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As she gazed at the display, she could see construction crews working on freight terminals, repair facilities, crew hostels, and all the dozens of other service platforms the wormhole's through-traffic was going to require. And she could see the long line of ships, waiting patiently for their turns to transit to Manticore, just as she could see the merchant vessels which had preceded Hexapuma moving steadily away from the terminus. Most of them appeared to be headed away from the Talbott Cluster, towards busier, wealthier, more important planets deeper into the Shell systems of the League. Some of them, however, were obviously bound for Talbott, and she wondered how much of that traffic would have been here if the terminus hadn't effectively reduced shipping distances so drastically.
She was still gazing at the display, listening with one ear as Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri reported their arrival to the control ship serving as temporary home for Manticoran Astro Control's Lynx detachment, when something else occurred to her.
The forts were under construction, the civilian infrastructure was growing almost literally as she watched, and hordes of merchies were streaming through the terminus... and the Royal Manticoran Navy's total presence-aside from Hexapuma , who was only visiting-were two relatively modern destroyers and one elderly light cruiser.
Well, she thought, I suppose Home Fleet is on call at the central terminus, but still...
The sight of that grossly understrength picket-almost as weak as the one the first Janacek Admiralty had assigned to Basilisk Station before the First Battle of Basilisk-made her feel even queasier than the wormhole transit had. She knew the Navy couldn't be strong everywhere, but she also knew the Talbott Station task force was far more numerous than anything she saw here. Surely, Rear Admiral Khumalo could have spared something more to watch over the billions of dollars worth of fortresses and service platforms under construction. Not to mention the trillions of dollars worth of merchantships and cargo passing through the terminus itself every single day.
But I'm only a snotty, she reminded herself. If Earl White Haven wants my opinion on his deployment policies, he knows where to send the e-mail.
Her mouth quirked wryly at the thought.
"Ms. Zilwicki."
Helen twitched in her chair, all temptation towards humor vanishing as Captain Terekhov's calm, cool voice addressed her.
"Yes, Sir!" At least she managed to avoid sounding as if she'd been daydreaming, despite the fact that she had been, but she felt her cheekbones heat as she heard the trace of breathless scared rabbit in her own voice. Fortunately, the naturally dark complexion she'd inherited from her father wasn't one that showed blushes easily.
"Plot us a least-time course to the Spindle System, if you please, Ms. Zilwicki," Terekhov requested courteously, and Helen swallowed hard. She'd calculated endless courses to all sorts of destinations... under classroom conditions.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" she said quickly, giving the only possible answer, and began punching data requests into her console.
Lieutenant Commander Wright sat back, elbows propped on his chair's arm rests, with a mildly interested expression. Part of her resented his presence, but most of her was deeply relieved he was there. He might not intervene to save her from herself if he saw her making a mistake during her calculations. But at least she could count on him to stop her at the end if she'd plotted a course to put them inside a star somewhere on the far side of the League.
The computers began obediently spewing out information, and she plotted the endpoints of the necessary course, feeling grateful that Hexapuma was already outside the local star's hyper limit. At least she didn't have to crank that into her calculations!
Next she punched in a search order, directing the computer to overlay her rough course with the strongest h-space gravity waves and to isolate the wave patterns which would carry them towards Spindle. She also remembered to allow for velocity loss on downward hyper translations to follow a given grav wave. She'd forgotten to do that once in an Academy astrogation problem and wound up adding over sixty hours to the total voyage time she was calculating.
She felt a small trickle of satisfaction as she realized the same thing would have happened here, if she'd simply asked the computers to plot a course along the most powerful gravity waves, because one strong section of them never rose above the Gamma bands, which would have required at least three downward translations. That would not only have cost them over sixty percent of their base velocity at each downward translation, but Hexapuma 's maximum apparent velocity would have been far lower in the lower bands, as well.
She punched in waypoints along the blinking green line of her rough course as the computer refined the best options for gravity waves and the necessary impeller drive transitions between them. The blinking line stopped blinking, burning a steady green, as the waypoints marched along it. Helen knew it was taking her longer than it would have taken Lieutenant Commander Wright. Still, she decided, she didn't have much to feel embarrassed about when the numbers finally came together.
"I have the course, Captain," she a
"Very good, Ms. Zilwicki." Terekhov smiled slightly, and waved one hand in Senior Master Chief Clary's direction.
"Helm," Helen said, "come to one-one-niner by zero-four-six at five hundred and eighty gravities, translation gradient of eight-point-six-two to h-band Zeta-one-seven. I'm uploading the waypoints now."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Clary replied. "Coming to one-one-niner by zero-four-six, acceleration five-eight-zero gravities, translation gradient eight-point-six-two, leveling at Zeta-one-seven."
Helen listened carefully as the senior master chief repeated her instructions. Under any conceivable normal circumstances, there was no way a petty officer of Clary's seniority was going to get them wrong. Even if she did, she almost certainly would have caught any error when she checked her actual helm settings against the course data Helen had loaded to her computers. But even improbable accidents happened, which was why the Navy insisted orders be repeated back verbally. And just as it was Clary's duty to repeat her orders, it was Helen's duty to be certain they'd been repeated correctly.
Hexapuma turned to starboard, climbing relative to the plane of the ecliptic of the local star, and moved ahead with ever gathering velocity as she accelerated at her maximum normal power settings.
"Thank you, Ms. Zilwicki," Terekhov said gravely, then he looked at Commander FitzGerald. "I believe we can secure from transit stations, XO. Set the normal watch schedule, if you please."
"Aye, aye, Sir." The executive officer turned to Lieutenant Commander Wright. "Commander Wright, you have the watch."
"Aye, aye, Sir. I have the watch," Wright agreed. "Third Watch perso
There was an orderly stir as the other three watches' bridge crew, including Helen and Ragnhild, but not Aikawa, turned their stations over to the Third Watch. As they did, Wright seated himself in the command chair at the center of the bridge which Captain Terekhov had just surrendered to him. He pressed the stud on the arm rest which activated the ship-wide intercom.
"Now hear this," he said. "This is the Officer of the Watch. Third Watch perso
He settled himself more comfortably in the chair and leaned back as HMS Hexapuma bored steadily onward into the Talbott Cluster.