The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict (43 page)

Solear said, “Computer, run an analysis. Is there any pattern to the missiles?”

…Analyzing. Yes. There is a pattern. Removing everything but the missiles and rerunning the simulation. Showing the missiles fired by the leading wing in red and the trailing wing in green…

This time only the 20 missiles that targeted the upper row of enemy fighters were shown. Now, Arean could clearly see what had occurred. Each individual shot appeared random, but the red and green missile streaks made a crisscross pattern that targeted each enemy fighter with exactly two missiles – one on their current vector and a second directly above. It was stunningly clear that the humans had anticipated where the enemy was going to be and fired to that location.

When it finished Solear said, “We can’t show this to anyone. How can the humans predict the enemy’s movements to such a high degree of confidence?”

Arean thought for a moment and had no answer. He was about to say that when he had an epiphany. Instead he said, “Let’s show it to the human and ask him.”

Solear smiled and nodded affirmatively, but remained sitting at his desk. Arean realized that his comment meant that he had inadvertently volunteered to go to the pilots’ quarters and get the human.

Arean checked the force fields and noted that maintenance personnel were still in the hangar and the pilots were in their quarters. Arean sent Jim Donovan a message asking him to come to the entryway alone. Arean did not want the humans running toward him. It was scary.

Arean collected Jim and they walked back to the bridge together in silence. Arean looked at Jim. The human seemed nervous. His mouth moved several times as if to form a word, but nothing was vocalized. Finally, Arean said, “Do you have a question?”

Jim said, “Yes. You never told me. What is the passing score on fighter test and what is the baseline score for your comparison?”

Arean saw little point in withholding the information. He knew that Jim would find out eventually. He said, “The answer isn’t as straightforward as it seems. The goal of the test is to pass, not to win. You found a way to win and your score was much higher as a result.”

Jim did not respond, so Arean looked up at him and saw that he had stopped, momentarily stopping a caribou in mid leap. Arean watched as Jim took a small shuffle step forward, apparently to allow the caribou to safely land on its feet.

Arean turned back to him and said, “The minimum passing score is 1,000. The baseline average for all Alliance pilots is 1,250. The highest recorded score in Alliance history is 1,440.”

Jim remained standing there, this time with his mouth agape. Arean assumed it was some human expression, but didn’t know the meaning. He briefly tried to remember if he had ever seen Ella with that particular expression.

He couldn’t recall, so he said, “Let me ask you a question. If you reran the simulation and weren’t allowed to switch missiles or pilot in manual, what score would you achieve?”

They began walking again and Jim said, “Let me think. I would crash at the 90 degree turn, I would kill the single fighter, I would avoid the 3 fighters, and I would die twice on the approach to the enemy cruiser. If I was lucky and I was able to score a glancing blow with my ship buster missile, I would score 2,000 maximum.”

Arean walked through the bridge proper and directly to the electro lift, but noted that Jim stopped and greeted each of the three females. When that was concluded, they rode the electro lift up to the Captain’s conference room. Solear motioned for them to sit and played the simulation.

When it completed, Solear looked at Jim and said, “Comments?”

Jim said, “Cool technology. It looks just like a movie. You guys should edit it and include close-ups of people’s faces.”

The comment was met with silence, so Jim continued, “See, you should show the missiles leaving the ship, then switch to Lexxi pressing the firing button. When the cruiser makes the hard turn, you should show Ella piloting the ship, maybe sweating hard to turn. She could say something ominous like – I don’t know if we can maintain the turn, the stress is tearing the hull apart. Oh, and play up the communications between you and Hiriculan commander. Can we release it on Earth?”

Solear took a deep breath and reminded himself that he had asked for comments. Perhaps his question had been a little too open ended. Solear said, “Those are interesting comments to say the least. However, the problem we have is that you and the other humans performed a little too well?”

Jim said, “Too well sir?”

Solear hadn’t heard the term sir before. He assumed that it meant captain, but made a mental note to ask the computer later. He said, “Again, you humans performed extraordinarily well; so well in fact that it might raise some unnecessary attention from some beings with questionable motivations.”

Arean was watching Jim (from safely across the table). He noted that Jim clearly didn’t understand. Arean said, “Let me say it a little more bluntly. You performed too well. If we show this video as it is, the Alliance Senate will more than likely move to immediately put Earth in Alliance and replace all fighter pilots with humans.”

Jim said, “Is that a bad thing?”

Arean thought for a moment and said, “Well, yes and no. Yes, it will be nice for Earth to join the Alliance, but when the Hiriculans find out how good the human pilots are, they will launch a preemptive strike to keep the Alliance from securing them.”

Jim repeated, “Preemptive strike?”

Solear said, “Yes. If the Hiriculans discover these scores, they will try to beat the Alliance to Earth and convince the humans to join their side.”

Jim asked, “And if they can’t convince us to join their side?”

Solear laughed and answered, “The Hiriculans can be pretty convincing. However, if for any reason they failed, they would ensure that neither side would use human pilots.”

Jim asked, “What would the Alliance do in response?”

Solear answered, “The Alliance will try to stop the Hiriculans at all possible costs. We would probably blockade Conron to keep them from going to Earth.”

Arean finished, “It will be the catalyst that started the war.”

Jim said, “So, if I understand you correctly, you need to find a way to change the battle to still show all of the facts, but minimize the impact of the fighters.”

Arean said, “And if possible, we need to make the battle seem more humane somehow. You may not realize this, but those two destroyers were the first and second Hiriculan ships that the Alliance has ever destroyed. I am sure that they are understandably upset.”

Jim said, “Show the video again.” Jim watched it patiently until the cruiser fired its missiles. At that point he said, “Stop video. Here is your answer.” He pointed to the screen and said, “Change the location of the two destroyers from 99.12.16 to 89.06.15 and give them an initial velocity of .08 light and a straight line course bound for 100.12.16.”

Jim stood and said, “Will that be all Captain?”

Solear looked at Arean, then back at Jim. Clearly the human thought that he had given them invaluable information, but Solear didn’t see how changing the destroyers’ location changed anything. Solear answered, “Not quite.”

Solear showed Jim the portion of the simulation that they were studying earlier. They watched as the green and red highlighted missiles struck and nearly destroyed the upper row of Hiriculan fighters. Solear asked, “How were you able to predict the enemy’s movement to such a high degree that you could fire unguided missiles and hit them?”

Jim said, “Simple really. We just guessed at the probable location of the fighters and fired missiles at that location. If the Hiriculans had acted differently, we would have missed completely.”

Solear’s response was interrupted by Ella entering the conference room. Solear said, “Thank you for the information. Ella, please escort Jim back to his quarters.”

Ella gave the Captain a look somewhere between despair and horror and said, “Okay.” She drew out the ‘ay’ quite a bit longer than necessary. She continued, “First though, I have some pertinent information for you.”

Solear said, “Yes.”

Ella continued, “The battleship just appeared on the scan. It is 7 hours and 28 minutes behind us.”

Solear said, “So, we have a 10 minute cushion. It isn’t as much as I had hoped for, but still better news than it could have been.”

Arean said, “They must have done the same math as us by now. Do the following scans show if the battleship returned to Netron?”

Ella said, “They exited hyperspace, waited 2 minutes, and jumped. I won’t know for some time whether they are pursuing or retreating.”

Solear said, “On your way through the bridge, tell Clowy to send a message to the
Informe
r that a battleship has entered the system and is in pursuit.”

Arean said, “Based on the distance we have already traveled, that should cut an hour off the time for the
Informer
to gather the information. Computer, verify time savings.”

…The time savings would be 1 hour and 7 minutes…

Ella exited the conference room and waited for Jim to join her on the electro lift. For the first time she noticed how small and confining it was. Jim standing close to her made her very nervous. She felt like she was going to pee.

Fortunately, they exited the lift almost as quickly as they had entered. Jim took a few steps and waited for Ella to join him. Ella verified she had maintained control of her bladder and slowly, but surely walked up beside Jim. She turned to Clowy and said, “Clowy, please send a message to the
Informer
that a battleship has entered the system and is pursuing us?”

Clowy said, “What battleship?”

Ella responded, “Remember, the Hiriculan battleship that has been chasing us for the last three systems.”

Clowy responded, “Well yeah, what other battleship could it be. Wait, are you trying to tell me that battleship stopped chasing us and was replaced by a different one?”

Ella said, “No. I am trying to tell you to tell the
Informer
that the same battleship that has been chasing us previously is still chasing us.”

Clowy said, “Well, why didn’t you just say that.”

They exited the bridge and began walking down the main corridor toward the hangar. Ella noted that Jim was intentionally taking smaller steps to stay beside her. She supposed he was trying to be polite, but she would prefer if he would walk about 3 paces ahead of her.

She thought about ordering him to do so, but instead decided to try to make conversation. She said, “I did a little research on your earlier question. As far as I can tell our main body parts are similar, but there are subtle differences in our DNA.”

Jim responded, “So Lexxi was right, we could date, but not procreate?”

Ella thought for a moment about how best to respond. She doubted that this was a topic for polite hallway conversation. She said, “Changing subjects, do you like the caribou?”

Jim craned his neck down a bit and looked at her. It seemed to be an earnest question, so he answered, “It is fascinating. It is probably the neatest thing I have seen since ‘volunteering’ to serve on this ship.” He over-stressed the word volunteering.

Ella appeared not to notice the wordplay. She said, “My father painted it. He just finished painting a corridor on the battleship
Guardian
. He titled that one
Birds Flying
. The Alliance Navy is now considering hiring him to paint every ship in the fleet.”

Jim said, “Wow! That is awesome.”

Ella had no idea why she had told Jim that. The information was useless to him. They were now crossing the hangar, so Ella asked, “How are you humans fitting in?”

Jim replied, “I don’t understand why everyone is scared of us. Why does everyone keep themselves forcibly separated from us?”

Ella replied, “Quite frankly you scare them.”

Jim simply asked, “Why?”

Ella replied, “Earth was discovered 300 years ago. We have been periodically monitoring the planet since then. Humans over time have become villains in horror movies and bed-time stories. When I was a young girl my parents would say, go to bed or a human will eat you.”

Jim said, “That sounds terrible. We typically don’t eat other people.”

Ella shrugged and said, “Well, that is why they are scared of you.”

They walked the next few paces in silence. Jim said, “Okay, I can understand their fear of the entire human race, but why fear us as individuals? We haven’t tried to hurt anyone on the ship.”

Ella replied, “Good point. When you first came aboard, I was scared to be anywhere near you. Now, I am not nearly as scared. It will take time for people to align reality with their preconceived notions I suppose.”

She ushered Jim back into the pilots’ quarters and returned to the bridge.

……………………………….

Adrmiral Fruid’la seemed to be in a constant state of frustration. They had set a perfect net to stop the cruiser in Netron, but had been foiled a second time. The cruiser had appeared in the wrong location and had disappeared again. Loid’la had taken a calculated risk and set course to Opron in the belief they had somehow circumnavigated the Netron system.

They were exiting hyperspace now in the Opron system. Admiral Fruid’la hoped they would have some good news. He said, “Loid’la, I need an update, are they in the system?”

Loid’la said, “Activating the passive scan now.” The bridge crew waited in silence for what seemed an eternity until the scan had completed.

Loid’la smiled triumphantly and displayed the scan on the main monitor. He said, “They’re here. I am setting a micro jump on a least time course through the system.” Loid’la raced through the calculations. He didn’t bother to double check his work or run a simulation. He engaged the jump engines.

Admiral Fruid’la said, “Nice work on calculating our new course so quickly. Will we be able to catch them?”

Loid’la smiled at the compliment. It was one of the few he had received during the last few days. He reviewed his numbers and said, “We are going to be 4 minutes behind them. They will reach the hyperspace lane to Conron. We will not be able to catch them.”