Re: Things we have learned so far
Because none of the repair drones are currently active, Khea has to go down to the remote ops bay and activate them because the ship is in 'stand-down' mode. Once the ship is active, the drones can be controlled from the bridge or engineering.
The repair drone named Diefenbaker by Vonon disengaged itself from its allotted docking station and trundled down the hall to the room that needed repairs, entered the room, and proceeded to fix the damage that Khea had done. When it was done, it paused for about 5 seconds, probably waiting for additional orders, and then trundled back to its docking station.
Sharik's astrogation calculations were threefold. First there was the vector to leave the planet and reach the jump point. Normally, this is routine, and was the case here, but there was always local traffic to deal with. Since the consequences of a misjump were usually fatal (or of a nature to make it the same thing in a more unpleasant fashion), sensible astrogators always updated their data just before take-off just to be on the safe side. 9,999 times there was no change in the planetary mass or the number of satellites (natural or man-made), but because the distances were vast (from a personal viewpoint), a hundredth of a decimal place could have dire consequences. The current situation turned out to be one of those times: no change.
The second calculation was the jump itself. The space lanes also didn't change much in the course of the time span since the last jump, but the presence of comets, asteroids, and rogue planets always made it necessary to re-calculate every time. There was also that 1 in 100,000 chance that the stellar or system data had changed. They gave you all the gruesome details in Astrogation Class about what happened when that 1 chance happened. Sharik didn't know that it was true, that a ship had been turned inside out and so had all its crew, but the lesson had been learned.
The third calculation wasn't so much the approach to the destination planet at the end of the jump as it was determining a 'safe' area in that system to drop out of jump. Ideally, of course, you wanted to get as close to the destination planet's jump point as possible so that inbound time was at a minimum... just in case. On the other hand, it was also prudent to give yourself some 'panic room'.
The Outpost system had three gas giants, any one of which they could refuel at if they needed to. Outpost itself was a moon of the innermost gas giant. There were also 10 other outer planets in the system, all useless balls of rock and frozen methane.
So she had to calculate all those things as the destination point. The jump distances were even vaster, and while the computer could make the calculations to a hundred decimals, the final destination was no better than the least calculation number. That was why the best that was currently available was 10 decimal places. That meant there was a vast volume of space at the destination where the ship could drop out of jump. Sharik's task was to put the ship as close to the center of that volume as possible as that area was considered the 'safe zone'.
After about ten minutes, Sharik had half a dozen jump calculations done, confirmed and triple-checked by the computer (and vice versa). She just needed Darrel to tell her where he wanted to arrive so she could enter that destination into the jump program.