Now, he was in charge of a four-ship formation, and Admiral Wolfe himself had entrusted him with a complex and critical maneuver that would determine the course of this mission. He took a moment to savor it before putting his pride in check and focusing on the job at hand.

"Taskforce has checked in, Captain. First hop is locked and ready," the OPS officer reported.

"Tactical?" he asked.

"Ready, Captain. Firing solutions loaded, weapons charged."

"Coms, inform the Saber we're now in play. Helm…execute."

"Executing warp hop one-alpha, aye!"

There was a sharp whine, a rough jolt, and a few bangs felt through the hull, and the Broadsword leapt from where she was to a place nearly two million kilometers away in less than a few seconds. On the main display, he could see that the Katana, Cutlass, and Gladius had also successfully made the jump.

"Quick-turning the drive now, Captain," the chief engineer's voice came over the intercom. Ready to jump again…now."

"Well done, Commander," Risher said. Quick-turn hops were highly discouraged by Fleet engineers. They preferred the ships to have at least a full hour to reset before trying another, but the ship captains assumed they were just being over-cautious. "OPS?"

"Waiting on Cutlass to— Nevermind, sir. All ships signaling ready."

"Helm, proceed." Risher sat in his chair. Warp hops that short were disorienting as the gravimetric fields played hell with his inner ear.

"Warp hop one-bravo," the helmsman said. This time, the flight was a little longer so the complaints from the ship were a bit more subtle when the RDS ripped her out of real-space and flung her across the system before spitting her back out.

"Hop one-bravo successful, Captain. We're in position and holding at twenty-eight thousand KPS relative velocity," the nav specialist called out.

"Broadsword now operating under low-observability protocols," OPS said, her voice frazzled after the two consecutive warp hops. "The rest of the taskforce is reporting in…status green across the board."

"Outstanding work, Engineering," Risher called over the intercom. "Great job, everybody. Now, let's give these bastards a nice little surprise. Tactical, if you please."

"Executing targeting package," the tactical officer said. "Laser banks firing, scanning for impacts."

The plan that Wolfe had sent them called for the taskforce to leap away from the cargo convoy they had been chasing so that, on the enemy's sensors, it would seem they had just disappeared. While they went back and analyzed their sensor data, the Wolfpack would come back, hopping in at a point well ahead of the formation and in position to be behind the stealth ships Wolfe was certain lurked for them.

Now, all four ships swept the sky in a prescribed pattern with their forward laser cannons, defocused and at low power, while CIC watched for an impact on the enemy ships' ablative shrouds. The automated sweeps were so fast the computers had to do both the shooting and observing as the taskforce worked to map out the enemies position.

It was unclear what sort of detection capability the Alliance ships would have while their stealth shrouds were deployed, but the hope was they could get a targeting solution and fire before the enemy could come about and charge their own weapons. The principle was basically a rudimentary LIDAR using the powerful laser cannons to make sure any impacts weren't missed by the optics.