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science and technology officer (STO), looked up from his console.
     
    "What is it, STO?"
     
    "I'm getting a red-force icon for the Blair , and it looks like she's simulating a power-up of her DEGs. And there is something else—" the STO's explanation was cut off as alarms blared throughout the ship, indicating that they had been targeted by radar and hit by directed energy guns (DEGs).
     
    Sir, the simulated attack is under way as planned, Uncle Timmy stated into Wallace's mind matter-of-factly.
     
    Roger that, Timmy, the RADM thought to his AIC.
     
    "CO, CDC!"
     
    "Go, CDC."
     
    "We just had a massive increase in the number of troop signatures detected on the ground, and they are all squawking simulation red, sir!"
     
    "Roger that, CDC."
     
    "CO?"
     
    "Go, Ground Boss!"
     
    "The Robots report outnumbered and being attacked by a force that just appeared on them from nowhere!" Army Brigadier General Brantley reported.
     
    "Well, General, I'd suggest they fight back," the XO added with the most gruff Marine sarcasm he could muster. It just sounded gruff—Chekov wasn't that good at sarcasm.
     
    "Roger that," the ground boss replied and then began issuing commands DTM to Colonel Roberts and Colonel Warboys on the red surface below. The air boss took the orders given to the ground boss to heart immediately and started signaling the fighters to attack any new vehicles entering the mix.
     
    "Structural Integrity Fields at maximum and start shooting back, folks! Let's move," the XO shouted and rerouted simulated power to the SIFs.
     
    "Nav!"
     
    "Aye, sir?"
     
    "Put us between the Blair and the surface. Don't want them taking potshots at our troops down there, do we?" Wallace tapped some virtual icons around his head to plan where to make his next move. Simulations of potential battle-scenario outcomes ran quickly in his mindview. With the advent of the new Seppy teleportation tech, the fleet needed to practice fighting against it. And since a few of the fleetships had been equipped with the tech as well, the U.S. military had been war-gaming with it. Both the Tyler and the Lincoln had teleported troops in and out and around the battlescape over the past four hours, forcing the Madira 's groundpounders, tankheads, and mecha jocks to learn to quickly adapt tactics and think more four-dimensionally in their battle reactions. Wallace was becoming proficient at battle tactics and strategies involving troops and equipment appearing and vanishing and reappearing at different locations throughout a conflict. But they had yet to be in an actual engagement with the technology. Practice makes perfect, he thought.
     
     
     
    Captain Benson Harrison, the chief engineer, a.k.a. CHENG, for the USS Sienna Madira , watched silently over his crew from the privacy of his office. His door was locked, and he was "indisposed" at the moment. In fact, he was both an observer and—as prearranged by the admiral—a red-team spy. He kept a very close eye through DTM on the ongoing battle simulation and how his second-in-command, Lieutenant Commander Joe Buckley Jr., was handling the situation of being in charge. To Harrison this was more than a test of his second-in-command of the engineering nexus of the mammoth supercarrier: it was a job interview for his replacement. But Joe didn't know that.
     
    Benny, as he insisted his team call him, had watched Joe closely from day one. In fact, on Joe's first day of duty on the Madira he had performed amazingly as a main propulsion assistant in order to make the ship's hyperspace jaunt projectors give the ship one last and badly needed jaunt out of the line of fire of an enemy railgun. Amazing and timely performance, yes, but his—the then-new lieutenant's—actions led him and an engineer's mate to be fried through and through with high-energy gamma rays. The two barely made it to sick bay before their organs ceased functioning. Fortunately, they survived, were both rejuved, and even commended