Once out of view of the Security Detail’s prying scanners, Signals Captain Thripval Branthus smiled to himself and carried on with the remainder of his duties.
Too easy, Thripval thought to himself.
Too easy.
Chapter 28: Chronos, A Moon Of Ganthus
Billy Caudwell dressed in his Anglo-Zulu War uniform as he hunched, head-down, behind the forward windshield of the Fleet Infantry Hover Bike. Beneath the large circular anti-gravity plate of the vehicle, the crisp and pristine blue-white sand of Chronos slipped by for kilometre after monotonous kilometre. Through the emptiness of the desert of Chronos, the Hover Bike sped carrying First Admiral William Caudwell towards whatever fate awaited him.
For two days he had been alone in the depths of the desert of Chronos, undertaking what the Ganthorans had called The Contemplation. He had refined his plans for the battle he would have to fight in the Time Warrior Arena. For two days, he had honed and practiced his skills with the Earth weapons that were a century out of date, according to the Earth calendar. The heavy pistol sat in the holster at his right hip, whilst the antiquated replica rifle was down amongst the bundles of equipment that he had brought for The Contemplation. This was the morning of the third day. In a few minutes, he would be presenting himself at the Time Warrior Arena to undertake the Ritual that would, hopefully, lead to him claiming the Crystal Throne of Ganthus, and averting a long and costly war.
As the Hover Bike sped over the flat, featureless desert, Billy Caudwell saw what looked like a small birthday cake emerging from the blue-white shimmering horizon. This was the Time Warrior Arena; the brilliant white and pink confection of a building that grew increasingly larger against the horizon. Slowing the Hover Bike down, Billy was able to see that the building was similar in architectural design to the great Coliseum in Rome. However, this brilliant white and pink building dwarfed the Roman amphitheatre by a factor of at least one thousand. The Time Warrior Arena, unlike the legendary Roman counterpart, was pristinely clean. It sparkled and shone almost painfully in the glaring light of the twin suns that seared and baked the surfaces of both Chronos and Ganthus.
Stopping for a moment, Billy Caudwell marvelled at the magnificent circular building that the Garmaurians had placed here for the entertainment of their garrison soldiers almost two thousand years before. Like a huge, circular, birthday cake that had been covered in icing sugar, the building was built in tiers with ten white plain wall layers set between twelve layers of pink columned arcades. Whereas, the Coliseum was open to the elements, the Time Warrior Arena was windowed and covered to protect the spectators from the harsh heat of the Chronos days.
To Billy Caudwell, it was the classic Garmaurian design that he had seen scattered over vast swathes of the galaxies he had visited since inheriting his mission from Tega Samarasa. When the Garmaurians had built large scale public monuments, they had gone into epic scale, and this Time Warrior Arena was no exception. Judging from the size of the building, Billy estimated that, like the Great Amphitheatre on New Thexxia, this monster could accommodate over half a million people in its rows and tiers of seating.
Anyone who was anyone in the Ganthoran Empire would be crammed into the seats of this Arena. The rest of the Empire would most likely be glued to the Vide-Broadcast monitors in their homes.
Well, those that could afford them would. Just like the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second, back on Earth, families would be crowded round the Vide-Broadcast monitors to witness the fate of Billy Caudwell and the fate of the Ganthoran Empire.
In many cities throughout the Empire, huge Vide-Broadcast monitors had been installed in large, open spaces to allow the less well-off members of society to watch this momentous event. All told, there were likely to be around one hundred billion people watching what happened to Billy Caudwell. Hovering in a wide sweep around the pink and white building, Billy was flagged down by an Imperial Guard Officer with a squad of twelve Guardsmen with him. With his left hand, the Officer indicated that Billy should enter the building beneath a broad arch that was patrolled by several dozen more Imperial Guards. With a nod, Billy slowly inched the Hover Bike into the cool darkness of the building beneath the arch, and drew to a halt in front of Grand Adjudicator Bellor and a further twenty Guards.
“First Admiral Caudwell.” Bellor’s voice echoed in the high-ceilinged, gloomy, empty cavern beneath the Arena.
Despite the white and pink pristine façade outside, the cavern was a dark and dreary, seemingly created from a dark brown stone, construction that was still spotlessly clean. Beneath his black shiny boots, Billy could feel the blue-white sands yielding softly and silently beneath his weight.
“Grand Adjudicator.” Billy nodded politely, removing the Fleet Infantry helmet and climbing down from the Hover Bike.
“You are welcome to this place.” Bellor bowed in response to Billy’s greeting. “You have completed The Contemplation, and are willing to undergo the Time Warrior Ritual?”
“I am, Grand Adjudicator.”
“Then, bring your weapons and follow me,” Bellor indicated with a deft flourish down what appeared to be a dark and low-ceilinged corridor.
Lifting the Martini-Henry rifle from the well of the Hover Bike’s anti-gravity plate, Billy slipped the sling over his head and shoulders. The rifle fell neatly into position on his back; running diagonally from his left shoulder to his right hip. From the well of the Hover Bike, he also lifted the scabbarded sabre and slipped the weapon neatly into the leather sling on his waist belt. Then, he crammed the pith-helmet onto his head, and set the leather chinstrap in place. With the pistol in his holster, and ten rounds of spare ammunition, his watch in his pocket, and a knife in his boot top, Billy Caudwell was ready for anything that stood in his way. Straightening the rifle on his back, he patted the twenty rounds of spare ammunition in his right tunic pocket.
Time to get this show on the road, he thought to himself and set off down the dark passageway a few steps behind Bellor. Behind him, Billy could hear the footfalls and shallow breathing of the Imperial Guards. No words were exchanged, and no conversation was entered into as Billy walked patiently behind the Grand Adjudicator. The flat slope of the passageway quickly turned into a gentle incline.
After about one hundred metres, the passageway turned sharply left, and continued its shallow incline. After a further hundred metres, the calf muscles on Billy’s lower legs were starting to feel the strain. He had become so accustomed to the Personal Environment Suit dealing with such aches and strains that he had almost forgotten just how terminally unfit he was. Still, he carried on, following the looming shape of Grand Adjudicator Bellor along the passageway, still in complete silence.
Starting to feel nervous, Billy noticed that his breathing was starting to labour and become heavier. He felt anxious as he walked along the passageway to the Arena floor, but he wasn’t afraid. He had expected the butterflies of anxiety to fill his stomach as the moment of reckoning approached, and prayed that he would not vomit when it happened. Yet, here he was, stepping forwards quite calmly, ready to face the Time Warrior Ritual.
Stopping a few paces behind Bellor, Billy quickly scanned the situation, and found that he was behind a large, white door.
“Are you ready, First Admiral?” Bellor asked patiently.
“Yes, Grand Adjudicator.”
“Very well,” Bellor said, “we will both step out into the Arena, and I will take you to the spot where the Vide-Orb will descend. Once the Vide-Orb has surrounded you, the Time Warrior programme will engage, and the Ritual will have begun. Do you understand me, First Admiral?”
“Yes, I understand, Grand Adjudicator.”
“Good fortune be with you, First Admiral Caudwell.” Bellor pushed a section of the rising white door open.
The first impression Billy Caudwell had of the Time Warrior Arena was of a great wall of sound that swept in from the bottom of the door. Like the faint buzzing hum of a million bees, more than five hundred-tho
usand Ganthorans waited expectantly for the alien who might become their next Emperor. The next sensation was of the heat of the Arena. Having just walked through the cool passageway to the Arena Floor, Billy Caudwell was about to enter the baking furnace of the Arena itself. With the door having risen above head height, Bellor stepped forwards into the Arena; followed by Billy, who was greeted with a roar that almost deafened him. Over half a million people had stood up and cheered at the same moment. To Billy, it was like being hit with an avalanche of noise, and for a moment it briefly disorientated him.
Then, the bright light of the twin suns struck Billy as he walked forwards onto the soft blue-white sand of the Arena floor. With the great roaring welcome still ringing in his ears, Billy squinted and shaded his eyes with his right hand to adjust to the bright sunlight. Still, the Ganthoran crowd continued their resounding ovation for the alien. But, after taking about a dozen steps, Billy was able to look upwards at the crowd. Row upon row, and tier upon tier of seats stretched one hundred metres upwards.
The circular Time Warrior Arena must have been around spanned fifteen kilometres in diameter. It was even larger than the Great Auditorium on New Thexxia. Still squinting and shading his eyes, Billy stepped forward, now able to discern shapes and patterns in the crowd. The Ganthorans, dressed in every colour of the rainbow, were waving, cheering, and smiling.
With a few more steps, Bellor halted.
Billy also halted, and turned slowly on the spot to witness the Ganthoran crowd in the full flow of its enthusiasm. Taking his time to look in every direction, Billy could see the smiling and cheering faces. Whether they wished him good fortune, or they were just preparing themselves to watch him being slaughtered, he really couldn’t quite guess. Looking upwards to the ceiling, Billy could see the massive white beams that held the covering in place.
Gazing down, once again, Billy saw Bellor bowing to him. Responding in kind, Billy felt that he wanted to say something, but realised that in this great cauldron of sound, his words would barely travel to his own ears, let alone Bellor’s. With Bellor walking away, Billy unslung the rifle from across his back. The Vide-Orb would descend in a few seconds, and the programme would initiate. Billy felt that he wanted to be prepared if the programme was going to drop him into a crowd of angry Zulus.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, the thought ran through his mind.
Carefully, Billy pushed the lever next to the trigger guard of the rifle forwards, which dropped the mechanism and allowed him to slot one of the incredibly soft metal cartridges into the chamber.
With no audible click in the great cacophony of cheering and shouting, Billy checked that the breech had indeed snapped shut around the cartridge.
Then, taking an at-the-ready stance, which he hoped would prepare him for any eventuality, Billy Caudwell nervously gripped the rifle in his hands and waited. It took only a few more seconds for the huge holographic projectors at the side of the Arena to activate and generate the huge, white, egg-shaped Vide-Orb above his head.
As the crowd cheered and applauded, Billy stood anxiously, rifle in hand, waiting for the Vide-Orb to descend.
Well, Billy, you don’t half get yourself into some pickles, he thought.
Suddenly, the white Orb descended.
Obliterating all sights and sounds.
Chapter 29: The Star Cruiser Aries
Senior Intelligence Officer Karap Sownus was furious.
He was angry with the agents that he had sent to investigate the murder of Ambassador Sarkor Nicx. Mostly, he was angry with himself. The Time Warrior Ritual had begun less than an hour before Sownus had made the dreadful discovery that the programming for the Challenge had been tampered with. Sownus was beside himself with rage at his own lack of foresight. An attempt on the life of First Admiral Caudwell, which had claimed the life of Ambassador Sarkor Nicx, should have alerted Sownus to the idea that someone might try to tamper with the Time Warrior programming. However, it had not been a fault with Sownus’ precautionary measures that had led to the failure of the discovery, but merely a failure of his subordinates to communicate their findings to each other in time.
Each morning, Karap Sownus summoned his Investigating Officers to the daily conference aboard the Star Cruiser Aries to monitor the progress of the investigation into Ambassador Nicx’s death. There were several ongoing strands to the investigation that reached beyond trying to identify the person or persons who had ordered, planned and executed the plot that had killed Sarkor Nicx. With the real target of the assassination plot being First Admiral Caudwell, there was still the matter of the continuing threat to his life to be considered. The two issues were inextricably linked, and Sownus considered that the security issue was also a legitimate element for inclusion in the Nicx investigation.
On the morning of the Ritual itself, Sownus had been confident that First Admiral Caudwell was safe from any Ganthoran attempt to kill him. The matter of thousands of computer-generated Zulu warriors was an entirely different matter, over which Sownus had no control. The investigation element into Nicx’s death had made some significant progress. The captured Junior Intelligence Officer from Kallet’s Frontier Fleet had been interrogated several more times, and the Memory Recordings drawn directly from his brain had thrown up the names and faces of several other conspirators. All of these other people had links with Frontier General Avavid Kallet, which indicated that he was the one who had ordered Billy Caudwell to be killed. Most of the new suspects were directly linked to Kallet’s Intelligence Service. However, with some of the conspirators, the connection was slightly more tenuous. Hence, they were that much more difficult to pin down and identify. One such conspirator had been the cousin of Kallet’s Deputy Chief of Intelligence, and in a culture where who you were related to often made, or broke, your career, Sownus had ordered that all family connections be explored with whomever became of interest to the investigators.
This order effectively multiplied the workload of the investigators by a factor of over one hundred. Tracing familial patterns, even through the extensive Ganthoran databases, was an arduous and time consuming undertaking. The investigation team leaders had been forced to draft in hundreds of Technicians to plough through the records to form the links that would tie one individual of interest to the others. It was this slow and methodical work which had not only impeded the investigation, but had provided the major breakthrough.
That the investigators and the research technicians were invading and violating the privacy and security of the official Ganthoran government records was of no real concern to Karap Sownus.
The computer technology of the Alliance was centuries ahead of the Ganthorans, and any incursion would most likely never be discovered.
So, regardless, the Technicians rapidly found themselves presiding over a backlog of enquiries from the other investigation teams. They also found that collating and integrating their information with other parts of the investigation took an inordinately long time. Even with the most advanced and complex computers available, running the hundreds of thousands of familial links to the thousands of suspects in the investigation was still taking too much time for Sownus’ liking. And, when a connection was eventually made between two suspected individuals, more time and resources had to be expended in discovering if the link was of any significance. Investigators spent many hours chasing down leads and connections that proved to be dead ends. However, with every dead end closed down, it was bringing the investigators one step closer to the link that would break the conspiracy wide open.
The other elements of the investigation were also making progress. The investigators were confident that they had identified all of the members of General Kallet’s Intelligence Team in Ganthus City, all of whom were currently under surveillance by Alliance agents. They were also fairly confident that they had identified the members of the Intelligence Teams for the other Frontier Generals, along with a large number of agents from the Ganthoran Internal Security Services and Secre
t Police. Bribes, blackmail and intimidation had been used to tap into the criminal underworld network of informers and vendors of valuable information. The Ganthoran government computer and communication networks were also being monitored, especially messages to and from the Frontier Fleets. The Imperial Guard networks were also monitored, but owing to a lack of resources, there was still a delay in collating and assimilating the information. The Frontier Fleets were of far greater significance and importance to the investigation than the Imperial Guard.
The investigators had even managed to get hold of a copy of the Time Warrior Ritual programme, and had assigned technicians to pore over the hundreds of billions of “0”’s and “1”’s that made up the final coding. For the technicians, it was like looking for a defective needle amongst billions of needles. The Technicians, unaware of what the original programme coding entailed, would have very few clues as to what was new and rogue coding in the final binary programme. It was long, tedious, and frustrating work for them. Having no idea of the historical context of the battle scenario, they were almost completely in the dark. However, after making quick and positive strides outlining the broad parameters of the Time Warrior scenario, they were starting to get bogged down in the tiny details, and after the initial successes of the first day, progress was now painfully slow.
During the meeting that morning, it had been a remark by the officer leading the Binary Code breakers that had set the wheels in motion to breaking the conspiracy. With the Time Warrior Ritual only three hours away, the officer was expressing her frustration at how slowly the work was going. During her rant, she requested to have access to some Binary Code Readers from a planet several thousand light years away from Ganthus to crack the elements that still remained.
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