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places where the nobility and commoners interacted freely on equal terms. Acceptance into the RSN lunar academy was solely on ability and at least theoretically, advancement worked along the same lines.
     
    Yet after two years Lieutenant Fisher still hadn’t overcome her awe at his presence. He knew he couldn’t entirely blame her of course. For a greater part of her childhood his family had been making the headlines in the British news outlets and reporters had been the bane of his life. As a commoner from a poor family he knew Fisher had grown up fixated on the nobility.  Now, in many ways she had found herself face to face with a larger than life character.
     
    On top of that he couldn’t be the easiest Commander to serve under. He was the Duke of Beaufort after all, he should be spending his time among the most powerful of the nobility not skulking around in unexplored space in a small tin can. His irritability and occasional outbursts of anger may just as easily been the source of her nervousness he conceded, as he walked from his private quarters onto the bridge.
     
    Upon entering the bridge James walked over to the sensors station where Sub Lieutenant Fisher sat in front of a large holographic display. Currently it was displaying a large worm like protrusion through space. The minor shift passage they had been exploring for the last week. The display said that it was just under half a light year long as it wound its way through the dark matter twisting and turning as it went. James grimaced. It would take a considerable amount of time to work their way back to the main passage they had been exploring for the last six months.
     
    Reaching over Fisher’s shoulders James shifted the view of the display to zoom out. The main passage came into view. Like the minor passage they had just explored it twisted and turned through space. However, unlike their minor passage it had many offshoots. Civilians often likened such a display to the roots of a tree. Typically when they occurred, main passages through the dark matter between the stars were large and somewhat like a cylinder in shape. Each of these main passages had numerous smaller minor passages snaking off them.
     
    More often than not both the minor passages and main passages led to dead ends but occasionally they intersected with the dark matter vacuums created by stars. Within these vacuums, sometimes up to a light week in radius, no dark matter existed. Where the passages through the dark matter in deep space intersect with these bubbles a starship could enter shift space and traverse through the passage to a new star. One end of the main passage James was looking at led back to the Cambridge system. For the other end, the navigational data ended near the minor passage they were currently located in - still waiting to be explored.
     
    Switching the display back to where Fisher had set it, James studied their minor passage more closely. “How long will it take us to get back to the main passage?” he asked Fisher.
     
    “Four hours forty seven minutes, sir,” Fisher replied as she looked up at him.
     
    James had to repress a smile. It was a fact he liked to keep quiet back on Earth but he had done quite well in his RSN lunar academy exams, being seen as a swat among his nobility friends would have badly damaged his reputation.  His subsequent postings as a sub lieutenant and as a third lieutenant aboard HMS Prestige had further enhanced his talents.
     
    Obviously the last two years of boredom had not completely dulled his wits. With just a visual inspection he had estimated it would take at least four hours and thirty five minutes to get back to the main passage. Not bad for a commander who had spent the last two years skirting the thin line into alcoholism. Strictly banned from the RSN it wasn’t hard for a ship’s commander to rewrite his personal food processing unit to create various beverages and then delete the records from its core. Twelve