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

to the end. A rough translation of the suffix ‘la’ in Hiriculan would be ‘aggressively taking things’ or simply ‘warrior’.
    The Vista received a hail and Victor immediately answered it. “This is traffic control. Please align your to ship to the attached coordinates. You may jump when you are ready.” Victor made the final course adjustments and hailed Crista to the control room. This made Carank and Lorano take a break and also head there.
    Crista sat down at the pilot seat and Victor told her, “Set course for Conron.”
    Making a jump into hyperspace is relatively easy. One simply types in the coordinates of the place in space to which they want to travel and engages the drive. The drive then uses time to curve space (without folding it) and allows the ship to travel along the peaks. Imagine the upper half of a sine wave or a humped camel. The ship travels from peak to peak (or hump to hump), bypassing everything in between.
    So, theoretically, anyone could jump from any point to any other. However, bent space is particularly sensitive to gravity. This is why ships have to leave the gravity field of a planet and be far enough away from a star to jump. Further, since shields create a gravity field, they cannot be used in hyperspace. If a ship in hyperspace were to approach too closely to a body of gravity, it would ripped from the peaks and shoved back into real space.
    Usually, one could then navigate around the gravity source and re-engage the hyperdrive. Sometimes though, this can damage the drive and strand the ship. Worse, the gravity source could be filled with asteroids or cosmic debris. Hitting debris while in hyperspace is deadly.
    As a result, the Alliance was formed primarily to chart courses between systems and constantly monitor them to make sure they are safe. They also control traffic within the lane to ensure that no two ships are on the same path. The odds of hitting another ship in hyperspace is infinitesimal, but not zero.
    Victor had found during their journey from Solaria to Advranki Prime that Crista enjoyed plotting courses and engaging the hyperdrive. This had been the first thing she had been truly interested in, so he gladly gave the navigation duties to her.
    Crista entered the coordinates for Conron, double checked for accuracy, ran a computer simulation of the flight, performed a status check on the hyperdrive unit, and declared that they were ready to leave.
    Victor said, “Engage the hyperdrive.” Crista could have easily just pressed the button after the status check, but somehow hearing the command to press the button made sense to her. Crista pressed the button and they disappeared from Advranki Prime.
    Travel through hyperspace travel isn’t instantaneous. Time passes, but at a much slower pace than in real space. This phenomenon has led Advranki fiction writers to surmise that if one could find a way to stay in hyperspace without moving, one could live for three thousand years. So, the people on the ship felt like the jump had lasted 8 hours. However, in the rest of the universe, 80 hours (just over 3 days) had passed.
    They exited hyperspace in the Conron system and updated their shipboard clock, downloaded any news feeds and warnings, and scanned the system. They set course for the hyperspace lane that leads to Earth. Victor contacted traffic control and requested clearance to micro jump to the Conron – Earth hyperspace lane.
    Traffic control responded, “Sorry, your request for a micro jump is denied. Unfortunately, there are several loose asteroids and two comets in the system at the moment and we can’t risk jumping. You will have to take the long way through the system.”
    It was a four day journey through the system at .01 light. Victor could have requested to be allowed to traverse the system at a faster speed, but he didn’t ask because he felt that this request would also be denied.
    The Conron system has a large star with three gas giant planets. Each