"Its a mess part of ventral A carried away, ripped through some of the mizzen on B before the lines snubbed it. Might be best to take the A ring of the sail plan and re-rig with B. I think we can get 90 percent efficiency within about an hour that way, vs eight hours to put ventral A to rights," Sabatine replied. Kaiden said something to her but her mind had wandered back to the engagement they had just survived.

"Sorry, sorry sir what was that?" she asked.

"I said go ahead and re-rig, hours count here, but obviously your mind was somewhere else?" he asked. Sabatine tried to look at Kaiden, the motion momentarily breaking the contact of their helmets, but all she could see was the mirrored reflection of the matrix in his visor. She was wrung out, as much by adrenaline as by the short action they had just fought.

"I keep thinking about that cruiser, I mean she is stuck on the ground, it will take three days at least for her crew to lift her," she explained, replaying the images of Graving's gunnery display in her mind, seeing the fittings and the outriggers struts burn under the hammering of plasma.

"We crippled her but she isn't finished, a couple weeks and she will be back in action. And while we are at it... I mean I shouldn't be saying this but what was with the Captain, he just froze up, never known him to suffer that badly from extractions, and that was only a few hours in the matrix." She thought back to the strange conversation she had shared with Commodore Welkins the night before they had lifted. The memory of how she had acted that night embarrassed her but she swallowed it down.

"I don't know, just don't know what to think," she admitted.