A few weeks after returning to the Viking system, the Aegis is unloaded, restocked, refueled, and ready. Zheeves has locked in your contract to update the Hazards to Spacers charts along the Tuatha-Wolf 359 trade route, Morrigan has arranged the acquisition of PDF-grade flack armor for all of your armsmen, as well as fragmentation and anti-armor grenades, but not any breaching charges because she is unsure of how to use them properly. A grenade is one thing: pull the pin and throw at the foe. A breaching charge is one and a half kilograms of directional high-explosive. One mistake using one can bring down a whole building, much less the door or wall you wanted through. She is working on it however, as well as learning all about making explosive devices and such, beginning to develop a deep appreciation for all things that go BOOM.

Your departure goes smoothly, and you have Yasha set course for the Wolf 359 system, being the closer end of the trade route. Much of the work promises to be utterly routine: jump into a system, spend a week scanning everything and making sure it's all where it is supposed to be, jump to the next system on the list. Accordingly, you leave standing orders to alert you when something inevitably goes pear-shaped while you are off-watch.

But the down time does provide you a chance to catch up on all of your paperwork, and even to spend time socializing with your subordinates, all of whom (with the exception of Zheeves) you do not know well. And given the time needed to survey all five systems in the route (Wolf 359, Helia, Nesre Secundus, HJG-1034, and Tuatha) plus the long return to Viking, you have enough time to talk to all of them. Dossiers and resumes are fine enough, but they are only paper, not flesh-and-blood, and often miss details that can prove critical.