Exeter was an installation built and manned post-Expansion War, so there couldn't be anyone still within the Alliance military who had also served in the old Confederacy who would have the information.

"Course plotted, Admiral," the helmsman said. "Flight time is seventeen days, nine hours using the most economical power settings. If need be, we can push the engines and get there in just under eight days."

Jackson looked over the plots that had been pushed up to the main display. At the speed the Alliance ships were capable of, the head start they had, and the strategic posture he liked to adopt when defending an entire system with a small force, they'd need to be there in twelve days.

"Increase power output during normalized warp flight by thirty percent. Move your transition point further out into the heliopause, and rerun the numbers," he said.

"New flight time is eleven days, one and a half hours from the time we break orbit, sir."

"Lock it in, send it out, and prepare to move on my order," Jackson said. "OPS! Prepare the taskforce to break orbit."

"Aye, sir!"

The bridge environment aboard the flagship was a bit different by virtue of an admiral being there. During their orientation and training period, Jackson and Captain Ellsworth had worked out the kinks in how their authority overlapped. The Fleet designers had assumed the admiral would manage the taskforce from CIC, but that proved to be too detached and unwieldy for Jackson.

Instead, he operated on the bridge as he normally would have as a senior captain commanding a squadron, and Ellsworth picked up the slack of managing the Saber herself when he was busy with the overall picture. John Ellsworth was a consummate professional and, so far, there had been no territorial pissing matches, but Jackson still made sure he wasn't stepping on any toes when issuing orders.

"Admiral, all ships are signaling ready," Ellsworth said. "They will move on the Saber."

"Very well," Jackson said. "Helm! Come onto new course, all ahead full. Make way for our first transition point at best speed."

"Coming about," the helmsman said. "All engines ahead, aye!"

The Saber swung out away from Arcadia, and her engines surged, pushing the destroyer out of the high transfer orbit and into open space. The rest of Taskforce Wolfpack tightened up their formation and slipped in behind the flagship as she roared away from the planet at an acceleration that probably caused the ground controllers to spit out their drinks in disbelief.

The taskforce would continue to accelerate away at full burn and make it to their transition point near the heliopause boundary in a little over seventy-six hours. The long subluminal flight was only necessary to maintain the secrecy of the fact Super Valkyrie-class destroyers could execute warp transitions deep in star systems accurately enough to hop from Arcadia to the outer system in a matter of minutes.

The tools of war were changing so fast the humans operating them had to shift their thinking even faster to fully exploit them. Jackson had served in Starfleet for just over thirty years, and he barely recognized it now. The Saber was so far ahead of his first ship, the Raptor-class destroyer, Blue Jacket, you almost couldn't tell they'd been built by the same species. Even now, the Mickeys, the modularly constructed ships Jackson had been pushing to the policy makers, would make traditionally built ships like the Saber obsolete.