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Neva-4, and Roth tied to a buoy in the inner roadstead while her captain reported to the port admiral. “We had a, er, we hit the first coil of the gate badly as we made the jump to hyperspace, and the jolt pulled some of the beams form the clamps and played havoc in the hangar. We put in some extra knees to support things and we had to put a cap on one of the gangway hatches to make the jump back to cartesian space - the christmas tree wouldn’t turn green, sir - but the hangar will need to be pressure tested. Engineering has a Robbins pipe fitted on the secondary loop of the prime mover, holding well, and the forward berth deck lighting is on an auxiliary panel.”
“I see,” said the admiral, who was a short, slightly overweight man with close-cropped grey hair and a hooked nose. At present he wore a rather severe expression, but whether this was due to Jack’s incompetence or due to pain from the admiral’s prosthetic hand wasn’t clear. “Well,” he said, “you’ll have to go in for a refit, clearly. But, you made it, that’s the main thing. How did you end up hitting the gate off-center?”
“Well, I have a guest, sir, a doctor, a physician, who has consented to stay aboard as our surgeon if you’ll appoint him. But he’s not a sailor and inadvertently - that is, I shouldn’t have allowed him on the bridge for the jump, or at least cautioned him to the nature of the maneuver.” Jack wasn’t certain the he was explaining himself clearly, and the admiral’s expression only seemed to be getting darker.
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