[geoschmo]

This strikes me as wrong somehow as well. But it's really just an asthtetic issue.

If you are going to have some sort of exterior docking surface for fighters operating in zero-gee then the size and shape could be anything you want. It wouldn't need to be long and rectangular like a wet navy carrier deck. There's no reason for it. You don't need a long deck for launching and recovering the craft. When you want to launch craft you simply unclamp them, or turn off whatever artificially generated magnetic field or force field that is holding them down. Landing would simply be clamping them back down or turning the force field/electro-magnet back on.

All you need is a platform big enough for however many fighters you'd want on the exterior at any one time. You could make the platform in whatever shape you wanted or was most efficent based on the size and shape of your carrier and the fighters themselves.

Think of the various carriers used now for vertical takeoff aircraft like helicopters and Harriers jets.

You could make it long and rectangular if you wanted, but it wouldn't have to be that.