The turbulence on emergence was enormous.

“Gravity well!” one of the pilots yelled. As it turned out, we’d emerged from jumpspace near a planet — far too close.

The physics of jumpspace is simple — there is no physics. Whenever a jump drive is engaged, it tears a hole in regular space through which a vessel may pass to any other part of the galaxy, provided the cartographer can safely map it. Jumpspace abides by its own set of rules, and the closest we’d ever come to simulating it was the forceless vacuum of space.

Which is why ships never, ever emerge near planets, black holes, or other such objects. The gravitational fields from these astronomical bodies wreak havoc on the transition between the jump drive and the normal propulsion engines. More than one ship was lost before we figured this out.

The stress on our already-battered ship was nearly its undoing. The planet loomed large in our forward view, and the pilots were doing everything they could to keep us from succumbing to its greedy pull.