First Admiral 02 The Burning Sun Read Free Page B

decades younger than Claggit, and fresh faced for a Xanath. His hair, darker than Claggit’s, was neatly shorn to expose long pendulous ear lobes. Nervously, Bem set down a small cube on the floor behind the hovering table and activated it. After a few moments of grainy static, a three-dimensional image of a solar system cleared to a crystal sharpness. At the centre a large yellow dwarf star burned, surrounded by eight planets. The sixth of the eight planets was the most striking, with a spectacular ring system around it.
    “Your Brilliance has asked me to design a weapon that would eliminate all life-forms on the third planet in this solar system,” Claggit began, the image focussing closely on a blue and brown planet with white clouds, “this planet, here, I believe it is called Terra or Earth,” he paused for effect pointing to the large image.
    “I would humbly submit,” Claggit continued as the image pulled out to show the whole solar system again, “that we send the Lissian Emitter,” the image showed a silver object approaching the yellow dwarf on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth, “and bring it into a safe orbit around the star in direct opposition to the planet itself,” the image changed to an overhead shot of the spinning planets with the moving silver object being hidden from the Earth’s line of sight by the star.
    “Yes…go on?” the Empress said, her interest piqued again as she leaned forward in her throne.
    “At a time of Your Majesty’s choosing, the Emitter would send forth a highly concentrated pulse of Lissian radiation that would excite and destabilise the solar plasma creating a massive super-charged solar flare,” Claggit continued, with a graceful bow, as the image returned to a profile view of the system and a huge yellow mass shot forth from the surface of the Sun towards the Earth image.
    Rapidly, the yellow mass overwhelmed the first two planets in the system before slowing down. The image then cut back to the Earth close up as the yellow mass engulfed the blue planet.
    “The super-charged flare would take around two Terran hours to reach its target, but would effectively be unstoppable. All life on the third planet would be vapourised in exactly three minutes and fifteen seconds as the solar flare material, trapped by the Terran atmosphere and gravity, swept around the planet until the increasing heat finally burnt away the entire atmosphere,” Claggit intoned matter-of-factly at the simulated annihilation of a life-bearing planet, “The flare material would then continue to engulf the fourth, red planet, before running out of energy, leaving the Terran planet sterilised with no hope of life ever being re-established”, the image showed the planet Mars being swamped by the yellow mass before the image cut out.
    For a moment, the entire Throne Room fell into a hushed awe. Claggit and Bem eyed each other nervously as the Empress stood up and walked slowly towards them.
    “Master Claggit, we salute you,” the Empress smiled, approaching the opened silver sphere.
    “Thank you, Your Phenomenal-ness,” Claggit replied as both of the Xanath backed anxiously away from the slowly advancing Empress.
    “And, how do we get it past the Alliance Scanners?” the Empress asked.
    “We have disguised it as a simple space rock, Your Generosity; the Alliance Scanners will simply detect a lump of floating material with a high-metallic composition,” Claggit bowed low and slapped Bem on the side; to copy him, as the Empress began to slowly circle the table, “and, it can assume a liquid state to meld with passing objects as well as change colour to further blend in. In fact, it would be completely undetectable unless you were looking for this specific piece of equipment.”
    “Very clever, Master Claggit,” the Empress praised with her best insincere smile, “we are pleased with your work.”
    “Thank you, Your Marvellous-ness; we are happy to have been of service to