“I’ve got no place safe to go,” Bull said.
Someone on the other end of the connection shouted and Sam looked up at them.
“I’m trying to scramble up all the technicians I can,” she shouted back. “Things have been a tiny bit disorganized. Had a little trouble with the rules of physics changing on us. Maybe you noticed.”
The first voice shouted again. Bull couldn’t hear the words, but he knew the timbre of the voice. Garza. The guy who’d always gotten bulbs of coffee for whoever was stuck in the security office. Garza was one of theirs. Bull wished he’d gotten to know the man better. Especially after the catastrophe, he should have been checking in with his staff more. He should have seen this all coming.
This was his fault. All of this was his fault.
Sam looked back down at the screen. At him.
“Okay, sweetie,” she said. “You should get scarce. Head for the second level, section M. There’s a bunch of empty storage there. The door codes are all on default. Straight zeros.”
“Why are they on default?”
“Because there’s nothing in them, bossypants, and changing the locks on all the empties never made the top of my to-do list. Is this really the time?”
“Sorry,” Bull said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Both of us under a little stress right now. Just get your head down before someone knocks it off. And Pa—”
“Pa knows. She’s heading for safety too.”
“All right, then. I’ll try to get you some help.”
“No,” Bull said. “You don’t know who you can trust.”
“Yes, I do,” Sam said. “Let’s don’t argue in front of the children.”
A voice brought him back to the corridor, the medical center. Not the groans of the wounded, not the professional calm of the nurses. Someone was excited and aggressive. Angry. Someone answered in a lower voice, and the first one came back with Do I look like I care? It was trouble, and despite everything, his first impulse was to turn toward it. His job was to get in the middle of things, to make sure that no one got hurt, and if anyone did, it was him. Him first, then the bad guys.
“I got to go,” he said, and dropped the connection. It only took a second to stow his hand terminal and get his palms back on the mech’s controls. Long enough for him to fight back his instincts. He shifted the mech to head down the corridor, away from the voices. They were Ashford’s people. Ashford and whoever was backing him. If he got caught now, he wouldn’t be any use to anybody. Chances were they’d just kill him. Might not even get as far as the airlock first. The mech’s legs moved slowly. Even full-out, it didn’t go more than a modest walk. The voices behind him shifted. Something crashed. He heard his doctor shouting now and waited for the report of gunfire. If they started shooting, he’d have to go back. The mech inched toward the farther door, toward the exit and what passed for safety. Bull pressed the joystick forward so hard his fingers ached, as if the force would make the machine understand the danger.
The voices got louder, coming close. Bull shifted the mech so that it was walking along the wall. If someone came around the corner behind him, it would give him an extra fraction of a second before he was seen. The thick metal legs slid forward, shifted weight, shifted again.
The doorway was six feet away. Four. Three. He let go of the controls and reached out for the door a little too soon and had to inch the mech forward before he tried again. He was sweating, and he hoped it was only fear. If something in his guts had given way, he wouldn’t have known. Probably it was just fear.
The door opened, and he slammed the little joystick forward again. The mech took him through, and he closed the door behind him. He didn’t have time to wait or think. He angled the mech down another hall toward the internal lifts and the long trip to second level, section M.
The great interior halls and passageways of the Behemoth had never seemed less like home. As he descended, the spin gravity grew almost imperceptibly stronger. His numb flesh sat a little heavier in its harness. He was going to have to get someone to change out his piss bag soon unless he could figure out some way to get his arms inside the mech’s frame, but his elbows only bent one direction, so that seemed unlikely. And if his spine didn’t grow back, if they didn’t get the Behemoth and everyone else back out of the trap the protomolecule had caught them in, he’d live like this until he died.
Don’t think about it, he told himself. Too far ahead. Don’t think about it. Just do your job.
He didn’t take one of the main internal lifts. Chances were too good that Ashford’s men would be watching for that. Instead, he found one of the long, spiraling maintenance passages and set the mech to walking on its own. If it drifted too near one wall or the other, he could correct it, but it gave him a few seconds. He pulled out the hand terminal. He was shaking and his skin looked gray under the brown.
Serge answered almost immediately.
“Ganne nacht, boss,” the tattooed Belter said. “Was wondering when you were going to check in.”
“Ashford,” Bull said.
“On top of it,” Serge said. “Looks like he’s got about a third of our boys and a bunch of crazy-ass coyos from other ships. Right now they got the transition points off the drum north to command and south to engineering, the security office and the armory, y some little wolf packs going through the drum stirring up trouble.”
“How well armed?”
“Nicht so bien sa moi,” Serge said, grinning. “They savvy they got us locked out of the communications too, but I got back door open.”
“You what?”
“Always ready for merde mal, me. Bust me down later,” Serge said. “I’m putting together squads, clean up the drum. We’ll get this all smashed flat by bedtime.”
“You have to be careful with these guys, Serge.”
“Will, boss. Know what we’re doing. Know the ship better than anyone. You get safe, let us take care.”
Bull swallowed. Giving over control ached.
“Okay.”
“We been trying to get the captain, us,” Serge said.
“I warned her. She may be refusing connections until she knows more who she can trust,” Bull said. He didn’t add, Or they may have found her.
“Check,” Serge said, and Bull heard in the man’s voice that he’d had the same thought. “When we track Ashford?”
“We don’t have permission to kill him,” Bull said.
“A finger slips, think we can get forgiveness?”
“Probably.”
Serge grinned. “Got to go, boss. Just when es se cerrado, and they make you XO, keep me in mind for your chair, no?”
“Screw that,” Bull said. “When this shit’s done, you can be XO.”
“Hold you to, boss,” Serge said, and the connection went dead.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Anna
The first sermon Anna had delivered in front of a congregation, fresh out of seminary and filled with zeal, was seventeen pages of single-spaced notes. It had been a lengthy dissection of the first chapter of Malachi, focusing on the prophet’s exhortation not to deliver substandard sacrifices to God, and how that related to modern worship. It had been detailed, backed by all of the evidence and argument Anna’s studious nature and seven years of graduate school could bring to bear. By the end of it, Anna was pretty sure not one member of the audience was still awake.
She’d learned some important lessons from that. There was a place for detailed Bible scholarship. There was even a place for it in front of the congregation. But it wasn’t what people came to church for. Learning a bit more about God was part of feeling closer and more connected to Him, and the closeness was what mattered. So Anna’s sermons now tended to be just a page or two of notes, and a lot more speaking from the heart. She’d delivered her message on “mixed” churches in God’s eyes without looking at the notes once, and it seemed to go over very well. After she concluded with a short prayer and began the sacrament, Belters and Martians and Earthers got into line together in companionable silence. A few shook hands or clapped each other on the back. Anna felt like it might be the most important message she’d ever delivered.