by Jeff Sims
Lexxi responded, “Go ahead; kill yourself. See if I care.”
Solear said, “Thank you for the kind sentiment. I knew you cared about me.”
Lexxi responded, “If you die I will visit the incineration hall once a year and shout expletives at whatever remains the humans don’t devour.”
Solear smiled and said, “Thanks for thinking about me.”
Lexxi gave an impolite hand gesture in response.
Solear continued, “I should be fine. However, monitor my progress and be prepared to gas the area if needed.”
Solear exited the bridge and noted that the force field snapped back into place the moment he crossed the threshold into the main corridor. He was a little concerned that one of these times Lexxi would close it too quickly and cut him in half.
He turned right and walked directly to the engineering control room. Solear saw that there were 4 humans in the room. Three were at control panels and one was fitting the boots, gloves, and helmet onto his smart suit.
One of the humans saw Solear and gave a small shout. The other 3 stopped what they were doing, turned toward the captain, and saluted.
Solear said, “Return to your duties.” Three dropped their right hands and no longer stood stiffly, but only the one dressing returned to his duties. The others just stood there and continued staring at the captain.
Solear looked at the man who was dressing. He had finished with his boots and gloves and was just about to put on his helmet. Solear asked, “Why are you putting on your full suit?”
The human responded, “We are going to run a simulation in a couple of minutes.”
Solear asked, “What are you simulating?”
Another human walked over and said, “Hello Captain, my name is Colin O’Neal. I am the chief engineer. Please feel free to contact me if you need anything from engineering. This is Becky, Ben, and Mike. John, the 5th engineer, is currently elsewhere.” Colin pointed to each one as he spoke their names.
Solear looked closely at each of them as they were being introduced and saw that one of them was female. He hadn’t noticed that there were female crew members when he had boarded. Of course, he had been distracted by seeing everyone in a line and hadn’t inspected each one. The female was shorter than the other males, but still taller than him.
All of the pilots from the first batch had been male, so Solear had somehow expected all of the humans to be male. Clearly, that was not the case though. He briefly wondered if there was some human rule preventing females from becoming fighter pilots. He made a mental note to ask Jim Donovan.
Solear suddenly realized that his question hadn’t actually been answered, so he said, “Nice to meet each of you. Can you tell me about the upcoming simulation?”
Colin replied, “We are testing our ability to switch to secondary power in the event of a catastrophic loss of primary power.”
Solear remembered Lorano mentioning this one. He said, “Losing primary power in a catastrophic manner would generally imply that the ship was lost.”
Colin replied, “In many scenarios I suppose you are correct. However, it is certainly possible to lose the main power reactor and still have the ship relatively intact. If the possibility exists, we want to be ready for it.”
Solear wasn’t convinced. However, he kept his opinions to himself. He said, “What does this particular test entail?”
Colin said, “The overall conversion involves disconnecting the trunk line from the primary generator, dragging it 44 meters across the deck, and reconnecting it. We also have to rewire the power relays to allow the energy to flow from the other direction. This simulation will test our ability to do so.”
Colin pulled out a stopwatch and said, “Ready.” He received a thumbs-up, so he said, “Lights.” The entire room and the caribou corridor went completely dark. Colin then started the watch and said, “Go.”
Solear was close to having a panic attack. He really didn’t particularly like being in well-lit corridors with humans and he definitely didn’t enjoy being stranded in complete darkness with them. He was about to order the simulation to stop when one of the engineers, the female he thought, handed him goggles.
Solear put them on and he could now see in the darkness. The goggles felt odd, strangely metallic, and very heavy on his face. He quickly realized that they must be of human origin. He looked at Colin and noted that he was also wearing a pair.
Colin said, “Captain, please follow. Let’s check Ben’s progress.”
They walked down the corridor and found Ben. He had removed the outer cover on the junction box and was rapidly removing and reorienting the circuit breakers. Solear saw that he was hampered by wearing the helmet and gloves and correspondingly not wearing night-vision goggles.
Solear said, “Ben, I believe, why don’t you remove your helmet and gloves and turn on the lights to make the task easier?
Colin replied for him, “If we lose primary power, we lose the lights. Also, if there is a hull breach we lose oxygen. Ben needs to be able to complete his task solely by feel without any external help.”
Solear asked, “What about these goggles? Shouldn’t he be wearing them?”
Colin replied, “We are testing his ability to do the task without them. The goggles may not be available.”
Solear said, “How about a light cube?”
Solear received only silence in response. Becky responded, “Is a light cube like a flashlight?”
Solear didn’t know what a flashlight was, but at least both words contained light. He said, “Probably. I will check and see if we have any spare light cubes.”
Ben finished and yelled, “Time.”
Colin motioned for the captain to remove his goggles and said, “Computer, lights.” He looked at his stopwatch and said, “5 minutes, 18 seconds. You need to shave another 30 seconds off of that time.”
Ben looked directly at Solear and said, “Don’t worry Captain; in a crisis we won’t let you down.”
Colin said, “Captain, can you tell us where we are going or anything about our mission. We are all very curious.”
Solear replied, “I honestly don’t very much myself. I will receive detailed orders when we dock with the Conron Naval Supply Depot.”
Ben must have been listening because he said, “C-SAC.”
Solear said, “What is sac?”
Ben replied, “That is the acronym that you could use to refer to the supply depot. On Earth, any military supply depot is called a Supply Administrative Center. The C in front designates it as Conron. Therefore, we are visiting C-SAC.”
Solear said, “I will pass the abbreviation along to command. However, I cannot guarantee that it will be accepted. As for the mission, after we dock, we are going to jump several systems away and look for the presence of Hiriculans in an unoccupied system.”
Colin asked, “And if we find them?”
Solear answered, “We run.”
Colin smiled and said, “The ship is missing many supplies and back-up components. May I submit a list to the station for replenishment?”
Solear said, “Granted.” He thanked Ben for allowing him to watch the simulation and wandered through a few more corridors. Eventually he found a lone human female working at a different junction box. She appeared to be trying to wrestle a large item into the small opening.
Solear said, “Hello.” When she turned around he said, “You do not have to get up. Please continue what you are doing.”
The woman started to get up; then stopped. Instead she looked directly at him and said, “You look just like the Advranki in the video game. How did they get the images so accurate?”
Solear thought for a moment. He really didn’t know what to tell her. Clearly, she was in the process of piecing together the truth and he was certain that if he lied to her he would lose her trust when she eventually ascertained the truth.
He replied, “Advranki engineers secretly landed on Earth and helped human computer developers program the video game.
”
“Why?”
Her response surprised him. Again, he decided to tell a version of the truth. He said, “The Alliance may soon go to war with the Hiriculans. Eventually, we will need the Earth to fight with us. The video game is essentially a training tool. By playing the game, you were able to take months, perhaps years off of your training.”
She seemed to have no further questions because she put her head into the junction box and started wrestling the unit again. The unit was only a millimeter or two shorter than the opening.
Solear said, “What are you doing?”
She said, “I am installing a battery backup for the sensors.”
Solear said, “What are you holding?”
She replied, “It is a battery. When you have electricity flowing to it, it charges and when there is no electricity, it provides it.”
Solear responded, “Yes. I understand the concept of a battery. The ion cannon is essentially an enormous battery. However, I don’t recognize the one you are holding.”
She responded, “It is a human battery, made on Earth. It’s called a car battery.”
Solear said, “What exactly will this modification to the junction box do?”
She said, “We noticed a design flaw in the ship. This battery will correct it. You see, the secondary generator is not wired to the external sensors. If you lose main power, you lose sensors. This battery will let you perform a passive scan when main power is off-line.”
Solear wanted to laugh, but restrained himself. He could not think of a single instance where someone would want to scan the area when they had no power. He reasoned, if you didn’t have power, you should probably be working on fixing the power generator instead of randomly scanning things.
Solear answered, “Thank you for detecting the weakness and making the upgrade. I will pass the design flaw and the method for correcting it to the ship’s designer. I am sure that he will be very interested in seeing it.”
As a matter of fact, Solear couldn’t wait to send Lorano a message and tell him that the humans were installing batteries from Earth to correct one of his design flaws. He was certain that Lorano would not appreciate it, which made it that much better.
As he wandered, he noticed that the ship was extremely clean. Not just clean, spotless. In fact, the walls, floors, and ceiling seemed to shine. He discovered that he was not imagining it when he came across a group of three humans polishing the floor.
When they saw him, they stood up and saluted. Solear acknowledged them and watched them work for few moments. When he could stand it no longer, he said, “Why are you cleaning the floor?”
One looked up and answered, “Colin said that we have to know every square inch of the ship. The only way to truly be familiar with the ship is to clean it.”
Solear couldn’t argue with the logic. Technically, he couldn’t find enough logic in the statement to create a cohesive thought about it, let alone an argument. He replied, “Good work, carry on” and walked to the next section of the ship.
Solear walked down the rest of the corridor and took the electro lift back up to the main level. He wandered through maintenance for several minutes and arrived at one of the missile launchers. There were two humans working beside it. They spotted him and he again had to salute them and tell them to return to their duties.
Solear looked at the area for a moment. The missile launcher was simply a large tube with a hole at one end and an electronic pulse actuator at the other. Beside the launcher was a cradle for storing missiles. The two humans standing beside him were huge. They were both male and easily the tallest and widest humans he had ever seen.
He briefly considered retreating and found that he had taken a half step backward. He willed himself to stay calm. So far these two hadn’t bothered him, but either one could crush his skull with little more than a back-hand swat.
The function of the cannon was nearly automatic. The firing sequence was relatively straightforward. To fire, the bridge officer chose a type of missile, offensive, defensive, or any number of other types. The order was sent to the missile storage depot right beside the hangar bay. Next, a gantry would find the appropriate missile, pull it from inventory on a shelf, create a record of removal for accounting purposes, and set the missile in a tube.
The missile travels through the tube and is routed into a Y that directs it to one side of the ship, then branches off to one of the 10 particular launchers. From there, the launcher separates into two sections and the missile is lifted up into the opening. The launcher closes over the missile and locks. A signal is then sent to the bridge that the weapon is armed and ready to fire.
It takes 18 seconds for one missile to be loaded into one launch tube. Therefore, the entire process for loading 10 missiles takes 3 minutes. This is the standard cycle time used by both the Alliance and Hiriculan navies. It hasn’t changed for over a century.
The process is automated, but several things can go wrong during loading. The first is that the launcher may not completely seal and the second is that the bridge crew may decide they want to fire a different missile than the one originally chosen.
These two reasons are why there are typically two beings stationed at each missile launcher during battle. The beings’ primary job is to verify that the launcher is completely sealed. The launcher won’t fire until it receives a palm print validation. If a launcher weren’t completely closed, the missile would explode inside the ship.
To address the second issue, there is an overhead lift assist with a specially designed magnetic carrier. The carrier had a top and two arms extending down. It looked like an upside-down basket. To remove a missile, one manually opens the launcher, attaches the carrier to the top of the missile, activates the electro-magnet, and then moves the missile to the nearby storage cradle.
After a battle, any unused missiles are removed from the storage cradle, placed back in the tube, and moved back to the weapons depot.
The storage cradle was the focus of Solear’s attention. The cradle had space for five missiles. Solear doubted that they would ever need to make 5 changes during a battle, but Alliance planners apparently thought that captains were an indecisive lot.
At any rate, the cradle was full. Specifically, it was overflowing. The humans had stacked 15 missiles in the shape of a pyramid onto the cradle. The bottom row had 5, the second row had 4 and were sitting in the gaps between the missiles on the bottom row. The third row contained 3, the second row 2, and the top row had one missile. They missiles were held in place by some weird cloth strip with a metallic latch.
Solear wasn’t sure which question to ask first. He decided to start with the obvious and said, “Why are there 15 missiles stored beside the launcher?”
The human smiled. Solear noted that the human clearly thought that he had been given a compliment. The human said, “Thanks Captain, we realized that one of the deficiencies of the design is that you can only fire a missile every 3 minutes. However, we can manually load the missile launchers much faster. Watch.”
The man pushed the button to open the launcher. The second ran to the missiles and hit a button on the strange strap. It separated and fell to the floor. Solear realized that it must be some human designed restraining device. Then the two humans grabbed the top missile, picked it up, and put it in the loader. The first activated the closing sequence; then the second verified it was closed and pressed his palm on the verification pad.
Solear had just observed it, but he really couldn’t believe what he had just seen. Those missiles weighed 91 kilograms (200 pounds) apiece and the humans had just picked it up and handled it like it was weightless. Solear was speechless.
Fortunately, the human broke the lull in the conversation. He said, “By loading them manually, we can load and fire much faster than one every three minutes.”
Solear asked, “How fast?”
The human responded, “Well, we can easily maintain a pace of one every minute. In a pinch we could probably do one e
very 30 seconds.”
“Pinch?” Solear asked. He hadn’t heard that expression before.
“Sorry,” the human responded, “Alliance basic is so similar to English that I forget some words are missing. It means in a crisis.”
Solear thanked the men for their efforts and walked away. He wandered aimlessly for a few minutes and found that he was where the marines were practicing. He briefly wondered whether his sub-conscious was directing him here the entire time.
He took a deep breath, activated the switch to open the door, and looked in the room. He watched in stunned silence as the humans practiced wearing the Mobile Powered Suits. They were impressive; they could jump, run, and swing the huge swords with apparent ease. Solear even watched one of them doing what appeared to be a dance.
Jim Donovan spotted him in the doorway and motioned for everyone to stop. After the perfunctory group salute, Jim approached and invited Solear to stand next to him behind one of the barricades.
Jim said, “Afternoon Captain, welcome back aboard. The marines are practicing with the new MPS.”
Solear noted that Jim had slurred the three letter acronym together. It sounded more like M-pease than M-P-S. Jim continued, “We brought the asteroid from the Waylon space station. You can see that it is fully shielded just like an AAU.”
Jim waved his hand at one of the suited marines. The marine power jumped to the rock and in one fluid motion swung his sword in a sideways swipe. The blow cleanly severed another piece of the rock.
Solear had seen one of the pilot wear the suit a couple of months earlier. However, the pilot looked clumsy compared to the fluid movements of the marines. He thanked the marines and walked back to the bridge.
………………….
Clowy said, “We are being hailed on a private channel.”
Solear looked confused for a moment. They had completed the hyperspace jump from Uselon to Conron and were rapidly approaching the Conron Naval Supply Depot or C-SAC. Solear mouthed the abbreviation a few times to decide whether he liked it.
