The regular engines were down behind the thick radiation shielding, but that was fine. The overseer coaxed pseudo-thrust out of our jump drives, pushing jumpspace behind to create the illusion of forward thrust.

I slotted the symbols into the code leisurely. Because there was no specific jump point of optimum space-time stress and so specific time limit. Everything looked in order, the route code was valid. I didn’t know exactly where we were but that was not a problem either – I wrote up a quick, millisecond translation to regular space for the computer to get some bearings. I was a little sad to think that all the code I’d spent my life studying might soon be obsolete, but perhaps it was time to move on.

The jump was uneventful, the overseer and the engines back to what passed for normal operation. The exit, however, was far from normal.