Original A/N: "Yes, that is totally the Alcubierre Warp Drive I'm describing. Now ya'll astrophysicists out there calm down, this is a fictious story. So I'm going to be very liberal with the existence of things like element zero and whatnot in this."

Long Range Warp, Captain's Quarters

The triple entente was once again holed up inside the captain's quarters, musing and discussing what lay ahead. Yayoi was once again spinning around in the chair, Sun-Sin leaning against the wall, and Hongxi sitting and leaning against the bedpost this time.

Sun-Sin: "Sir, if I may ask. Why have we not engaged the enemy yet?"

Hongxi let out a sigh. Sun-Sin have been eager to see the Yamato in battle, and so had many of the crew actually. It was the most heavily armed and armored pure battleship sailing the open space, and the gunnery crew were complaining about how only the marines saw action.

Hongxi: "Because Yayoi is right. This is an old and out dated ship."

Sun-Sin: "Sir?"

Hongxi: "It was built in the World War and repaired just recently. All the upgrades we put into her will not change the fact that she's an old ship. But, she's a big ship. Know when, where, and how to use your resources Sun-Sin."

Sun-Sin: "But, she's a battleship sir."

Hongxi: "She was built as a battleship, and perhaps for her time it would have been a fine and mighty ship. But not now. Our shielding, no matter how powerful it is, is only able to cover 150 meters of hull at any single time. Our missile launchers are SA heavy Odin walkers that are brought upto the surface of the ship by elevators. Our only lasers are the pulse lasers found on the SA Akizuki DP tanks that have to be anchored onto the ship's hull before battle.
We carry the single most powerful landing force found anywhere in the galaxy, to land and occupy enemy planets? No. They're here to supplement and project our own firepower. Do you understand?"

Sun-Sin: "Y-yes sir."

Hongxi: "Good. And the more times we can have our landing force engage away from the ship, the less of a chance the Yamato will be damaged. There are no shipyards big enough to conduct repairs on this ship in Alliance spaces or the Neutral Rim. Any damage done to the ship will have to be repaired by ourselves."

Sun-Sin: "We do have an onboard refinery and assembler sir-"

Hongxi: "It is a lot more difficult and time-consuming assembling complex ship components on a ship versus on a station. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? That we can't risk direct engagements?"

Sun-Sin: "He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious. Right… Sir?"

Hongxi: "Yes."

A knock and a muffled voice came from the door.

Dynamic Duo: "Captain, Tactical Officer Tact reporting! Electronic Countermeasure Officer Coco reporting!"

Yayoi stared at Hongxi.

Yayoi: "Hey, captain. The speakers can clearly broadcast their voice in, why do you set it at 'muffle'?"

Hongxi: "It's less of a disturbance. Come in."

The door slid open to reveal two young Wa officers in their late teens. Tact was male, a little on the short side with a thin and tone build He stood at 170cm tall and sported short dark blue hair and dark blue eyes. Coco on other hand was female. She was 5 cm shorter than Tact, had a modest chest and curvy waist, and had neck length light brown hair with matching color eyes. They entered the room, lined up to face the captain, and saluted.

Tact & Coco: "Sir!"

Hongxi: "At ease, you're off duty aren't you? Make yourself at home. Ah, there's a pot of tea and a tray of seaweed crackers there on the table. Please help yourself."

Meanwhile the two young officers had a look of confusion upon seeing the laidback atmosphere of the ship's highest officers.

Tact: "S-sir?"

Hongxi: "Call me Hongxi when we're off duty. Go on, go ahead. It's my favorite blend of orange flower tea, hopefully you'll find it to your liking."

Coco, as if interpreting it as an order, swiftly responded and began pouring tea a new cup.

Coco: "Yes sir, I'll bring you a cup right away."

Hongxi: "No no, it's fine. As you can see, I have mine right here."

Hongxi gave her a little smile and raised the simple dark brown teacup he had by his side.

Sun-Sin: "I just had the sudden dreadful realization that if any of our enemies got their hands on gravity mines, we'd be in serious trouble."

Yayoi: "Why's that?"

Sun-Sin: "The entire highest chain of command is lazing away in the captain's quarters. We are completely unprepared should someone drag us out of warp."

Yayoi: "Ahh, it's fine. Don't worry about it."

Sun-Sin: "No it's not fine. What we're doing right now is jeopardizing the entire ship, especially since we're warping deep into PACT space. This is no longer Alliance space, we don't know their patrol routes, the positions of their fleets and bases. We know nothing but what intelligence has gathered. We can't even play innocent bystanders anymore if we're caught."

Yayoi: "But. Buuuut, PACT doesn't have gravity mines do they?"

Sun-Sin: "Hmph, as far as we know."

Tact and Coco suddenly found themselves stifling a giggle. Upon catching Sun-Sin's sideways stare, they snapped to attention and apologized.

Tact: "I apologize sir, I did not mean to laugh."

Hongxi: "Sun-Sin you're scaring the kids. Smile a little."

Sun-Sin sighed and cracked a smile.

Hongxi: "You see? No wonder you're the most popular man on the ship."

Sun-Sin: "You exaggerate sir."

Hongxi: "It's true, you're the one I hear the most gossip about while in the cafeteria."

It was then when Coco let out a squeak, drawing the stares of the three somewhat older adults.

Coco: "O-oh, I'm sorry. Uh, captain. If you don't mind me asking…"

Hongxi: "No, go ahead. I won't mind."

Hongxi gave her a smile a grandfather would give a granddaughter.

Coco: "You… When..? Do…. Uhh, you eat at the cafeteria?"

Sun-Sin answered for him.

Sun-Sin: "He disguises himself as an artillery officer and spies on his crew to hear all the latest gossip in an attempt to catch up with modern youth culture."

Upon seeing Tact and Coco's horrified faces, he added.

Sun-Sin: "No, I'm not joking. Usually one could notify the military police and file a suit, but the head of the military police is appointed by the High Admiral of the Fleet so… Don't worry, he's not the type to lay his hands on his subordinates."

Yayoi: "Ahh, captain. If only you had asked, I help you release all that pent up… Stress."

She looked at the captain, licking her lips and lightly brushing her hand down her face and her body.

Sun-Sin: "Nee-san, please. Not with the younglings around."

Tact: "S-so this is the true side of the commander huh..?"

Yayoi: "Hm? Oh, don't mind me. I'm only like this around the captain."

Coco: "Eeeh? Is it true?! That you and the captain are-"

Yayoi: "Yes!"

Sun-Sin: "No."

Hongxi: "I'm not looking for relationships at the moment."

Yayoi: "What? Caaaptain, how long are you going to make me waaaait."

Yayoi slid off the chair and crawled towards the captain on all fours. She held out one clenched hand and lightly pawed at Hongxi's shoulder.

Yayoi: "Nyaaa~"

Sun-Sin: "Nee-san, please…"

Sighed Sun-Sin who couldn't bear to look. Coco giggled and walked over, crouching in front of Yayoi while holding out a hand.

Coco: "Paw."

Yayoi: "Nyaa~!"

Yayoi puts a paw on Coco's hand.

Coco: "Roll over."

Yayoi toppled over onto her back and looked up at Coco while holding up both hands in front of her.

Yayoi: "Nyaa~?"

Coco: "Good girl."

Coco smiled and started scratching Yayoi behind the ears.

Sun-Sin: "Please don't encourage her…"

The wristband on Tact's right arm suddenly began beeping. Frowning, he raised it up and tapped it. A holographic image of a map appeared in front of him.

Hongxi: "What is it?"

Tact: "We're… Leaving Warp in 5 minutes."

Instantaneously, all discipline and order was restored. Sun-Sin and Yayoi were already brushing past Tact and Coco and towards the door.

Hongxi: "Leaving warp? That's faster than expected."

Tact: "It must be some kind of calculation error, our destination is off by several lightyears. I'm… I'm not sure where it's taking us out sir."

Hongxi: "Get to the bridge, sound the General Quarters alarm."

Tact: "Yes sir!"

Planet Cera, PACT main fleet

Upon warping in, Hongxi finally realized the full extent of the 'simple calculation error' made by the Macross Drive. Something was terribly astray, for they had arrived in Cera system and was but a measly twenty thousand kilometers away from the closest PACT ship. Arrayed before them was over a thousand PACT ships of all various sizes, the PACT garrison.

Tact: "Sir! We have warped right into the middle of a PACT Fleet at… Cera!"

Yayoi: "Sun-Sin I thought you said the captain wouldn't take us here!"

Sun-Sin: "Not intentionally!"

Hongxi: "… I don't suppose we could jam their targeting systems can we?"

Tact: "Only if they were bunched within a 150,000 kilometer cone! Beyond that, there's no assurance-"

Coco: "We're being locked on sir, incoming missiles!"

The one thousand or so mix of PACT cruisers, destroyers, and battleships locked onto the Yamato and launched their stock of missiles and rockets. A long continuous hailstorm of missiles streamed from the armada and towards the Yamato.

Hongxi: "How long until we can warp?!"

Yayoi: "One minute sir! The engine is still charging!"

Hongxi: "If placed into full emergency mode, the Changcheng Combat System can track and shoot down up to 700 simultaneous targets within a one minute time frame. With five spread throughout all sides of the ship and one located on the bridge, judging from the direction of the missiles only four can be fully implemented. Meaning approximately 2800 missiles, with the engine being fully charged in 45 more seconds and calculating the rate of missiles fired multiplied by the approximate amount of ships…
Sun-Sin, accelerate us to max speed! Coco! Disengage safety on the Changcheng Integrated Combat System! All guns open fire!"

Coco: "Yes sah!"

Sun-Sin: "Yes sir!"

The Yamato's engines ignited and sent the entire ship lurching forward. The ship accelerated rapidly under the full propulsion of its engines, its mass steadily increasing the more speed it built up general relativity speaking.
The thousands of tiny assault guns lining the slanted armors of the Yamato lit up the missile filled space, spewing bullets at rates of thousands of rounds a minute towards the incoming swarm of missiles. The space before them exploded into a dazzling array of light.

Hongxi: "Fired at a resting pace, PACT missiles have a maximum velocity of 20,000 kilometers per hour. Even with this ship's pulse fusion engines at max, we're accelerating too slow for those missiles to overshoot. Wait, what if instead of overshooting…
Sun-sin! Disengage all warp safety mechanisms and engage frontal half warp ring!"

Sun-Sin: "I told you 32 more sec- half warp?"

Hongxi: "JUST DO IT!"

Startled by the captain's outburst, Sun-Sin obliged.

Sun-Sin: "Yes sir!"

Frontal warp ring? What did the captain mean by that, and was that even possible?! The warp drive operated by contracting the space in front of the ship and expanding the space behind the ship. For the warp to work, a ring of negative energy had to be generated around the ship's midsection and oscillated in rapid speeds in order to soften the fabric of space-time enough where the warp field could stabilize and carry the ship forward. There wasn't enough energy for a full warp, but certainly enough to cover the front space of the ship. There were numerous safety mechanisms ensuring that all three had to be turned on at the same time as activating only the forward or rear warp rings would be extremely dangerous to anything in front or back of the ship. However in this case, there wasn't anything they had to worry about outside the ship. Sun-Sin manually activated the drive and turned on only the forward warp components.

Hongxi: "Tact! Concentrate all forward firepower on the warp bubble in front of the ship!"

Sun-Sin: "Warp bubble?"

Tact: "Yes sir?!"

Unsure what the captain meant, he re-inputted the Changcheng parameters to narrow its forward firing arc. Even though now wasn't the best of times, Tact's curiosity got the best of him and he sneaked a glance away from his monitor and at the front window. The face he wore after seeing what he saw was shared by nearly everyone onboard the ship.

The wide spread of missiles in front of them suddenly found the amount of space they could travel in to be much less. Some of the more fragile larger rockets couldn't withstand the warping of space and simply exploded. With the majority of the missiles coming in from the front suddenly bottlenecked, the Changcheng Combat System suddenly found that it could shoot down a lot more missiles with a lot less bullets. It made suitable readjustments to fully exploit this.
Yayoi: "Captain! By engaging half warp, it will take our ship even longer to charge up the Macross Drive for warp! Our new estimated warp point is 5,000 kilometers behind that PACT cruiser!"

Hongxi: "Can we do an emergency side thruster maneuver?"

Yayoi: "We're too close!"

Hongxi: "Activate the pinpoint barrier system! Concentrate it at the prow of the ship!"

Coco: "Yes sah! Activating pinpoint barrier system, prioritizing the prow!"

A new holographic screen displaying the ship and incoming enemy projectiles appeared in front of Coco. She cracked her fingers and lightly laid them on the hologram. Outside, ten different 15 meter wide circles of energy appeared on the ship's hull. Coco then traced all her fingers to the front of the ship. Outside, the ten energy circles joined together at the prow of the ship to cover the nose of the ship and then some.

Yayoi: "But sir, we haven't tested it since installation at First Pass Above Heaven!"

Hongxi: "Nothing like a field test right?!"

Random-crewman-caught-on-the-bridge-at-the-wrong-time: "The Yamato will always stand by you, sir!"

Hongxi: "That's nice kid, save that for when we come out of this alive. All hands, this is the captain speaking! Brace for impact!"

The many digit number ton Yamato slammed into the PACT cruiser that was in its way, the shielding at the prow absorbing most of the impact and energy and converting it into electrical energy that was then funneled into the Macross Drive.
Now for those wonderful if the pinpoint barrier system was some kind of giant solar panel, why not keep it on all the time? This was due to the fact that the pinpoint barrier system usually tends to consume more energy than it absorbs and thus inefficiency is the key reason. Also, the surface area of the pinpoint barrier system was quite small, even when totaled up it would be no bigger than 150 meters across.

The PACT Cruiser was quite literally rammed in half where its top half separated from its bottom half. The extremely low profile of the Yamato had turned it into the galaxy's largest spearhead. The two PACT battleships beyond the cruiser were already veering off to the side, fearing the same fate would befall them if they simply sat in front of the Yamato.

At this range where the Yamato was in the center of the fleet, PACT was switching over to kinetics and lasers and slowly maneuvering themselves into position. It was not every day where a single ship would charge straight into the fleet and causing them to suddenly find their firing arcs pointed at empty space. Conventional methods called for ships to laser and broadside each other with kinetics from a distance.

The two battleships in the Yamato's path had no qualms about firing though to which they did, and quite liberally at that too. Streams of lasers burned into the Yamato's hull and 1,000 kilogram shells hurled themselves at the ship. However at this angle, the lasers were doing more damage than the kinetics as they were simply redirected after striking the extremely slanted slope of the ship.

Yayoi: "Once we're past them we'll be free to warp sir!"

Hongxi: "Then let's give them a little going away present, open port guns zero through eighty on both sides and roll out the cannons! Alternate between KEP and HEAP rounds! Fire on my mark! Warp as soon as we're clear!"

All along the Yamato's flat side, the reinforced armor over the gun ports slid open and out rolled the Type Jiushiyi gun, the Tianxia equivalent of the Alliance kinetic gun. From inside the ship dozens of gunners and technicians stood at ready beside their guns, the angles already calibrated and the cannons ready to fire.

Each cannon was massive, about six stories tall and over 40 meters long. On the ground next to each gun was a control panel and a gun crew consisting of 3 gunners, 2 technicians, and 1 artillery officer. The gunner was in charge of positioning and ignition of the gun, the technicians were there to conduct emergency repairs if needed, and the artillery officer would direct when and where to shoot. Although only one gunner was needed, the others were simply there as backups should anything happen to the main gunner.

Upon receiving orders from bridge, the artillery officers barked out the order to load. The gunners would first disengage the safety before pressing a switch that would bring out the next shell. The thick massive doors on the far side of the battle hanger opened and out came the HEAP shells drawn from the deep interiors of the ship. Though a series of buttons, switches, and multiple safety disengages, the hatch on the back of the Type Jiushiyi cannon opened and the shell slid right in. Upon finish loading the cannon, the leader gunner would call out 'Gun loaded!' and the artillery officer would either call out 'standby!' or in this case the direction of the target and 'Fire!'

Hongxi waited, counting the seconds and milliseconds unconsciously. The Yamato was speeding towards the space between the two PACT battleships. His eyes followed the noses of the battleships, waiting. Waiting until they passed the nose of his ship…

Hongxi: "Now! Fire broadside cannons!"

One second later, when the nose of his ship had already crossed half the distance of the PACT battleships, the cannons fired. A straight line of 1,000 kilogram shells erupted from the flat sides of the Yamato, striking the PACT battleship all along the side from nose to rear. It was a salvo no ship could withstand, 120 shells with around 13 meters of dispersion between each shell. Granted, a full broadside of the Yamato's side guns would only be effective against a ship as long as it or longer.
Nevertheless with over 65 of the 80 shells fired hitting the enemy on both sides, they were quickly torn asunder. On the right side, the High Explosive Armor Piercing rounds penetrated the hulls of the battleships and burrowed themselves deep into heart of the ship before exploding. Every critical system that was laid along the centerline of the ships were destroyed beyond repair as fire and force bent and obliterated metal. The Kinetic Energy Penetrators however kept on going, tearing through the entire battleship and over-penetrating. Fired with a force several times greater than the HEAP shells due to the sabots attached to its side during ignition, they emerged on the other side and kept sailing on. Even though it had considerably less energy than when it first started, it was going to ruin the day of any unarmored or lightly armored object in its path.

On the left side, three of the HEAP shells found themselves inside the ammunition room and detonated. A KEP round tore itself through the engine, shutting it off. The entire front section of the battleship blew up and the ship was swallowed in a massive fireball. When the heat dissipated all that was left was the blackened rear half of the ship, drifting away into space.

Yayoi: "We're clear!"

Hongxi: "Warp!"

The first streams of lasers from the surrounding ships slammed into the hull of Yamato, burning deep into the top and bottom armor. However the ship warped away before any irreparable damage could be sustained, leaving behind nothing but an afterimage.

The Yamato emerged from warp a couple dozen lightyears away. Hongxi and the rest of the bridge crew were drawing in sharp breaths and trying to calm their beating hearts.

Hongxi: "Tact, did you figure out what was wrong with the Macross Drive?"

Tact: "The Macross Drive was built using a map of the galaxy half a century ago. And in order to keep its existence a secret from the rest of the galaxy, it was not networked. Thus it could not account for the deviations in long range jumps. The error is less than 1%, but-"

Sun-Sin: "But that 1% almost got us killed…"

Hongxi: "Yayoi, plot us a jump into the farthest asteroid field we can safely jump to. I want us to get somewhere safe as well as someplace with the necessary raw materials for repair."

Yayoi: "Yes sir, plotting course now. We will jump in T minus 60 seconds."

Sun-Sin: "What are you planning to do after this captain?"

Hongxi: "What we do best."