The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict (6 page)

Frank mentally reviewed the bill; the giggle had caused the earlier practice speech to be forgotten. The bill was simple really. Since the Alliance was technically defending the Earth, humans should be actively engaged in that defense. Simply put, the Alliance Fleet was requesting that humans be allowed to join, hopefully as fighter pilots. Of course, it wasn’t that simple, it never was. There were multiple counter points, such as humans aren’t Alliance members, humans are way too aggressive and will never interact with other races, and probably the most valid, no one knows if humans have the mental capacity to fly the fighters.

The vote had come before the Senate three times earlier. Each time the three Altian senators had voted for it and the Advranki and Solarian had voted against it. This time was different though. Frank could feel it. Everyone was nervous after hearing about the brave Captain Solear’s incident. He considered the report for a minute – he still couldn’t believe what the Hiriculans had done.

Frank was going to change his vote! This meant that it would end as a four-four tie and fall under rule three. He would force his opponent, Korno, to be the sponsor of the bill. That way, if the humans failed, Korno would take all of the blame and if the humans succeeded, well he would be on record voting for the bill and he knew he could find a way to take the credit.

Frank’s communicator buzzed, and Frank said, “Computer, answer incoming call, voice only. Invoke Senate security protocols. ”

…Incoming call by unknown caller. The call is being patched through to your personal communicator, voice only, security is in place, the call is not being recorded…

Frank was so excited he couldn’t wait for the other person to speak. He blurted out, “Well, were you able to do it?”

The man responded, “Yes, the controls are on your pad. After you are done, delete the application.” His voice was strange and metallic sounding. Frank assumed that he was using a voice changer to hide his voice. He needn’t have bothered; no one could listen in on their conversation.

He checked his appearance a second time. Perfect. He was using a new hairspray and antiperspirant today that he had never tried before. Also, he normally wore anti-aging cream around his eyes, but he had decided not to wear that either. It was almost time for the council meeting to start, so Frank left his chambers and walked to the Senate chamber.

The Senate building was incredible. It was a stunning feat of architecture. The building swooped up in middle, then down on both sides, and back up at the end. It looked something like a bird in flight. The outer chamber was spectacular. It was covered in stone and precious minerals from across the galaxy. The inner chamber was equally exquisite, with harmonics perfectly tuned so that any voice is amplified for easy hearing. It was a must see for anyone visiting the area and there were tour groups daily.

Of course, Frank wasn’t headed there. The place was too unsafe and noisy for actual Senate business. They actually met in a non-descript, underground bunker about a ½ block away. The inner chamber was an exact holographic duplicate of the real one. No one watching on television would be able to tell the difference. There was an underground passageway to the real one in the event they needed to make an actual appearance. Today, they were certainly going to have to use that passageway.

……………………….

Victor and Crista Bullpeep were approaching Advranki Prime. It had been an uneventful journey, but Crista had found it exciting since it was her first journey away from Solaria. She yelled “Wooo” as the exited the hyperspace lane and transitioned back into real space. They were deposited from hyperspace directly in front of a large space station.

The station was basically a large asteroid that had been hollowed out and repurposed. The station housed a weapons platform, several squadrons of fighters, and the traffic control office. They were immediately hailed by the traffic control.

“New arrival, welcome to Advranki Prime. We have your ship registered as the
Victoria
. Please verify and state the purpose of your visit.”

Victor looked at Crista. She didn’t seem to respond when she heard the name of the ship. Still, he was a little concerned that she would feel slighted because her name wasn’t yet part of the ship’ name. They were technically newlyweds after all. He made a mental note to change the name of the mini- freighter to
Vista
the first chance that he got.

Victor answered, “Verified. This is the
Victoria
with two passengers aboard. Our holds are empty. We were invited to attend a conference at the Alliance Senate.”

“Got it. You are approved for landing on pad 149.15.2. You can set your navigation system to those coordinates and have your ship automatically flown there. Please note that as you pass the station your craft will be scanned. You are in no danger from any type of radiation from the process. Have a great day. Control out.”

It wasn’t a request. There were so many craft in the surrounding area it would very difficult to fly the freighter to the destination on manual. Victor set the ship to automatic and felt it take off on its preprogrammed flight. They were looking out at the area on the viewport monitor. There were no actual windows on the
Victoria Vista
.

Christa stared at the monitor as they flew through the system and oohed and aahed nearly everything. At one point she said to Victor, “There is so much here, so many craft, so many space stations, so many ship building facilities, it is unbelievable.”

Victor answered, “Well, Solaria has a population of 800 million and Advranki Prime has nearly 14 billion on the planet and several million more on the stations and orbital platforms. Remember, we are a very young race compared to them.”

The
Vista
landed and Victor and Crista exited their mini-freighter. A helpful hoverbot was waiting for them and led them to the secondary Senate chamber. They had two seats just off of the main floor waiting for them, right beside an Advranki officer and an Altian civilian.

Christa sat next to the Altian and said “Hi, I am Crista and this is my husband Victor.” Victor noted that she had said husband without hesitation and only a little anger. That was definitely an improvement. He couldn’t blame her too much though; because from her point of view he had drugged her, kidnapped her, bleached her skin white, forced her to marry him, dragged her off-planet, and put an control collar around her neck to keep her from hurting him.

The man beside her said, “Hello human, my name is Lorano. I would say that I pleased to meet you, but we would both know I was lying.”

Crista responded, “Oh no, we’re not humans, we’re Solarians. We just had our blue skin bleached white so that we would look exactly like humans.”

Too easy, Lorano thought. That was way too easy. He responded, “What is the difference between a Solarian with her skin bleached white and a human?”

Crista said, “What?”

Solear grabbed Lorano and pushed him gently aside. He said, “Hello, my name is Solear, captain of the Alliance cruiser
Sunflower
. What brings you two to this meeting?”

Victor answered, “I am an expert on humans. The Alliance Senate asked for me to testify on human culture and technology.”

Lorano couldn’t help himself, so he said, “Hmm, if you look like a human, talk like a human, and know everything about humans, you must be a…”

“Human,” Crista answered helpfully.

Crista tuned beet red with anger when she realized she had been the butt of the joke. Despite the two races physical similarity, they were nothing alike. She was just about to do something when she heard a commotion behind her.

……………………….

The Ceremonial Master entered the chamber and said, “All rise, the Senators are entering and the session is starting.”

Frank entered and took his seat along with the other seven senators. He smiled to himself. He was really going to enjoy today’s Senate meeting. He took out his pad and activated the application the mystery man had mentioned. The app was connected to the humidity control in the room. Slowly, the humidity level in the room started increasing. No one would notice, he hoped, at least not until it was too late.

The Ceremonial Master said, “We are here today to discuss several bills, but most noticeably bill 179.44.18, allowing humans to join the Alliance military.” Please note that any and all discussion about this bill must remain a strict secret. Any questions on that point?” The ceremonial master looked around the room, his gaze stopping at each person until he received a nod or a verbal yes.

We have some special guests with us today, and we will start today’s meeting by hearing the report of the recent conflict with the Hiriculans from the captain in charge of the mission.”

Captain Solear stood and walked to the podium. He knew that he had to tell the story carefully. He had rehearsed it several times, so he should be okay provided no one asked too detailed of questions. He turned to the Senators and said, “Respects Gentle beings.”

They all nodded or muttered responses so Solear began telling his story. “Let me begin by showing you the computer reenactment of the battle.” The video had been edited for length and content and only showed the enemy launching fighters, Captain Solear ordering the Alliance fleet to respond by its launching fighters, the battle, and then the enemy breaking off and returning to their ships after the first pass.

Solear said, “After the battle we all thought the enemy’s maneuvers were suspicious. Clearly, in hindsight it is obvious to anyone watching that the enemy wanted to test their fighters against ours in a limited engagement. This made us suspicious that they were testing a new material or weapon. So, we had some of the remains of their fighters brought aboard one of the ships and examined.” He was intentionally using ‘we’ to avoid saying who did what. “The initial examination turned up a biological substance that should not have been there.”

“What was it?” asked one of the Advranki Senators.

Solear responded, “Well, I will turn the podium over to Lorano. He led the investigation to determine what the substance was.” Solear sat down and gave the podium to Lorano.

Lorano said, “Respects Gentle beings,” and waited for the obligatory nods in response. “The substance was blood. Specifically it was blood from a Neto.”

“A Neto?” interrupted Senator Figur, the same Advranki Senator that interrupted a moment earlier.

Lorano responded, “Yes. The tests were conclusive. There is no question that a Neto was piloting at least one of the fighters in the skirmish. I would guess that Netos were flying 20 of the fighters.

“The leading two wings,” interrupted the same Advranki Senator. “Those two wings took all of the casualties. I recall from the video that they lost 18 fighters from those two wings.”

Lorano looked at Solear, who nodded in agreement. He said, “Solear could answer that question much better than I, but basically yes. We both believe that the reason the enemy took such high casualties is that they intentionally blew up their damaged ships to prevent us from finding out that Netos had piloted them.”

Senator Figur said, “Netos are a very ‘young’ race, to put it politely. Last I knew they had just invented electricity. How could they have the mental capacity to understand complex computer systems and fly fighters?”

Frank looked over at Senator Figur. He desperately wanted him to be quiet. Everything depended upon proper timing, and Senator Figur was wasting it by asking pointless questions. Frank said, “Senator Figur, perhaps we could let Lorano finish his story.”

Lorano nodded at Frank in private thanks. Lorano continued, “Well, they don’t; or at least they didn’t. It is clear from the biological sample though that the Hiriculans have been tampering with them. I don’t think the Hiriculans have been altering the Neto’s DNA, but they certainly have been engaging in selective breeding, advanced training, and more than likely drug therapy.”

Senator Figur interrupted Lorano and said, “Are you sure?”

Lorano hid his first response to the question and simply said, “Yes.”

Figur said, “Computer, can you compare the performance of the possible Neto pilots to the Alliance pilots?”

…Calculating….

Solear stood up joined Lorano at the podium. He said, “Let me answer that. This computer probably isn’t tuned for that complex of a task. We had the battle computers at fleet headquarters calculate the relative performances.”

Senator Figur said, “Computer, cancel request. What was the result of the fleet analysis?”

Solear answered, “They performed poorly. All of the Alliance pilots in the battle were Advranki. So, using their performance as a baseline of 100%, the pilots tentatively identified as Hiriculans performed at 95% and those identified as Netos performed at 67%.”

Senator Figur exclaimed, “Wow! That is actually pretty good, isn’t it? It seems much better than I would have expected.”

Lorano replied this time. He said, “There wasn’t much hardware for us to recover, but what little we did get seems to indicate that the Hiriculans may have tried to compensate for the Netos mental shortcomings by modifying the flight helmet and the corresponding controls to have the computer perform more functions.”

Senator Figur interrupted, “Aren’t the fighters almost a symbiotic link between pilot and ship? We have experimented with fully automatic fighters in the past. They don’t work. You need the interaction between pilot and computer to have an effective system.”

By this time the humidity in the room was very high. Frank observed everyone. Several people were fidgeting. One observer in the back had started to fan himself. Frank figured the room had reached the target humidity level so he turned it off and deleted the application from his pad. He mentally hoped that Figur would stop talking.

Solear responded, “I have personally never flown a fighter, but yes, you are essentially correct. An individual Neto may not be a threat to an individual Alliance fighter, but if the Hiriculans can put enough of them into fighters, they will have a clear advantage.”

“Why is that?” said Senator Figur.