At a dead run, his armor assembling around him as his boots hammered the decking. It was dangerous to move—let alone violently—while the shell constructed itself, but the urgency in the Angel’s call left no time to dally. And Tristen knew that no matter how he taxed them to wait for assistance, the odds of Caitlin and Perceval doing so were slim to the point of vanishing. So he hustled. He was careful, and he got lucky, and his armor drew only a little blood. The gauntlets sealed themselves across his palms, and he dragged Mirth from its scabbard with a rasp in the last of the outside air. The air locks and pressure doors sealing the segments of corridor he reached next slowed him, but they were also advance warning that something had gone terribly wrong—if he needed anything more than the Angel’s status reports and information feed. After her first call for help, Nova did not urge him to hurry; there would have been no purpose to it. He passed through the gates and Nova sealed them again behind, and then he found himself beside only two unmoving bodies—the blue blood frozen onto unfamiliar gray armor—in a corridor open to the Enemy.
