Chapter Twenty-Six: Bull

Bull awakens in the Behemoth’s medical bay amid alarms, pain, and chaos. He connects with Sam Rosenberg, who reports that the slow zone has tightened speed limits again, seizing every ship and dragging them into orbit around the station. As medical staff triage the wounded, Doctor Mihn Sterling explains Bull’s spinal trauma and urges a medical coma.

Sam forces Bull to confront the diagnosis: crushed spinal cord, blood and fluid pressure, and the risk of permanent damage in zero g. Despite the chance of recovery under thrust, Bull refuses the coma, insisting on staying on duty until the ship and crew are safe. He asks the doctor to keep him cognitively functional for now.

Reviewing damages, Bull learns the deceleration devastated the flotilla: hundreds dead and injured on Behemoth, multiple Martian ships silent, and other vessels fighting critical power and environmental failures. Communications outward are unreliable, and all ships are being pulled into formation around the station with no ability to change course.

In conference with Pa, Bull frames the station’s behavior as progressive restraint escalating with perceived threats. He warns that any new provocation—like someone trying to use a nuke—could trigger worse. Pa, under pressure and managing Ashford’s heavy-handed morale campaign, accepts the point but demands concrete proposals.

Exhausted and confronting his paralysis, Bull realizes unity is essential to prevent panic and further escalation. He calls Sam with a specific plan: give every ship something only Behemoth can provide. He asks how quickly she can spin up the drum to create gravity, aiming to reduce medical deaths and rally the entire flotilla aboard one platform.