The idea of a Maxolhx cruiser lurking out there, a ship we might not be able to detect until its weapons blew through our shields, scared the hell out of me. My plan had been to turn the duty officer shift back to Chang once we'd jumped away from the Thuranin, now I'd be stuck in the chair another hour, to make sure we'd jumped safely away and the ship had not suffered any damage from stressing the engines with multiple jumps. Skippy insisted the critical engines were fine, his assurances didn't assure me. Him admitting that he had jumped us closer to the Thuranin than necessary, just to screw with them, didn't make me confident in his judgment right then.

The jump engines achieved sufficient charge, and Desai asked whether she should initiate jump, I held off another ten minutes to build up a safety margin. After the jump, and Skippy peevishly running a system diagnostic that I insisted on, I turned the chair over to Chang and retreated to a bathroom, where I almost barfed. Everyone on the ship, everyone on Earth, were counting on me, I was doing the best I could, and it wasn't good enough. Even with Skippy's stores of knowledge, there was too much we didn't know. We'd almost stumbled on top of a Maxohlx warship that had even Skippy frightened. Too many unknowns. And too much at stake.

Splashing cold water on my face helped settle my nerves, I no longer felt nauseous. In the Thuranin bathroom, I had to bend down to reach the sink, and my hands were trembling. Through my zPhone, I called Skippy. "Hey, Skippy, we need to talk."

"Sure." He responded immediately, despite the fact that I knew he was talking to a half dozen other people, and running the ship, and decrypting the petabytes of data he'd stolen from the Thuranin command ship at the same time. "Wazzup?"

"I need you to be serious for a minute, can you do that?"

"If I have to. You're worried about something, I can tell by your voice."

Likely he was also monitoring my blood pressure, skin reactions, eye movements, and whatever else he felt like looking at. "You said you were screwing with the Thuranin."

"Yeah, that was fun."

"No, it wasn't. It put the Dutchman in unnecessary danger."

"Ah, I see the problem now. You're upset. Joe, we were in no additional danger. Once I got into the Thuranin command network, I knew ahead of time the actions of the Thuranin ships that were trying to chase us away. Me having some fun didn't affect us."