Zachary sat and contemplated a bit more. He'd had experience with solving problems before, but never quite like this, for the engineering problems he had faced rarely included people quite so closely, or had quite so much at stake. There was the cold hard fact that their shuttle current had a very limited range and needed restocking urgently. Restocking had two options- a shuttle stop, or salvage from another shuttle. The former would presumably be much easier and safer than the latter. This had to be a primary priority in planning, or else they would be stranded. But then there was the matter of where would they go after that? They could go back to Sovereign and assist further in the evacuation efforts, but that would be highly dangerous and he doubted that they had enough kinetic core charge to fulfill that mission. Aside from that, Zachary personally did not want to return to the fighting. His desire to kill had been quenched, and he found the thought of going back for more fighting repulsive. Blake was probably right that Ishigo had a good plan, but Ishigo was in stasis.

"Waiting for Ishigo would likely be impractical. I don't know how long stasis goes for, but we might be waiting days for all I know. While heading back to Sovereign to help with the evacuation sounds very noble, that is also impractical, because we barely have enough charge to make it back to Sovereign and then we'd have to push through the military. If the Golden Mercenaries which remained have softened up the military enough to make entry possible, then they can take care of it. If we can't get in, on the other hand, then we'd be doing a suicide mission. Besides, take a bit of logic- the military have gone to extreme lengths to keep everyone inside Sovereign. Therefore, they would likely go to similar lengths to get everyone who escaped back into Sovereign. Thus we would be best to get as many stores as possible before the military locks down on our escape routes, and I'm sure we could find a way to do that without resorting to force. Once we have several sets of cores, then we can go wherever we like. The Wall's not going to close up on us while we're out, and unless someone else has a safe-house in mind then we'd have to wait for Ishigo anyway."