The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict (36 page)

The second destroyer blew apart at nearly the same time. Its complete destruction was just as dramatic as the first. It was annihilated beyond description. There was no identifiable piece left, only a cloud of dust. This cloud connected with the first and blocked out a large portion of viewable space.

The cloud was so dense that the bridge crew missed the fact that the 15
^th
and final missile made a course change and completed a 20 second burn. The missile was now ballistic; it could not change direction or adjust its course. However, its target was stationary.

Captain Solear watched the two destroyers explode in stunned silence; trying to fathom what had just happened. . He lowered his head and thought about the lost souls. Everyone aboard had died instantly. The follow-up scans were practically useless due to the dust cloud, but what little they could see had confirmed there were no survivors.

How could there be. There had only been 3 minutes from the first hit to complete destruction. Of those 3 minutes, there had only been a few seconds when the enemy crew could have realized they were in trouble. Assuming both ships had the standard compliment of 72 persons each; Solear had just watched 96 beings die in horrific fashion.

Yes, they were the enemy and yes they were attacking him. However, it seemed that despite the final warning the enemy was trying to give him ample opportunities to surrender before firing the killing shot.

The humans, on the other hand, had given the enemy no quarter, no pause, and literally no chance. Solear now realized the humans had pre-planned the destroyers’ imminent destruction and had ruthlessly carried out the execution. Solear believed that was why every other race feared humans. They really were the most dangerous species in the known galaxy.

Solear asked, “How? How did they destroy two enemy ships with only 7 missiles? Like too many other things in the battle, this seemed impossible.

Arean said, “The homing beacon.” Every one turned to look at him, primarily because they could no longer look at the screen due to the expanding dust cloud. Arean continued, “They used their homing beacon to provide a clear and unambiguous path for the missiles.”

Solear said, “Explain.”

Arean said, “The two ships that I earlier said rammed the destroyers. Now, I am not so sure if they actually rammed the ship or simply fired their homing beacon at the destroyer. Either way, they programmed the missiles to follow the homing beacon directly to the exposed area of the destroyers’ shields.”

Arean took a breath and continued. He said, “Meaning that our missiles followed one of our homing beacons directly to the target. There was no way for the Hiriculans to move or dodge. The missiles ignored everything. They couldn’t miss.”

Solear said, “The missile pattern was specific as well. The first 6 missiles hit the exact same area enough times to expose the power core and the final ship buster missile finished it. The humans knew exactly how to kill a destroyer. How could they have known that?”

No one answered the rhetorical question, so Clowy broke the sour mood. She said, “We have a completely clear board. We are going to make it out of the system.” Everyone looked at her and realized that she was correct. The board was completely clear; dusty perhaps, but clear. Everyone smiled and temporarily forgot the destruction they had just witnessed.

Clowy then asked, “Should we turn around and explore the object now?”

She hadn’t meant it as a joke, but everyone laughed. Solear said, “No. I think not. Ella, run another scan as soon as the dust cloud dissipates a little bit. Also, stop accelerating. Let’s slow down to .07 light and get the fighters back aboard.”

Both Ella and Arean reacted to his orders. Ella inputted the new speed settings and the ship began decelerating from its current speed of .12 light down to .07 light. The constant, slower speed would make it easier for the fighters to land on the cruiser.

Solear asked, “How long until we clear the system’s gravity well?”

Ella responded, “Ten minutes until we clear the gravity well and 20 minutes to the hyperspace lane.”

Solear said, “That seems longer than our original mark of 49 minutes 11 seconds.”

Ella responded, “Yes, it is 2 minutes longer. Recall that we are slowing. The two minutes extra are due to that. If we only slow to .1 light and continue at that speed we can still make the original time.”

Clowy added, “That means there is only 8 minutes to our original mark.”

Solear said, “Thanks Clowy.”

Arean added, “The fighters are spread out, but appear to be in two main groups. The first group is lining up to land as I speak and the second group will be able to land in 18 minutes.”

Solear said, “Ella, hold the ship at .1 light until the first group docks. Then continue to slow down.” He then looked at Arean and said, “Do we know how many fighters survived?”

Arean responded, “There is too much dust in the system to get an accurate count, but at least half did survive the battle.”

Solear was clearly impressed. He said, “Keep me informed.” For the first time in nearly 3 hours he relaxed.

It was short lived. Three minutes to be exact.

Ella yelled, “We have a contact. A Hiriculan battleship just appeared on the scan.”

Clowy asked, “Do you think it sees us?”

Solear answered, “Yes. If we see it, then it can certainly see us. Show the scan on the main monitor. Where is it?”

Ella showed the scan on the monitor. The battleship was on the outer edge of the system, well outside of the gravity well. Using the circle analogy again, the battleship was at the 345 degrees or nearly the center of the circle on the east side.

Solear said, “They can make a micro jump from there. Computer, assuming they make a micro jump the moment they see us, when will they arrive.

…Analyzing. They need to make a 0.35 minute micro jump. This will position them between us and the hyperspace lane. The battleship will exit the micro jump in missile range…

Solear said, “Ella, calculate a new mark if we maintain this speed. When will be able to exit the gravity field?

Ella said, “By strange coincidence, that puts us exactly back on our original time. Mark time is now plus 4 minutes 3 seconds until we clear the gravity field and can jump.”

Solear said, “Computer, estimate time for the battleship to appear and fire.”

…87.1%. The battleship should be complete the micro jump in 3 minutes, 35 seconds. The ship will be within both missile and ion cannon range when it exits hyperspace. The missiles should take 12 seconds to launch and will have a travel time of 18 seconds…

Solear did some quick math and arrived at the answer of 2 seconds. They would be able to jump somewhere, heck anywhere, exactly two seconds before they are hit by enemy missiles. The timing seemed insane. He wanted to order the ship the speed up again, but he knew that some of the pilots were trying to land.

Solear said, “Arean, do you have an update on the fighters.”

Arean said, “Yes. The first batch is landing as we speak. I have an accurate count of 10 fighters. Eight fighters have landed. There are two more on final approach. They are spread out properly and one will land in 30 seconds and the other in a minute.

Solear said, “And the other group?”

Arean said, “They are still obscured by the dust cloud. They had been slowing in preparation for landing. However, they dramatically increased speed to chase and destroy the 3
^rd
volley of missiles from the destroyers.”

Solear said, “So, where are they?”

Arean answered, “They are approximately 3 minutes flight from the ship. They will reach the ship one minute before the enemy’s missiles do.”

Solear reviewed the data. The remaining fighters would make it back to cruiser before they had to jump, but they would be going way too fast to land. If they tried, they would ram into the docking bay.

The second problem was the spacing. The fighters needed to be spaced 30 seconds apart to properly land. This means it could take as long as 4 ½ minutes to land 10 fighters. Even if the fighters were going the correct speed, they only had 4 minutes until they would be forced to jump.

He thought about the bomb application on his com pad. He would have to set it to explode every fighter not on the ship. He set those thoughts aside for the moment and said, “Ella, set a hyperspace course to … to, well to somewhere. We need to get away from that battleship.”

Ella said, “I have a potential course set. We can micro-jump away from the battleship to the other side of the system. We won’t have time to run the simulation or double check the coordinates.

Solear answered, “Anywhere will be better than here in 4 minutes.”

Jim Donovan checked his sensors. The sensors on the fighter weren’t nearly as good as those on the cruiser, but he received a feed from theirs. It notified him of the appearance and imminent arrival of the battleship.

Jim used the fighter frequency and said, “Well Ace, it looks like we found the Captain’s hot date.” That earned a few chuckles from the other pilots. Jim continued, “Men, we get to execute landing pattern splatter.” He received several “woo hoos” from the other pilots.

He continued, “Line up in single file for landing, use emergency spacing, execute now.”

Jim then contacted the
Sunflower
and told Clowy to patch him immediately through to Captain Solear. He said, “Captain, I have an emergency order request. Please set the shields to configuration 612Z5, focus on area 126.33, and use full emergency power. Execute in time mark 2 minutes. Tell the ship to brace for impact.”

Solear thought that the human’s voice sounded calm and confident – way too calm. He wasn’t sure what value the shield configuration would have. He had never heard of that one. He said, “Ella, is that a valid shield configuration?”

Ella input the shield configuration, set the power requirement, and selected the focal area. Ella said, “The computer accepted the configuration as a valid one, but I have never heard of it.”

Solear said, “Me either. Commander, have you ever heard of configuration 612Z5?”

Arean answered, “No.” He then said, “Computer, display shield configuration on the secondary monitor.”

…Displayed…

Arean and Solear walked over to the main monitor and stared at it. The shields showed a weird pattern extending out from the port side landing bay. Some of the shield deflectors were reinforcing others. The shield strength was very strong right beside the ship and got weaker the farther it extended from the ship.

It also showed emergency power strength. Emergency power meant that the shields would be reinforced with the ion cannon’s stored power. They wouldn’t be able to use the ion cannon in this configuration, but that was of little interest since the ship was pointed in the wrong direction and the cannon could not hit the battleship.

Solear looked at the monitor and could make no sense of the shield configuration. He said, “Computer, run data retrieval and analysis. What is this configuration intended for and has it ever been used?”

…Researching. This shield configuration was originally intended to deflect an asteroid away from a ship or possibly a ship away from a comet. The configuration has never been used in Alliance history…

Solear said, “This configuration is completely useless against the battleship. Do you see anything commander?”

Arean continued to stare at the simulation in concentrated silence. Ella said, “Captain, shall I activate the shields. We only have 5 seconds until the marked time the human requested.”

Solear waved his hand and said, “Yes.” There seemed little point in refusing the request, even if it appeared useless.

Suddenly, Arean’s eyes flashed wide open. He yelled for the captain to sit down. He raced backed to his chair, flopped down, and activated the emergency straps. He activated the ship-wide communication network and yelled, “All hands, this is not a drill. Brace for impact.”

Solear and the rest of the bridge crew followed Arean’s advice and activated their emergency straps. A strap quickly circled each occupant around their chest and a second around their waist. The straps were essentially a buckle-less seatbelt that held the occupant very firmly in their chair.

Solear watched the first monitor showing the battleship and the rapidly approaching fighters. His eyes then flicked to the monitor showing the animation of the funnel shield configuration. He still couldn’t figure out what was happening. His eyes went back to the first monitor and he watched the fighters get closer and closer.

Then it hit him.

The impact of the first fighter smashing into the shields pushed the entire cruiser to the right by a giant lurch. Solear felt the straps tighten into his ribcage. He didn’t fall out of his chair, but he felt like he had been punched. The entire cruiser rocked from the hit.

Just as he settled down from the first hit, another fighter hit the shields exactly 6 seconds later and again rocked the ship. Solear thought this one had been harder than the first. He started to yell that this was madness, but his wind was knocked out of him when the third fighter hit the
Sunflower
.

Solear heard Ella say something, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He wondered how she even managed to speak. He figured that she was trying to tell him that the battleship had appeared. He figured it didn’t matter. His own fighters were tearing the ship apart; he really didn’t help from the enemy.

After a minute of relentless pounding, the impacts suddenly stopped. Solear looked at the countdown clock. It showed 3 seconds until they could jump and 5 seconds until the first wave of missiles would hit them. Solear yelled, “Navigation.” He wasn’t intending to yell. His ears were ringing and he wasn’t sure he was conscious.

Ella yelled, “Course set. Ready to jump.”

Solear then yelled, “Fighters.”

Arean yelled in reply, “All fighters report on board.”

That was impossible, but at this point Solear didn’t care. He activated the secret program on his com pad just in case, watched the clock tick down the final second.

When it hit zero, he yelled, “Jump.”