Chapter Six

Dupaynil, hustled through the scarred and echoing corridors of the transfer station to the control center where the Claw’s captain met him with the suggestion that he “put a leg in it” and get himself out to the escort’s docking bay, had no chance to think things over until he was strapped safely into the escort’s tiny reserve cabin. He had not been passenger on anything smaller than a light cruiser for years; he had never been aboard an escort-class vessel. It seemed impossibly tiny after the Zaid-Dayan. His quarters for however long the journey might be was this single tiny space, a minute slice of a meager pief hardly big enough to lie down in. He heard a loud clang, felt something rattle the hull outside, and then the escort’s insystem drive nudged him against one side of his safety restraints. The little ship had artificial gravity, of a sort, but nothing like the overriding power that made Main Deck on the Zaid-Dayan feel as solid as a planet.

The glowing numbers on the readout overhead told him two standard hours had passed when he felt a curious twinge and realized they’d shifted into FTL drive. Although he’d had basic training in astrogation, he’d never used it, and had only the vaguest idea what

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