The Spindle Station: Book 2 of the Alliance Conflict (41 page)

Jim said, “Can the fighters fly through hyperspace?”

Solear looked around the room and said, “Computer, answer question.”

…Theoretically yes, provided a stable hyperspace window is created and the fighter remains in a perfectly straight line course…

Lexxi asked, “How about the command carrier?

Colin replied, “Simple, we will just destroy it with missiles.”

Solear said, “I doubt we can fire enough missiles to destroy it. We would have to use the guided fighter maneuver, and even then it may not work.”

Colin said, “Well then, at least we could annoy it with missiles and hopefully keep it out of the fight.”

Lexxi replied, “That won’t work. We have been in two recent battles. Our missile stockpile is nearly depleted.” Lexxi suddenly realized that she should have ordered replacements when they were docked with the supply ship.

Jim said, “Not a problem.” Jim paused for effect and continued, “We already have the missile making machines on board. We took enough raw materials from the supply ship to build 1,000 missiles. In a few hours we will have more than enough missiles for this endeavor.”

Solear said, “That is good, but we can only fire 10 missiles a minute. The command carrier can fire 72 every 3 minutes, or 24 a minute. We will be overwhelmed.”

Colin said, “We can fire every 30 seconds; 20 total missiles a minute.”

Solear looked at Colin in disbelief, but didn’t challenge him.

Putat said, “Okay, assuming that the missiles, fighters, and asteroid work; how are we going to get on the station and actually rescue them?”

“Hmm…” Jim said. “That is certainly a conundrum.”

Paul said, “I know. The marines will fly one of our confiscated Hiriculan transports to the station, pretend we are Hiriculans, and ask for permission to land. Do you think we will need a secret code?”

Jim sighed and said, “Really, our best idea is to use a stolen transport to fool Hiriculan traffic control into giving us access to the facility. Does this sound familiar to anyone?”

The 3 Advranki and 1 Altian shook their heads no. Ella looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “It’s from a human movie, isn’t it? I just watched it.” Ella put her hands together and swung them around a couple of times while saying, “Zoom.”

Jim said, “Yes. Everyone knows the plot. It will never work.”

Ella replied, “Perhaps the Hiriculans haven’t seen it.”

Jim argued, “Besides, how can we fool them. We can’t speak Hiriculan. They will immediately know it is a ruse.”

Ella replied, “Actually, I can speak Hiriculan fluently. I will pilot the shuttle.”

Everyone looked at her in astonishment. Ella simply shrugged.

Jim said, “We need a plan B just in case.”

Ella responded, “We have one. The mini-freighter
Jackal
is still docked to the station. The back-up plan will be to dock with that ship and convince the captain, Jack Dogbarks, to let us pass through his ship and onto the station.

The meeting ended. Colin reviewed the mechanics of increasing the firing rate from one a minute to one every 30 seconds. Jim created a simulation of a frigate and squadrons started practicing for the attack. Lexxi programmed the missile launch. Ella created a detailed flight plan for the
Sunflower
, Paul reviewed the station schematics and planned the invasion, and the remaining bridge officers began scanning the Opron system for large rocks.

In just under two hours everyone reported that they were ready to go. Solear checked the overhead monitor showing a countdown clock. They were almost out of time. If they didn’t leave in the next 3 hours, the prisoners would be transferred off the station and they would miss their window to rescue them.

Solear briefly reviewed every plan. It looked good, absolutely crazy on every level, but good. Solear smiled as he recalled Colin’s remark – the Hiriculans certainly won’t be expecting this attack plan.

Solear shook his head; he could delay no longer. It was time. He opened a broadcast channel to everyone on the
Sunflower
and said, “All hands, initiate Operation Repo.”

It was time to get their people and ships back.

Chapter 19

Captain Solear said, “Steady, steady, wait for the correct spot in the planet’s rotation.” A second later he said, “Fire.”

Lexxi palmed the fire button and fired two missiles at a moon circling Opo, the farthest gas planet from Opron’s sun, which also happened to be the nearest astronomical body to their current location. They managed to blow a small chunk off of the moon.

Putat said, “Now scanning. The asteroid chunk we created has a diameter of 11 meters.”

Solear figured that someone somewhere had created a law against senselessly attacking an uninhabited moon in a neutral system, but he wasn’t aware of it. In fact, he had intentionally avoided asking the computer for said verification.

Solear said, “That should do nicely. Please enact shield configuration 612Z5, focus it on area 000.12, and use full emergency power.”

This shield configuration was specifically created for deflecting asteroids. The shield output was centered at the front of the cruiser. The shields were very strong just off the bow, and grew weaker as they extended away from the ship. Visually, the configuration looked like a giant funnel. This was the configuration used by the fighter pilots to perform an emergency landing on the ship during the battle in Hepitila.

Ella replied, “Shields are active.” She made fine maneuvers to the ship and also adjusted the shield output and location. After several minutes she announced, “We have the asteroid captured in front of our bow.”

The computer interspersed:

…Technically, it should now be called a meteoroid instead of an asteroid...

Ella asked, “Computer, what’s the difference?”

…An asteroid rotates around an object like a sun or even a solar system. A meteoroid is an asteroid or a comet that physically impacts a planetary body…

Solear said, “Engage sub-light engines. Accelerate to .14 light. Remember to go nice and easy.” Solear really wanted Ace to do the maneuver, but Ella assured him she could do it.

Force is equal to mass times acceleration. An 11 meter (12 yard) diameter asteroid accelerated to a speed of .14 light has a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. The energy is roughly 100 million times more powerful than the largest nuclear bomb ever created.

Solear’s rough calculations predicted that the 7 hour trip through hyperspace should slow the meteoroid down significantly. The primary reason was that the rock has sharp, jagged edges and wasn’t designed interstellar travel. They briefly discussed trying to chisel the rock into a better form, but they simply didn’t have the time.

Even though it should slow down significantly during hyperspace, Solear estimated that it will still be traveling at .07 light and have a diameter of at least 9 meters. If so, it will only be 58 million times as powerful as the aforementioned bomb. That should be strong enough to knock out an ion cannon installation.

The
Sunflower
made a gradual turn in a wide arc and aligned itself perfectly with the Opron – Influenla hyperspace lane. They slowly accelerated the ship and the captured asteroid to a speed of .14 light.

Clowy said, “We should name the meteoroid. How about Meteoroid Kaleidoscope? The light that it is giving off is beautiful.”

Putat announced, “Some of the edges are shearing off of Meteoroid Collider.”

Solear asked, “Is it in danger of breaking up?”

Putat: “No. The core is still intact.”

Ella had timed the maneuver perfectly. They obtained the required speed of .14 light just before they reached the start of the hyperspace lane. Ella lowered the shields, stopped accelerating the ship, and activated the hyper drive.

She created a hyper window 400 kilometers in front of the ship. Then she slowed the ship a tiny amount and allowed the meteoroid to pass through the hyper window. After it passed through she quickly reset the hyper drive to produce a field around the ship, entered the coordinates for a 6 hour 50 minute hyper flight to Influenla, and jumped.

Solear said, “Put the name of the meteoroid to a ship wide vote – Kaleidoscope, Collider, and of course Lexxi’s favorite Buzzkill.”

The crew stared making missiles almost as soon as the raw materials were brought on board and continued making them during the nearly 7 hour jump. They were able to speed up the production line and make 60 an hour. They were able to produce 540 missiles in total.

These new missiles, combined with the 20 remaining in inventory, gave the ship a total of 560 missiles – 280 defensive missiles and 280 offensive missiles. They could fire at a rate of 20 missiles per minute for 28 minutes before exhausting their inventory. If all goes according to plan, this would be more than enough.

They dropped out of hyperspace 10 minutes from Influenla. Time was of the essence at this point. The fighters had to follow the asteroid as quickly as possible because they couldn’t allow the frigate to react to the missile impact and move away or interfere with their plan. Therefore, it had to be killed immediately after the asteroid impact.

The problem was that they needed to launch 40 fighters as quickly as possible from a ship designed to safely (translate slowly) launch 20. The fighters were typically stored in an elevator. There were four sets of elevators in a row in the exact center of the hangar. Normally, each row of in the elevator has two fighters facing port and two facing starboard. This allows the fighters to use both hangar bay exits.

Each elevator had five slots and would go down all the way to the floor, meaning when the fighters were completely put away, the top of the elevators were even with the hangar floor. The hangar was tall enough to expose three rows of fighters above the hangar floor. When the bottom two rows of the elevator were above the floor the top two spots extended into the ceiling.

When they were ready to launch, a plate would appear behind the fighter. This plate serves two functions; first it is a temporary shield protecting the back half of the bay and second it creates gravity. The plate creates a strong gravity field that repulses the fighter. The fighter is pushed forward hard enough to give it an initial velocity of .02 light.

They solved the problem by loading all 20 fighters in the storage elevator in the one direction – facing port. This loading method would double the launch time. However, because the remaining 20 fighters were parked on the starboard side of the gravity plate, they would be safe from the launch. The downside to the plan was that only 20 fighters could be launched in time to attack the frigate.

Clowy contacted Kip and said, “You are clear to launch and begin the attack.”

Christopher Armstrong (Kip) replied, “Repeating orders for clarification. We are clear to launch, fly directly to the enemy, engage and kill them in any way possible, and rendezvous with the ship when finished.”

Clowy responded, “Yes.”

As the bridge officer in charge of the fighter wing, Clowy was required to give a motivational speech. She knew that the humans weren’t able to comprehend long winded speeches, so she opened a channel to all of them and offered, “Do a good job of hunting them to hell.” She smiled brightly at her speech.

Kip contacted the other 3 pilots in the top row of the elevator and said, “Launch.”

Kip disengaged his safety and allowed the gravity plate to sling him off the ship. He angled his fighter up and around the ship, disengaged manual mode that he had used for the side by side launch, and waited. The elevator indexed up one row and the next 4 fighters launched. Three repeats later Alpha squadron was in a single file line and headed perfectly straight.

Meanwhile, the crew pushed 4 fighters from the Lost First squadron off of the opposite side of the hangar. These pilots flew under the ship and landed in the bottom 2 rows of the elevators that had just been evacuated by Alpha squadron.

With two squadrons, it became clear that both needed names. Kip was unwilling to give up the name Alpha, so Jim named his squadron the First squadron. He loved the play on words the name implied.

The crew now raced to reload the elevators with the remaining 16 fighters from the First squadron. The head start was critical because they only had 10 minutes to complete the task before the
Sunflower
reached Influenla. The task normally took 60 minutes.

Ella again activated a hyperspace window in front of the cruiser. The entire bridge crew watched the main monitor as all 20 pilots flew through the window and disappeared. Ella rapidly reset the hyper window and followed the asteroid and fighters in hyperspace.

Ella asked absentmindedly, “Do you really think the fighters will be able to fly through hyperspace?”

Solear said, “Well, we will know in 10 minutes. Bridge crew, it is time to change our clothes.”

Kip immediately decided that he did not like traveling through hyperspace in what basically amounted to a coffin. This was strange because when the cruiser jumped he rarely noticed. Kip figured it was simply his nerves and forced himself to calm down and relax. It didn’t work.

He was flying the fighter in automated mode. They had decided to stay out of fully manual mode because of a fear of sensory overload from their surroundings. Although Kip couldn’t see anything, he felt weird, displaced in time or perhaps reality.

During the planning session, Kip volunteered, no really he demanded, that his squadron be allowed to make the hyperspace jump and attack the frigate. He felt that he needed to prove himself and his squadron to Jim and the other original pilots. He had been in hyperspace less than a minute and the joy he had felt from volunteering was rapidly diminishing.

After 5 minutes the fear was tangible. He couldn’t contact the other fighters and he couldn’t navigate. He was locked into a course and had no way of verifying if it was correct. Since the fighters did not have a hyper drive, the only way for them to exit hyperspace was to run directly into a gravity field. If their trajectory was off by only a degree, they would miss Influenla and eventually die from starvation in hyperspace.