The previous method made use of hyper charting missiles. These were enormous missiles about the size of a fighter that were capable of jumping into hyperspace by themselves. The method was to launch a missile, have it jump to hyperspace and travel to a specific location, chart that location, then open a tiny hyperspace window and send the information back. These missiles were hugely expensive to produce and could only be used one time. Thousands or even tens of thousands of missiles were required to chart a hyperspace lane.
Lorano had created a new type missile that could continuously send back gravity readings as it traveled through hyperspace. From this, they could then create a map of the gravity fluctuations throughout the missile’s flight path. The gravity information wasn’t nearly as good as a detailed scan, but a ship could follow a missile’s path with a high degree of confidence that it wouldn’t smash into anything.
Using Lorano’s method, the same area could be effectively charted using only hundreds of missiles instead of thousands. Plus, each missile was significantly cheaper since it didn’t need a hyperspace generator or advanced communications gear.
Lorano’s idea for locating Old Solaria was to inundate a particular location with gravity reading missiles. The result should be a chart showing areas with high gravity and their relative width and breadth. Once identified, they could follow-up with hyper charting missiles or actual visits to these locations for exact scans.
During his brief stay at the Conron Depot, Lorano reviewed all of the legends and stories about Old Solaria and made note of any that gave a spatial location. The task hadn’t been as arduous as it sounded. There were only a handful of stories that gave a general location of the planet and only one (the monument on Solaria) that gave actual coordinates.
Carank had also been busy. He reviewed all of the previous Alliance Navy searches. He created a multi-layered chart that showed the known astronomical objects such as stars, planets, and meteoroids against the gravity profile of the regions in question. He was searching for any area that had a high gravity spike without a corresponding identified object.
Their research hadn’t yielded any new information or insight, but Lorano had identified four potential areas that he thought were promising. According to the star chart, the obvious place to search for Old Solaria was Trilon.
The old historical records suggested that there may have been a hyperspace jump path between the two systems. Although there is mention of a path, it doesn’t list actual jump coordinates or actually mention Trilon by name. This was strange because Trilon had been discovered before Old Solaria had been evacuated.
The Navy had conducted multiple searches from Trilon and could find no evidence of a previous path to Old Solaria; nor were they able to chart a new one. Every conceivable direction from Trilon was blocked by gravity disturbances and/or cosmic radiation.
The Navy next tried to find a way around the radiation field by starting in Uselon, Waylon, and Dunron. If they couldn’t find the planet by going right to left, perhaps they could stumble upon it by going left to right. They made several, unsuccessful searches from each location.
Since the Fleet had left a hyperspace charting platform in the Waylon system, Lorano agreed with Carank’s earlier assessment that Waylon was the most logical place to begin the new search. Lorano and Carank had boarded the
Sunflower
in Conron and had made a relatively short series of jumps from Conron to Uselon, and then on to Waylon.
The Waylon system consisted of an average star with five planets. The system was unusual in that all five planets were clustered very close together and were very high in raw materials such as iron ore and polonium. It appeared that at one time the five planets were probably one giant asteroid that was struck by a meteoroid and splintered.
They had arrived in the system approximately two days ago and docked with the hyperspace charting platform. The
Sunflower
made a complete scan of the system while it was traveling to the platform. The system was unoccupied. They also queried the traffic control buoy; it showed that no traffic had been here since the Navy stopped looking for Old Solaria almost a year ago.
Well, official traffic anyway. Lorano and team had flown the mini-freighter
Vista
around the outskirts of the Waylon system roughly four months earlier when they were forced to find an alternative hyperspace path from Earth to Conron because the existing hyperspace corridor was ‘accidentally’ damaged and was no longer viable.
The fancily named hyperspace charting platform was in reality simply a drilling platform and its corresponding control sphere and living quarters. The drilling platform wasn’t being used; the team was located in the control sphere. The conversion from mining control sphere to hyperspace charting platform had been straightforward – the Navy had simply dragged the structures to the Waylon system and changed their name.
Lorano and Carank reached the hangar and saw the
Sunflower
. The
Sunflower
was docked to an exterior bay right beside the main hangar. It was connected to the station via an airlock. Carank waved at Lexxi as they passed. She couldn’t literally see him, but there was a camera in the corridor and he knew that Lexxi was monitoring it despite what she had said.
The last two days had been productive. They had landed on the station and found an unmarked corvette stored in the main hangar with a completely clean transponder. They moved the corvette to an exterior docking bay and cleaned the main hangar.
The humans then unloaded the cruiser and transferred everything to its correct position – the assembly line in the main hangar and the monitoring equipment in the bridge. Lorano and Carank focused on setting up the assembly line. It was the priority because they needed roughly 1,000 gravity missiles to conduct an adequate search of a particular area.
Lorano took a deep breath and prepared himself for his upcoming encounter. He noted that Carank was doing the same. They had no inherent force field protection here should the humans turn violent. They could have removed the sleeping gas canisters from the
Sunflower
, but the hangar bay was too big. The gas would dissipate before it would cause the humans to fall asleep.
Lorano fingered his beam weapon. He had been in the bay several times before, but with only 1 or 2 humans. This time all 20 were there. Individual humans hadn’t bothered him, but he felt the weapon was a necessary precaution this time. Basically he thought it was better to have a beam weapon and not need it then need one and not have it.
They walked in. One of the humans saw him and they immediately came running toward them. The humans lined up in their eerie twin lines. Lorano forced himself not to turn and run. Instead he held his breath and waited. Captain Solear had informed him the correct greeting was ‘dismissed’ or ‘return to your duties’.
Lorano said, “Dismissed.”
Eighteen of the 20 pilots returned to whatever they had been doing. Jim Donovan and Russ Brand approached them. Lorano noted that it was normally these two humans that discussed technical issues with him. He wasn’t sure why those it was always those two, but then he hadn’t really given it any thought.
Jim said, “The machine is rejecting too many parts. The circuit board won’t fit into the housing.”
Lorano responded, “I imagine it is simply user error. Is everyone following the work instructions I created?”
Jim didn’t answer, so Lorano reviewed the assembly process. The prototypes that he had built by hand to check the design had fit perfectly. However, now that it was being assembled on a relatively high speed machine, the circuit board was slightly rubbing against the housing and causing the issue at final test.
Now that Lorano had diagnosed that the problem was that the components weren’t fitting together properly, he quickly changed the design. He angled his body so that no one could see the monitor. He quickly made a small adjustment to the length of the circuit board. Then he announced, “Everything looks good, let me try.”
Lorano started the machine and it produced a perfect part. He said, “It seems to function properly. Perhaps you simply need some remedial skills training.”
Lorano made a production of showing the human how to run the machine. Then he stood back and allowed the operator to continue making parts. Lorano decided to wait beside the machine and pretend to watch the human work.
The human ran one part, then two, then three. All of the parts were now fitting together properly. While watching, curiosity finally overcame Lorano and he asked Jim, “Why do you line up in two rows when people come into the hangar?”
Jim replied, “It is a sign of respect for superior officers.
Lorano asked, “So you don’t do it if lower ranked officers enter?”
Jim simply replied, “No.”
Lorano smiled in anticipation of winning an argument. He asked, “What about civilians?”
Jim replied, “No. Lining up for review is reserved for superior officers.”
Lorano replied, “Well, Carank and I are technically civilians. Does Earth have civilians that work for the military?” Lorano had spent a couple of months on Earth to design an Alliance flight simulator that the humans could use. He already knew the answer.
Jim said, “Yes. There are many different types of civilians that work for the military. Generally, we refer to them as government contractors.”
Lorano asked, “And would you stand in honor for them.”
Jim said, “No.” He paused for a moment, now understanding Lorano’s line of questioning. He said, “I assume that means that you don’t want us to line up for you or Carank.”
Lorano said, “Correct. Please reserve that for Captain Solear and First Officer Clowy.” Lorano figured that Solear still deserved the eerie two line treatment.
Now that the entire assembly process was running again, Lorano decided to watch each station to ensure the process was being followed correctly. The line consisted of three separate stations. The first used a large stamping press to create the shell of the missile. The second manufactured the electronics package, and the last station was assembly and final test. This time there were no rejects at the final assembly station.
The line was finally running at 1 missile every 90 seconds. At that rate, they would be able to produce 45 missiles every hour. This was well below the peak rate the line could achieve of 60 per hour, but there was no real reason to go that fast. The humans planned to divide themselves into three teams of six and each team was going to run the line for 4 hours a day.
Providing the line continued at this pace, they would have the 2,000 missiles required for the first launch in a little less than four days. The humans certainly could have worked more hours per day, but there was little point. Lorano estimated that he needed that much time to assemble and test the monitoring equipment.
One set of monitoring equipment could only track one launch of 1,000 missiles to one location at a time. Fortunately, they had brought two sets of tracking equipment, so they could track two locations at the same time. This meant they could fire two batches of 1,000 missiles, then wait up to 3 weeks for the missiles to complete their hyperspace journey, and then repeat for the next two locations.
Lorano stepped over to what appeared to be a hastily assembled break area. There were a few chairs surrounding shipping crates that had been converted into tables. He noticed there was a chess board set up on one of the tables. He looked closely at it and was convinced it was the board that he and Carank had used when they were stuck on Earth.
Lorano looked at it and asked Jim, “Do you play chess?” He immediately regretted the statement. It was a human game after all and the board was set up. Obviously, the humans played chess. There was a clock beside the board that he was unfamiliar with.
Lorano could see Jim staring at him questioningly. Jim responded, “Would you like to play a game?”
Lorano shook his head yes and sat down on the white side. Jim sat on the other side. Within a few seconds, the game had drawn a fair crowd of on-lookers.
Jim said, “I assume you are familiar with the game.”
Lorano answered, “Yes. But I haven’t seen the clock before. What does it do?”
Jim said, “You agree on how many minutes you want to play, and then the person that runs out of time loses. We use it speed up the game. Chess can take a long time if each person spends several minutes thinking about each move.” Jim set the clock on floor.
Lorano made the first move, sliding the pawn over his black bishop up two places. Jim countered. Each made several moves. Jim seemed to focus on moving his pawns, forcing Lorano to expend his pawns removing them. Lorano saw his opening. He moved his queen down the board and captured Jim’s rook.
Jim then slid his queen directly in front of Lorano’s king and called checkmate. Lorano looked at the board and saw that Jim’s pawn was protecting the queen. Lorano couldn’t move his king and his queen was out of position to trade.
Jim said, “Good game.” He put his hand out, but pulled it back just as quickly.
Lorano was stunned. Losing to Carank sometimes was one thing, but losing rather quickly to a human was quite another. Lorano said, “Yes. Good game. I didn’t expect you to be quite so competent.” Lorano stood up.
Jim smiled and said, “Thank you, I think. Most of us play chess. You are welcome to come back when you have free time and want to play.”
Lorano assured him that he would return for a rematch when time allowed and turned toward the exit. Carank joined him and they walked back to the control room. They entered the room and activated the power lock.
The control room was independently armored and shielded, similar to the bridge of a warship. They were safely sealed inside. It would take an Alliance Armored Unit (AAU) to break inside. Even then, it would take hours to break through the force field and the armor.