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“We came out here with an operational plan,” she said “If we start rewriting it every tiht as well not have bothered”
Privately, Bull thought the sa, but with a different inflection If he’d been XO, the operational plan would have been called a suggested guideline and only opened when he wanted a good laugh Pa probably knew that They reached the transit ra curve that led from the command and control levels at the head of the Behemoth down to the massive drum of her body Fro into a conciliatory s to start reallocating until I have an idea of the big picture Iresources out of environ that needs doing there, I’ll just be pushing it back, right?”
Bull looked down the rahts recessed in the walls filled the air with a shadowless glow like a cheesy vision of heaven Pa put her hand on his shoulder She probably meant it to be sympathetic, but it felt like condescension
“Yeah, okay,” he said
“It’ll be all right, chief,” she said, giving his trapezius a little squeeze He nodded and walked down the ramp to the transfer platfor in the hue to spit
The Behemoth, back when she’d been the Nauvoo, had been built with a different life in mind Most ships built for travel between the planets were like s, one floor above another with the thrust of the Epstein drive at the bottoes apart from a few hours in the e fro down But Epstein or not, no ship could afford the power require forever Plus, Einstein had a thing or two to say about trying to eneration ship, its journey ht-e of its life span it could afford to spend under thrust was tiny by comparison The coines and the associated parts of engineering at the bottoed to a standard craft connected by a pair of kilo shafts, one for a keel elevator to ave access to the skin of the dru else was built to spin
For the centuries out to Tau Ceti, the body of the Nauvoo was , crew quarters, tees, and at the center, the vast interior It would have been a piece of Earth curved back on itself Soil and farmland and the illusion of open air with a central core of fusion-driven light and heat as gentle and warm as a summer day
All the rooms and corridors in the body section—the vast , slow, endless season in mind The brief periods of acceleration and deceleration at the journey’s ends hardly mattered Except that they were all the ship had now Those places that should have been floors were all walls, and would be forever The vast reinforced decks meant to carry a tiny world’s worth of soil were the sides of a nearly unusable well So from the connection where the coreat chamber could fall for nearly two full kiloravity and Coriolis stood on their sides, useless The Nauvoo had been a , a stateineering The Behee job with mass accelerators strapped to her side that would do e to herself than to an enemy
And Bull wasn’t even allowed to fix the probleh the transfer station and doard his office The roo for the spin gravity that would never co spoke of the rush to finish it, and then to salvage and re past thetiineer on the Behe with Bull’s new deputy Serge, his nae had been part of the OPA before that was a safe thing to be He had the traditional split circle insignia tattooed on his neck and wore it proudly But like the rest of the security force, he’d been recruited by Michio Pa, and Bull didn’t know exactly how things stood He didn’t trust theall that well of him
Sam, on the other hand, he liked
“Hey, Bull,” she said as he dropped onto the foaet a chance to talk to the XO?”
“We talked,” Bull said
“What’s the plan?” Sa her arms in a way that h his hair When he’d been younger, his hair had been soft Noas like he could feel each strand individually against his fingertips He pulled out his hand ter, three routine security reports and two occasionals—an injury report and a larceny coe,” Bull said “You hold the fort here for an hour?”
“Anything you want, chief,” Serge said with a grin It was probably just paranoia that left Bull hearing conteht, then Come on, Sam I’ll buy you a drink”
In a Coalition ship, back when there’d been an Earth-Mars Coalition, there would have been a commissary In the OPA, there was a bar and a couplewith a bare-bones keep-you-alive supply of prepackThe bar was in a wide space thatenough for a hundred people but Bull hadn’t seen it withhad been swapped out for blue-and-white LEDs set behind sand-textured plastic The tables were flat black and netized to hold the bulbs of beer and liquor to thelasses
“Che-che!” the bartender called as Bull and Saen! Alles-mesa, you”
“Meh-ya,” Sam replied, as comfortable with the lish It was her native tongue