The ship has now been dragged out of hyperspace by the nearest gravity well in the vector it had chosen. Usually these are jump-points, brown dwarf stars of Jupiter-like objects which exist between the greater stars -- too cool to give off much light or radiation, but massive enough to make a considerable pockmock in hyperspace.
The ship is now traveling about 3/4 to 1/2 lightspeed or about 139,000 miles per second. At this rate, planets and large rocks are dangerous to it. If something went wrong at this speed in our solar system, a ship near Earth might have fourteen minutes to solve its problem before hitting the Sun -- and, of course, it takes enormous energy to turn even a hair, let alone bend a sharp turn to evade something.
If you use conventional radar, it sends out a pulse and you literally run into its bounced-back return; if you are tracking a high-speed ship moving in a different vector than your own, your pulse may not catch up to it and come back fast enough to do you any good. Remember the fourteen minutes above; and heaven help you if the ship in question is coming your way! More about communications and radar of FTL ships later. For now, suffice it to say it is a good idea to come in only at zenith of the jumppoint and to leave the point only at nadir. This regulates traffic and reduces your chance of running into someone to those of your house getting hit by a meteorite on Earth. Rare, but known to happen. Starships, after all, are not as frequent as automobiles.
If your instruments are off, of course, you could impact the jump point.
And any ship moving at in-system speeds looks like it's standing still. They can only hope you'll slow down before you get into the jump point central area.
How to shed this enormous velocity? Pulse the jump engines, which partially reforms the field and blows off some of your velocity like an invisible drag chute extended into the interface of realspace and hyperspace. You slow down to a crawl.
Now you pass tamely through the realspace near the Mass, the almost star-like object that makes the gravity well. There may be other ships already here. You can talk to them by com and even, if you wish, stop completely, link airlocks, and exchange goods outside station customs. A lot do. This passage through the jump point can take a leisurely week, if you're having fun. If you're in a hurry you can probably get on through (and be cursed by near traffic) in a day.
There is, however, a penalty for this, subspace is a harrowing experience and makes one feel awful. Moving through space too rapidly give you no time for your stomach to recover and you will progressively become sicker and worse at navigation. Take your time. It's healthier.
Also, if you string jumps (pass through several jump points without slowing down) your velocity could begin to get out of control. If you should fail once to dump speed before jumping out again, you would probably jump past any local gravity wells and get sucked into the nearest most massive star's well, exiting at a speed beyond lightspeed, which violates Einstein's principle and pockets you in a traveling discontinuity -- in other words you become a black hole and come to a spectacular end as you and the star attract each other. Since you are a very small black hole, it will swallow you without ill effect -- except to you.
So you make your exits from stars and jumppoints tamely, at a sedate speed, with due care.
Now, during the War years, you may see a military ship occupying the jump point. It is good to identify yourself rapidly and courteously beyond the computer-squeal of identity your ship constantly gives off, and to heave to if ordered to do so. You cannot match a military ship in maneuvers or jump capacity. It can go further, faster. Only if you are still 3/4 light do you have a chance of running from it before it can get up to speed or before its particle weapons and shells can reach you. But its beams go lightspeed: you are 3/4 light. You have maybe fifteen minutes lagtime before it knows what you are (your noise getting to its receptors at lightspeed). And fifteen minutes lagtime for its beams to reach where it predicts you will be fifteen minutes later (or less if you're going toward it) -- if it fired at once.
That is not a lot of maneuvering room, considering your degree of possible turning is less than a warship's, and it diminishes incrementally at 3/4 light. You have to dump most of your speed, lock on a star, and be in a favourable position to jump. Thirty minutes is not really very long to do all this. If you can do it you are probably a merchanter running with empty holds and up to no good.
They do have to guess how much mass you're carrying to know where you're likely to be (if you should turn). How much cargo you carry plays a part in this.
You could try dumping cargo.
Usually, however, the worst the military will do (if they're Union) is look you over and check your papers and question you. If they're Mazian's Fleet -- well, in the last years of the War, the Earth Company Fleet began to need troops and crew for its ship. It might impress your young men and women as troops or crew; might take your supplies, raid your cargo. Africa and Australia have been known to kill for fun. India, North Pole, Atlantic, and Pacific will mostly take supplies. The rest of the fleet are likely to take both people and cargo items.
If you meet other merchanters at a jump point -- still be careful. Ships have been taken by Union to use as spies.
Merchanters know one another by name. All on a given ship have one last name. If you say Finity's End, for instance, everyone knows this means the Neihards. So it is an age in which a man or woman's word and name for dependability are life itself. But Union knows these names too. And has access to ships that come and dock at Union ports.
This war has no borders -- except for the fleets that maintain them. It is fought in three dimensions and the front skips and moves according to where the carriers are. Merchanters more freely through the war, dock here and there, get questioned by both sides, and try as much as possible to ignore the fighting which has been going on for half a century. They act as if the war doesn't exist.
So you may be bound out of that jump point for either a Company star or a Union base. It doesn't matter. Usually. After, no one attacks stations or planets. Yet.
When you arrive at a star, you come in at the stellar zenith pole as agreed by navigational law, slow down at once, Your arrival has been reported by a jump range buoy which is a robot station which has three functions: first, it gives you a current updated computer image of the estimated positions of every object in the solar system, cutting down on the lagtime problems. Second, it adds you to the image which it now beams back to station. Third, it assigns you a lane to follow, again cutting down lagtime. You do as instructed and come in safely at reduced speed.
Station will know you have arrived an hour or so later when the message gets there (FTL ships are faster than messages). Station Central will greet you and you will talk to them as you approach. The lagtime shortens from an hour to half and hour to five minutes to no appreciable lag as you get to the station and begin docking. You match the station speed and rotation pattern, shutting down your own rotation, and locking your cylinder into docking position, then shove your nose into the docking cone, fasten clamps and wait for the crews to attack lines and hoses which provide you power, flush your tanks, take your refuse (biostuffs are precious) and give you shielded-line communications with the station.