The backup plan, if Skippy failed to take control of the star carrier, was that Desai would kill the autopilot and engage an emergency jump away, which Skippy had begrudgingly programmed into the navigation system.

After we jumped away, the Thuranin, and Kristang, would be alerted there was something very wrong with our captured frigate, and both species would be extra careful not to let our ship, or any lone Kristang ship, close to a Thuranin starship without a thorough inspection far away from Thuranin fleet assets. So, Plan B meant giving up any chance of capturing a Thuranin starship, without which we had no chance of getting to the wormhole. Which left us having to hitch a ride from the patrons of the Ruhar, the insectlike Jeraptha. We would have to make our way back to Paradise, ditch the Kristang frigate, and use Skippy's sensor hacking ability to get close to a Ruhar ship using our Dodo. Problem was, the Ruhar task force was sticking close to Paradise, so finding a Ruhar ship on its own was going to be a problem. Especially since, by now, the Ruhar would have discovered one of their Dodos had been stolen by humans, and no Ruhar ship would let a suspicious Dodo get close.

So, it wasn't a great or even good, ok, barely mediocre plan, but it was better than our original Plan B, which was to sneak back to Paradise, ditch the Dodo and try to hide. Skippy was not a big fan of that plan, because it meant abandoning his dream of ever contacting the Collective. I wasn't a big fan of that plan either, because it meant abandoning my dream of ever eating a cheeseburger.

Seriously.

When the engines came back on, they slammed us back into our couches with what Skippy blithely announced was 4.7 gees, and that pressure kept up for over two minutes as we decelerated. How human astronauts had launched into space on spine-crushing chemical rockets, I had no idea. My neck had been at a bad angle when the deceleration started, I had to lift a hand to lever my head into the right position. Still, it hurt. And it was hard to breathe.

Skippy must have sensed our confusion, because the main display changed so that it showed something considerably more useful; the Thuranin star carrier was now in the center of the screen. The dot representing our ship was on the edge, with a dotted line projecting the courses of the star carrier and our ship. At the edges of the screen were numbers showing the time to intersect, and the speeds of both ships. None of it truly mattered, since we humans were incapable of flying the Dodo more than short distances, at low speed. It did give us a sense that we had some, if not control, then at least knowledge of our destiny.

The acceleration ended abruptly, then resumed with a gentle pressure. "The Thuranin have taken control of navigation, they will guide us onto a docking pad."