Chief Killian held Fearless’s place in the outbound queue without further orders, and Honor punched up Engineering as they neared the departure beacon. Commander Santos appeared on her small com screen.

“Commander. Stand by to reconfigure to Warshawski sail on my command.”

“Aye, Ma’am. Standing by to reconfigure.”

Honor nodded, watching the freighter ahead of them drift further forward, hesitate for just an instant, and then blink out of visibility. The numeral on her maneuvering display changed to “1,” and she turned to Webster and quirked an eyebrow, waiting out the seconds until he nodded.

“We’re cleared to transit, Ma’am,” he reported.

“Very good. Transmit my thanks to Junction Central,” she said, and looked back at Chief Killian. “Take us in, Helm.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”

Fearless drifted forward at a mere twenty gravities’ acceleration, aligning herself perfectly on the invisible rails of the Junction, and Honor watched her display intently. Thank God for computers. If she’d had to work out the math for this sort of thing, she’d probably have cut her own throat years ago, but computers didn’t mind if the person using them was a mathematical idiot. All they needed was the right input, and, unlike certain Academy instructors she could name, they didn’t wait with exaggerated patience until they got it, either.

Fearless’s light code flashed bright green as the cruiser settled into exact position, and Honor nodded to Santos.

“Rig foresail for transit.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Rigging foresail—now.”

No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor’s instrumentation told the tale as Fearless’s impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser’s hull. The Warshawski sail, useless in normal-space, was the secret of hyper travel, and the Junction was simply a focused funnel of hyper-space, like the eye of a hurricane frozen forever in normal-space terms.

“Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark,” Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—

The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.

“Rig aftersail now,” she said crisply.

“Rigging aftersail,” the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.

Honor watched Chief Killian closely, for the transition from impeller to sail was one of the trickier maneuvers a coxswain had to deal with, but the diminutive CPO didn’t even blink. His hands and fingers moved with complete confidence, gentling the cruiser through the conversion with barely a quiver. She noted his competence with satisfaction, then turned her attention back to her maneuvering display as Fearless gathered still more forward way.