the more Avavid Kallet enjoyed the futility of their efforts, and revelled in his own power and superiority to inflict suffering upon them.

In one of the other ranks’ Barracks, a Senior Sergeant had instinctively organised his comrades to try to block the gas vents. Once again, it was to no avail. There were simply too many vents and not enough Imperial Guards. And, once more, the resourceful and courageous Guards began to succumb to the effects of the gas. Kallet enjoyed the ever-increasing urgency in the orders being issued that rapidly deteriorated into screams and shrieks as any semblance of military order broke down and the animal instinct for sheer naked survival broke through. Some of them began to beg and plead at the Vide-Monitors; knowing that someone had to be watching their suffering, and hoping that someone would release them from the trap.

But, those who could spare their lives were standing terrified in the Control Room under the sway of a homicidal madman with a side-arm.

The brave Duty Officer lay dead on the floor of the Control Room, whilst his deputy sat crammed into a corner covering his ears and sobbing his heart out. The rest of the Control Room personnel stood and looked on in impotent horror and outrage. They knew and understood that the Frontier Fleets were hard and cruel as a necessity to defend the Empire, but this was simply cold-blooded murder. And, they stood in shock and horror as the whole sadistic episode unfolded.

After thirty seconds of the gas, many of the Guards were on the floor clutching their throats, retching and coughing as the cloying and dirty-white mist of Haggrion swirled and settled around them.

For those banging helplessly on their doors, their efforts were becoming feebler as the lack of oxygen to their brains began to disturb their motor co-ordination and weaken their muscles. Their pleas and screams became more insistent and desperate, but still, help did not come for them.

For General Kallet, the enjoyment of the mental torture had been replaced by the sheer ecstasy of their physical suffering. Kallet especially enjoyed the way their eyes began to bug outwards from the stricken Guards’ faces as they coughed and vomited their lives away in front of him. Image after image danced in front of Kallet’s eyes on the checkerboard of holographic Vide-Monitors, standing in dispassionate and mechanical testimony to the suffering and final moments of so many defenceless Imperial Guards. Their shrieks and screams filled the small Control Room, lancing bursts of sheer ecstatic pleasure into the brain of Frontier General Avavid Kallet.

Once more, Kallet’s favourite image of the dying Guards’ General cycled around on the checkerboard of holographic Vide-Monitors. But, to his dismay, the old soldier had already expired; his motionless body lay slumped against the wall next to the door of his quarters, his head tilted forward against his chest. For an instant, Kallet felt the burn of anger; he had wanted the old Guard General to suffer. And, for that instant, Kallet felt cheated. However, a moment later, the image cycled round to that of the Barrack room of other-ranks where they were crawling about, on hands and knees, in the swirling mist of Haggrion, trying to break down the solid metal wall in their frantic desperation.

Yes, this was indeed sweet revenge for Avavid Kallet. And, it also gave him a solution to the question of the Imperial Guards. If he could wipe out the Officer Corps of the Imperial Guard, then he could replace them with his own chosen representatives. The senior echelons of the Imperial Guard would be his to command and control. So, when it came time to dispose of the unknown Emperor, Frontier General Avavid Kallet would have control of his own Frontier Fleet and the Imperial Guard. He would be unstoppable when it came time for him to seize the Throne of Ganthus for himself. It really was the ideal solution to the problem according to Kallet’s twisted logic.

And, as he savoured the exquisite delights of the pain and suffering of others, Avavid Kallet smiled distantly and wickedly to himself. On the Vide-Monitors, the helpless Imperial Guards were going into the final stages of what was a highly unpleasant death. With oxygen deprivation staring to shut down their brains, a great many of the dying Guards were lying on the floor convulsing; their final spasms a source of wonderment and joy for Avavid Kallet.

With heels digging pointlessly into the floor, they arched their backs and twitched their limbs involuntarily in some grotesque parody of a final dance. And, after a few uncomfortable moments, the Imperial Guards gradually began to fall still and silent.

Angrily, Avavid Kallet stared at the holographic screens of the fallen Guards. Viciously stabbing at the control mechanism, he scanned rapidly through all of the image feeds on the hope of finding one last ounce of suffering to satisfy his sadistic cruelty. Finding none, an enraged Kallet turned to the weeping figure of the Junior Lieutenant sitting on the Control Room floor.

“Weakling!” The enraged Frontier General lashed out with a vicious kick to the ribs, before stalking out of the Control Room, followed by the gaggle of his sickened and terrified subordinates.

The Junior Lieutenant felt nothing of the savage kick. Within a few hours, there would be a nasty bruise. However, the young officer felt nothing except his own guilt, shame, and inadequacy.

Major Kadrimus had chosen to die rather than murder defenceless Ganthorans; even if they were Imperial Guards, whilst he had chosen the coward’s path and killed tens of thousands to save his own pathetic, miserable skin.

The moment Kallet had left the Control Room a Senior Sergeant had darted forward to the Duty Officers’ Control Console. Ignoring the weeping Junior Lieutenant, she had stabbed the button that disengaged the Discharge System, and set the extraction fans in the facility to maximum capacity. The handful of medical teams that were stationed in the Barracks were put in standby to sweep through the facility, at a moment’s notice, and rescue any survivors once the Environmental Control Scanners had indicated that the atmosphere was safe to breathe. It was a desperate long-shot, but the Senior Sergeant hoped and prayed that there might just be a handful of Guards who could survive.

And, she was determined that she would find them. Frontier General Avavid Kallet may have been a psychopathic murderer, but that didn’t mean that the rest of the Frontier Fleet was cut from the same cloth as that maniac. With her face dark green with the anger and outrage of the situation, she urged the rapidly-spinning and loudly-shrieking extractor fans to hurry up and clear the fatal gas from the facility.

Turning to the door through which Frontier General Avavid Kallet had just stalked through like a petulant child having been refused a new toy, she angrily mouthed several words of an obscene manner; which gave vent to her anger and impotent outrage.

The last word the Senior Sergeant uttered, silently, appeared to be: “Murderer”.

Back on the battlefield of the Time Warrior Ritual, Billy Caudwell stared with mixed relief and horror at the dead and badly injured bodies of hundreds, maybe thousands of Zulu warriors around his inner square. In his head, he knew that they were simply computer-generated reconstructions, but to Billy their cries of agony, along with their injuries, looked and sounded all too realistic. Perhaps it was because one of these computerised reconstructions could so easily have plunged a computer-reconstructed short stabbing spear into his body and ended his very real and very organic life.

Around him, the smoke of thousands of rifle shots still lingered in the late afternoon air. The acrid stench still bit at the back of his throat and stung his eyes. For a few moments, the roaring and snarling of cannon and rifle fire had ceased, and the battlefield had fallen into an eerie, almost oppressive, silence for a few brief seconds. That was the calm before the cries and pleas of the wounded had shattered the brutally artificial silence. The clanging and clashing of steel, and the screams and shrieks of men locked in battle for their lives were now just fading echoes on the battlefield, and in the memories of the survivors.

Beside him, Billy Caudwell could see the grim, powder-blackened faces of the red-coated soldiers. For many, their sweat cut deep channels through the grime and powder residue on their faces, giving them the appearance of streak-faced spectres. The whites of their eyes and teeth shone through the grim smears of their darkened faces. In front of them lay the bodies of hundreds of dead and wounded Zulus mixed with the dead and wounded red-coated soldiers and Native troops who had fallen in the hideous hand-to-hand scrimmage of the south wall.

They coughed and groaned softly as they gripped their weapons with white-knuckled fingers, through the grime of dirt, blood, and powder residue, unsure of what was to happen next. The survivors stared wild-eyed out at the carnage of the battlefield. Their wickedly sharp bayonet points, red with Zulu blood, were pointed outwards toward their enemies. Silently, they waited for the return of a dreaded foe that had come close to overwhelming them in blood, pain, and terror. No native troops had ever come close to breaking a British square, and these soldiers were brutally aware of just how close they had come to being massacred.

Despite the smoke pall over the battlefield, it was all too clear to the trained eye what had happened. The great slew of dead and injured Zulu bodies from the foot of the ridge down to the very edge of the British square gave testimony to the courage and determination of the Zulu warriors. All along the foot of the ridge, the bodies were fewer and scattered widely. However, the horror deepened the closer an observer came to the British square. The bodies of the dead and injured became more numerous and thicker on the ground, right up to the very edges of the British position.

On either side of the makeshift barricade, the bodies of Zulus and red coats were heaped up in piles in some places. However, worst of all, at the edges of the square, the bodies were piled deepest in an indiscriminate tangle of arms, legs, torsos, and heads. Bare black feet and legs mingled with blue-trousered and black leather-booted legs. Some of the bodies, although dead, still twitched, giving the appearance of some grotesque parody of life. A final dance of death with an enemy they had never met and had ultimately succeeded in killing.

Like the debris for a high tide after a storm, the bodies were thickest and deepest at the point where the British square had stood its ground and fought back hand-to-hand with discipline; the bayonet point and rifle bullet against the stabbing spear, shield, and war club. 

Beside him, Billy saw a young corporal in a torn red jacket turn and vomit on the ground behind the rear rank of soldiers, his helmet toppling to the ground as he retched what little food remained in his stomach. And, the young corporal was not alone; stomachs were being involuntarily emptied all along the British line. Silent prayers were being offered to a God that more than a few men had never really believed in or prayed to before. Some of the prayers were not quite so silent, but nevertheless, no less fervent in their gratitude to the Deity.

The sight of the vomiting corporal brought Billy back to reality and the urgency of the situation.

“Major Pulleine?” Billy called for the second-in-command, who had been in the very thick of the fighting, and had remarkably emerged with little more than a gash to his forehead.

“Sir!” Smeared with blood, the Major approached with an empty pistol in his right hand, and a blood-stained sabre, artlessly displayed, in his left.

The smoke of the battle had darkened his face like every other British soldier on that hallowed field, and he was streaked with sweat and blood. The bandage around his head looked like the torn-off sleeve of a white shirt, giving him the appearance more of an American Indian than a senior British officer.

“Clean the rifles, Major - issue more ammunition and get the wounded to the surgeons,” Billy said, “my Lord Chelmsford may yet have some more use for us…and for God’s sakes, give the lads something to drink, they’ve earned it!”

“Yes, sir,” the Major disappeared back into the lines of soldiers.

“Get them rifles cleaned, come on, hurry up, move yourselves, you ‘orrible lot!” came the barked order of an NCO from the face of the square behind Billy.

In the historical battle at Isandlwana, the Zulus had lost an estimated one thousand dead, and two thousand wounded. In front of his square, Billy Caudwell estimated that roughly two-thirds of the Zulus involved in the attack had fallen to the volleys and bayonets of his soldiers. The British had lost around seven hundred men, killed. Now, on this computer-generated Isandlwana, there had to be upwards of thirty thousand Zulu casualties out there on the field. At his feet was a dead Zulu, lying face down, who had been bayoneted by a soldier who had stood to Billy’s right. He lay on top of his shield with his war club a few centimetres from his outstretched left hand, a thin stream of blood running from his open mouth into the hard sun-baked ground.

“Dear God, that was close,” a shocked and stunned Major Pulleine said to Billy.

“Yes, rather too close, Major.” Billy noticed a sharp, stinging pain in his left upper arm.

Looking down at his arm, he saw the ten-centimetre tear in the upper sleeve of his dark blue tunic where the short stabbing spear had torn into his arm. The blood from his wound staining the blue uniform with a darker, almost black, colour.

“You’re hurt, sir,” a concerned Major Pulleine said, “I’ll get the surgeon to look at it.”

“NO!!” Billy shouted slightly too loudly for his own liking, halting the startled Pulleine in his tracks. “It’s just a scratch, Major, the surgeons have more pressing cases to deal with than me.”

Now, the rattle of metal ramrods in rifle barrels was the sound that drew Billy’s attention.

All along the British square, the soldiers were cleaning out the powder residue from their rifle barrels. The fear of their hectoring NCOs, and of another Zulu attack, drove them with quick and nimble fingers to clean out and dry the barrels of their weapons in record time.

But, Billy Caudwell was not destined to see how clean those rifle barrels became.

As he stood watching a red-coated corporal frantically thrusting the ramrod into his rifle barrel, the whole dreadful scene began to slowly melt in front of his eyes. The British soldiers, the dead and dying Zulu, the terrain, and even the sky began to melt.

Then, suddenly, his ears were assailed by the loudest cheer Billy had ever heard. From an invisible audience, Billy heard the roar of triumph and approval. The parameters set into the programming of the Time Warrior Ritual computers had been satisfied. First Admiral Billy Caudwell of the Universal Alliance had fought a battle in history that was lost, and he had triumphed. The Time Warrior Ritual was completed, and the Isandlwana programme had been terminated. He was now no longer in a computer-generated terrain of South Africa, but in the Time Warrior Arena. The greens and browns of South Africa were now replaced by the blue-white sands of the Arena and the pale-yellow sky of Chronos.

And, the cheering and foot stamping was deafening.

Stunned at the sudden change of environment, Billy stared at the huge tiers and banks of seated Ganthorans who cheered themselves hoarse and stamped their feet until their legs ached. It took him a few moments to understand that the computer programme had run its course. The crowd, having witnessed the Time Warrior Ritual completed by a brave and shrewd commander, now hailed their new Emperor. They had waited anxiously for almost twenty years for a worthy new Emperor, and now they cheered and shouted and stamped their relief. Slowly, Billy Caudwell turned to view the great sea of Ganthoran faces amidst the deafening roars and cheers and the stamping of their feet. RUMM-RUMM-RUMM! RUMM-RUMM-RUMM! RUMM-RUMM-RUMM! The Ganthorans stamped their jubilant tattoo of approval.

The pale-yellow sky seemed to smile down on the new Emperor of the Ganthorans, and for just one moment, Billy wanted to stand in the blue-white sand and enjoy the applause that his victory had earned him.

Taking a deep breath, a smiling Billy Caudwell stooped down to pick up the rifle, sabre and helmet he had lost during the battle. They had now become the only physical objects, apart from Billy Caudwell, his pistol, and uniform, to survive the termination of the Time Warrior Ritual programme. Still smiling, Billy straightened up and was about to replace the sabre into its metal scabbard, when he noticed the three figures, standing side by side, near the gateway to the colossal Arena. The central slim and elegant figure wore the robes of the Grand Adjudicator, the second figure wore a green Universal Alliance Fleet uniform, whilst the third; a large and stocky figure, wore the silver-grey colours of the Ganthoran Frontier Fleet.

Through the deafening noise of the cheering and stamping crowd, the three figures approached Billy. As they approached, it became clear that the figures were Grand Adjudicator Bellor, Karap Sownus and General Grobbeg. Their faces spoke of a seriousness that did not match Billy’s mood of delight.

“Your Majesty.” The Grand Adjudicator Bellor bowed deeply. “I congratulate you on your victory, but, the Empire is under great threat…”

“Sir, the Frontier Generals, except for General Grobbeg here, have revolted, and have taken control of Ganthus City,” Karap Sownus interrupted.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire
, Billy thought.