The Spindle Station: Book 2 of the Alliance Conflict (23 page)

Frank asked, “So, what happens if the cruiser detects a fleet in Trilon?”

Dolen replied, “Simple, they would jump back to Opron and warn the other cruiser. That cruiser would then jump back to Conron and gather enough warships to break any blockade.”

Figur said, “The first half of the plan seems solid. Do we really need the Trilon piece?”

Dolen responded, “No. Not really. The odds of Trilon containing anything more than space dust are astronomical, but it is only one ship and it adds a layer of protection that we wouldn’t otherwise possess.”

Frank responded, “Admiral Dolen, I suggest that you send the
Sunflower
on the mission to Trilon. Captain Solear has proven to be adept at lone ship operations.”

There was a lengthy pause after Frank’s response, so the Ceremonial Master dismissed Admiral Dolen from the podium and said, “Esteemed senators, it is now time to vote.”

The voting went very quickly. Each senator pressed a button on their communication pad. The Ceremonial Master quickly reviewed the results and said, “The bill stands at 4 – 4 and has at least one Advranki and at least one Altian vote. Therefore, it will pass provided someone sponsors it.”

Frank was thrilled. His plan had worked perfectly thus far. Now, for the final piece. Frank stood, smiled politely at the other senators and said, “I propose that Senator Figur sponsor the bill. Figur has been an ardent supporter of the military and is, I believe, the perfect person to sponsor this bill.”

Everyone applauded Frank’s speech. Figur announced that he would sponsor the bill. Perfect. Now, if the military failed, Figur would be held accountable and if the military succeeded, Frank smiled wickedly to himself.

If the military succeeded, then Frank would make certain that Senator Figur would get all the credit he deserves. Who knows, a lone Hiriculan gunman might want revenge for their second straight military defeat.

Chapter 11

The
Sunflower
successfully completed the 11 hour jump from Earth to Waylon. They exited at the 14 minute mark from the system to avoid detection from Waylon’s automated traffic control system.

Since they had entered false coordinates into
Sunflower’s
transponder when they left for Earth, it was critical that they re-appear in Waylon at the exact location indicated by these false coordinates.

They executed two micro jumps to get back to the hyperspace charting platform, perfectly retracing their path from a month earlier. Once docked at the station, the humans loaded the final set of 2,000 hyperspace charting missiles aboard.

The first set of missiles had been fired missiles from Waylon toward Dunron and Hepitila. These missiles had found a system exactly where Old Solaria was supposed to be. Lorano assumed that he had already found Old Solaria. He was waiting for Captain Solear and Lexxi to return to confirm it.

The second set of missiles had been fired from Waylon toward Solaria. This set was intended to find and chart the gravity anomaly that Lorano had encountered when he had traveled from Conron to Earth using the original Conron – Earth hyperspace lane.

Lorano decided to essentially waste the third and final set of missiles. He programmed courses that would send the missiles in a broad arc away from all known systems. This area of space to his knowledge had never been explored. Lorano doubted they would find anything, but thought it would be fun to try.

He set the self-destruction timer on the missiles for 50 hours. After 50 hours, the signal would be so faint that the equipment would have severe difficulty tracking the missiles. Further, 50 hours was well beyond the range of a ship’s jump engine.

They repeated the process of micro jumping to a point just outside the gravity well, loading the fighters with missiles, and launching them through a hyper field directly in front of the cruiser. Lorano had been informed that the new pilots were flying this mission. Lorano didn’t particularly care who was flying as long as they could follow simple firing instructions.

The
Sunflower
again docked with station. Carank performed a status check, saw a completely green board and announced, “We have a problem.”

Clowy said, “What.”

Carank accepted the ‘what’ as a legitimate response to his question, so he continued, “We need to go to the control room in the space station to review the reports from the last batch of missiles.”

Lorano asked, “Why is that a problem?”

Carank responded, “First, we have to walk through a ship filled with 70 humans and second, we have to do it in such a way that the humans still think we are on the bridge.”

“What?” Clowy somewhat legitimately asked.

Carank said, “If the humans realize we aren’t on the bridge and monitoring them, then they could steal the ship.”

Lorano responded, “Oh. Excellent point. We definitely don’t want to let a ship full of humans loose on the galaxy.” He paused for a moment and said, “I have an idea. Clowy, you can stay on the bridge by yourself.”

Clowy answered, “No. I would rather the humans steal the ship than be all alone with them.”

Lorano said, “I have another idea then.” He worked at his officer station for a few minutes, then said, “Computer, please patch me through to the entire crew.”

…Communication established…

Lorano announced, “Crew, this is a drill. I want to see how quickly everyone can get to their battle stations. I expect both sets of pilots to don their flight gear. One set must get in the fighters and the other set must report to the armory. Marines, get into your…human armored battle suits. The simulation ends when everyone is in place and presses their communication pads. The simulation starts now. Go!”

Lorano had almost said AAU’s, but caught himself in time. He couldn’t immediately remember the name of the new human armored suit. Fortunately, Carank reminded him, “It is called a Mobile Powered Suit or MPS for short.”

Lorano answered “Thank you” in a tone that clearly implied the opposite. Lorano said, “Let’s go. We have about 6 minutes.”

They waited about 1 minute for the humans to clear the caribou corridor and then they exited the bridge. They reset the force field and strolled down the corridor. Clowy smiled as a caribou followed her. She pointed to one in particular and said, “That one is my favorite, I painted it.”

Lorano looked at it and simply said, “Impressive.”

They exited the caribou corridor into the main hangar just after the last pilot climbed into his fighter. Finally, they walked off of the ship and into the station.

Lorano’s communication pad blinked. Lorano said, “Computer, report.”

…The crew was able to get to battle stations in 7 minutes 20 seconds…

The time was approximately a minute slower than a well-trained, experienced Advranki crew. Also, the Advranki crew normally had some advanced warning that drill was going to be conducted. The pilots, on the other hand, did set the record for fastest to their fighters.

Carank reviewed the data and said, “Impressive, maybe there is hope for this crew.”

Lorano said, “I have a great idea. I know a way to keep the humans entertained so that they won’t notice our absence.”

Carank said, “Well. Are you going to share with us?”

Lorano didn’t answer immediately. Instead he said, “Computer, establish a link with Jim Donovan.”

…Connection established…

Lorano said, “Jim, I am sending you the results of the drill. The pilots did an impressive job, but the rest of the crew needs work to become a cohesive team. Please work with engineering to create and execute a series of drills to get the crew to be more efficient.”

Jim replied, “Okay, do we need your permission to run a drill?”

Lorano replied, “Not specifically. However, if you intend to shut down a major system, please inform acting Captain Clowy in advance.”

Jim asked, “I do have one question, what is going to happen to the second set of pilots?”

Lorano answered, “I don’t really know for sure. My guess is that one of the squadrons will be permanently transferred to another cruiser.”

…………………

Jim was standing in engineering talking with chief engineer Colin O’Neal when Lorano called him. Jim let Colin overhear the conversation. After the conversation ended Jim said, “We need to dramatically improve the crew’s competence as quickly as possible.”

Despite the awkward way he had been recruited for the mission, Colin was a natural leader and quickly established himself as Jim’s second in command and the head of engineering and maintenance. Plus, his background as a chief engineer at a nuclear plant had prepared him for this role. Jim understood why the aliens had decided to kidnap Colin.

Colin was furious with the results. He stomped around the engineering area shouting expletives at the air for a few moments, then calmed down and got to work. They created a list of every system and sub-system. They listed the top 3 failure modes for each sub-system.

They put a crewmember in charge of each one. They also established a back-up person for each system. Then they created a simulation that would test the crew’s ability to repair each one. Fortunately, most of the identified failures were the same as the ones they had solved in the Victory Games simulations. Unfortunately, they would have to run battle simulations at a frenetic pace to cover every scenario.

Finally, they had the computer review the system failure list and show any other key failures or maintenance activities not covered by it.

Colin reviewed the computer’s list and said, “Jim, look at the first one. In the event that primary power is lost, the secondary power generator can be cross wired to provide emergency power to the ship. This requires bypassing sub-junctions 963.22.14 and .15 and rewiring the main junction box to accommodate the reversed flow.”

Jim answered, “You would think we could just pre-wire it to flow in either direction.”

Colin replied, “Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. This has to be done real-time when main power is gone. Otherwise, you would have power coming from both generators and it would short out the circuits.”

Jim: “Okay.”

Colin continued, “We also have to reroute the trunk line.”

“Trunk line?” Jim asked.

Colin said, “The main power line from the primary reactor. Currently, the secondary power generator is only wired to the bridge. We would literally have to disconnect and drag a giant bundle of wires halfway across the ship from one generator to the other.

Jim replied, “That seems inefficient. Why don’t we just wire them in series now?”

Colin responded, “Good question. I bet we can prewire a connector trunk line into an A-B junction box. We would still have to manually switch them, but it could work and cut the time required from hours to, well, something less than hours.”

Jim said, “We need to be able to switch in 5 minutes, or it isn’t worthwhile.”

Colin asked, “Why 5 minutes?”

Jim replied, “That is approximately how long it takes to charge and fire an ion cannon.”

…………………….

Lorano was sitting in the control room of hyperspace charting platform. It had been approximately two weeks since the
Sunflower
had successfully jumped from Earth back to Waylon and docked with the space station.

His communicator pad chimed and he noted that the humans had sent yet another advanced notification of a drill. He believed this was the 11
^th
drill of the day. He smiled at his own wit. His suggestion to the humans that they needed more training had worked perfectly. The humans had been training night and day and hadn’t bothered them again.

He and Carank had analyzed the data from the previous set of gravity charting missiles – those fired toward Solaria. The missiles had detected a large gravity signature almost exactly where he expected it to be.

However, the unknown system showed recent signs of a massive gravity fluctuation, as if the star suddenly expanded or contracted. The system would definitely need to be thoroughly investigated.

…Passive scans have detected the presence of a ship now entering the Waylon system…

Lorano said, “Computer, can you determine the name of ship or at least the size?”

…The apparent mass displacement places the unknown ship in the corvette class. It will take another 1 hour 14 minutes until I can obtain the ship’s designation and destination. However, the entry path into the system is consistent with the exit path taken by the
Buzzkill
…

Solear and Lexxi had taken the corvette
Buzzkill
to investigate the most likely location for the planet Old Solaria. Lorano had started to worry about them. They were a week overdue and it wasn’t like Solear to miss a date by that wide of a margin.

A few hours later the corvette
Buzzkill
docked with hyperspace charting platform. Solear and Lexxi exited the corvette and headed directly to the platform’s control room.

When they arrived Carank said, “Welcome back, we were starting to worry.”

Solear responded, “The missiles were able to get far closer than we were. The high radiation forced us to drop out of hyperspace earlier than expected. As a result, we spent 3 days flying in real-time to get close to the system and another 3 days returning.”

Everyone waited for Solear to continue. When he didn’t, Lorano finally said, “Well, did you find Old Solaria?”

Solear placed a flashcube on the reader and said, “Computer, display images and readings of the system.” Solear walked closer to the monitor and pointed at the system. He continued, “The results are mixed. There is a planet in the system that could have at one point in time sustained life.”

Carank said, “That’s positive.”

Solear said, “Yes. Although we scanned it and found no traces of life.”

Lorano responded, “That was to be expected. Solarian lore says that the planet was abandoned due to an unlivable level of background radiation. The system does fit that description.”