The Tau Ceti Agenda

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.

'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.