Time Commander (The First Admiral Series) (32 page)

Sownus, ever eager to help progress the investigations, recommended that she put in an equipment request. It was then that the officer informed him that the Binary Code Readers she sought were actually people, not machines. Almost immediately, an alarm bell went off in Sownus’ mind. He questioned the officer on whether there were any Ganthorans who could read Binary Code. The officer responded, mentioning that there were. She mentioned that they were extremely rare; at a rate of around one in tens of billions of any given population. To the mind of Karap Sownus, one in tens of billions meant that in the Ganthoran population of over one hundred billion, there would be at least a dozen of these particular individuals out there. The Frontier Generals like Avavid Kallet would bend every nerve and sinew to get hold of the code readers.

Sownus then asked the officer if these Binary Code reading people were easy to identify. She proceeded to tell Sownus that identifying a Binary Code Reader would require someone to isolate a specific genetic mutation on one of the suspect’s chromosomes. Rather than scan the DNA profiles of the entire Ganthoran population, Sownus ordered that only those linked to the investigation and those associated with the Time Warrior Ritual be checked. The officer in charge of the family research investigation advised that it could take up to eight hours to complete a full sweep. With the Ritual about to begin in three hours, Sownus was aware that any link that they ended up discovering would most probably appear too late to prevent First Admiral Caudwell beginning the challenge. Still, Sownus ordered the search, and began to create a contingency plan of stealthing the Aries, travelling to Chronos and teleporting Caudwell out of the Arena if it looked likely that he would die.

If that were to happen, then in all likelihood there would be a long and protracted war with the Ganthoran Empire. However, to Karap Sownus, Billy Caudwell was too valuable a military asset to lose. It would most probably mean the end of Sownus’ career, a Courts Martial, followed by whatever punishment was handed down; in all probability, a very long term of imprisonment. Well, that was a bridge he would have to cross when he reached it. Meanwhile, the investigations meeting broke up, and Sownus resumed his other duties.

It was four hours later, an hour after the Vide-Orb had descended onto Billy Caudwell that the family research lead officer had presented the report to Senior Intelligence Officer Sownus. There was a Binary Code Reader attached to the Time Warrior Arena. He was an Imperial Guards Officer; the second in command of the Communications group. Although he had no direct, or indirect, access to the Time Warrior computers, he was in the same building, he had the requisite genetic aptitude to sabotage the programming, and he was related by marriage to Frontier General Avavid Kallet.

His uncle had been married to General Kallet’s sister, with the record being obscured by listing him under his mother’s family name. He had been a person of interest to the investigators looking at Kallet’s Intelligence network on Ganthus, but being an Imperial Guard Officer and not stationed on Ganthus itself, he had been categorised as low priority. For a moment, Sownus almost snapped in anger. A nephew by marriage of Kallet was on Chronos, and stationed in the Time Warrior Arena. For a moment, Sownus could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Then again, as Billy Caudwell had once taught him, you sometimes miss the obvious when you don’t know what you’re looking for. The investigators were looking for Kallet’s Ganthus network, not potential assassins on Chronos.

With a deep sigh, Sownus had dismissed the slightly embarrassed officer and opened up the red report folder on an Imperial Guards Signals Captain by the name of Thripval Branthus.

It took less than two seconds for the landscape to change from the cloying, claustrophobic whiteness of the descending Vide-orb, into the beautiful green and brown tints of Southern Africa in late January. Despite almost a year of teleporting with the Alliance Fleet, the sudden change of environment still came as a shock to Billy Caudwell. As his vision began to clear, his eyes acclimatising to the bright sunlight of that late January morning in the Earth year 1879, Billy started to recognise the features of the battlefield he was about to risk his life upon.

The first sensations to hit him were the sounds. To his left, a large ox was bellowing its reluctance to conform to the wishes of his driver. Loud curses in a strange African language Billy couldn’t understand, and the sound of flesh being slapped mingled with the bellows of pain, and outright rebellion, from the beast. The crackle of dried timber burning nearby, along with the sharp, acrid sting of wood-smoke on the back of his throat spoke of camp fires and cooking. However, the overall smell was that of animals; of oxen and horses, of sweat and muck. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, but an army needed animals-lots of animals-to pull, push, and drag the myriad of equipment that allowed it to function in the field. From behind him, Billy heard the angry snarl and barking of a dog. A soft thud of boot leather on dog flesh was swiftly rewarded by a pained squeal and whimpering as the dog was driven away from whatever prize it sought, followed by a loud curse in English.

With his eyes now focussing clearly, Billy looked to his left and saw the great looming, sphinx-like shape of the mountain of Isandlwana. It was a beautiful, bright, clear sunny day, and the oppressive heat of the mid-day sun was still several hours away. The light from the morning sun struck the rocky outcrop of the mountain, highlighting the different layers of the mountain’s complex structure. The dark-grey rocky crown of the mountain dropped down sharply to a band of grassy vegetation. To Billy, it resembled a green collar beneath the outcrop. From the green collar, a gentle slope descended down through a mixture of vegetation, and scree of stones and boulders, giving a mottled grey, brown and green effect. This descended down to the valley floor in one last collar of green vegetation before the pale greens and browns of the valley floor.

To the right of the mountain was the plateau at the foot of the Nqutu heights. It was a gentle, rolling, hilly country, not unlike the area of Southern Scotland Billy had been born and brought up in. Unfortunately, this was not a rolling, idyllic, pastoral scene. This was where the Zulu attack would roll down onto the British forces. Realising that he had very little time to admire the scenery, Billy slung his loaded rifle back over his shoulder and took his watch from his right tunic pocket. Opening the front casing, Billy noted the time as being eight o’clock.

Eight o’clock in the morning... Lord Chelmsford has been gone, with most of the column’s troops, for almost two hours,
Billy thought to himself, remembering the timeline of the battle. The first contact with the Zulus would take place at around noon. If his calculations were correct, he had just over four hours to get some form of defence set up before the real Zulu attack came thundering down those gently rolling slopes of the plateau.

Replacing the watch in his pocket, Billy set off to find the command centre of the camp; Major Pulleine’s tent. From the activity going on around him, it appeared to Billy that he had appeared in the middle of the wagon lines. Again, the protesting ox was being roundly abused by the driver; a tall, barefoot black man in knee length trousers and a muddy coloured short-sleeved pull on shirt.

With a long, shafted whip, he was trying to batter and cajole his reluctant charge into a heavy yoke to pull an open topped wagon. All around him, other native ox-team drivers were similarly shouting, yelling and whipping to bring their slow and resistant animals to heel.

Striding up the gentle slope, Billy encountered his first British soldier. An off-white, tea-stained pith-helmet stood atop his red-mottled and sweaty face. Sprouting a generous set of dark brown sideburns and whiskers, he stood to attention in his red jacket and white cross-belts. Below the scarlet red jacket, he wore a pair of dark blue regulation issue trousers, complete with red stripe down the seam, and was completed by a pair of black army boots with black leather puttees that reached half way up his lower leg.

“Good morning, Private. Major Pulleine’s tent, please?” Billy asked the regimentally correct soldier.

“
Over there, sir,” The soldier switched his grounded rifle to his right hand, then indicated the line of tents nearby with his left forefinger.

“
Carry on.” Billy watched as the red-coated soldier returned to the attention position until he had passed.

Moving higher up the slope, Billy began to see the extent of the camp scattered out before him. It was a hive of activity, with seemingly endless rows of tents, and all the paraphernalia of a Victorian British army on the march. However, unlike most British army camps in hostile territory there were no defensive ramparts or barricades of wagons.

Chelmsford has made a really bad mistake in not fortifying the position at Isandlwana before going off on a wild goose chase to the Mangeni Falls
, Billy considered.

Then again, hindsight was a wonderful General who never lost a battle.

Groups of red-coated infantrymen were being marched by their corporals and sergeants all over the camp, and the clipped military commands were only just audible to Billy. The sharp clang of the blacksmiths’ hammers against anvils indicated the importance of horses, mules and iron to this campaign. A bugle sounded, its crisp clear notes puncturing the cacophony of noise from the camp sprawled out below him. There was no note of strident alarm in the bugle call, so Billy concluded that the Zulus were not attacking yet.

From his vantage point on the slope, the whole camp stretched before him; from the Native Contingent troops congregated on the left through the First Battalion of the 24
th
, the Royal Artillery Park and the Second Battalion of the 24th on the extreme right. Behind the lines of the First Battalion of the 24
th
, Billy could discern the cluster of tents that comprised Major Pulleine’s Headquarters. That was where Billy had to get himself to take command of this situation.

Stretching in front of the British position was the rolling countryside of the valley beneath the gently sloped plateau.

This would be the battleground that had been chosen for the Time Warrior Ritual. In the distance, he could see the small conical kop; a rounded hillock sticking out like an island in a pale green and brown ocean of grass, strewn rocks and boulders. He could also see the dongas; the deep trench like fissures in the ground that indicated dried up waterways. When the rains came, the water would flow down from the heights into these dried up channels, making its way to the Buffalo River.

However, it was not the rainy season, so there would be no protective water-filled barrier for Billy’s soldiers. Heading down from the gentle slope of the mountain, Billy focussed on the clump of HQ tents next to the Pioneer lines. The Pioneers, just as in the Universal Alliance Fleet, were the ones who got the dirty jobs; usually involving a great deal of the digging, that kept military formations functioning.

As Billy strode purposefully down towards the command tents, a voice interrupted his progress.

“
Good morning, Sir.” The voice of a computer-generated Major Henry Burmester Pulleine had the slightest hint of a Yorkshire accent.

Rather than being cooped up in his command tent, Major Pulleine was out and about, inspecting the position. In his hands, he had spread out a large map, which was blowing in the slight breeze. Standing next to Pulleine, there was a man who Billy recognised as a Captain in the 24
th
Regiment.

“
Good morning, Major Pulleine,” Billy said.

The man with Pulleine was Billy recognised, from an old black-and-white photograph that he had viewed while researching this historic battle. Captain Reginald Younghusband was thirty-five years old, and proudly) sporting a fashionably long pair of sideburns, and an excessively grown out moustache.

“Captain.” Billy nodded to the commander of the battalion’s C Company.

“
Sir.” The Captain had the soft bur of the West Country.

“
Right then.” Billy got straight down to the business at hand. “We’d better get this command ready to defend against an enemy attack.”

“
I’m sorry, sir?” Major Pulleine asked,

“
You heard me, Major, we’re going to prepare this command for a Zulu attack,” Billy repeated.

This was going to be the critical few moments where Billy Caudwell had to stamp his authority onto the senior officer at the Isandlwana camp. He had to take command of the situation and begin manufacturing some form of structured defence against the hordes of Zulu who would come hurtling down the slopes around them in a few short hours. Under normal campaign rules, the wagons would have been circled to form a defensive perimeter. However, for some unknown reason, Chelmsford had not ordered the camp fortified.

The ground was too hard for ditches, and, perhaps, Lord Chelmsford felt safe enough from the Zulus not to order any defensive works. Campaign standing orders specifically mentioned that some form of defensive structure should be created around camps. However, there was nothing at Isandlwana. Lord Chelmsford had seriously underestimated his enemy, +which was+ something that Billy Caudwell was not prepared to do.

“
But, sir, the General is confident that no threat exists…” Pulleine said.