by Jeff Sims
The first asked, “What do you suggest?”
Solear said, “Gentle beings, each of you have a decision to make. You can resign, return to civilian life, and live in peace and prosperity. Or, you can stay in the now defunct Alliance Navy and fight the Hiriculans. You will become an interstellar terrorist and be ostracized from your family for the remainder of what will probably be a very short life.”
The first grabbed his communicator and said, “Computer, append Admiral Solear’s recent speech to admiralty message ORD.66.36982.ER and send to all active naval personnel in the system.”
The first admiral asked, “What do we do now?”
Solear said, “Over the course of the next day we need to strip this base of all equipment. We need to scour the system and put every single naval asset on the naval space station. We then need to prepare the naval space station and corresponding mining drill for transport. When everything has been collected, we need to jump this fleet to Advranki Prime and hand it to the Hiriculans.”
“What about the naval personnel? We have over 3,000 beings from Advranki-3 here due to the fleet exercise. We don’t have the commercial capacity to return that many beings to Advranki-3. Further, I am sure that there are others from all over the galaxy. How are we going to get them home?” The first admiral asked.
The second answered, “I have a partial solution. We can jump the fleet from Advranki-2 to Advranki-3, disembark the personnel who live on Advranki-3, then jump the empty ships to Advranki Prime.”
The second said, “That could work. We could also return the personnel that live on Advranki Prime that way.”
“No,” Solear said. “We cannot.”
The third admiral said, “Because we are only allowed to have two people on the ships when they reach Advranki Prime.”
“My apologies, I had already forgotten about that rule,” the second said. “Well, we can return the Advranki-3 personnel I suppose. We will have to arrange commercial transport for the rest.”
The first asked, “Who is going to return the ships?”
Solear quickly responded, “I am.”
Everyone looked at him. No one spoke for an awkward moment, creating a strange vibe in the room. Solear took the opportunity to stop the chair massage.
The first eventually said, “Why would you do that?”
Solear responded, “I am not going to retire from the Alliance Navy. I am going fly the ships to their destination and accept the consequences.”
The second admiral said, “You will be arrested.”
The third said, “Why? If you retire now you will be treated as a civilian. The warrant for your arrest will no longer be valid. The Hiriculans even stated in their message that they would not arrest civilians.”
The second said, “No. It said they won’t arrest civilians without just cause.”
Solear said, “The Hiriculans will arrest me for war crimes regardless of whether or not I am a civilian. I may as well just get it over with now instead of delaying the inevitable.”
The third said, “You could hide.”
The second prompted, “You could run.”
Solear said, “Yes. I could try running and hiding; always in fear of being discovered. I would rather keep my dignity intact.”
The first asked, “Why do the Hiriculans want you so badly. What really happened during the rescue mission at the Spindle Station?”
Solear said, “My crew devised an innovative plan to rescue the prisoners. I ultimately approved it and we executed it flawlessly.”
There was another awkward pause. The first asked, “Solear, what really happened?”
Solear responded, “We accelerated a meteoroid to .1 light, aligned it on a perfect trajectory, and hurled it through hyperspace. The system’s gravity forced the meteoroid out of hyperspace. One second later it collided with the Hiriculan’s defensive asteroid; killing everyone stationed there.”
The second used the natural pause to say, “No warning; no chance of escape.” Hi sighed slightly.
Solear continued, “We had two squadrons of fighters. I sent one of the squadrons through hyperspace.”
“You did what?” a couple of the admirals blurted out loud. One continued, “If they were off course even a meter they would have died in hyperspace.”
Solear responded, “The pilots were Humans.”
The admirals nodded in understanding. Somehow that seemed to have made the action better. One admiral finally thought better of it and responded, “Still, that doesn’t seem right.”
Solear gave a brief acknowledgement and said, “They volunteered.”
He continued, “We timed the squadron’s exit from hyperspace to coincide with the explosion. There was a frigate guarding the hyperspace lane. The blast overwhelmed its shields and scanners for a few seconds. At that precise moment the fighters exited hyperspace and fired both shield and ship buster missiles at the stunned frigate. We gave them no warning. We just fired at an unshielded ship at point blank range.”
There was another awkward silence. The second said, “There were rumors about the station rescue itself. Murder, property damage, unheralded carnage.”
It wasn’t a question, but Solear answered anyway. “We had a problem. We needed to get past a dozen HAS units, around a control room, and through a locked door before reinforcements came and overwhelmed us.”
Solear continued, “We used some weapons that the Humans brought from Earth. The weapons use an explosive chemical reaction to throw shrapnel a great distance and at a high velocity. The weapons are primitive by our standards, but we discovered that they were particularly effective against HAS units. We used the weapons on the guards, doors, and HAS units.”
The second said, “You literally blew the Hiriculans into pieces?”
Solear said, “Yes. We killed the HAS units by blowing holes in their armor, then shoving giant pieces of steel through the holes and into the wearer’ flesh. They bled to death.”
“That’s, that’s astounding,” said the second.
Solear continued, “It is my hope that if I surrender, they will leave the rest of my crew alone.”
The third admiral added, “The ironic thing is that now that the Hirculans have invaded, the entire rescue mission was pointless.”
Solear responded, “So it would seem.”
The next day was an absolute whirlwind of activity. All Alliance naval ships, equipment, transports, spare parts were placed on the space station. All computer records were purged. All secret codes and personnel transfers were erased. The entire military presence in the system was expunged.
Solear sent the Hiriculans in Advranki Prime a message stating that due to a pre-planned fleet exercise it was necessary to first stop at Advranki-3 to deposit personnel before proceeding to the rendezvous.
There was nothing else left to do. They were ready to leave.
Admiral Solear was allowed to command the fleet. After his story, the other admirals agreed that it would only be a matter of time before the Hiriculans arrested him. They also applauded his bravery for facing his near certain future.
Solear contacted the entire fleet and gave the order to make the quick 3 hour jump to Advranki-3. Solear spent the entire time in his quarters on the battleship Discoverer reviewing transfer requests; specifically resignations. Everyone on Advranki-2 had resigned.
They spent the better part of a day repeating what they had done on Advranki-2. They again stripped all presence of the Alliance Navy from the system. When the Hiriculans came, they would only find a handful of policemen assigned to traffic control.
Finally, they deleted all personnel records on the planet, erased all battle computers, resigned, and shuttled down to the planet.
Solear supervised the entire process from his quarters. In reality, he didn’t actually supervise or even check on the progress. He just sat in his room, reflected on his career, and reflected upon what was about to happen.
Well, that isn’t entirely correct either. H
e ordered the main monitor in the admiralty conference room to show a dot for every active service member in the Navy. When they resigned, the light went out.
Solear watched it on and off. The number of dots had remained fairly steady throughout the day. Now though, lights were winking out at an extraordinary pace. Clearly that meant the transfer crews must be done and it was time to leave. He checked the board a final time. There were only two lights remaining.
Solear left the admiralty quarters and took the electro lift down two levels to the bridge proper. He probably could have directed the fleet from the admiralty bridge, but he knew that he had to do one thing first – and that one thing was more than likely waiting for him on the bridge.
He exited the electro lift and saw Arean standing there. Arean was standing as straight as possible and had his right appendage over his eye. Solear walked over to his old friend and returned the salute.
Arean said, “Somehow the Human custom just seemed right.”
Solear said, “Goodbye old friend. I believe that Advranki-3 is your home world. It is time for you to resign and go to the planet.”
Arean replied, “I am coming with you. We will face them together.”
Solear looked at him and said, “I’m sorry, but you cannot. I must do this alone.”
Arean said, “No.”
Solear said, “You don’t understand. You cannot come this time.”
Arean lowered his voice and softly said, “I know you better than anyone. I know that you are not going to surrender and you are not going to Advranki Prime. I am going to come with you.”
Solear smiled and said, “Then let’s get to work. We have to slave an entire fleet to this battleship and calculate a series of jumps.”
Arean said, “Where are we going?”
Solear answered, “I have a perfect place in mind. Somewhere a little off the charts.”
Chapter 17
“Shit!”
Jim Donovan thought that the proclamation came from Becky, but he wasn’t sure. However, it was a fairly accurate assessment of their current situation.
They had jumped from Waylon to Uselon without incident. Once in Uselon they queried the traffic beacon and established that they had indeed passed the Hiriculan fleet in hyperspace. They plotted a least time course to the Uselon – Conron hyperspace lane and micro jumped around Uselon’s gravity well.
They contacted the automated traffic control beacon in Uselon and obtained jump coordinates to Conron. Russ then aligned the Sunflower perfectly in the middle of their jump lane and they made the 6 hour jump to Conron.
There was still a little concern about what Shole meant by the words ‘giant laser ball’, but after several conversations and a few debates they had formed the consensus that the only logical place that Shole and Kolvak could have safely hid the hyper bubbles was on the automated fortress that guarded the Conron – Earth hyperspace lane.
Shole had stated that Conron was occupied by 23 active warships. Jim reasoned that the Hiriculans would more than likely guard the routes to Altian and Advranki Prime with a fleet of 7 ships each. They would then station the remaining 9 ships at the naval station. It made logical sense because Shole stated in her message that the Hiriculans had sent a significant force to both Solaria and Waylon.
Their plan to rescue the hyper bubbles was predicated upon their belief that the Conron – Uselon hyperspace lane was not defended. Their detailed plan was relatively straightforward; fly into the system unopposed, micro jump to the ‘giant laser ball’, grab the hyper bubbles, and leave before the enemy could react. In hindsight, the plan may have been too straightforward.
Jim quickly discovered upon reentry into the Conron system that the Hiriculan commander in charge must be illogical; or at a minimum came to a different logical conclusion than he had. Either way, ‘shit’ seemed to sum up their current circumstance rather nicely.
They felt turbulence the moment that they exited hyperspace. Jim and the entire crew were wearing their full smart suits and were safely strapped into their chairs. The Sunflower shook mightily for a few seconds, but nothing was damaged and no one was injured. Greatly inconvenienced, but not injured.
Jim knew immediately that they had flown into a trap. There was only one logical reason for shaking upon exit from a known hyperspace lane and Jim knew from painful experience that it wasn’t a good one.
Colin reported, “Passive scan updating, but I can confirm that the turbulence was due to a hundred of gravity missiles exploding around us.”
Russ commented, “We cannot jump.”
Colin reported, “Passive scan completed. Displaying it on the main monitor. We are surrounded by two destroyers, one battleship, and two cruisers.”
Becky said – well, what she said has already been established.
Russ said, “We are being hailed. It’s in Hiriculan. Computer, translate”
…Alliance ship, come to a full stop immediately or be destroyed…
Jim looked up at the main monitor. The battleship was directly ahead. There was a destroyer to the left and another to the right. There was a cruiser in the up direction and another cruiser stationed in the down direction from them. They were situated exactly in the middle of a box. There was technically nothing behind them, but they would have to turn around to get there.
The enemy was very tightly packed around the hyperspace lane. Each enemy ship was located exactly 7 light seconds, or 2.1 million kilometers, from the hyperspace lane. At their exit velocity of 0.08 light, they would reach the battleship in exactly 87.5 seconds.
There were at two squadrons of fighters currently on patrol. The fighters were circling the two cruisers. Both squadrons turned and dove toward the rear of Sunflower at .15 light.
Jim felt a little frustrated with himself. He had had plenty of time to think of something witty to say when hailed by an apparently overwhelming enemy force. Unfortunately, he had never thought of anything particularly clever. The best that he could come up with was, “No, I don’t feel like stopping right now. Why don’t you stop telling us what to do?”
Jim decided against using the stinging retort and said instead, “Charge the ion cannon. Increase speed to .15 light. Continue on this path straight toward the battleship.”
Becky asked, “Should I set the ion cannon at minimum dispersion?”
Ion cannons used a series of highly reflective surfaces (essentially mirrors) to focus the blast. There was basically only one option for the cannon – the width or diameter of the blast cone. A wide blast covered more area, but was less powerful. A narrowly focused beam covered significantly less area, but was correspondingly far more powerful.
Jim thought for a brief moment. There was very little danger that they were going to miss. He answered, “Yes, set it to minimum dispersion. We are going to get very, very close to an enemy ship in the immediate future.”
Jim watched the main monitor for a few seconds. Both the two destroyers and the two cruisers were veering toward them at a sharp angle. By the time they reached the battleship, they would be neatly hemmed in between the ships and the fighters.
The battleship had been sitting in space perpendicular to the hyperspace lane. This orientation made it easy to fire missiles, but impossible to fire its ion cannon. The big ship must have spotted that the Sunflower was charging its ion cannon because it suddenly started moving in a random pattern. This pattern made it extremely difficult to target with an ion cannon. Further, the battleship was turning so that it would soon face the Sunflower.
Colin announced, “The battleship is charging its ion cannon and turning to face us.”
Jim mentally drew a straight line extending the path of the destroyer on the right. He had done this thousands of times before in his fighter and the skill was certainly transferable to larger capital ships. The only difference was that in a fighter the distances were more condensed and things happened in a second or two. In a cruiser, it generally took a lot longer. He drew the line until he found t
he perfect intersection point.
Jim said, “At time now mark 28 seconds turn to coordinates 22.7 next 2.4.”
The coordinates used to turn a ship were based on two concentric 360 degree circles – one going around the ship horizontally and the second going around it vertically. However, the ship realistically only maneuvered through a 60 degree turn in any direction. A turn tighter than 60 degrees was not physically possible. If a ship wanted to make a 90 degree turn, it would have to sweep through an arc to do so.
A ship proceeding in a straight line would be considered traveling at coordinates 0 next 0. An adjustment to course was announced as a degree variation from that direction. As soon as the ship made the course correction, the steering coordinates reset to 0 next 0.
Therefore, the proper way to give the above command was to say left 22.2 degrees and down 2.4 degrees. However, because a ship can only turn 60 degrees, the Alliance Navy had developed a shorthand method that decreased words while correspondingly enhancing clarity.
A turn to the right of 22.4 degrees was announced as 22.4 while a turn to the left of the same amount was stated as 122.4. The same method was applied to down (0-60) and up (100-160). The word next was added to separate the two coordinates.
Therefore, Jim’s command of 22.7 next 2.4 meant that he told Russ to turn 22.7 degrees to the right and 2.4 degrees down. If he truly wanted the ship to turn left 122.4 degrees he would have to use the words ‘swing left’ or ‘sweep left’ which implied that the shorthand method was not to be used and he was speaking literally.
It generally made perfect sense unless it didn’t.
Russ had also followed the line the destroyer was taking and connected the dots. Jim probably could have said ‘turn right into the path of the destroyer before the battleship annihilates us’ and had the same effect as giving the coordinates. Again, he didn’t, but he probably could have.
Becky said, “We just received another message. Playing it.”
…You have five seconds to comply…
Becky said, “Some good news. They haven’t fired any missiles yet.”