“That’ll work. How long will we need to hang around the Thuranin, until you have the info you need?"

"Oh, a couple minutes to half an hour, depends. The closer to the command ship we jump in, the quicker I can get the data we need. It's a trade off; either we jump in close a couple times, or we jump in further away more times, when we're exposed longer."

I looked at Simms, and she nodded. "It's a judgment call, then," she said.

A judgment call neither Simms nor I were qualified to make, and Skippy knew it. Passing the buck to Desai would be the coward's way out. "Uh huh. Skippy, I assume you'll have a series of options programmed into the nav system, and you'll advise the pilot which jump we should make, right, based on what the Thuranin are doing?"

"Yup, you got it." Surprisingly, he resisted the temptation to make a smartass remark about my intelligence, or lack of it.

"All right then, if you think we need this intel, then we'll do it. One condition; I want a jump option that will take us safely far away, not only a micro jump, if the pilot or duty officer think's the ship is in danger. More danger than usual."

"Yeah, sure, that's fair enough. Don't go panicking on me, agreed? We don't want to do this more than once if we don't have to."

"Pilot?" I asked Desai, "are you comfortable with that?" As the words left my mouth, I knew I'd put Desai in a difficult position. What I should have done is ask if she had any different ideas.

"Yes, Colonel. We have an emergency jump option at all times, on a different button here," she pointed to a silver button on the top right of her control panel. "I worked that out with Mister Skippy when we were doing our first series of jumps. The safety jump option is updated every time we jump."

"Oh." I should have known that. "Excellent work, then, Pilot. Skippy, you know where a Thuranin battlegroup is?"

"I know where one is likely to be, and several other strong possibilities. We will be approaching in seventeen hours."

That was right in the middle of Chang's next shift as duty officer, I'd need to tell him that I'd be taking over the bridge then. We'd developed a good working relationship, I didn't want to screw it up.