“Thank you Chief.”
“My pleasure Captain.”
“How is our new emitter array?” Alice asked as she looked through the list of changes that were made while the Triton was being repaired. She couldn't help but be surprised as she read that eight hundred and nine repair team members worked on the ship and there were over two hundred volunteers on top of that. The repairs that were made were beyond extensive, even systems that were damaged years before the battle they had just engaged in were taken care of.
Finn cleared his throat before answering; “Chief Grady didn't tell you?”
“Never answer a question with a question on my bridge, Finn.”
“Right. It didn't look like it was going to work until we bypassed most of the power generation systems aboard the hypertransmitter, but then we had a break through and were able to just build it into the ship.”
Alice turned towards him and looked at him straight on. He looked up but his gaze flinched back to his station in the next instant. “Build it in?”
“He really didn't tell you,” Finn said, half to himself. “We cut off the wireless receivers and wired it right up to one of the ship's main data lines and power systems. Now it's operating behind eight meters of armoured hull with cloaked emitter rods sticking out of an airlock.”
“Is that the permanent solution?”
“No, but it'll work without burning out. Wiring things up while it was already generating a wormhole was a little tricky.”
“Good work,” Alice said with a smile.
Finn nodded, smirking a little. “I broke the last main emitter systems, only makes sense that I install a new one.”
“You and your people deserve a day off after this.”
“I'll pass that onto my team,” he said, glancing at Angela, who playfully nudged him with her elbow from where she manned a damage control post beside him.
“Captain, I'm in main engineering and can confirm that everything's set down here,” Chief Grady said through her personal communicator.
“Thank you Chief.”
“Exiting the wormhole into regular space in five, four, three, two, one,” announced Larry, Ashley's main navigator.
Ashley unlocked the controls as they emerged and listened to Larry and Henrietta, the navigators who sat on either side of her as they took turns in telling her about their situation in the arrival point. She also viewed the quickly populating tactical map of the area around them.
Pandem was still minutes away at full thrust, but there was a veritable gauntlet between the Triton and the green and blue planet. Ashley jerked the controls, sending the ship several degrees to port, towards one of Pandem's outer moons. “Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath as she watched the tactical map light up.
Alice stared at the main holographic tactical projection in the center of the bridge and her spirits dropped. Without realizing it, she found she was slowly standing to get a better look.
There were hundreds of destroyers, corvettes, battle cruisers, carriers, several larger combat platforms and at least five command carriers at a glance. Their markings were clear, there was no long range signal jamming in the battlefield, and Regent Galactic, the Order of Eden as well as the Carthan Defence Fleet were represented. As the tactical display continued to populate with thousands of fighters, gunships and other medium sized close combat vessels appeared between the furious juggernauts that had joined the fray that extended past Pandem's outer orbit and all the way down to the upper atmosphere.
“Cloaking systems?” Alice asked the bridge in general and everyone not in direct control of the energy fields and suppression systems held their breath in anticipation of the answer.
“Emissions are contained, we're not putting anything out there,” Finn reported from his engineering station.
“Our gravity shielding is working as a counter to anything that can detect our mass. Anything running a sensor sweep through our area should read zero,” Laura reported.
“The hull is bending all spectrums of light around the ship and no one has started scanning or firing on us,” Agameg reported. “We are hidden.”
There was a collective sigh of relief as Ashley guided the Triton into a course that kept them thousands of kilometres away from the battle and would take them behind the third Pandem moon.
“I don't know for how long,” Agameg added. “Interdiction particles are spreading from several of the Regent Galactic carriers in all directions, if we encounter them we will be visible to most scanners.”
“And our hyperspace systems won't work,” Alice added.
“Actually, they will. Our gravity shields will keep the interdiction particles from interacting with the hyperspace emitters,” Laura corrected. “Then again, if we come near that expanding field of interdiction particles our gravity shields will displace them in a larger radius, making us look like we're about five times our size.”
Alice looked at the profile of the Triton on the status display projected by her command chair. It was an unusual ship, modelled after a sea stingray from Earth she was much broader than she was long, unlike most vessels that were built lengthwise for easier hyperspace and wormhole travel. “That could work to our advantage.”
“So we're hidden at the moment but how do we let Jake know we're here without sending a big flare up?” Stephanie asked in a whisper.
Alice sat down and stared at the tactical display, a hornets nest of red, blue, green and yellow ships between them and the green blue ball of Pandem. “I think I have an idea,” she whispered back.
“You're kidding,” Stephanie whispered back with a restrained look of surprise and amusement.
Alice thought for a long moment, watching the tactical display. Triton was entering a wide orbit around the Pandem moon and they were safe for the moment but less than seven hundred kilometres behind three Regent Galactic carriers. The most important part of their location was that there was little to no chance of them being struck by stray munitions or of them colliding with anything in the area. “Ashley's team is really good,” she said quietly as though realizing for the first time.
Stephanie was pretending to watch the security status panel so she wouldn't stare at the woman in the Captain's chair. “She's always learning.”
“I know, seems this ship rewards hard work,” Alice said as she brought up a large rail cannon munitions list and started searching. “If I didn't spend days looking through specifications and fabrication lists for the materializers I don't think I would have found this,” she said, finding what she was looking for and pointing at it.
“That's a rail cannon transmitter round.”
“Yup, made for sending thousands of emergency beacons in every direction if the ship gets into trouble, but in this case we only need a few dozen.”
“Won't they find us?” Stephanie said quietly with a gesture to the frantic scene on the main display.
“Not in time, we'll launch them while we're on the move and change directions,” Alice replied as she opened a channel to Frost. “I'm sending you a request to manufacture two hundred of these rounds in four cartridges. I want four adjacent turrets to fire the rounds towards Pandem without hitting anything. Program them with this message and be ready to fire on the target I'm marking on my order.”
“Aye, squawker rounds, try ta miss everythin' but that island. Those'll be loaded in two minutes.”
“Keep the turrets as covered as you can and when you've fired the volley retract them.”
“Aye, we'll roll 'em out, pop the shots off then draw the turrets back so the hull can close up over 'em up,” Frost confirmed.
Alice turned her attention to the bridge in general then. “All right, we're going to send a message to Captain Valance. I need you to plot a course that takes us as close to the planet as is safe. I want to send these transmitters straight for Damshir, so keep that in mind.”
“That's the busiest section of space,” Larry countered, half turning in his seat. “And we'll have to shadow the largest ships in the area to avoid getting caught in an interdiction particle wave.”