The system was surprisingly busy, with two dozen or more small craft operating in a relatively tight space. Sabatine narrowed the plot position indicator and located the tramp freighter. Its high drive had cut off, an easy thing for sensors to register given the noisy electromagnetic signature of matter/antimatter annihilation. She frowned, that was an odd action so far from any obvious landing zone. The frieghters transponder identified her as the Brother Kamal, without a logged home port.

"Sir, I think the Kamal is about to enter the matrix," she reported a second before the ripple reported on the sensors and the ship vanished into the infinite bubble universes that surrounded the sidereal.

"Velocity at time of exit was too low for them to be going anywhere," Sabatine continued. Velocity could be multiplied by taking advantage of different constants of mass and energy, but you needed to have something to multiply to make the effort worth while.

"A local tramp spooked by the arrival of a warship, nothing more," Captain Micha replied. They were speaking over the command channel, a necessity given the noise of a warship under high drive acceleration, but she hadn't been aware Micha was monitoring the conversation though she shouldn't have been surpised.

"No flight plan sir," Sabatine reported her voice not quite a challenge but definitely disagreeing. Micha snorted.

"Please Lieutenant, this is the sticks, its a wonder anyone files anything at all," the captain replied.

"Aye sir, but he spotted us within second of our emerging from the matrix, pretty good sensor watch for a backwoods freighter," she countered.

"Probably just spooked because of the reports of pirate activity," Micha responded with a trace of asperity in his voice. That was a possibility of course, though it had been the only ship to react in such a fashion to their arrival. Sabatine let it go, in all likelyhood the ship would emerge from the matrix in the next few minutes a little abashed but better safe than sorry.

"Yes Sir," Sabatine responded with a shrug. Perhaps the captain was right, but there was something about the situation that sat poorly with her. She fought down a grin, maybe she was just as eager for action as Ottis was.