"You got it Sir," Sabatine replied nodding her head. Unfortunately the motion broke the contact of their helmets so that Kaiden couldn't hear the full sentence. Irritated she pressed her helmet back against his.

"Follow me sir," she repeated and turned and began tramping forward. Higgs was making his way forward also, though the veteran rigger did so be making short leaps from line to line rather than the slow methodical progress of magnetic boots. That was a form of showing off, there was no cause to rush on a routine cruise when time wasn't a factor but Higgs was a new man to a crew that had been together for over a year. Spacer's were an insular group and Higgs couldn't expect to lead them if he gained a reputation as a coward. Sabatine understood his motivation but she hoped a sudden maneuver didn't send their bosun floating off into space.

Hydraulic semaphores mounted to the hull began to flash upright communicating to the riggers the desired sail plan. Yards began to extend from the masts stretching sail fabric out like an unfolding flower. For a miracle there were no major hold ups, though there were a couple of kinks that were quickly resolved by riggers with belaying spikes. As each of the sails reached its proper position a rigger tapped a hydraulic set switch which took the signal inside the hull to the bridge. Sabatine clasped the mast step and re-established her helmet contact with Kaiden.  

"We are running with the A and B rings only," she told the Lieutenant making slow careful gestures to the first two rings. The curvature of the hull prevented them from viewing any more than one mast at a time but the semaphores and riggers hand signals communicated that the others were in place. Sabatine's tone had lost its hostile truculence as she warmed to the subject, she loved the romance and practice of star-faring, as much time and skill as she had in the technical department she had never regretted pulling the strings she had to get transferred away from her safe billet at Harbor 3 for an active commission. Well connected officers like Kaiden might expect a junior birth in a battleship, but she preferred small ship service where she could get her hands dirty.

"C and D rings are only at half deployment, we don't need the sail area but they give us useful maneuverability to let us transition more smoothly," she explained. The rear most sails acted as gaff rigs which would allow them to slip between the bubble universes of the matrix quickly, countering the lower sail area by making more stressful transitions. As if listening to her thoughts the arms of the semaphore towers switched to straight vertical. Riggers gripped masts and yards and engaged their boot magnets. Sabatine checked Kaiden but the aristocrat had seen the signal and had engaged both boots. The hairs on the back of her hands lifted as the sails took on the precisely calculated charge. Insertion to the matrix wasn't as bad as extractions were but it was still disorienting enough that an unsecured man might drift off into a bubble universe all of his own. The space above them shimmered into white and thing a mind shattering whirl of pastels.

"And welcome to M-121A, the first of twenty one transitions," she told Kaiden.