SWM wrote:Hm. That's a plausible interpretation. I can't think of any text that would contradict that view.
A bit if textev that may or may not provide confirmation:
Honor Among Enemies
Chapter Nine
Wayfarer's Wormhole Transit to Gregor wrote:Engineering had more than its share of rough spots, but Tschu had put his best people on the duty roster for the transit, and Wayfarer's impeller wedge dropped to half strength as her forward nodes reconfigured smoothly. They no longer produced their portion of the wedge's total strength; instead, their beta nodes were out of the circuit entirely while their alpha nodes generated the all but invisible, three-hundred-kilometer-wide disk of a Warshawski sail, and Honor watched red numerals dance as her ship continued creeping forward under the power of her after nodes alone and the sail edged deeper into the Junction.
"Stand by for aftersail," she murmured to Tschu, never looking away from her repeaters.
"Standing by," the engineer replied
At this velocity there was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way before the grav wave's interference would blow Wayfarer's after nodes, but a poorly executed transit could produce nausea and violent dizziness in a crew. Besides, no captain wanted to look sloppy, and Honor watched the numbers for the foresail spin upwards with steadily mounting speed until, suddenly, they crossed the threshold. The sail was now drawing enough power to provide movement independent of the wedge, and she nodded sharply.
"Rig aftersail now!"
"Rigging aftersail, aye," Tschu replied instantly, and Wayfarer twitched gently as her wedge disappeared entirely. She moved forward more quickly, gathering way under Warshawski sail alone even though she was still technically in normal space, and a time-to-transit icon flashed brightly, ticking downward in the corner of Honor's display.
"Stand by for hyper," she said. Then—"Hyper now!"
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
Tschu threw power to the generator at precisely the right instant, and HMS Wayfarer vanished. For a fleeting instant no chronometer or human sense could measure, she simply ceased to exist, and then, suddenly, she was no longer in Manticore but seven hundred light-minutes from the F9 furnace known as Gregor-A, one hundred and eighty light-years distant from Manticore in Einsteinian space. The disks of her sails were blazing blue mirrors as they bled transit energy, and her hyper generator kicked back off at the conclusion of its programed burst of power. The ship slid forward once more, this time riding out of the terminus instead of into it, and Honor nodded in pleasure at how smoothly it had gone.
"Transit complete," Chief O'Halley announced, and Honor nodded again.
"Thank you, Chief. And you, Mr. Kanehama. That was well executed." She saw the astrogator's pleasure at her complement and looked back at Tschu.
"Reconfigure to impeller, Mr. Tschu."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Reconfiguring to impeller now."
Wayfarer folded her wings as she slid free of the grav wave, and Chief O'Halley needed no instruction to bring her wedge up quickly. The ship accelerated clear of the transit threshold, clearing the way for Parnassus to follow her as she headed down the Gregor arrival lane, and Honor checked her plot once more.
Note that rather than working together to form the wedge, each alpha node ring works to form its own pair of sails... The Beta nodes do nothing in sail mode.