Free The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict by Jeff Sims

also laughed. He said,” The missiles are normally stored in the small hold. They are fed through the wall and into the slot (pointing down) here when fired. I loaded one missile into the tube launcher. If we need to fire any more, we will have to roll them across the hallway.”
    Victor had completed the pre-flight check sheet. He also answered the corresponding six question pre-flight survey (his answers were fast, neat, average, friendly, good, good). He closed the door, signaled to Advranki control that he was ready to launch, and sent a warning beep through the ship.
    “Mini-freighter Vista , this is Control. You are cleared to leave. Remember to use automatic guidance until you pass the outer edges of the planet.”
    The automatic control system engaged and they gently lifted from the planet. For some unknown reason, this made Lorano cry. Carank had been around Clowy enough to know that Altians often had mood swings and tended to cry for no (or little) reason, but he hadn’t seen Lorano do it before this. His mandatory diversity training had taught him to just let the Altian cry and not to ask what was wrong. If Lorano wanted the others to know, he would mention it.
    Victor must not have noticed, for he didn’t comment either. He gave the controls one final look and said, “Okay, we are going to be on autopilot for the next 14 hours, so you may as well get settled in.”
    Carank noted it immediately, but Lorano responded faster, “14 hours? Isn’t that a little long.” Lorano had stopped crying almost as fast as he had started.
    Victor responded by bringing up the planned path on the monitor. It showed that they had to bypass several ships and installations. He said, “This is the typical route for freighters.”
    Lorano nodded and said, “I forgot we are not on a military vessel.” He pointed to the map and said, “Normally we get to go through this area and it only takes 4 - 6 hours.”
    Carank asked as sarcastically as possible, “Well Lorano, do you want to call traffic control and see if they will give us a better path?”
    Lorano briefly considered it, but they were trying to stay fairly incognito. Demanding a better route through the system would be a good way to draw unnecessary attention to their mission. He shook his head no, ending the conversation.
    Lorano and Carank spent the next 14 hours organizing their cabins and starting to turn the 3 rd hold into an electronics lab. The rooms had been easy, the lab had been far more difficult. Everything in the lab was brand new and still in the box. Items had to be moved out into the hallway, unpacked, checked, initialized, moved back into the hold, and then organized into a cohesive unit. Victor had helped by removing boxes and clearing pathways.
    They even had their first meal together. It consisted of the usual preserved packets, but Crista had surprised everyone by making a salad from fresh vegetables. Victor took a lot of pride discussing the salad. His main hobby is gardening, and he had planted a large garden between the inner and outer hulls. After dinner, Victor gave everyone a tour and discussed the finer points of space gardening.
    They had reached the hyperspace corridor linking Advranki to Conron. The letters ‘ron’ is a shortened version of an Advranki word meaning transit station. The letters ‘con’ are from the name of the explorer who found the system.
    The Altians had discovered Uselon and Waylon and had followed the Advranki custom of naming new systems. However, they changed the ‘ron’ to ‘lon’, which has no meaning in either language. Researchers today believe the reason for the name change was racial pride – the naming convention was close enough to the Advranki standard, but different enough so that everyone would know who discovered it.
    The Hiriculans also have a similar naming convention for uninhabited systems they discovered or control. The system is named after the discoverer and the letters ‘la’ are added