The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict (26 page)

Directly in front of him were the missiles for both the ship and the fighters. They were stored in a rack system that extended from the floor to the ceiling. There were supposed to be anti-gravity carts at every intersection, but Solear noticed they were all missing. Strange, he thought.

The missile storage room was technically a part of maintenance, but it was physically separated from the rest of maintenance by an incredibly strong wall. It wasn’t quite as protective as the bridge, but it was close. It was enclosed to protect the ship from an accidental missile explosion. If there was an explosion, the force of the blast would be directed to blow back into the hangar and out the hangar bay doors, hopefully preserving the ship’s integrity.

There was a below the floor conveyor system that took the missiles to each of the 10 missile launchers. Solear walked to the central loading spot and inspected the area. Everything seemed in place with the exception of the missing carts.

The room was otherwise empty, so Solear walked to the other person-sized exit in the room. It was the door leading directly from missile storage to maintenance. However, the door was physically locked from the other side and could not be opened. There was a force field generator over the door, but it was not functioning. Also, the anti-gravity platform that went down to the lower level of maintenance did not function. It read ‘Out of Order Due to Maintenance’.

Captain Solear read the sign twice. The words bothered him. He said to no one in particular, “If the anti-gravity platform is broken, the sign should simply read ‘Out of Order’ or possibly ‘Out of Order, Maintenance called’ or more than likely ‘Out of Order for Maintenance’. The words ‘Due to’ on the sign really mean from; not for. He thought if it was truly ‘Out of Order from Maintenance’ that would mean that maintenance had intentionally placed the platform out of order. If that were the case though, wouldn’t maintenance simply fix it since they were maintenance?

Solear retraced his steps through the missile room, back into the caribou corridor, past the bridge, and into the first door to maintenance. There were three levels in the maintenance area. The middle level, in which Solear was standing, was primarily used for storage and small projects. This level was smaller than the level above and below because the 5 missile launchers were housed here.

Solear walked across the maintenance bay and found two workers performing a preventative inspection on one of the missile launchers. Solear said, “Hello, what’s the status?”

The first technician said, “The launcher is fine. We are just giving it a routine check. It will fire when required.”

Solear said, “That’s good. How are the fighters?”

The response was a little less forthcoming. Finally the second technician said, “They’re okay, I guess.”

Solear responded, “That isn’t a great endorsement. What is the issue?”

The first said, “I’ll be honest. The issue is the humans.”

Solear said, “Please explain.”

The second technician said, “Well, there are several problems. The first one is that they sit in their fighters for hours every day. We walked into the hangar one day, started working on a fighter, and boom, all 20 hatches open. The humans start to get out of the fighters.”

The first continued the story, “We see them and they see us. We drop our equipment and start running out of the hangar as fast as we can. Three of the ones closest to us start chasing us. We have a big head start, but the humans are big and really fast. They’re gaining on us. We realized we weren’t going to make it, so I yell to the computer to close the main cargo door and gas the hangar. My partner here yells to the computer to inform our colleagues to come and retrieve us.”

The second technician said, “Yeah, I didn’t want to wake up and find I was trapped with twenty hungry humans just waking up from a long nap.”

Solear asked, “Why didn’t you report this?”

The first said, “We didn’t report it because technically we were in the wrong. We should have verified there were no humans in the hangar before entering. But, I just can’t figure out why they sit in their fighters all day long running status checks. It’s annoying.”

The second said, “Now, we only enter the hangar at night. Also, now we only enter the hanger from the lower level of maintenance. I don’t think the humans are aware of the lower level.”

Solear said, “So why is the door locked and the platform broken?”

The first technician said, “Well, we can’t prevent them from getting into the missile storage area. The force field over the small door leading from the missile storage area to maintenance doesn’t work because we would have had to break the integrity of the blast wall to wire it. So, we shut it and permanently locked it. We also disabled the anti-gravity platform in the room to keep them from going into the lower level.”

Captain Solear finally understood. Somehow, discovering that the sign was written correctly made him happy. He said, “Thanks” and turned to leave.

The first technician said, “Wait, that isn’t even the worst of it.”

The second seconded, “Not even close.”

Solear turned back and said, “Please continue.”

The first technician said, “We went to do an evening repair and we noticed that the humans had changed several of the missiles. Their fighters no longer had the standard package.”

The second said, “So, we simply changed them back to the correct ones. With the automatic carts it only takes a few minutes.”

The first said, “We come back the next night and the missiles had been changed again. So, this time we change them back and store the carts where the humans can’t get to them.

The first said, “And then. And then I saw it. I didn’t believe it at first. They, they…” His voice trailed off.

Solear asked, “They what?”

The second technician said, “The humans. They changed the missiles back without the carts. I don’t know how they did that.” He wanted to say more, but stopped. He appeared to be shivering slightly.

The first looked at the second and continued, “After they changed the missiles, they left us a message; a very clear message.” The Advranki shook his head.

Solear prompted, “What was the message?”

The second had calmed himself down a little and said, “The humans wrote ‘Leave missiles
alone
!’ on the side of the wall in big letters. They even included an exclamation mark and underlined the word alone.”

Solear said, “Okay, so they left a sign. Apparently they didn’t like you removing and changing the missiles.”

The first said, “No Captain, you don’t understand. They wrote the message in blood – their blood. The message was obvious. If you touch the missiles again it will be your blood smeared all over the walls.”

Solear said, “Blood? That is barbaric.” He couldn’t believe it.

The second technician said, “You know, you hear tales about humans as a kid and only half believe them. How can a race of beings be that dangerous you wonder? You assume that people are just making up stories. Then you see it. The reality was far worse than the stories.”

Solear thanked them and left. He walked back into the main corridor and considered returning to the bridge. He didn’t though. He kept walking forward, toward the hangar. He noticed that he had slowed down considerably. His mind wanted to go, but his feet seemed to have other ideas.

He eventually made it to the hangar. The force field was active. Solear said, “Computer, scan hangar. Identify location of all humans.”

…Scanning. All humans are in the living area. The hangar is unoccupied…

Captain Solear lowered the force field and entered the hangar. The force field snapped back into place after he had walked through. Well, Lexxi was certainly watching he thought. He walked across the hangar to the humans’ living area. The force field was down, but no one was racing toward him.

Solear walked through the door. One of the humans saw him and yelled. He saw a flurry of motion as all 20 humans came running toward him. Solear almost turned to leave and shout for the gas, but he hesitated. He wasn’t sure if was displaying bravery or if fear had rooted him in place.

Either way, the humans lined up in two rows facing him and put their hands to their heads. They were standing perfectly still, not exactly looking at him. Solear remembered the two phrases from last time. This time he said as loudly as he could, “Return to your duties.”

The pilots dispersed almost as quickly as they had lined up. Two of them remained. One of them motioned to the nearby couch. He said, “Captain, thank you for visiting us. Please come in and have a seat.”

Solear walked over and sat on a couch. The two remaining humans sat down on the opposite couch. Solear forced himself to breathe. This wasn’t so bad. The humans looked less intimidating sitting down. Solear said, “How is everything?”

The human responded, “I am Jim and this is Russ. We are getting used to our quarters and to life aboard the ship.”

Solear asked, “Have you had any problems?”

Jim responded, “I don’t think our communication pads work properly. It appears that we are able to send and receive messages to Earth and we can send messages to each other, but we can’t send messages to Arean or other members of the crew.”

Russ said, “Or, if we are sending messages, none of the other crew members are responding.”

Solear looked incredulous and asked, “You can send and receive messages to Earth?”

Jim said, “We think so. We have each received three emails from our families so far. They appear to be legitimate. I doubt anyone would try to fake them. What would be the point?”

Solear remembered the message that Lorano had sent from Earth. He supposed that Lorano had left the hyper communications platform in Earth and functioning. Solear answered, “I can assure you that no one is forging messages to you. I think it is safe to assume that they are really from your families.”

Jim said, “Thanks.”

Solear responded, “I will check into the com pads. However, I have a couple of questions. Why do you guys sit in the fighters and run status checks?”

Jim responded, “Is that a problem?”

Solear answered, “Each time you run a status check, both maintenance and engineering have to review the results. The constant status checks are creating extra work for those departments.”

Jim said, “Sorry, every time you get in the fighter, it asks if you want to run a check before continuing. I will instruct the team to only run one check a day.”

Solear said, “Thanks. Just out of curiosity, why do you spend so much time sitting in the fighters?”

Jim responded, “We are using the ships like simulators and running missions. It is a great way to practice flying.”

Solear thought that seemed like a good idea. The human pilots probably needed all of the practice they could get. He said, “I heard about that you had a disagreement with maintenance concerning the missile payload on the fighters.”

Jim responded, “Yes. According to Alliance Navy regulations, the pilots have the final decision about what missiles to use for a particular mission. Maintenance kept changing the payload without consulting us.”

Russ said, “We tried to send them messages, but again we don’t think they went through. We saw them in the hangar once and tried to talk to them, but they literally ran away.”

Jim added, “There were two other crew members that kept coming to the doorway of the hangar and looking in as if they wanted to talk to us. We had someone wait for them. He saw them and pointed to his to com pad to try to tell them to test it, but they left.”

Russ added, “The pilot thought they were coming back, but he fell asleep waiting for them.”

Solear redirected the conversation. He said, “I heard about the message you sent to the maintenance workers.”

Jim said, “Yes. We wanted to tell them to stop changing the missiles, but we couldn’t find anything to write with. The walls are incredible, nothing sticks to them and you can’t scratch them.”

Russ said, “The only thing that would work was blood, so we pricked our fingers and wrote the message. Each of us did one letter.”

Jim said, “It must have worked because they stopped changing the missiles.”

Captain Solear thought that each of the answers made sense. Perhaps it was merely a misunderstanding. He told them again that he would have com pads checked and stood up to leave.

Jim said, “I have another question. Why are there force-fields preventing us from entering the rest of the ship?”

Solear was surprised by the question. He wondered if they really didn’t know. He said, “You have not been trained yet on the other functions of the ship. The fields are there for your protection – in a way – to keep you from hurting something that you don’t understand.”

The humans seemed to understand and accept that explanation. Solear then got up and left the room and returned to the bridge.

Shortly thereafter Ella announced, “We have exited hyperspace in the Opron system.

The traffic control system was automated in this system. It consisted primarily of a series of large buoys that marked the entry way and a computer system that tracked incoming and outgoing ships.

The Opron system had a sun and two large gas giants. There were a handful of moons that rotated the closest gas giant, but all were uninhabited and could not support life. The system was located near the center of several other stars, which made the night view from Opo, the largest moon, remarkable. As a result, the only industry in the system was stargazing. An observation and landing platform had been constructed to accommodate, but there was little else here.

Clowy received the system information and updated the ship’s clock.

Captain Solear said, “Ella, perform a scan of the area. Are there any other ships in the system?”

Solear asked, “Are there any relevant updates from Opron?”

Clowy asked, “From Opron?”

Solear said, “Yes.” He paused for a moment, then said, Clowy, are the humans’ communicator pads disabled?”

Clowy responded, “Yes. You told me to disable the shipboard functions.”

Solear thought for a moment. He had technically told her to disable the function that would allow the humans to lower the force fields.