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away.
    I couldn't help but grin as I watched her go.
     
    Chapter Back to Sol
    For the next few hours, everything was a rush as I made my way onto the bridge. The wormhole generators were in the final hours of charging.
    “Alright, run final checks on all systems and everyone to check their positioning,” I broadcasted to every ship commander as the one hour mark approached.
    Captains across the fleet ran the checks, greening up on everything that they had already checked.
    Twenty minutes to go, and every ship had run their final tests.
    “Bring everyone to pre-jump readiness,” I said to Rick, who nodded, making sure everyone was ready.
    I felt the now familiar hum of the wormhole generators as they finished charging, the counter hit zero, and the fleet created a mass wormhole.
    “Engaging worm jump!” Helm called out as we orbited the event horizon, all of the ships lining off of Resilient as we neared the horizon.
    “Changed over to Sol System chart,” Sensors said as the map changed and shields waited to change over from adjusting to the magnetic forces from Chaleels System to Sol's for optimum shield output.
    Helm guided us past the event horizon. There was a feeling of nothing.
    “Configuring shields,” Shields said as they changed from Chaleel's presets to a slightly modulated version of the presupposed positioning of the planets, sun, and ourselves. At this point we were at our most vulnerable. We had limited to no shields and didn't have any sensor readings.
    “Sensors, remember non-active systems! We don’t want them pinging us,” I said in a tone which carried as Sensors worked through the limited information each ship was receiving through their passive sensors.
    “Shields modulated,” Shields said as Sensors updated the plot with the planets that the shield operators had had to compensate for.
    Helm and Nav coordinated with the other ships to make sure that they stayed in formation by using just their maneuvering thrusters and the initial velocity we had entering the wormhole, which had now been cut off as we cruised in-system.
    “Release them,” I said. The combined arms officer knew what I meant as they talked into their microphone.
     
    “Phase one is good, no failures,” the sensors officer said, meaning that there was nothing in immediate weapons range. He remained focused however, not even turning around as I relaxed minutely, still watching the basic plot of Sol System as it filled with data, much slower than when we used our high powered sensor arrays. If we had used them, the enemy would’ve seen us as fast as we’d see them, even when we where coming from the furthest out jump point possible.
    I looked to the two eclipse ships. They looked like damned big freighters, much like the ones that were carrying recruits to Parnmal.
    The only major differences were ports that went diagonally through the freighter's cargo areas for fighters. No real offensive weaponry other than light cannons and a half dozen missile ports. Though it was covered in the newly developed Personal Defense Systems or PDS.
    Felix had looked at the current laborious PDS and in a strongly worded memo expressed their absolute stupidity. They could hit a dime five million kilometres off, but it took them an impossible amount of time to get on target. They had limited arcs due to their bulky design, took up a ton of power and were, in Felix's mind, “Complete and utter fucking garbage, I now see why people need so few missiles.” His exact words. So he'd gone and taken the tracking and aiming system and upgraded it with Resilient in the time we were in Parnmal. He hadn't completed the new system until a few weeks ago, but it was so simple he'd been able to cover the Eclipse freighters with them.
    They were essentially up scaled gatling guns that shot a seventy five caliber round with a highly advanced targeting system.
    Being the defense for the fleet wasn't these freighters primary role, no, their primary role was to