"Right. Okay, time to get to work. Melissa, give Joe's AIC full access to all engine room protocols required for position of main propulsion assistant," the CHENG verbalized to his AIC and nodded to his new MPA.
"Yes, Benny," his AIC said over the room's coms.
"Okay, Buckley, she's all yours." The commander slapped him on the back and moved across the room to speak to a young female lieutenant at the damage control assistant's station.
"Yes, si— uh, Benny." Buckley sat down at the MPA's station and typed in his personal password data, then handed the wireless off to his AIC, Debbie.
Debbie, Three November One Uniform Zulu Juliet One logging into MPA station control protocols.
Welcome, Debbie, a subconscious or automated subroutine of Uncle Timmy's replied.
We're good to go, Joe.
Roger that, Debbie. Now DTM me the ZPE field projector status. Joe's mind filled with a virtual sphere of gravitometric tensor calculations and vacuum field probability equations. The intense whirl of space-time in front of the ship was decreasing and about to destabilize in less than a minute as matched perfectly to the flight plan of the ship. "Looks good," he mumbled to himself. However relaxed the CHENG might have been on formalities, his propulsion system control was dead on. Joe assured himself that the CHENG's ship was tight in the best way and was probably why he was the CHENG of the nation's fleet flagship.
Captain Jefferson ignored the DTM virtual sphere for a brief moment to look out the viewport of the bridge as the Sienna Madira lurched and then phased out of normal space with a reversed cascading shower of violet flashes of light.
"Hyperspace entry looks good, Captain," the ship's navigator said.
"Stay on it, nav."
"Aye, sir."
The Madira jaunted through her multidimensional vector and as far as the captain could tell would emerge into normal space just as the battle plan required. It was a short jaunt. The Madira and the Blair had been prepping for the attack on the Seppy Oort Cloud facility only a few light-minutes away, and so they would be snapping back into normal space very quickly into whatever mess the Seppies might have waiting for them. Of course, Captain Jefferson was fairly sure that the Seppy bastards weren't expecting them at all, but nothing was ever certain when it came to warfare. And the Separatists had proven to be nothing if not clever and full of misdirection and misconception. He tugged his seat belt a little tighter and gripped the arms of his chair nervously.
Uncle Timmy, how're we doing? Captain Jefferson asked his AIC.
All is well, Captain.
Good. Keep on top of it all.
Aye, sir.
"Everything looks right, Captain. Emerging from hyperspace in thirty seconds," the helmsman announced.
"Prepare for incoming. Air boss is a go for sorties," the CO ordered. Violet swirls of hyperspace spiraled rapidly around the supercarrier in a vortex of space-time fabric being warped into submission by the main propulsion system.
The quantum membrane of the universe was expanded beyond its normal flatness in the converging tunnel ahead of the supercarrier, violating the energy conditions of normal space. The exotic matter field generators in the giant field coils underneath the ship projected a focused beam in front of them that interacted with the vacuum energy fluctuations and through negative superposition canceled out a majority of normal space energy bands. This created the vortex region, where less energy existed than even in empty space-time itself. Navy propulsion engineers were often fond of explaining that they would create a region of nothingness that had even more nothing in it than normal.
The CO took one last, brief glance out the stern viewscreen at the twirling, blinking, and flashing light show of super-sized nothing and took a deep breath. He slowly pursed his lips and exhaled while closing his eyes. Taking one last quick assessment of the operations readiness data in his DTM, he tensed and readied himself for what waited on the other side of hyperspace.
"Aye, sir. Go for sorties!" the air boss acknowledged. Without looking up from his screen, he switched channels to the hangar bay. "All hangars, all cats, we are about to reenter normal space. Commence sortie deployment. I repeat, commence sortie deployment."
"XO, forward guns!" Jefferson ordered just as the hyperspace conduit swirled away to infinity and vanished. The Sienna Madira phased into normal space with full-forward velocity like the overarmored and overarmed menace from Earth she was.
"Gunnery Officer, begin sensor sweep and lock and commence firing of main DEG batteries at your discretion. Be advised to excise military targets only, and do not hit the teleportation facility as briefed and gamed!" Colonel Chekov tapped at his console, double checking the power levels of the guns.
"Roger that, XO! Multiple targets identified, locked, and firing solutions ready. Firing at will," Lieutenant Rice acknowledged.
"CO, CDC!" the commander of the Combat Direction Center a few decks below the bridge chimed.
"Go CDC."
"We've got multiple sensor pings and are actively jamming on all frequencies. Expect incoming fire, as we are getting lit up like a Christmas tree, sir!"
"Roger that, CDC. Is the jamming buying us anything?"
"It might be confusing their point and track, sir, but they know we're here."
The supercarrier pressed through the active wash of sensor energy from the Seppy facility at maximum normal space velocity. The computers of the ship picked out targets and blasted away at them with mammoth directed energy weapons. The intense blue-green bolts of energy tore through the surface of the Oort object beneath them, blasting away surface materials and manmade structures. Smaller anti-aircraft railguns came online automatically and started searching for enemy flying targets to shoot. Sensor domes and weapons batteries on the planetoid facility exploded into the quiet vacuum of space, scattering debris and chewing up the surface like a behemoth repulsor plow.
Red dots appeared in the captain's DTM sphere, moving toward the supercarrier at extreme velocities. The IFF algorithms not only identified them as foe but also as anti-carrier missiles, hundreds of them.
"CO, CDC! Incoming!"
"We've got it, CDC." The captain turned his chair toward the XO. "Forward SIFs at maximum! XO anti-missile batteries, fire!"
"DEG and railgun Phalanx systems are active, Captain," Chekov replied. "SIFs at maxi . . ." He was interrupted as the first missile detonated against the forward force fields and armored plating. The ship vibrated against the explosion as the debris from the missile washed over the bow and was absorbed by the supercarrier's hull.
"Keep firing. And get me a fix on those launch tubes and start battering the hell out of them!"
"Aye, sir!"
"Good hunting, DeathRay!" The deck chief snapped a salute from the top of the mecha support scaffold and grabbed at the handrail as the ship's inertial dampening systems compensated for a sudden impact against the exterior hull of the supercarrier.
"Roger that!" Jack saluted back, and the chief quickly climbed down and began unhooking the power and com umbilical. He finished by giving the VTF-32 Ares-T fighter one last affectionate pat on the empennage.
Jack pulled his helmet over his head and gave it a twist to lock it in place as he settled into the cockpit. Air rushed into his suit with a faint, hissing sound. He then pulled the hardwire connection from the universal docking port of his fighter and plugged it into the thin rugged composite box on the left side of his helmet, which made a direct electrical connection to his AIC implant via skin-contact sensors in his helmet. The direct connection wasn't necessary as the quantum membrane wireless connectivity was very strong that close to the fighter's computer systems. It had once been thought that enemy jamming of the wireless connection between the AIC and the fighter was almost impossible. The wireless connection was spread spectrum and highly encrypted. But the Seppy attack during the Exodus had shown quite the opposite. The entire fleet had been spoofed, and the wireless systems were told by a Seppy hacker—rumored to have been coded by Ahmi herself—not to see enemy targets with any sensors. Since then, the hardwire was promoted from backup to primary connection, and the wireless was only used in emergencies and in noncombat situations.