The Exiled Duke's Lottery system

Belhorn’s final advice followed them across the freight yard, quiet and persistent against the rising roar of the Junction.

Find the station office before you start standing around looking thoughtful.

Torrin Vale had taken it seriously. Standing still in Iron Junction was difficult anyway. The place moved around them with the relentless, grinding. Railcars groaned across distant sidings, their iron wheels screaming against grease-slick steel. High above broad stone platforms, mana-driven hoists swung timber crates and iron beams through the vapor-laden air with heavy, rhythmic clatter. Steam bells rang from somewhere beyond the brick warehouses, answered moments later by another deeper chime farther down the valley.

Workers crossed the yard in steady, disciplined streams, following broad painted lines on the cobbles that routed bodies between sheds, sidings, and administrative blocks. Behind massive walls of brick and riveted iron, machines hissed, hammered, and rumbled, sending tremors through the soles of Vale’s boots.

Vale looked at belhorn caravan going away"So ladies and gentleman i guess it’s time we be on our way too"

Torrin Vale walked ahead with Elenwe Sarath ,The elf kept her long hands tucked deep inside the sleeves of her travelling coat, her eyes moving deliberately across the painted wooden signs suspended along the freight road. Several minutes behind them came Aldis Ferren, flanked by Ghara Mok-Sûl and Sevik Thorne, their paces mismatched to look like casual travellers who happened to share the same stretch of mud. Vashek Durn and Pib Skarrow arrived after them, trailing a string of ore trolleys, with Renna Coil bringing up the rear, her quiet footfalls completely lost in the surrounding industrial noise.

The station office stood exactly where Belhorn had pointed. It was a long, utilitarian brick building running alongside the primary passenger lines, fitted with tall, iron-framed windows and a massive brass-cased clock mounted above the central archway. A painted wooden noticeboard outside listed arrivals, departures, freight schedules, temporary labour calls, and territorial ordinances written in block lettering large enough to read from across the thoroughfare.

The final notice caught Vale’s attention instantly.

ALL NEW ARRIVALS SEEKING EMPLOYMENT MUST REGISTER WITH THE LABOUR OFFICE WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

Directly beneath it hung a smaller, darker plate.

IDLE PERSONS WITHOUT DECLARED BUSINESS MAY BE QUESTIONED BY TERRITORIAL SECURITY.

Vale read both once, then adjusted his coat and pushed through the heavy oak doors.

The hiring shed behind the station office was noticeably warmer than the open yard, thick with the damp heat of trapped breath, drying wool, and hot oil. It was also considerably louder. Four long oak tables stood aligned against the far western wall, each occupied by a territorial clerk flanked by towering stacks of parchment, lead inkwells, and small wooden trays slotted with numbered cardboard employment cards. Long, ragged queues stretched before every desk, shuffling forward inch by inch.

Along the opposite wall, available work had been broadly categorized in thick white chalk beneath bold headings:

LOADERS

TEAMSTERS

RAIL CREWS

SORTING

STORES

MACHINE WORK

WORKSHOPS

PERIMETER

At the far end of the board, isolated from the rest, sat a final, column:

ASK

Nobody looked at Vale twice when he stepped inside. That surprised him, leaving a tight knot of tension uncoiling slightly in his chest. He had spent the previous eleven days expecting scrutiny at every turn. Inside Caelrith, dodging patrols through ruined alleys. On the open road, they had painstakingly learned to behave like strangers—never looking too defensive, never behaving so perfectly detached that it became suspicious in its own right.

But Iron Junction operated under a different law. There were perhaps seventy people crowded inside the shed, and nearly all of them were strangers to the town and to each other. Some had arrived with the morning grain caravans from the west. Others had stepped off coal trains firing up from the valley floor. Several still carried dusty travel packs slung over their shoulders, smelling of open road and cold campfires. Nobody cared where anyone had come from. Everyone wanted work. Coin was moving, iron was building, and the machine required bodies.It was just that simple.

Vale joined the second queue, keeping his eyes lowered. Elenwe drifted toward the desk on the far right without a single glance in his direction. A few minutes later, the others filtered through the doors separately, dissolving into the line.

The clerk standing before Vale’s line was a woman in her mid-forties, her dark hair pinned back with iron needles and dark ink permanently staining the pads of her thumb and forefinger. She dipped her iron-nibbed pen into a pot without looking up from her ledger.

"Name."

"Torrin Vale."

"Place of origin?"

"South."

"Specific."

"Southern continent a small duchy."

Her pen paused mid-stroke. Only briefly—a fraction of a second’s hesitation—before continuing its scratch across the coarse paper.

Vale noticed the pause, his posture remaining rigidly relaxed. She did not ask why he had crossed the line, nor how he had managed it.

"Previous employment?"

"Military."

That made her look up. Her eyes were sharp, gray, and entirely unamused by the world. "Rank?"

"Knight."

"Current employment?"

"None."

"What can you do?"

Vale considered the question carefully, selecting the simplest truths. "Carry. Dig. Stand watch and Fight if necessary."

The woman scribbled a quick line of script across a blue card, tore a narrow stub from the edge, and pushed it across the ink-stained oak.

"Labour gang. North sidings."

Vale picked up the card, feeling the rough texture of the board. "That is all?"

The clerk looked back up, an eyebrow arching. "Were you expecting a formal examination?"

"I have been asked more questions when buying a horse."

"Then horses are apparently more difficult to employ." She gestured toward the side exit. "Green building across the tracks. Report before the evening bell."

Vale looked down at the stub. "Accommodation?"

"Workers’ hall, east road. Bunk and a locker."

"Food?"

"Included while employed. Deducted if you shirk."

"Payment?"

"Posted on the main board weekly."

"How long is the assignment?"

"Until they no longer need you," she said dryly, her eyes already tracking past his shoulder. "Next."

Vale stepped aside, melting into the crowd near the door to observe.

Sevik Thorne’s turn at the third desk lasted less than a minute. The enormous Grand Knight approached the line carrying his massive travel pack over one shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all.

The clerk at desk three looked up at Thorne’s chest. Then looked higher. Then stopped looking entirely, realizing the sheer physical footprint of the man standing before him.

"What can you do?" the clerk asked, his voice dropping an octave.

Thorne thought about it for a beat, his broad, weather-beaten face completely unreadable. "I can lift."

The clerk glanced at Thorne’s arms, which stretched the seams of his heavy wool coat. "I can see that" the clerk muttered. "Clearly."

He scratched a quick note. "Loading platforms. Platform Seven. Heavy freight."

Thorne accepted the card with a quiet nod. "That is all?"

"Do you require additional work?"

"No."

"Then Platform Seven."

Thorne nodded once more, perfectly respectful. "Thank you."

The clerk watched the giant walk away, paused, and quietly made a small secondary mark beside Thorne’s name in the ledger before calling the next man forward.

Ghara Mok-Sûl removed her heavy leather riding gloves before she reached the desk, tucking them neatly into her belt. The orc’s hands were broad, thick-boned, crisscrossed with old blade scars, and calloused deep enough to handle hot iron. The clerk’s eyes rested on those hands for a full three seconds before rising to meet her gaze.

"Name."

"Ghara."

"Race?"

"Orc."

"What can you do?"

"Animals. Driving. Guard work."

"How many animals?"

Ghara tilted her head slightly, her jaw tight. "What kind?"

The clerk stopped writing, resting his pen on the inkwell. "Mules. Draft oxen."

"Single, pair, four-team, six-team. Depends on the harness and the weight behind them."

The woman behind the desk pushed a yellow card forward without hesitation. "Team lines."

"Where?"

"West yard. Stables four to eight."

Ghara picked up the card cleanly.

As she turned, the clerk added, "Do not let the yard masters intimidate you."

Ghara paused, looking back over her shoulder. The clerk met her eyes steadily. "They intimidate most people who present credentials there."

For the first time that morning, a faint, ghost of a smile touched Ghara’s lips. "Then send me to the difficult ones."

Renna Coil gave her desk almost nothing to work with. The beastwoman stood before the fourth clerk with her dark hood pulled back just enough to reveal her features. Her ears were fully visible now, twitching subtly at the sharp, echoing cracks of steam valves outside. She had spent the days trek hiding them under layers of wool to avoid unwanted eyes on the imperial highways. Here, in the churning melting pot of Iron Junction, there was no need. Nobody gave her heritage a second glance.

"Name."

"Renna."

"Race?"

"Beastman."

"Work background?"

"Outdoor."

"What kind?"

"Anything."

The clerk waited for elaboration. Renna simply stood there, her dark eyes fixed on the inkwell, waiting right back.

Finally, the clerk blew out a long breath and rustled her papers. "Can you track?"

"Yes."

"How well?"

Renna considered how to frame it without sounding like a ranger who had spent her life hunting in high-canopy wilds. "Better than most."

The clerk wrote for several seconds, the nib scratching loudly. "Perimeter maintenance. Rail inspection teams. East section."

Renna accepted the card with a swift movement, tucking it away. She glanced past the desk through a tall window, taking in the vast, dizzying web of tracks stretching out toward the eastern mountains. It was high-ground work, open air, and mobility—exactly what she had wanted. Her expression remained stone.

Next Aldis Ferren approached the desk on the far left. The Master Knight had spent his fifteen minutes analyzing the architecture of the room. He soon knew which clerk processed paperwork fastest, which line suffered from administrative bottlenecks, and which desk carried the largest stack of unfiled carbon duplicates. By the time he reached the front, he had also spotted three mathematical discrepancies on the chalkboards overhead.

"Name."

"Aldis Ferren."

"What can you do?"

"Count."

The clerk finally looked up from his balance sheet, blinking. "That is an unusual answer."

"I can also organize supplies, manage transport schedules, calculate feed and fuel consumption rates, prepare loading manifests, and tell you precisely when somebody has stolen from a warehouse."

The clerk eyed him up and down, taking in Aldis’s sharp posture and immaculate, if worn, tunic. He pushed a small wooden slate covered in chalked columns across the desk.

"Find the error."

Aldis didn’t even pick up the slate. He leaned down slightly, his eyes sweeping the four columns of logistics figures once.

"Third line from the top," Aldis said calmly.

"Which part?"

"The second wagon’s grain weight was copied as six hundred and forty-eight pounds. Based on the axle tally on the left margin, it should be six hundred and eighty-four. Your total at the bottom is thirty-six pounds short."

The clerk snatched the slate back, pulled out a brass slider, and checked the arithmetic. His eyes narrowed sharply. "How long did that take you?"

"Nine seconds."

"Stores," the clerk said instantly, snatching a white card from a box.

Aldis accepted it. "Where?"

"Warehouse Three. Supply ledger office."

"Thank you."

As Aldis turned to leave, the clerk called after him, his voice low. "Do you steal?"

Aldis glanced back over his shoulder, a dry glint in his eye. "Not from people who know how to count."

The clerk stared at him for a long moment.

Aldis allowed himself a faint smile. "That was a joke."

"It wasn’t a good one."

"No," Aldis agreed softly. "But I have a job now."

Elenwe Sarath chose her words with calculated precision. There were few things in the empire more dangerous or memorable than a rogue archmage. She had spent the entirety of their escape ensuring that not a single trace of her arcane authority leaked into her demeanor.

"Name."

"Elenwe."

"Race?"

"Elf."

"Previous employment?"

"Academic work."

The clerk groaned softly. "That could mean anything from copying poetry to sweeping high-caste libraries."

"Research," Elenwe corrected softly, her voice smooth, level, and deliberately stripped of regional accent.

"Can you sort?"

"Objects?"

"Cargo."

"Yes."

"Can you read?"

"Several languages."

The clerk paused, giving Elenwe a longer, more searching look than the labourers before her had received. "Several?"

"Enough to read manifest tags."

The clerk held her gaze for another second before writing rapidly on a thick gray card. "Sorting floor. Documents and sealed freight handling."

Elenwe accepted it, her long fingers vanishing the card into her wide sleeve. "Where do I report?"

"Second building beyond the red warehouse."

"Thank you."

Then came Pib he had already seen the machine shop from the yard outside, and that, Vale knew, was an immediate problem. Pib knew Vale knew it was a problem. But she had entered the queue anyway, her boots practically vibrating against the floorboards.

The goblin reached the fourth desk with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, old grease still blackening the lines of her knuckles from her work on Belhorn’s caravan axles.

"What can you do?" the clerk asked, sounding thoroughly drained.

"I fix things."

"What things?"

"Anything with moving parts."

The clerk raised a skeptical eyebrow. "That is a very broad answer."

"It is an accurate one," Pib fired back, leaning forward on her toes.

The clerk leaned back, tapping his pen against his chin. "Do you know what a governor does?"

Pib’s yellow eyes narrowed instantly into slits of sharp professional disdain. "Which kind?"

The clerk paused. "A pressure-driven machine governor."

"It controls output rotational speed and stops the core system from exceeding its operational thermal range," Pib snapped without breathing. "Unless whoever built it was stupid enough to couple the bypass line directly to the secondary pressure regulator without a relief valve."

The clerk stared. Pib stared right back, her chin thrust out.

The clerk slowly set his pen down on the blotter. "Machine shop."

Pib’s entire face lit up, her pointed ears twitching high. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Immediately?"

"Before I change my mind and put you on shovel duty."

Pib snatched the card off the wood before he had even finished the sentence. "Where?"

"Fourth workshop! Ask for Vessik!" the clerk shouted after her as she was already turning on her heel.

She was halfway across the packed shed before the clerk yelled over the crowd: "Tell him Marla sent you!"

Pib tossed a hand into the air without looking back, disappearing through the heavy exit doors.

Vashek Durn was last.

Vale, watching from near the wall, noticed the dwarf’s deliberate delay. It worried him instantly.

The dwarf approached the final desk with his heavy, leather-bound tool pack slung low across his broad shoulder. He stopped before the clerk like an iron post being driven into the earth.

"Name."

"Vashek Durn."

"What can you do?"

"Wheelwright."

The clerk’s hand froze mid-write.

Across the room, Torrin Vale closed his eyes briefly, exhaling a quiet, weary breath. Of course of course what did he expected.

"Say that again," the clerk said, turning his head.

"I am a wheelwright," Durn repeated, his deep voice carrying easily over the chatter of the shed.

The clerk leaned over the desk to look down at Durn’s pack. "Anything else?"

"I can craft a wheel from raw timber and iron ring," Durn said, his tone dripping with the quiet authority of a master craftsman. "I can repair one. Cut a hub. Fit spokes to tolerance. Repair sheared axles. I understand load distribution, bearing wear, and stress dynamics."

The clerk slowly put his pen flat on the table. He didn’t write. Instead, he stood up and turned toward the adjacent table.

"Hesk!"

A man at the next desk looked up from his ledger. "What?"

"Got a wheelwright here!"

The man named Hesk immediately pushed back his chair and crossed the room. He was broad-shouldered, human, his arms thick with muscle, wearing a heavy leather apron darkened by coal dust, grease, and iron filings. He stopped two feet from Durn, sizing him up with a sharp, critical gaze.

"How many spokes in a four-ton heavy dray wheel?" Hesk demanded.

"Fourteen," Durn replied without hesitation. "If it is properly constructed to handle lateral torque."

"Most use twelve," Hesk countered.

"Most break too," Durn stated flatly.

Hesk stared at the dwarf. Durn stared right back, his thick beard bristling slightly.

"What breaks first on a mana-driven rail bogie?" Hesk asked, narrowing his eyes.

Durn’s expression shifted, a flicker of genuine curiosity crossing his brow. "I have never worked on a rail bogie."

Hesk’s eyebrows rose slightly.

Durn continued, his voice dropping into a dry growl. "But if you want me to guess based on structural logic, the answer would probably be whichever component was designed by the least competent man on your engineering board."

A heavy silence hung over the corner of the shed for two seconds.

Then Hesk let out a sudden, booming laugh that startled the clerk beside him. "Good answer!" He pointed a thick, soot-stained finger toward the northern exit. "Wheel and axle workshop. Third shed down."

Durn did not move immediately. "Now?"

"Yes."

"Immediately?"

"Unless you intend to become less useful before tomorrow morning."

Durn picked up his tool pack, settling it over his shoulder. "How large is the workshop?"

Hesk frowned, confused by the question. "Enough to fullfill your wishes."

"What machinery do you use for heat-treating the rims?"

"I don’t know, the smiths handle that—"

"Third shed!" Hesk barked, waving him off with a half-amused grin.

Durn left. Very quickly.

Vale caught up with him twenty yards outside the shed, stepping briskly alongside the dwarf as they navigated the crowded timber walkways.

"Master Durn."

Durn kept walking, his short legs moving with determined efficiency. "I know."

"You don’t know what I am going to say."

"I know exactly what you are going to say, Knight."

Vale stepped smartly off the boardwalk, cutting off Durn’s path near a stack of iron rails. Durn came to a halt, grunting.

"You are going to tell me not to attract attention," Durn said, looking up.

"Correct."

"You are going to tell me not to examine anything I have not been explicitly assigned to touch."

"Correct."

"You are going to tell me not to improve anything."

"Especially that," Vale said, his voice dropping low and stern.

Durn looked genuinely, deeply offended. "I am a craftsman of the third rank."

Vale pointed a rigid finger at the dwarf’s chest. "You repaired Belhorn’s wagon wheel back on the road, and you did it so well that two merchant guards spent an hour staring at the hub trying to figure out how it was done. You nearly got us noticed."

"I repaired it incorrectly!" Durn snapped, his face reddening.

"Maybe," Vale corrected softly.

"That was an act of extraordinary, agonizing restraint!"

"I know," Vale said, his tone softening slightly. "And I am asking for more of it."

Durn looked past Vale toward the massive workshop buildings occupying the northern quarter of the yard. Pale, mana-heated vapor rose in thick plumes from bronze vents along the rooflines. Somewhere deep inside those structures, heavy machinery was turning—a deep, thrumming vibration that rattled the iron studs in Durn’s boots. He could hear the rhythm of it. He could feel it in his teeth.

"One week," Durn grumbled, crossing his thick arms.

Vale narrowed his eyes. "One week?"

"Give me one week in that workshop to understand what they are building."

"No."

Durn looked at him, his eyes dead serious. "Master Vale. I crossed through a sealed barrier that cost three centuries of soulsilver to build. I walked eleven days behind Belhorn’s smelling oxen. I just watched a crane lift an entire ten-ton freight wagon into the air using a bottle of refined mana-fluid and three gears."

Vale crossed his arms, standing his ground.

Durn pointed a blunt thumb toward the distant smoke stacks. "Do you even understand what they are doing in there?"

"Probably not," Vale admitted cleanly.

"Exactly!" Durn exploded softly.

Vale held the dwarf’s stubborn gaze for several long seconds, the noise of the yard crashing around them. Finally, the knight let out a long, slow sigh.

"One week," Vale conceded.

Durn immediately straightened his posture. "One week."

"You repair strictly what they give you."

"Yes."

"You do not improve anything. You do not re-align gears. You do not touch the tolerances."

Durn’s face twitched as if he were being asked to swallow glass. "Yes."

"You do not explain to anyone why their work is wrong."

"Vale—"

"Say it, Vashek."

Durn’s jaw tightened until his beard quivered. "I fix what I am given. I keep my mouth shut. I do not improve anything."

"And?"

Durn looked genuinely, intensely miserable. "I do not tell anyone their hub is cut incorrectly."

Vale nodded once, stepping back out of his path. "Good."

Durn didn’t wait another second. He grabbed his pack strap and marched briskly toward the steam-vented doors of the third workshop.

Across the high freight yard, someone had been watching the entire exchange.

He stood on an elevated wooden gantry beside a bank of depleted brass mana-cells, wearing a heavy, unadorned coat of coarse grey wool. The hem of the coat was dark with coal dust and dried road mud. Nothing about his appearance marked him as military or as a territorial security.

The observer held a small, brass-bound pocket slate resting flat in his left palm. To any worker passing on the walkways below, he looked like just another logistics clerk auditing battery returns.

He hadn’t paid particular attention to Belhorn’s caravan when it had rumbled through the southern gates an hour after dawn. Iron Junction swallowed fifty caravans a day without breaking stride. But he had paid attention to how the arrivals dispersed once they left the wagons.

Most groups stayed clustered together like sheep. They argued openly over coin, hunted for shared lodgings in the slums, or drifted in noisy packs toward the cheap alehouses behind the southern railheads.

This group had done something entirely different.

They had scattered the moment their feet hit the cobbles—cleanly, deliberately, and with an eerie, practiced discipline.

The observer’s eyes remained tracked on the human called Vale as the man split from the dwarf near the iron rails. He had noted the sharp, low-voiced argument,the dwarf’s obvious irritation, but more importantly and the human’s posture.

When Vale turned toward the north sidings and the dwarf vanished into the workshop doors, the observer closed his slate with a soft click.

He walked calmly down the gantry stairs and entered the rear door of the station administration annex bypassing the noisy public counters entirely, taking a narrow spiral staircase made of cast iron up to the gallery level. Up here, the carbon duplicates from all four hiring desks were automatically routed via brass drop-chutes every twenty minutes for archival processing.

The gallery room was quiet, warm, and smelled heavily of oil lamps, fresh ink, and stale tea.

The officer stepped up to the central sorting rack and pulled eight freshly dropped carbon slips from the incoming tray. He laid them out side by side across a wide oak table.

Desk One: Torrin Vale. Human. Former military. Assigned to North Sidings Labour.

Desk One: Elenwe. Elf. Academic research. Assigned to Freight Sorting.

Desk Two: Thorne. Human. Heavy labour. Assigned to Platform Seven Loading.

Desk Two: Ghara. Orc. Teamster/Guard. Assigned to West Yard Stables.

Desk Three: Renna. Beastman. Outdoor tracking. Assigned to Perimeter Rail Inspection.

Desk Four: Aldis Ferren. Human. Supply logistics. Assigned to Warehouse Three Stores.

Desk Four: Pib Skarrow. Goblin. Mechanical systems. Assigned to Workshop Four.

Desk Four: Vashek Durn. Dwarf. Wheelwright. Assigned to Workshop Three.

He stared at the eight slips for a long time, his fingers tapping a slow rhythm against the wood.

Eight strangers. Three humans, an elf, a dwarf, a goblin, an orc, and a beastwoman.

On paper, it looked like a statistical mess—an absurdly diverse group of migrants who had no logical reason to travel together. Yet every single one of them possessed a high-value, specialized skill set—or, in the case of the elf, claimed an uneducated background while reading manifest script at sight. A human who solved a complex warehouse balance error in nine seconds. A dwarf wheelwright who knew the exact structural breaking point of heavy rail bogies without ever having worked on one.

And all eight had stepped off Belhorn’s freight line within twenty minutes of each other, pretended not to know one another, and taken jobs that effectively distributed them across every critical sector of Iron Junction’s infrastructure: fuel, transport, supply, mechanics, repair, and perimeter security.

"They split up," the officer murmured softly to the empty room. "Very neat. Very clean,huh."

He reached into his inner coat pocket, drew out a small brass key, and unlocked the heavy iron ledger box bolted beneath his desk. From inside, he pulled a sealed, red-bordered dossier dispatched from the capital three weeks prior.

SUBJECT:Caelrith Breach — Incident 44-B.

DETAILS:Sealed inner vault compromise. High-order arcane disruption. City guard response delayed by tactical sabotage. Eight unidentified assets fled outer perimeter.

The physical descriptions contained in the Caelrith report were virtually useless—vague shapes in the dark.

But the count was not.

Eight.

The officer did not call for the local guard or security.

Instead, he pulled a pre-stamped red dispatch form from his top drawer.

With rapid, practiced strokes of his pen, he began to write:

LOCATION: Iron Junction Main Yard.

SUBJECTS: 8 new arrivals (Belhorn Freight Line). Registered under separate queues, immediate tactical separation observed.

MATCH ASSESSMENT: High probability link to Caelrith Incident 44-B.

DISTRIBUTION: Subjects successfully contained within internal labour assignments (Sidings, Stores, Workshops, Perimeter).

ACTION REQUESTED: Deploy specialized oversight before shift change. Do not initiate arrest on yard floor.

He folded the dispatch tightly, slipped it into a heavy leather canister, and sealed the cap with a drop of green counter-signet wax.

He walked across the gallery to the pneumatic wall tube marked SECURITY DIVISION — DIRECT.

He lifted the heavy brass latch and held the canister over the opening.

Below, through the floorboards, the massive five o’clock shift bell began to toll across the valley. Down in the deafening roar of the yard, Torrin Vale was picking up a heavy iron shovel. Vashek Durn was stepping into the shadow of pounding steam hammers. Elenwe was folding her long hands into her sleeves beside the cargo crates.

They believed they had slipped quietly into the skin of the industrial machine.

The officer released the canister.

A sharp, pressurized thwack-pop echoed through the small office as the pneumatic tube swallowed the message, vacuum-thrusting it straight toward the central security headquarters at thirty feet a second.

The officer stood by the high window, looking out over the vast, labyrinthine network of tracks gleaming under the grey sky.

"Well well well what can I say except welcome to Elarion gentleman," he said softly.

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