CHAPTER 8
If you can’t achieve perfection in yourself, how can you expect it in others?
—Anthropos, The Sane Mind
It took Dev ten minutes to rouse Grgat from his involuntary hibernation while Dunnis and Larramac went down to the hold to unpack the weaponry. Dev tried shaking the bulky native first, and when that failed to produce results she tried light slaps across the side of his muzzle. His eyelids fluttered in response, until finally he was looking at her. It took perhaps half a minute more for awareness to seep into his brain that he was still alive, and not sharing with these strangers whatever afterlife he believed in.
“Are you all right?” Dev asked him through the translator.
Grgat was slow to answer, but did so in the affirmative.
He tried stretching his arms and legs, findi
