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minutes off wasn’t a bad estimate from a solely visual inspection.
     
    Theoretically the shift drive greatly reduced the time to travel through space. Yet this was only true where the passages through the dark matter were straight. Entering shift space catapulted a vessel at great speeds in a single direction. However, once in shift space this direction couldn’t be changed. To change direction a ship had to leave shift space, re-orientate itself and re-enter shift space. To traverse back down the minor passage they were in HMS Drake would have to make four directional adjustments to compensate for the various twists in the passage. Between jumps it would take 30 minutes to charge the capacitors on the shift drive, thus to cover a distance that would take approximately two hours and forty five minutes in shift space would instead take the four hours and forty seven minutes Fisher had reported.
     
    “Ok, send your data over to the navigational station,” James said as he strolled over to Sub Lieutenant Hanson. Determined to start to break down some of the walls he had allowed to build between himself and his crew, after all that is what the hero’s in his books did wasn’t it? James placed his hand on Sub Lieutenant Hanson’s shoulder. To his credit the sub lieutenant didn’t jump when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
     
    “Lieutenant Hanson, I want you to plot Fisher’s course back to the main passage and as soon as the capacitors finish charging from our last jump take us out of here.”
     
    “Yes sir,” Hanson eagerly replied.
     
    Looking over to Sub Lieutenant Graham, James called to him. “Prepare a communication drone to send back to Cambridge. Once we revert back to the main passage you can dispatch it with the details of this latest dead end we have discovered, and prepare a message to send to Lieutenant Gupta, I want her on the bridge when we reach the main passage. I’m going to retire for the night.”
     
    Sub Lieutenant Graham nodded to show he understood. Typically a RSN ship had five Sub Lieutenant positions, communications, sensors, navigation, tactical and defense. This meant the larger starships had upwards of fifteen sub lieutenants onboard, five for each of the three watches.
     
    However, Drake had only nine, one for each watch in communications, sensors and navigation. Tactical and defense were not deemed worth wasting a sub lieutenant on for a survey ship that was not designed to see action.
     
    As a result, posting to a survey ship was highly sought after by sub lieutenants. Regulations stated that a sub lieutenant couldn’t be considered for promotion until they had served at each station for at least a year. The lack of a dedicated tactical and defense watch meant that the other sub lieutenants could fill in on these positions on their off hours and so increase their clocked station hours.
     
    In reality though simply clocking the required five years was a minimum requirement for promotion into the senior lieutenant ranks. The RSN largest ships were the Reliant class battlecruisers and regulations stipulated there be a maximum of five senior lieutenants. With up to fifteen sub lieutenants per ship throughout all the classes in the RSN there was a tight bottleneck that ensured only the stand out sub lieutenants progressed up the command tree.
     
    And this turned James’ thoughts back to HMS Drake’s second lieutenant, Georgia Ashan Gupta. A second-generation emigrant from India, Lieutenant Gupta had served on HMS Drake since she was commissioned 8 years ago. From his files and from slightly illegal searches of the datanet James had done before they left Earth, he had found out that Gupta’s family had left New India to escape the strictly enforced caste system. When the previous Captain of Drake had been promoted two years ago Gupta had been his natural successor to take over command. James knew that his whirlwind promotion from third lieutenant to commander must smack of