"Oh, good point." I opened the intercom and advised the crew what was happening.

It was a long twelve minutes, drifting through space toward a technologically superior enemy ship that could squash our ship like a bug. Skippy had better know what he was doing, or it was going to be game over real soon.

Unlike our assault on the Kristang frigate, our plan to capture a Thuranin star carrier depended entirely, one hundred percent, on Skippy. We humans were simply along for the ride, until Skippy firmly seized control of the ship and all systems aboard. The difference between the two plans, was, ironically, the Thuranins' advanced technology compared to the Kristang. According to Skippy, the Thuranin's cyborg nature made them highly reliant on networked computers; computers which the Thuranin obsessively protected from any possibility of being hacked. Any possibility, that is, except for the utter magnificence of Skippy. Even the Maxohlx overlords of the Thuranin had a very difficult time breaching Thuranin data system security, but Elder technology was beyond the most fevered imaginations of the Maxolhx.

According to Skippy.

Skippy, an ancient, alien AI I didn't entirely trust. Not that I didn't trust him to do what he said he was going to do, since he needed us as much, or more, than we needed him. What I didn't trust was not his ability, but his judgment. He was an amazingly arrogant and absentminded little punk-ass beer can. So, we had cooked up a backup plan, a plan Skippy huffed was not necessary.

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.