Four figures stood at the dusty floor-to-ceiling viewport, surveying worn machinery grinding into place under the starboard wing of Watchtower Zil. Gears the size of habitations scraped as they rotated, clouds of rust blossoming into the ether. Something gargantuan was being moved into place, but what? And for what purpose?
“Explain it to me again,” said Stroth, the first being at the window.
The second person turned to address her, harsh outside light illuminating the polished mask of Station Master El-Suiyat, who explained: “The next inhabited world outside of the Ele Dominion is several light years away. Most spacers leaving the Dominion are short on fuel, so…” El-Suiyat gestured serenely to the mechanism at work outside. “… we offer them use of the Expedited Kinetic Accelerator. It is unique in its design; no other Watchtower has one.”
Noting more than a little pride in the Station Master’s voice, Stroth asked her, “so what does it do?”
“In very simple terms,” the third figure, Ambassador El-Deen, chimed in gently, “a starship is loaded onto a secure pallet which is then, with the use of highly tensile cabling, propelled forward at a velocity approaching the speed of light. At the end of the track, over there, the pallet snaps open, releasing the ship with enough momentum to carry it to the nearest settlement.”
“Hmm,” grunted the fourth being, reformed bounty hunter Tren Krellos, in response. “So it’s a big slingshot?”
There was a lengthy pause, before El-Deen answered wryly, “In simple terms, yes.”
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