The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict (22 page)

Ace responded, “Well, the only thing out here is the Alliance cruiser.”

And just like that Jim had the solution. Or, at a minimum, he had an idea. He said, “That’s it. That is exactly what we are missing. In the final run in the obstacle course we have to use the enemy ships’ missiles against them. In this simulation, we have use missiles from our cruiser!”

They began calculating the burn distances, turning ratios, and final flight reprogramming of cruiser based missiles. Cruisers carried a fair array of missiles, including ship buster missiles. The team reset the simulation and started again. Like usual, they flew directly to the destroyer. Minutes before they engaged the destroyer’s contingent of enemy fighters, Jim contacted the cruiser and requested 10 ship-to-ship missiles be fired followed by 5 ship buster missiles.

He specified the firing pattern. Since there were five launchers on each side, the first 5 on the side facing the enemy destroyer would fire ship-to-ship missiles and begin reloading with ship buster missiles. The cruiser would then slowly rotate on its axis (like a spinning top held on its side) to bring the 5 launchers on the opposite side closest to the enemy. These launchers would then fire.

The ship would continue rotating so that exactly 3 minutes later the original launchers could fire 5 ship buster missiles. This meant that there were 15 missiles directed at the destroyer in three rows of five missiles, each spread out 1 ½ minutes from each other.

After the first pass with the enemy fighters, 18 of the fighters immediately turned back to the cruiser. The remaining two fighters continued on to the destroyer; followed by the remaining enemy fighters. These two fighters dodged the incoming fire from the destroyer and knocked out two key shield deflectors directly over the primary power core. They then launched a couple of more ship-to-ship missiles to keep the destroyer’s shields from regenerating and then launched their homing beacons. Finally, they reprogrammed the missiles to lock onto the homing beacon. They swooped around the battleship and headed back toward the cruiser.

The first wave of missiles completely shredded the shields. The next wave opened a large hole in the destroyer, and the final wave of ship buster missiles flew inside the ship and exploded.

The results were dramatic. The destroyer blew up into a huge cloud of dust spreading out over four kilometers. It again blinded the 3 remaining enemy fighters that had pursued them back toward the destroyer. The two Alliance fighters easily killed these three blinded enemy fighters without slowing down. They had not even fired their lone ship buster missile.

The 18 other Alliance fighters were able to make a pass around the 80 fighters from the battleship. Now all they had to contend with was the missiles launched from the battleship and the simple fact that they were going way to fast to safely land on the cruiser. Oh well, Jim thought, it was progress.

They kept trying new things to solve both issues. Blaze and Russ were reviewing shield configurations and found one that looked like a giant funnel snaking out from the Alliance cruiser. The configuration, aptly named 612Z5, had no documented use, but appeared to be designed to repulse an object (or possibly the ship away from an object depending on the relative gravities).

During one battleship simulation, Blaze had the Alliance cruiser set the shields to the funnel configuration and had the funnel positioned with the cone directly over the landing bay and extending outward. He aligned his fighter in the center of the funnel and tried to land.

The landing went terribly. The gravity wave caused by the fighter hitting the cruiser’s shields sheared the fighter in half. Blaze missed the landing bay and smashed what was left of his fighter into the side of the cruiser because the gravity from the initial collision bounced both the fighter and the cruiser into new trajectories.

This looked too fun to pass up, so the rest of the fighters tried as well. Soon they found that they had to modulate the cruiser’s shield strength and increase the effective distance of the funnel. They also had to use both primary and auxiliary power to reinforce the shields. If the shield was very weak at the opening of the funnel and became increasingly stronger, they fighter would not be torn apart and they could adjust their flight path to accommodate the gravity wave. Eventually, they were able to land their fighters using this method.

Now, they could kill the destroyer make it back aboard the cruiser before it jumped to hyperspace. However, the problem now was that the cruiser would get destroyed by the enemy’s missiles before they could reach it. They began the arduous task of finding a way to shoot missiles out of the air.

………………

The
Vista
started its three week journey back to Conron. They made one straight, direct jump to the far distant outskirts of the Waylon system.

The 11 hour jump from Earth to Waylon was stressful, primarily because Lorano insisted that Carank rewire the ship’s transponder so that it could be turned off. Alliance law strictly forbids rewiring the transponder to either turn it off or make it broadcast as another ship. The punishment if caught is forfeiture of the vessel.

When in normal space, the ship’s transponder broadcast a signal telling its name, location, and any recent hyperspace jumps. It will also receive an update package from Alliance traffic control that includes updates to hyperspace routes and news feeds.

Lorano summarized, “Something is wrong. The main hyperspace route from Earth shouldn’t have deteriorated as quickly as it did. We cannot broadcast that we found a new route to Earth.”

Victor readily agreed, “If beings know that there is a safe, unguarded route to Earth, they will travel there just for fun and break the Alliance quarantine.” What he really meant was that if anyone could travel to Earth, the Alliance would no longer need his monitoring services.

They quickly scanned the system and found that it was currently unoccupied. However, there were results of recent activity. Two large structures had been towed into the system. The first appeared to be a hyperspace charting platform and the second looked like a support structure. Both structures were clearly Alliance built. They were pointed toward the possible location of Old Solaria.

“The Alliance must have been trying to chart a new course to Old Solaria,” Victor ventured.

Carank answered, “It certainly looks that way. However, does the fact it is abandoned mean that they found a passage or that they gave up?”

Lorano looked at the charts, “There are no updated paths on the Alliance hyper chart. However, this data is nearly four months old. I am guessing they haven’t been successful and took a break.”

Carank said, “I heard they were looking for a path from Uselon to Old Solaria, but haven’t had success there either.”

Lorano said, “This part of space must be affected by localized bodies of gravity like comets, meteors, or black holes.”

“Yes,” Victor responded, “There is a statue on Solaria that basically says as much.”

Lorano had Crista program a series of micro-jumps. They jumped in a wide arc, staying 14 hyper minutes outside the boundaries of the system. There was a potential of contacting an uncharted source of gravity, but the odds were in their favor.

Despite the jumps, it still took 3 days to navigate around Waylon’s gravity well. Their last jump was perfectly coordinated to place them in the Alliance charted hyperspace lane connecting Waylon to Uselon. It was dangerous, as well as illegal, to jump into a hyperspace lane without receiving authorization from traffic control. They crew figured that there was minimal traffic, so again they risked it.

The jump from Waylon to Uselon lasted only 6 hours. When they were 14 minutes from Uselon and the next traffic control tower, they exited hyperspace. They were able to avoid detection because traffic control does not scan this area for ships traveling in real time.

Once again, they plotted an arced course around Uselon to avoid registering on traffic control. This arc again took them 3 days to complete. They again jumped into the hyperspace lane bound for Conron, thus avoiding traffic control. This lane is also lightly traveled, so again the risk was minimal.

The jump from Uselon to Conron also lasted 6 hours. They stopped 14 minutes short of the hyperspace exit and repeated the 3-day process of jumping around the outskirts of Conron. They were staying 14 hyper minutes from the gravity well to ensure that they were outside of the detection range of Conron’s traffic control system.

The Solarians spent their time reestablishing the neglected space garden and remotely watching the humans. The humans were certainly aware that they were imprisoned, but had made no attempt to talk to the crew or try to break the cage and gain access to the rest of the ship. The humans focused their time and attention on the flight simulators.

Lorano and Carank had spent most of the journey plotting hyperspace jumps and attempting to hack into the ship’s transponder database. The database retained a record of every jump the ship had taken and was thought to be unbreakable.

Lorano, Carank, and especially the diagnostic computer were eventually able to gain write access to the log. Lorano couldn’t delete any of the 12 jumps the ship had made. However, he could reconstruct the log with false coordinates to make it appear that they had used the existing Earth-Conron hyperspace lane.

It would show they exited hyperspace to avoid a gravity well, made a series of micro jumps around it, and repeated twice more around two other gravity wells. Lorano didn’t exactly know why he bothered with this level of deceit, but he had a strange feeling that it was necessary.

However, when they prepared the 13
^th
and final micro jump that would align the ship in the middle of the original hyperspace lane from Earth to Conron, they experienced a problem.

Crista said, “The navigation system won’t accept the jump coordinates. When I run the simulation, I get a 99.977% chance of failure. I have run the simulation 5 times and each time it ends with the ship blowing up. It is statistically possible to succeed, but extremely unlikely.”

Lorano looked over her shoulder and said, “Let me see.” He reviewed the data and said, “Reset the coordinates for 10 minutes away and try again.”

Crista ran the simulation and said, “Well, that’s a little better, only a 95% chance of dying a horrible death in a hyperspace collision.” She then tried 5 minutes out and got a 91% chance of imminent death. Finally, she tried 30 seconds away and still got an 85% chance of failure.

Carank reviewed the data and concluded, “Something is wrong with the hyperspace lane. This is similar to the data that we received when we checked from Earth. The hyperspace lane has been corrupted.”

Lorano said, “I agree. Perhaps something happened while we were gone that necessitated closing it or at a minimum contaminating the entry way.”

Victor added, “And trapping us at Earth forever!”

They had a small problem. They could make the 14 minute jump to Conron without issue. However, they would come out at a location that would clearly show that they weren’t following the hyperspace lane, despite what the edited data said.

Lorano said, “Crista, run the simulation for a jump that takes us directly to the forts guarding the hyperspace lane.”

Crista ran the simulation and said, “Mostly clear, we can jump there, but we are still getting a 13% chance of failure.”

“Good enough,” Lorano said. He edited the transponder database to show that the ship had jumped from the middle of the Earth-Conron lane two hours away to the final destination. The transponder will show that the ship flew straight through whatever had contaminated the exit point to the lane.

Carank looked at it and said, “They will never believe it. There is no possible way that we could have followed that hyperspace path and made it back to Conron.”

Victor said, “Not a problem. You two are geniuses. Just think of a potential solution that we could have used that sounds feasible, but is technically impossible.”

Carank said, “I like it. That way everyone will be trying to duplicate a nonsensical path instead of figuring out exactly what we did.”

Lorano brought up the entire flight path that he had created. It actually hit every single source of gravity along the path from Earth to Conron and even gave an incorrect location for Earth. Anyone trying to duplicate their flight path would literally jump through multiple asteroid fields and gravitational anomalies. The final jump would take a ship directly into Earth’s sun. They would be destroyed many, many times over. The route was a complete and utter falsification with no chance of success.

Lorano said, “Carank, we should go address the humans.” They had decided to keep Victor and Crista hidden from the pilots. They thought that the pilots would be more willing to accept that the twosome were humans that were inadvertently working for aliens versus instigating paranoia by introducing the concept that any short human could secretly be a bleached Solarian there to spy on them.

Lorano and Carank walked to the front of the ship, deactivated the force field, and entered the cage in the main hold. No one initially saw them, so Lorano yelled, “Hellooo.”

One of the humans noticed Lorano. He notified the others and in a couple of minutes all 20 humans were gathered around the cage. Lorano said, “Hello humans. I need to tell you something.”

The humans waited silently, so Lorano continued, “In the next few minutes we will approach our final destination. Our ship will dock with an Alliance vessel, probably a cruiser. You will then be transferred to that vessel. You can cross into the new ship one-at-a-time or we can shoot you with a stunner and carry you to the other ship while you sleep. Are there any questions?”

Lorano was shivering with fear. Being this close to so many humans made him extremely nervous. He looked over at Carank and noticed that he was also looking a little green.

One of the humans responded. Lorano thought it was possibly the one he had spoken to earlier, but he couldn’t tell. They all looked the same to him. The human said, “How long have we been traveling?”