The Spindle Station: Book 2 of the Alliance Conflict (3 page)

Lorano turned to Carank. He said, “What is going on? You have been smiling non-stop since the chess match.”

Carank didn’t answer. He just kept smiling.

Lorano looked at him and said, “I thought Altians were the only ones that were emotional. I didn’t think the trait was shared by the Advranki.”

Carank kept smiling. His grin increased slightly.

Lorano said, “I know, I know, you can’t believe that I lost to a human.”

Carank continued to smile. Finally, he said, “Yes.”

The next few days were a whirlwind of activity. The humans completed assembling the 2,000 missiles required for the first test. They transferred the missiles to the
Sunflower
and loaded each of the 20 fighters with a full complement of 20 missiles each. The fighters would have to make multiple trips to launch the required number of missiles.

The two scientists installed the monitoring equipment in the control room. They ran multiple tests to ensure everything was functioning properly. They ran a simulation by having the corvette make a small, in-system micro-jump. The jump verified two things; the tracking equipment was ready and corvette was space worthy.

Next, they focused on fitting the
Sunflower
with the equipment necessary to extend the hyperspace window away from the ship. They started by carefully sticking the nose of the ship into the station’s hangar and then securing the opening with flash sealant so they could re-pressurize the hangar. If they had simply activated the force field that normally protects the hangar bay opening, it would have severed the front of the ship.

Jim argued that they could just put on spacesuits and do the work in outer space, but Lorano was insistent that it was too dangerous. Lorano said, “Working in deep space is simply not done, anywhere, for any reason. The risks of death from exposure are simply too high.”

Once secured in the hangar, Carank installed a series of hyper enhancers along the bow of the
Sunflower
. The additional enhancers were required to extend the field beyond the immediate vicinity of the ship. Typically, the hyperspace drive was designed to create a window only around the ship. Now, the hyperspace window could be extended to include a greater volume of space or moved to a location a few kilometers away from the ship.

Like shield strength, hyperdrive efficiency was measured and compared among the fleet. The goal was to create a window exactly big enough to fit the ship and nothing else. Hyperspace efficiency was measured as the volume of the ship divided by the volume of the field that was created times 100 to give a percentage. Generally, a percentage above 94% was considered to be acceptable for a freighter and 96% for a warship.

Finally, Lorano installed a program to control the location of the extended field. These modifications were essentially a replicate of what they had done to Victor’s mini-freighter
Vista
when they were trapped on Earth.

Solear complained on more than one occasion during the modification process that making significant, possibly unauthorized, modifications to the
Sunflower
was very risky. “What if we are in battle and the thing goes haywire and creates a field in wrong spot?” was his primary argument.

Lorano allayed his fears and eventually was able to assure Solear that the extensive modifications to his ship would not have an adverse effect on the performance of his hyperspace drives. Lorano summarized, “Maybe you can entertain your friends by moving your hyperspace field around.”

Finally, the missiles had been built, the monitoring equipment assembled, and the
Sunflower
was appropriately modified. It was time to launch the missiles. Carank boarded the
Sunflower
. He planned to oversee the missile launching operation from there. Lorano stayed in the control room to verify the monitoring equipment was working.

Lorano activated his communicator and called Carank aboard the
Sunflower
. He said, “Are we ready to start?”

Carank quickly answered, “Yes. Everything appears to be in order. Let’s begin.”

Carank was sitting in the weapons chair and Clowy was in sitting at the communications station. With every work station occupied, Lexxi was left with first officer’s seat. However, she was markedly unhappy when she discovered that the first officer’s chair couldn’t rock back and forth. Ace, one of the human fighter pilots, entered the bridge and sat at the pilot’s chair.

Captain Solear said, “Ace, proceed to the designated coordinates, .02 light, and bring us to a full stop when we get there.”

Ace responded, “Aye Captain, proceed at .02 light to the coordinates listed on the navigational system and bring the ship to a full stop when we reach them.”

Captain Solear sighed. The humans made a point of repeating every order given to them. He didn’t particularly like the habit, but he supposed it was nice that he knew his orders were understood. It was certainly preferable to hearing the word ‘what’ after giving an order or wondering if the orders would be followed correctly.

Ace had recently completed the simulation training for piloting a cruiser. He had received the highest score ever in the graduation simulation. This was his second time actually piloting the vessel.

Ace donned the pilot’s cap. The cap wasn’t needed to fly the cruiser, but Ace preferred wearing it. The cap transmitted information concerning location, speed, and direction directly to his brain. He also received a limited amount of the ship’s diagnostics and performance. The cruiser’s cap didn’t transmit nearly the same amount of information as the fighter. Also, it wasn’t possible for him to switch to full manual control to pilot the ship.

Ace engaged the sub-light engine and eased the ship away from the hyperspace charting platform; or at least appeared to do so. He had actually launched the ship into motion at a frenetic pace, but the take-off felt as smooth, or possibly smoother, than a normal launch.

He quickly brought the ship to .02 light. They were traveling at 3,720 miles per second (6,000 km/sec), but in relative terms they were crawling. The ship was capable of going at least 10 times faster, but there was little reason to speed up just to have to slow back down again.

Ace set a course for the nearest point that was outside of the system’s gravity band. A ship had to be a significant distance away from the gravitational pull of all objects before it could create a hyperspace field.

It was quiet on the bridge. Clowy, Lexxi, and Ella normally broke the monotony by chatting, but without Ella the other two seemed to have lost the desire to converse. Solear looked over at the human piloting the ship. If it had been a little odd to have a Solarian pilot the ship, it seemed insane to have an actual living, breathing human now flying it.

Solear decided to lighten the mood. He said, “Carank, how does it feel to be back aboard the
Sunflower
?”

“Odd,” Carank replied. “Very odd. The battle with the Hiriculans in Opron seems like a lifetime ago.”

Solear answered, “It is a shame we didn’t have the humans aboard for that battle. It certainly would have gone differently.”

Carank replied, “Yes. I saw the simulation from the battle. The humans did very well. They won all 12 fighter battles. You were very lucky that the two Hriiculan destroyers turned into the on-coming missiles.

Carank was reciting from the doctored video of the
Sunflowe
r’s last battle. Solear suddenly realized that Carank didn’t know what had really happened during that battle. They had been outnumbered two to one, but the human fighters had destroyed the enemy fighters and launched a devastating attack against the destroyers. Solear had modified the video record of the battle to minimize the humans’ role.

Precious few beings knew the truth; just the
Sunflower’s
bridge crew and the human pilots. Solear knew that Lorano and Carank had trained and evaluated the humans. He remembered the report that Lorano gave stating the humans were slightly better than the Advranki baseline. He wondered if they had also lied about their evaluation of the humans’ flying abilities.

He also wondered if he should show the scientists the actual footage of the battle. Then, they could have a real discussion about the humans’ uncanny performance. He knew that he should to do this before he had an entire crew of humans aboard. He fingered the file on his communicator pad and almost pressed play. He stopped himself though. Another time perhaps, he decided.

Ace announced that they had arrived at the appointed coordinates. Solear was surprised. The transition from motion to full stop had been so smooth he hadn’t noticed it. Solear said, “Thank you Ace. Nice piloting. Please return to the hangar and tell everyone it is time to launch the fighters.”

Ace walked down the caribou corridor to the hangar. He climbed into his fighter and performed his pre-flight check. The other 19 humans were already loaded into their fighters. Ace completed his checks and signaled that he was ready to launch.

Jim Donovan opened the channel to all fighters and said, “All fighters, launch now on normal pattern.”

The fighters launched one at a time from each bay. There was no reason to hurry the launch or deviate from regulation. They were flying in computer assisted mode; there was no reason to switch to manual for this activity. Each fighter flew to a predetermined position and waited.

Carank engaged the hyperspace generator and adjusted the effective envelope so that the field was directly in front of the ship. When he had a stable window in space, he told the fighters to begin firing the missiles.

The fighters lined up in two rows of ten. The fighters in the first row took turns launching one missile at a time into hyperspace. It was an arduous process because each missile had to be programmed with exact coordinates and properly aligned before going into hyperspace. Once the missile entered hyperspace, it had to fly in a straight line. The missile would be sheared to pieces if it tried to adjust its trajectory in hyperspace.

After the first row of fighters shot their 20 missiles, they returned to the
Sunflower
to reload. The next row of fighters replaced them and fired their payload of 200 missiles. The first group reloaded and shot another 200 missiles. They repeated this process until all 1,000 missiles had been launched. Carank then adjusted the hyperspace field to a new location and the repeated the entire process a second time until an additional 1,000 had been launched.

The fighters returned to the
Sunflower
and the
Sunflower
returned to the hyperspace charting platform. The ship smoothly transitioned from dead stop to nearly .02 light and then back to a dead stop. Solear didn’t realize that they had docked until Ace announced it. Solear again noted how smooth the cruiser performed when Ace piloted it.

Carank returned to the control room of the hyperspace charting platform. He asked, “Is everything working?”

Lorano responded, “Yes. We are monitoring gravity readings from 1,890 missiles. Ten were destroyed immediately after launch and the other 100 are not sending gravity information.”

Carank said, “If it creates a sizeable hole in our chart, I guess we will have to re-launch them.”

Lorano nodded in agreement and said, “At the moment, I don’t think it will be an issue. We should be fine.”

Carank looked at the monitor and said, “I guess we just have sit and wait now.”

“Yes,” Lorano replied simply. “There is very little to do for the next 14 or so days.”

Carank smiled and said, “Well, it sounds like you have time for that chess rematch.”

Lorano’s reply was drowned out by the computer’s message.

…Warning, large weapons fire detected in the main hangar…

Carank said, “Computer, specify, are really large weapons being fired or are there a large number of weapons being fired?”

…Warning, a small number of very large weapons are being fired in the main hangar…

Lorano responded, “Can you be more specific?”

…The fire appears consistent with an Alliance Armored Unit. Based on the rate and dispersal pattern, there appears to be two AAU’s firing. There is no other fire. You are now being hailed by the
Sunflower
…

Lorano told the computer to put the call on screen. Carank headed to the weapons locker and retrieved four beam weapons. He figured that they would both need an extra.

Captain Solear was on-screen. He said, “We are detecting weapons fire. Did the humans attack you?”

Lorano responded, “We’re fine. The weapons fire is isolated in the hangar bay and we are safely sealed in the control room.”

Clowy was listening and responded, “Why are you firing at the humans?”

Lorano said, “We’re not.”

Clowy was not to be deterred though. She said, “Then why are the humans are firing at you?”

Lorano yelled back, “They’re not!”

Clowy asked, “Then who is firing at the humans?”

Lexxi instructed her monitor to show the feed from the cameras located in the hangar bay. She studied it for a moment and said, “The humans appear to have found two Alliance Armored Units.”

Carank, Lorano, and Solear shouted in unison, “Here?”

Lexxi said, “Yes. I was able to access a camera in the hangar bay. It appears that two of the humans are wearing the armor and are firing at each other. The other humans are hiding behind a bunker.”

Solear said, “Clowy, contact those suits and find out why they are firing.”

Clowy answered, “What suits?”

Solear said, “The two Alliance Armored Units that are currently trying to kill each other in the main hangar.”

Clowy scanned the hangar bay and quickly found the identification of the AAU’s transponders. She hailed both of them at the same time.

The two suits temporarily stopped firing and answered the hail. Clowy said, “Why are you firing at each other?”