The corridor curved downward (based on her old frame of gravitational reference), which would have given her a nice little speed boost if she’d been on foot. Not enough to matter, but she would have died with a feeling of exhilaration and progress, maybe. The station was shaking much more badly now, and she bumped against the tunnel walls as they trembled. The timer in her field of vision was getting down to within a minute of Ashok’s best guess for when the whole station would be ripped into tiny chunks of debris.

Then Shall dropped out of a connecting tunnel above her, grabbed her with enfolding arms, and pressed her to his mechanical belly. He maneuvered with his thrusters on full burn. Shall’s body was designed to zip around in vacuum and fix damaged ships in dry dock or drifting in space, and he had large reservoirs of propellant. He was going through them, accelerating constantly, and Callie let out a whoop in her helmet. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving you.”

“How did you even get way the hell over here?”

“I yelled at Lantern until she found me an access point that would intersect your path, then I jumped off the canoe and flew around the outside of the station until I found the door, and then I came looking for you. I’m glad I did. I see you missed your ride. I was afraid of something like that. I had a bad feeling.”

“You’re a hull repair drone. You’re not supposed to have feelings.”

“I am many things. Hull repair drone is just my current occupation. We’re almost at minimum safe distance. Are you ready to jump?”

“I don’t think the teleport will take you too.”

“Sorry. You’ll have to buy a new repair drone. This is goodbye. I’m not connected to the ship at the moment, and this local node of my consciousness will never be integrated back into the whole, so if you have any secrets you want to spill–”

“I never stopped loving you, Michael. It just hurt too much.”

“I know, Callie. I hate myself. And by ‘myself,’ I mean the biological specimen my mind is based on. Fuck that guy.”

“I know, right?” Callie’s timer was almost at zero. She wiggled her arm, and Shall shifted to give her the necessary freedom of motion to push the teleport button on her wrist.