Re: Things we have learned so far
["Merchant ship Long Shot, this is Control. Flight plan received. You are cleared for lift-off on your command. You have a 3-minute lift-off window."]
There's no roar of rockets as the ship lifts off because it has gravitic engines. The thrust is a gradual increase so there also isn't any sense of acceleration, no G-forces pushing you back into your chair. Also, the ship lifts off horizontally, and only changes orientation once it has elevation and speed.
In the pilot's seat, Sam sees that the console displays the gravity 'well' that the ship's engines produce, which looks somewhat like the magnetic lines that a magnetic field represents. It's neat, but it's clearly for the novices. Sam is more concerned with the actual data readouts, which show everything green.
Once she saw the ship in action, she had a better idea of where the limits and red-lines were. She's taking the ship out on dual thrust dialed back to 1.5 Gees each. She can't help smiling as the image shows a single engine producing 3-Gees. Presumably, that's the image that external sensor will also see.
The readouts, on the other hand, display both engines running at 100% efficiency, but at half-power.
Despite the typical belief that ships can be detected anywhere in the system, nobody has active sensors with that kind of range. Detecting a ship relies on passive sensors--whatever energy a ship is emitting has to reach your sensors and register on them. The two types of energy normally detected in that manner are gravity (a ship under gravity drive) and neutrinos (jump entry and exit).
The other type of energy that can be detected is radio waves because they are broadcast in a 360-degree arc on all axes. However, they also attenuate the fastest, and require triangulation to get a good fix.
Thus, if the ship, on its way to its jump point (the flight plan), makes a few course changes and then overshoots the jump point before going to 6-Gees, its only going to be detectable by another ship in the area. If there is one there, unless it's running dark, you'd be able to detect it.
So the ship heads first to orbit, monitoring the other traffic in system, then makes for the calculated jump point. Instead of jumping then, it continues on in an erratic course, as Sam slowly begins increasing the acceleration. On the present course, there is no obvious destination--no planets in that direction, no satellites, not even any asteroids.
When it's finally safe by Sam's standards, she changes the course for the asteroid belt and accelerates to full 6-Gees. She does find out that there is a limit, though. At full 6, it'll start to redline after 12 hours. The readouts tell her that. Dropping back to about 5.9 seems to be unlimited duration.
Once in the asteroid belt, off the beaten path, Pablo and Vonon can try the guns. The slight delay turns out to be a result of the fire control program not being attuned to the gunner. The Fire program, coupled with the bio-interface system, essentially means that you can roll twice--once for the program, and once for the gunner... and take the best result.
Anything else you want to do while you're out in the middle of nowhere?