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watched while Raleigh got to do everything. Raleigh was the one that got to huck the charges off the back of a knuckledragger mech-suit passing the open bay door. He even insisted on detonating them himself so he could whoop as all the molten steel shot out into the vacuum from the rippling shock waves.
    Tig and Parker’s duty shift ended, and after he went out the airlocks, he made straight for the primary bays. Out in the passageway, he strode fast for the interdeck tube before he even took his helmet off. He wended his way between the junk crews and pilots hoping that if Parker was following him, she’d lose sight of him and give up. Parker didn't. She called out to him over local comms. He almost broke into a run trying to make it to the lift before she caught up.
    "Hey! Where the hell are you going? You come off a sixteen-hour duty shift and bolt without a word?" He flipped the latches at his neck and lifted his helmet off so he couldn’t hear her yelling in his ear. She lifted her helmet off, too and shouted down the passageway after him. "Hey!"
    " Bay 3, primary!" he barked over his shoulder. Maybe that would shut her up. "I’ll meet you in the mess."  
    " Why?" She caught up with him in front of the lift.  
    " I just gotta get to bay 3, primary is all," he said as he stepped on the lift at the last second. She followed just before the railgunner who’d got on the lift first hit the lever and sent them down towards the carrier's spine.  
    She squinted at him. Parker was too smart. She was already figuring it out. "Bay 3 is the bay the Chief’s salvage junk is launching from," she said. "The one that’s going to try and save the breaching ship... Tipperary ."  
    " How’d you know about it?"  
    " Same as you," she said. "Devon can’t shut his scuttlebutt-slingin' pie hole."  
    When the lift shot out the bottom of the tube, Tig thought his vision tweaked out for a moment from all the space to his left and right. From where he was, in the hollow, tensegrity spine of the ship, he could see some 250 meters through the struts looking towards the bow and nearly 700 meters looking towards the stern.
    In the spine, he didn’t have to wait more than ten seconds for a mover. That’s what they called it in places like the spine when a lift moved horizontally, but it was really the same piece of equipment they called a lift when it was going up and down inside a tube. When it arrived, he pushed his way past of a pair of greensuit glow-peckers to get on first and didn’t wait for anyone else. He gripped the lever and sent the mover away from the platform and down its track before anyone else could get on. The reactor tenders shouted profanities at him, but another mover would rise up out the port in the bulkhead for them in ten or fifteen seconds.
    He thought he’d got away from Parker until she yelled his name from behind him. She sounded too close. He only got half way turned to look behind him before she landed. She hit the deck of the mover after making what must have been a ten-meter jump from the platform. It was a hell of a jump even in Hardway’s .3 gees, but she couldn’t stick the landing. She slammed into Tig hard. He thought maybe it was harder than she had to.
    " Don’t you try to ditch me , Tig Meester." She pushed herself up and off of Tig and stood. "I’m the only friend you’ve got on this ship."  
    " I thought you said you didn’t even like me."  
    " I don’t," she said as she helped him up.  
    As the mover shot down its track in the spine, Tig shifted the lever back to slow the platform gradually so she wouldn’t notice. Then, he waited until she let go of the rail, and then he pushed the mover’s lever forward to speed up quickly, producing about .2 gees worth of acceleration inertia. That was all it took to knock you on your ass if you weren’t ready for it.
    Parker fell backwards, on her big butt, and Tig grabbed her legs and used the momentum to roll her over, under the mover’s