When Angus finally answered him over the intercom, Davies began to burn like hard thrust.

In a sense, he was always on fire.  The endocrine intensity which his body had learned to accept as normal in Morn's womb kept his nerves hungry, his heart hot.  He lived on the edge of combustion.  Yet when he heard Angus' voice the flame in him leaped higher.

Sometime earlier, perhaps only half an hour ago, he'd taken Morn from the bridge into the first cabin he could find.  It might have been Angus': it might once have been used by Milos Taverner, for all he knew.  He didn't care.  It had what he needed - two bunks equipped with g-seal webbing and sheaths to protect their occupants during high acceleration.  As more and more of her memories came back to him, he found that he knew how to use her black box.  If he'd trusted himself, he could have put his fingers on the right buttons with his eyes closed.  When he was sure that she was deeply asleep, he'd secured her in one of the bunks, then done the same for himself.  After that he'd waited for Trumpet to live or die.

More helplessness; more waiting.

He'd already lost track of how long he'd been alive.  He'd spent too many of his few hours just like this, waiting in one kind of prison or another while other people somewhere else decided his survival.  He couldn't distinguish this day or this moment from their predecessors.  In a sense, Morn's past was more precise than his own; more distinct, as if it were more recent.  Nevertheless, when g came slamming through Trumpet's hull, he'd been grateful - briefly - for the restraints which kept him from being beaten to pulp against the cabin walls.

Once the ship appeared to have settled on a stable course, however, with clear gravity under her and no pressure from the thrust drive, larger questions had loomed.  He'd waited as long he cuold stand; then he'd risked leaving his bunk in order to reach the intercom and ask Angus what was happening.

The fact that Angus hadn't answered - that the intercom had gone dead under his thumb - made this prison no different than any of the others; as comfortless as his cell aboard Captain's Fancy, or his constricted ride in the ejection pod, or his room in Billingate.  Because he wanted to live, he'd returned to his bunk, resealed the g-sheath and webbing.  He could make that choice; but no others were allowed to him.

Then the intercom chimed, and Angus spoke at last.

"All right, listen."  His voice was guttural with stress or pain.  "For the next eight hours or so we should be about as safe as we're likely to get.  Mikka, Davies, I want you on the bridge to keep an eye on Nick.  He just tried to kill me.  If he hadn't ###### it up, you would all be as good as dead.

"I don't care what the rest of you do.  Just leave me alone for a while."

Angus paused.  More quietly he finished, "Davies, wake Morn up if you want to.  Otherwise let her sleep.  She looks like she can use it."

Davies' heart responded like a magnesium flare.  Without transition the questions became larger with a vengeance.

He flung himself out of his bunk.  He needed movement; freedom from restraint.  As safe as we're likely to get.  How safe was that?  For the next eight hours or so.  Where were they - where had Angus taken them?  He just tried to kill me.  How safe could any of them be with Nick aboard?

But when he turned to consider Morn, he stopped; froze.

All the essential questions of his life were there in her abused face and imposed sleep.

She didn't look like she could "use" sleep: mere slumber was too fleeting to meet the scale of her need.  She looked like she required the solace of physicians and psy-techs and utter peace, months of rest and healing.