"Chief of Ship, you may light the thrusters," Sabatine instructed. Almost before the syllables had left her mouth thrusters one and eight light with a roar. One on the port bow and the other at the aft stern, the two thruster balanced each other out and the Vickie began to bob and shudder in her birth. Kaiden irised the thrusters fully open to disperse there thrust rather than fiddle with the output volumes, though she didn't remember how he had fared at ship handling during the academy, he had obviously had plenty of practice since. The thrusters continued to come online in pairs until Kaiden controlled all eight units from his holographic console. Sabatine's nose began to itch as inonized steam from the slip began to infiltrate the ship, stinging her sinuses and the back of her throat. She took some pleasure in the look of discomfort the familiar irritant caused to Tilda.

"Chief of Rig, seal all hatches and all hands stand to," she announced over the intercom. In truth there was little for the riggers to do other than seal the hatches and then take thier places in the forward and aft airlocks, ready to spread the rig once they reached orbit.

"This is the Chief of Ship, reporting all stations optimal," Chief Engineer Savachev declared over the command push. The Vickie was buffeting now, surging on the wake of its thrusters as they dispersed thier force into the slip. 

"Herculaneum control this is RCN Vicount, requesting final clearance to lift," Sabatine said, switching the comm relay to the port control. She wondered how those personnel felt about the dispersal of the fleet. Intellectually they probably understood that the minefield offered far better protection that the ships but it had to be demoralizing to see the vessels which were the symbol of the RCN scattering.

"Acknowledged Vicount, clear to depart," came back a flat female voice, too degraded by the microwave signal that was beaming through the clouds of ions being raised by the thrusters to convey any emotion. Sabatine pointed a finger at Kaiden to let him know they were clear but he was evidentlly listening in on the comms because his hands smoothly irised shut all eight thrusters. The jest of ions which had been widely dissipated concentrated and the ship leaped upwarards, her deck seeming to slam into Sabatine's boots. Kaiden made a hurried adjustment and the upward flight smoothed out. He might be an expierience ship handler, but he was new to the Vickie and her quirks. Sabatine supposed she could have warned him that the controls were a little touchy but she hadn't imagined the Captain would have him take the ship up his first full day aboard. Perhaps he was taking the measure of Kaiden as well. The ship rose rapidly up through the atmosphere. Sabatine had split her screen in four, one quadrant mirrored Leyla Savachev's board in engineering. Anything that conerned the engineer was worth knowing. Sabatine didn't quite have the woman's skill, but her time in the yards at Harbor 3 gave her a better grasp than most RCN officers. The second screen was Kaiden's, fully occupied just now with the thruster controls, though he was preparing to cut in the high drive in a side bar. The last screen showed the Captain's screen, he seemed to be checking Candleworth's astrogation plot. Micha was a fine astrogater, one of the best Sabatine had met, and he was busily making corrections to Candleworth's course plot. The midshipman's plot was so unimaginative that she suspected it had been lifted verbatim from the astrogation computer. Well she would check that later, and if Candleworth was a terrible astrogater, well the RCN would find a use for him regardless. Her own screen held a 3D representation of the space around Herculaneum, there was nothing of interest besides the mines but Sabatine plotted several missle attacks based on her assumptions about likely appearances of an attacking fleet. The odds of such a fleet arriving and not being destroyed by the mines was slim but a slim, but in battle the few seconds the computations could save her might be vital.

Gravity vanished suddenly as Kaiden shut down the thrusters. It returned with a jolt a few seconds later as the high drive kicked in. The high drive functioned with matter anti-matter converters, which were far more efficient than the ion thrusters used for maneuvering in a gravity well. Unfortunately high drive couldn't be used in an atmosphere as undecayed particles of antimatter would mix with the atmosphere and chew the drives themselves to pieces. Even in space there was a certain amount of particulate, but not enough that the motors were at risk with regular maintenance. The Vickie began to pick up speed and Sabatine unstrapped herself. It would be a three day voyage to Errhai and she didn't want to spend any more time looking at Tilda's smirking face than she had to.

"Sir, with your permission I'll join the bosun on the hull, it is his first time with us and I'd like to make sure the riggers don't give him any grief."