The orbit of Jupiter was in their rear view as the squadron continued its sunward fall into the Sol System. Gracen had spent the last hours poring over the ever-improving tactical intel they were gathering from the system. FTL sensors were impressive, especially the Priminae-improved ones, but nothing beat high-resolution light-speed scans, no matter how long it took to compile them.

They were approaching the orbit of the asteroid belt, a sector of space of interest to humans only for the raw materials that could be mined without the added cost of moving the material from the surface of a planet to orbit.

Unlike the movies, the only difference between the asteroid belt and “open” space was the fact that a ship’s radar operator occasionally got a beep from his system inside the belt. Very occasionally. The Trojan points on either side of Jupiter were a little more stocked, but only marginally as a rule.

So she noted the locations of a few of the larger rocks, including the planetoid Ceres, but none of them were in the path of the squadron, so she paid very little attention to them. The things that held her focus were still in Earth orbit, hundreds of them sitting there, circling the planet below.

They were still just buzzing around like an aimless swarm, no sign that they’d registered the entrance of the squadron into the system. That seemed off to her. She knew that the transition in-system would have lit up a tachyon flare that a blind man could see, so they should be reacting somehow.

A buzzer caught her attention and she looked up from the imagery on her screen and across the bridge.

“What’s that?” Gracen asked softly, mostly just a little curious.

“Small asteroid cluster crossing our bow,” Susan answered professionally. “Too small to detect until now on passive or short-range scans. They’re not a navigation hazard.”

Gracen nodded, looking back down to her screens.

That was how things worked in an asteroid field, she supposed. Lots of nothing punctuated by moments of almost nothing.

“Commander,” she said, “you have the bridge. I’m going to get a cup of coffee and stretch my legs.”

“It will be as you say, Admiral,” Commander Son said stiffly. “I have the bridge.”

She nodded and walked off the bridge, heading for the commissary. She wanted Commander Son to get some time in the hot seat, integrate him better with the crew while things weren’t too dangerous.

Splitting up the crew of the Wei Fang had been a difficult decision, but she didn’t have enough experienced spacers, let alone blooded combat spacers, to group them all in the same ship. That spread out the experienced people, but also threw a lot of Confederate officers in with Block officers by necessity.