Bolton sat in his chair. His chair. His ship. He was done with thinking. Done with analyzing his self. It was action time. Techs sat the boards about his bridge, doing the things techs are supposed to do. He looked left; Gilbert sat there at Com; she was safe. He looked right; An Nai sat at Nav, system schema and trajectories traced patterns on his screens. He worked feverishly, without hesitation. He was good. Leahy had not lied about that.
They'd short-jumped. Come out of hyperspace 60-odd light-hours short of Dernhelms Colt. They rode inertial for the time being, at a significant percentage of the speed of light. They would boost again, for even more V before they jumped on in for the system-skip. For now, they skated silent, gathering 60-hour old data from passive longs
