The walkway was clear now, and I moved along it to the junction between the shelf-wall and the engineward flex-well. For a moment, I was thankful for my rank. As flight team Commander, my flyer was positioned closest to the floor, which spared me climbing up the curved wall. Not that I would mind the climb, but since flyer training began, I had discovered I was mildly acrophobic. It didn't bother me once I was flying, but I disliked hanging suspended in midair.

I didn't spend a great deal of time checking over the flyer. That was the Technicians' job. I knew enough about the flyers to pilot them and effect minor repairs, but machines were the Technicians' field of expertise as weapons are mine, and anything they missed on their check would be too subtle for me to detect.

Instead, I occupied my time securing my personal weapons in the flyer, a job no Technician could do. I do not mean to imply by this that the Technicians are lacking in fighting skill. They are Tzen, and I would willingly match any Tzen of any caste on a one-for-one basis against any other intelligent being in the universe. But I am of the Warrior caste, the fighting elite of a species of fighters, and I secure my own weapons.

In truth, it was doubtful they would be necessary on this mission; still, it heartened me to have them close at hand. Like so many others, I had not yet completely acclimated myself to the new technology that had been so suddenly thrust upon us. The hand weapons were a link with the past, with our heritage, with the Black Swamps. Even the High Command did not object to the practice of carrying hand weapons on a mission. They merely limited the total weight of personal gear carried by a Warrior in his flyer. Nobody comes between a Tzen and his weapons, not even another Tzen.