"That's it, COB? 'It seems too easy, sir'? Where the hell is the amusing anecdote about some damned space mermaid or a UFO or some such damned thing? That's just no good at all, COB. We need to check with Ensign Rivers about what they're putting in your coffee." Captain Jefferson laughed almost disappointedly.
"That damned Rivers won't make anything but decaf, sir. I've had to hide those colored water packets three times this week," the XO added. "If he does it again, I'm going to put his decaffeinated ass on report."
"At ease, EndRun," the CO replied, using the XO's mecha callsign, which he seldom used unless he was trying to keep the mood light.
"Well, now that you mention it, there was this one time," the COB started, but thought better of it when the captain waved him off with a grin. He paused, almost sulked, and then sipped his real coffee that he had made himself. Captain Jefferson, of course, realized all of that. Everybody on the bridge drank the COB's coffee, as nobody could stand that weak-ass stuff that they kept down at the mess hall. And the stuff that Ensign Rivers had insisted on, well, it didn't even qualify as Navy coffee, and an old marine mechajock like the XO sure as Hell couldn't take it. Captain Jefferson had been very pleased once the COB had decided it was his personal duty to make certain that the bridge crew members were supplied with appropriate, thick-as-mud, vile, and extremely stout-beyond-stout java with real caffeine in it.
Uncle Timmy? He sipped from his coffee mug and then snapped the magnetic base back onto his command chair's arm.
Yes, sir. We are packed, stacked, and ready to go, sir.
Hyperspace?
All systems are go and ready for the engagement.
Sound it off, Timmy.
Aye, sir. The ship's head AIC, actually Lieutenant Commander Timmy Uniform November Kilo Lima Three Seven Seven or UNKL377, the AIC officer of the U.S.S. Sienna Madira, keyed the 1MC intercom and announced the call to start the mission. There were a few short bursts of the bosun's pipe and then Timmy's voice.
"All hands. All hands. Battle stations. All hands prepare for immediate hyperspace transfer to hostile engagement zone and battle deployment. Stand by for hyperspace countdown."
"Well, that's that. Comm, verify that the relay of engagement command to the Blair was successful and that mission clock has started," the CO ordered.
"Aye, sir! Message is relayed, and the clock is going. Captain Walker says, 'break a leg' sir," the communications officer Lieutenant Keith Aldridge replied. The young lieutenant held a finger down on his right ear as if he were drowning out ambient noise to listen more closely to his DTM mindvoice.
"Of course she did." Jefferson grinned briefly, recalling that Sharon had indeed broken her leg while commanding the Thatcher during the Exodus and practically saving his ass, the Madira, and the entire Mons City main dome. It had been a running joke between them since. "Take us in, XO."
"Aye, sir." Colonel Larry "EndRun" Chekov turned to face the viewport and looked sternly over the bow of the Madira. "Helm!"
"Roger, XO."
"Commence hyperspace jaunt to predetermined coordinates at your discretion."
"Aye, sir," the helm replied, and turned from the XO to the navigator's station. "Navigation Officer, confirm that hyperspace jaunt coordinates are correct, ma'am?"
"Jaunt coordinates comply, Helm!" Lieutenant Commander Penny Swain verified the jaunt tensors in her DTM and again with her AIC. "We're good to go, Captain Jefferson," Penny added with a nod to the captain. Most officers of the bridge crew historically answered to the CO through the XO, but it was common practice since wooden ships with sails that the navigation officer replied directly to the captain on major course changes.
"Hyperspace is a go, sir. Handing off to Uncle Timmy in five, four, three, two, one, mark," helmsman Lieutenant Junior Grade Macy Marks counted down.
General quarters! General quarters! All hands, all hands man your battle stations immediately! Prepare for short hyperspace jaunt in fifteen seconds. Expect multiple ground targets with incoming surface-to- air defenses and multiple unknown airborne targets. Prepare for evasive! Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Hyperspace.
"If you don't mind my saying so sir, you sure picked a hell of a day to join the crew." Engineer's mate Petty Officer First Class Vineet Shah made idle conversation as he led Lieutenant Joseph Buckley to the Chief Engineer's staion. The CHENG's station was on the aft side of the hyperspace propulsion unit in the engine room.
"Well, I'd guess today is as good as any," Lieutenant Buckley replied. Joe looked the engine room over as they walked. He was most intrigued by the dancing of the light-pink fluorescence, swirling around the zero point, energy-field-shielding projector. Joe had studied the ship's systems ad nauseam and was knew that the pink light was caused by gamma rays at extremely high energies being generated at the event horizon of the space-time expansion, which was created by the projector. As the extremely high energy gamma rays were ripped right out of space and time itself, they traveled radially— aside from a slight rotation due to the frame dragging of the projector's vortex-like motion—away from the section of space and time that was stretched beyond normal space but were then severely red- shifted all the way to the far visible and near infrared. The red- shifting was an effect of Einstein's General Relativity, and the extreme gravitational difference at the boundary between the projector and normal space was like trying to escape the pull of a neutron star.
As a main propulsion assistant it would be his job to make certain that the projector functioned properly and continued to generate a focused swirl of expanded space-time in front of the supercarrier. Joe and EM1 Shah walked underneath the giant, swirling tube of pink light. The conduit projector hung just above head height and was more than four meters in diameter. It ran the length of three decks of the ship in both directions.
"Commander Harrison, sir, this is Lieutenant Buckley." EM1 Shah nodded back and forth between the two senior engineering officers.
"Sir." Buckley saluted the chief engineer and then shook his hand.
"You picked a hell of a day to join us, Lieutenant," chief engineer Commander Benson Harrison said with a raised eyebrow. The engineer watched the propulsion control systems closely. The instrument panels spread across the wall, and duty stations around him all were active with digital readouts blinking some piece of information in a myriad of thousands of brilliant flashes that gave Las Vegas a run for its money in artificial illumination.
The instrument panels were complicated enough, but there were also several other layers of information regarding the main propulsion system that could only be transferred DTM; otherwise, there just wouldn't be enough real estate within the ship to physically locate all the sensor readouts. The actual sensors and switches were the minimum systems required to manage an extremely rough jaunt through hyperspace with a several-AU destination-error budget per light-year. The DTM layers and AICs were required to keep the jaunts more accurate.
"That's what EM1 Shah said, sir," Buckley replied.
"Well, Vineet has a good head about him, and you'd be wise to keep him around. Look, we'll be dropping out of the hyperspace conduit in less than a minute. Are you up to speed on this ship's systems enough to take your duty station at Main Prop?" Benson asked.
"Aye, sir."
"Take it easy with that 'aye, sir' stuff, Joe, unless the command crew is around. You can call me Benny otherwise."
"Yes, sir, uh, Benny, sir." Joe just couldn't make himself break the protocols. His last command on board a frigate had a CHENG that was so by-the-book that he had even starched and pressed his coveralls. Buckley was going to have to get used to his new boss's more relaxed style.