The mood on the bridge was still tense after their battle with the Ta’Akar warship while orbiting the small Haven moon. Although their current position put them a good thirty light minutes away from the warship’s last known position, there was still the chance that their opponent might deduce their location and come after them in the very near future.

Because of this, Abby kept updating the escape jump plot every few minutes. In her spare time during the harvesting operations back in the rings, she had written an algorithm that would easily update the transition parameters and adjust the jump plot based on a given course and speed. It might be a little less accurate-she hadn’t had time to validate the results-but as escape jumps were plotted to wide open areas, any slight discrepancies posed little risk, especially at such short distances. She would’ve preferred to be more accurate in her calculations, but the current situation seemed to favor speed over precision. As a scientist, it had been a difficult adjustment. Superluminal transitions required exact calculations. But as a wife and mother who desperately wanted to return to her family, she had found a way to overcome her aversion to shortcuts.

Tug and Jalea came out of the captain’s ready room and were about to exit the bridge, when Nathan came out of the ready room behind them.

“You might want to stay and see this,” he said to Tug as he passed. “Abby,” he called as he stepped from the exit foyer onto the aft section of the bridge. “Commander Taylor says we’re ready to jump to a safer position outside the system.”

“Yes, Captain. To roughly the same position that we originally jumped in from, give or take a few hundred kilometers.”

“Very well. Prepare to jump,” he ordered as he stepped aside to allow Jessica to take her position at the tactical console.