To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

CHAPTER I. AWAKENING

1.

A muffled boom sounded, loud enough to penetrate even the deepest of sleep.

Then clanks and clatters, followed by a rush of cold and a flare of light, bright and searching. Voices echoed, distant and garbled but discernibly human.

Some small part of Kira’s mind noticed. A primal, instinctual part that drove her toward wakefulness, urging her to open her eyes—open her eyes!—before it was too late.

She struggled to move, but her body refused to respond. She floated inside herself, trapped by her flesh and unable to control it.

Then she felt herself inhale, and sensation flooded back to her. The sounds seemed to double in volume and clarity, as if she’d removed a set of earplugs. Her skin tingled as the suit’s mask crawled back from her face, and she gasped and opened her eyes.

A blinding light swung across her, and she winced.

“Holy shit! She’s alive!” A man’s voice. Young, overeager.

“Don’t touch her. Call the doctor.” A woman’s voice. Flat, calm.

No … not the doctor, Kira thought.

The light stayed focused on her. She tried to cover her eyes, but a foil blanket stopped her hand. It was wrapped tight across her chest and neck. When had she done that?

A woman’s face swam into view, huge and pale, like a cratered moon. “Can you hear me? Who are you? Are you hurt?”

“Wh—” Kira’s vocal cords refused to cooperate. All she could produce was an inarticulate rasp. She struggled to free herself from the foil blanket, but it refused to give. She slumped back, dizzy and exhausted. What … where…?

The silhouette of a man blocked the light for a moment, and she heard him say, with a distinct accent: “Here then, let me see.”

“Aish,” said the woman as she moved aside.

Then fingers, warm, thin fingers, were touching Kira on the arms and sides and around her jaw, and then she was being pulled out of the pilot’s seat.

“Whoa. Look at that skinsuit!” exclaimed the younger man.

“Looking is for later. Help me take her to sickbay.”

More hands touched her, and they turned her so her head pointed toward the airlock. She made a feeble attempt to right herself, and the doctor—she assumed it was the doctor—said, “No, no. Rest now. You mustn’t move.”

Kira slipped in and out of awareness as she floated through the airlock … down a white, accordion pressure tube … then a brown corridor illuminated by scuffed lightstrips … and finally a small room lined with drawers and equipment; was that a medibot along the wall?…

2.

A jolt of acceleration returned Kira to full consciousness. For the first time in weeks, a sensation of weight, blessed weight, settled over her.

She blinked and looked around, feeling alert, if weak.

She was lying on an angled bed with a strap secured across her hips to keep her from floating or falling off. A sheet was pulled up beneath her chin (she was still wearing her jumpsuit). Lightstrips glowed overhead, and there was a medibot mounted to the ceiling. The sight reminded her of waking up in the sickbay on Adra.…

But no, this was different. Unlike at the survey base, the room was tiny, barely more than a closet.

Sitting on the edge of a metal sink was a young man. The same one she’d heard earlier? He was thin and gangly, and the sleeves of his olive jumpsuit were rolled back to expose sinewy forearms. His pant legs were rolled up as well. Striped socks showed red between cuff and shoe. He looked to be in his late teens, but it was hard to tell exactly.

Between her and the kid stood a tall, dark-skinned man. The doctor, she guessed, based off the stethoscope draped around his neck. His hands were long and restless, fingers darting fish-like with quick intent. Instead of a jumpsuit, he wore a slate-blue turtleneck and matching slacks.

Neither outfit was a standard uniform. The two definitely weren’t military. And they weren’t Hydrotek personnel. Independent contractors, then, or freelancers, which confused her. If she wasn’t on the gas-mining station, where was she?

The doctor noticed her looking. “Ah, Ms., you’re awake.” He cocked his head, his large, round eyes serious. “How are you feeling?”

“Not—” Kira’s voice came out in a harsh croak. She stopped, coughed, and then tried again. “Not too bad.” To her astonishment, it was the truth. She was stiff and sore, but everything seemed to be in working order. Better, in some cases; her senses felt sharper than normal. She wondered if the suit had integrated itself even further into her nervous system during the trip.

The doctor frowned. He seemed the anxious type. “That’s most surprising, Ms. Your core temperature was exceedingly low.” He held up a hypo. “It is necessary to take blood so—”

“No!” said Kira, more forcefully than she intended. She couldn’t afford to let the doctor examine her or he’d realize what the Soft Blade was. “I don’t want any blood tests.”

She pulled back the sheet, unclipped the strap holding her down, and slid off the bed.

The moment her feet hit the deck, her knees buckled and she toppled forward. She would have face-planted if the doctor hadn’t sprung over and caught her. “Not to worry, Ms. I have you. I have you.” He lifted her back onto the bed.

Across the room, the kid pulled a ration bar from his pocket and started to gnaw on it.

Kira raised a hand, and the doctor backed off. “I’m fine. I can do it. Just give me a moment.”

He eyed her, his expression speculative. “How long were you in zero-g, Ms.?”

She didn’t answer but lowered herself to the floor again. This time her legs held, although she kept a hand on the bed to steady herself. She was surprised (and pleased) by how well her muscles worked. They had barely atrophied, if at all. Second by second, she could feel strength returning to her limbs.

“About eleven weeks,” she said.

The doctor’s thick eyebrows climbed upward. “And how long since you last ate?”

Kira did a quick internal check. She was hungry, but not unbearably so. She ought to have been starving. More to the point, she ought to have been starved. She’d expected to arrive at 61 Cygni too weak to stand.

The Soft Blade had to be responsible. Somehow it must have put her into hibernation.

“I don’t remember.… A couple of days.”

“Not fun,” the kid muttered through a mouthful of food. Definitely the same voice she’d heard on the Valkyrie.

The doctor glanced back at him. “You have more of those rations, yes? Give one to our guest here.”

The kid produced another bar from one of his pockets and tossed it to Kira. She caught it, tore open the foil, and took a bite. The rations tasted good: banana-chocolate-something-or-other. Her stomach rumbled audibly as she swallowed.

The doctor opened a drawer and handed her a silvery pouch full of liquid. “Here, when you are finished, drink this. It will replenish your electrolytes and provide you with much-needed nutrients.”

Kira made a grateful sound. She scarfed down the last of the bar and then drank the contents of the pouch. It had an earthy, slightly metallic taste, like iron-tinged syrup.

Then the doctor raised the hypo again. “Now, I really must insist on taking a blood sample, Ms. I need to check—”

“Look, where am I? Who are you?”

Taking another bite, the kid said, “You’re on the SLV Wallfish.”

The doctor looked irritated by the interruption. “Indeed. My name is Vishal, and this is—”

“I’m Trig,” said the kid, and slapped himself on the chest.

“Okay,” said Kira, still confused. SLV, that was a civilian ship designation. “But—”

“What’s your name?” asked Trig, jerking his chin toward her.

Without thinking, Kira said, “Ensign Kaminski.” They’d discover her real name easily enough if they started checking records, but her first instinct was to play things cautiously until she understood the situation better. She could always claim she’d gotten confused from lack of food. “Are we close to Tsiolkovsky?”

Vishal seemed taken aback. “Close to … No, not at all, Ms. Kaminski.”

“That’s all the way on the other side of Sixty-One Cygni,” said the kid. He gulped down the last of his bar.

“Huh?” said Kira, disbelieving.

The doctor bobbed his head. “Yes, yes, Ms. Kaminski. Your ship lost power after you returned to normal space, and you were coasting across the whole of the system. If we hadn’t rescued you, who knows how long you might have drifted?”

“What day is it?” Kira asked, suddenly concerned. The doctor and the kid looked at her strangely, and she knew what they were thinking; Why didn’t she just check the date on her overlays? “My implants aren’t working. What day is it?”

“It’s the sixteenth,” said Trig.

“Of November,” said Kira.

“Of November,” he confirmed.

Her trip had taken a week longer than planned. Eighty-eight days, not eighty-one. By all rights, she ought to be dead. But she had made it. She thought of Tschetter and Corporal Iska, and a strange disquiet afflicted her. Had they been rescued? Were they even still alive? They could have starved to death during her time on the Valkyrie, or the graspers could have killed them and she might never know.

Whatever the truth might be, she resolved to never forget their names or actions, no matter how long she lived. It was the only way she had of honoring their sacrifice.

Vishal clucked his tongue. “You can ask all your questions later, but first, I really must check to make sure you are okay, Ms. Kaminski.”

A twinge of panic formed in Kira, and for the first time since waking, the Soft Blade stirred in response: a wash of cold prickles rising from thighs to chest. Her panic worsened, now colored by dread. Have to stay calm. If the crew of the Wallfish knew what she was carrying, they’d stick her in quarantine, and she was in no hurry to experience that particular pleasure again. In any case, the UMC wouldn’t look kindly on her revealing the existence of the xeno to civilians. The more her rescuers knew about the Soft Blade, the more trouble she’d be creating, both for them and for herself.

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

The doctor hesitated, appearing frustrated. “Ms. Kaminski, I cannot be treating you properly if you won’t let me finish my examination. This is just a simple blood test, and—”

“No blood tests!” Kira said, more loudly than before. The front of her jumpsuit started to tent outward as a patch of short spikes formed on the Soft Blade. Desperate, she did the only thing she could think of: she willed that area of the suit to harden.

It worked.

The spikes froze in place, and she crossed her arms over her chest, hoping neither Vishal nor the kid would notice. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably fast.

From outside the sickbay sounded a new voice: “What are you, Orthodox Hutterite?”

A man stepped through the doorway. He was shorter than her, with sharp blue eyes in startling contrast to his deep spacer’s tan. A day’s worth of black stubble covered his chin and cheeks, but his hair was neat and combed. His apparent age was early forties, although of course, he could have just as easily been sixty as forty. Kira guessed he was on the younger side of that equation, as his nose and ears didn’t show much, if any, age-related growth.

He wore a knit shirt under a vest with military-style webbing, and he had a well-worn blaster strapped to his right thigh. His hand, Kira noticed, never strayed far from the grip of the weapon.

There was an air of command about the man; the kid and the doctor straightened seemingly without noticing as he entered. Kira had known men like him before: hard, no-nonsense SOBs who wouldn’t settle for half-truths. Moreover, if she had to guess, he would sooner stab her in the back than allow anything bad to happen to his ship or crew.

That made him dangerous, but if he wasn’t a complete bastard, and if she dealt with him straight—straight as she could—he would probably treat her fairly.

“Something like that,” Kira said. She wasn’t particularly religious, but it was a convenient excuse.

He grunted. “Let her be, Doc. If the woman doesn’t want to be examined, the woman doesn’t have to be examined.”

“But—” Vishal started to say.

“You heard me, Doc.”

Vishal bobbed his head in agreement, but Kira could see him suppressing his anger.

Then the blue-eyed man said to her, “Captain Falconi at your service.”

“Ensign Kaminski.”

“You have a first name?”

Kira hesitated for a brief moment. “Ellen.” It was her mother’s.

“That’s a hell of a skinsuit you have there, Ellen,” said Falconi. “Not exactly standard-issue UMC gear.”

She tugged on the cuffs of her jumpsuit, pulling them farther down her arms. “It was a gift from my boyfriend, custom-made. I didn’t have time to get into anything else before leaving on the Valkyrie.”

“Uh-huh. And how do you, you know, remove it?” He motioned toward the side of his head.

Self-conscious, Kira touched her scalp, knowing he was looking at the fibers crisscrossing her skin. “It peels right off.” She mimed with her fingers, as if to pull up the edge of the xeno. But she didn’t because she couldn’t.

“Do you have a helmet too?” asked Trig.

Kira shook her head. “Not anymore. But I can use any standard skinsuit helmet.”

“Cool.”

Then Falconi said, “So here’s the deal, Ellen. We got your crewmates transferred to our ship. They’re fine, but we’re leaving them in cryo until we dock, as we’re already packed to the gills. I assume the UMC is eager to debrief you—and I assume you’re eager to report in—but it’ll have to wait. Our transmitter got damaged a few days ago, which means we can’t send data, only receive it.”

“Can’t you use the equipment on the Valkyrie?” Kira asked. She immediately regretted it. Dammit, don’t make their job any easier.

Falconi shook his head. “My machine boss says the damage to your shuttle caused the electrical system to short out when the fusion drive was reactivated. It fried the computer, shut down the reactor, et cetera, et cetera. Your companions are just lucky the power cells on the cryo tubes held.”

“So no one back at Command knows the five of us are alive?” Kira said.

“Not you particularly,” said Falconi. “But they know at least four people were on the shuttle. The thermal signatures were pretty clear. It’s why the UMC put out an open contract for any ship that could rendezvous with the Valkyrie before it ended up out on the far edge of the system. Fortunately for you, we had the delta-v to spare.”

Kira felt possibilities opening up before her. If the UMC didn’t know she was alive, and Orso and the others were still in cryo, maybe—just maybe—there was an opportunity for her to avoid getting disappeared by the UMC and the League.

“How long until we make port?” she asked.

“A week. We’re heading in-system to Ruslan. Got a bunch of passengers in the hold to drop off.” The captain raised an eyebrow. “We ended up pretty far off track going after the Valkyrie.”

A week. Could she keep the Soft Blade a secret for a whole week? She’d have to; there was no other choice.

Then Falconi said, “Your flight path shows you came from Sigma Draconis.”

“That’s right.”

“What happened? Those older drives can only manage, what, point one four light-years per day? That’s a hell of a long trip to tackle without cryo.”

Kira hesitated.

“Did the Jellies hit you?” said Trig.

“Jellies?” she said, puzzled, but grateful for the extra few seconds to think.

“You know, the aliens. Jellies. Jellyfish. That’s what we’re calling them.”

A growing sense of horror filled Kira as he spoke. She glanced between him and the captain. “Jellies.”

Falconi leaned against the frame of the door. “You wouldn’t have heard. It happened after you left Sigma Draconis. An alien ship jumped in around Ruslan—what, two months ago?—and hit three different transports. Destroyed one of them. Then groups of them started popping up all over the place: Shin-Zar, Eidolon, even Sol. Punched holes through three cruisers in orbit around Venus.”

“After that,” said Vishal, “the League formally declared war on the intruders.”

“War,” said Kira, flat. Her worst fears had come true.

“It’s shaping up to be a bad one too,” said Falconi. “The Jellies have been doing their best to knock the fight out of us. They’ve been disabling ships throughout the League, blowing up antimatter farms, landing troops on colonies, that sort of thing.”

“Have they attacked Weyland?”

The captain shrugged. “Hell if I know. Probably. FTL comms aren’t exactly reliable right now. The Jellies have been jamming them all they can.”

The back of Kira’s neck prickled. “You mean they’re here? Now?”

“Yup!” said Trig. “Seven of them! Three of the larger battleships, four of the smaller cruisers with double blasters mounted—”

Falconi raised a hand, and the kid obediently stopped. “They’ve been harassing ships between here and Sixty-One Cygni B for the past few weeks. The UMC are doing their best to keep the Jellies tied up, but they just don’t have enough forces.”

“What do the Jellies want?” Kira asked, feeling overwhelmed. Underneath her jumpsuit, the Soft Blade stirred again. She struggled to calm herself. Somehow she had to find a way to contact her family, figure out if they were safe and let them know she was still alive, consequences be damned. “Are they trying to conquer us, or…?”

“Wish I could tell you. They don’t seem to be trying to wipe us out, but that’s about all we know. They attack here, they attack there … If I had to guess, I’d say they’re softening us up for something more serious. You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“Huh?”

“About Sigma Draconis.”

“Ah.” Kira gathered her thoughts. “We were attacked,” she said. “I guess by the Jellies.”

“We?” said Falconi.

“The Extenuating Circumstances. We were on patrol, and Captain Henriksen stopped by Adrasteia to check on the survey team there. That night we got ambushed. My boyfriend, he, uh—” Kira’s voice broke slightly, and then she continued. “He didn’t make it. Most of the crew didn’t. A few of us managed to get to the shuttle before the Extenuating Circumstances lost containment. When it went, it took out the aliens as well. The five of us drew straws to see who would go into cryo, and I got the short end.”

That did it; Kira could tell Falconi believed her. But he didn’t relax, not entirely. With his middle finger he tapped the grip of his blaster; the movement seemed more habit than conscious gesture.

“Did you see any of the Jellies?” Trig asked, sounding excited. The kid pulled another ration bar from his pocket and tore open the wrapper. “What shape were they? How big? Big-big or just … big?” He took several quick bites, stuffing his mouth until his cheeks bulged.

Kira didn’t feel like making up another story. “Yeah, I saw one. It was big enough, and it had too many tentacles.”

“Those are not the only kind,” said Vishal.

“Oh?”

“No one knows if they are the same species, a close relation, or something else entirely, but the Jellies come in different flavors.”

Speaking past the food in his mouth, Trig said, “Some have tentacles. Some have arms. Some crawl. Some slither. Some only seem to function in zero-g. Others only get deployed in gravity wells. Some appear in both. A half-dozen different kinds have been spotted so far, but there could be lots more. I’ve collected all the reports from the League. If you’re interested, I could—”

“Alright, Trig,” said Falconi. “That can wait.”

The kid nodded and fell quiet, although he seemed slightly disappointed.

Falconi scratched his chin with his free hand, his eyes uncomfortably sharp. “You must have been one of the first ones the Jellies attacked. You left Sigma Draconis, what, back in mid-August?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you able to get a warning off to the League beforehand?”

“Only via slower-than-light. Why?”

Falconi made a noncommittal sound. “I was just wondering if the League knew about the Jellies before they started appearing everywhere. Guess not, but—”

A short, loud tone sounded overhead, and the captain’s eyes grew vague as he shifted his attention to his overlays. The same occurred with both Trig and Vishal.

“What is it?” Kira asked, noting the concern on their faces.

“More Jellies,” said Falconi.

3.

A tall, straight-backed woman hurried up to Falconi and tapped him on the shoulder. She looked older than him, old enough that most people would begin to consider their first round of STEM shots. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and the sleeves of her tan work shirt were rolled up. Like Falconi, she wore a blaster strapped to her leg.

She said, “Captain—”

“I see them. That makes two … no, three new Jellies.” Falconi’s glacial-blue eyes cleared as he pointed at Trig and snapped his fingers. “Get Ms. Kaminski down to the hold and make sure everyone is secure. We might have to make an emergency burn.”

“Yessir.”

The captain and the woman disappeared down the corridor together. Trig stared after them until well after they were gone.

“Who was that?” Kira asked.

“Ms. Nielsen,” said Trig. “She’s our first officer.” He hopped off the counter. “Come on, then.”

“One minute,” said Vishal, opening a drawer. He handed a small container to Kira. Inside it, she found a pair of contact lenses floating in liquid-filled capsules. “You can use these to go online while you wait for your implants to be repaired.”

After so long without any overlays, Kira could hardly wait. She pocketed the container. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

The doctor bobbed his head and smiled. “My pleasure, Ms. Kaminski.”

Trig bounced on his heels. “Alright, now can we go?”

“Yes, go, go!” said the doctor.

4.

Trying to ignore her sense of foreboding, Kira followed Trig into the narrow, brown-sided corridor. It curved in a gentle arc, forming a ring around what was, no doubt, the midline of the Wallfish. The deck looked as if it had once rotated to provide artificial gravity when the ship wasn’t accelerating, but no more; the orientation of the rooms and furniture—as she had seen in the sickbay—was strictly stern to aft, in line with the engine’s thrust.

“How much did that skinsuit cost?” Trig asked, pointing at her hand.

“You like it?” said Kira.

“Yeah. It’s got a cool texture.”

“Thanks. It was made for survival in extreme environments, like Eidolon.”

The kid brightened up. “Really? That’s awesome.”

She smiled without meaning to. “I don’t know how much it cost, though. Like I said, it was a gift.”

They came to an open doorway on the inner wall of the corridor, and Trig turned. Through it was a second corridor, this one leading toward the middle of the ship.

“So does the Wallfish usually carry passengers?” Kira asked.

“Nah,” said Trig. “But a lotta people are willing to pay us to take ’em to Ruslan, where it’s safer. We’ve also been picking up survivors from ships the Jellies have damaged.”

“Really? That sounds pretty dangerous.”

The kid shrugged. “Beats sitting around waiting to get shot. ’Sides, we need the money.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We used the last of our antimatter getting to Sixty-One Cygni, and then the guy who was supposed to pay us stiffed us, so we ended up stuck out here. We’re just trying to earn enough bits so we can buy the antimatter to get back to Sol or Alpha Centauri.”

As he was talking, they arrived at a pressure door. “Uh, just ignore that,” said Trig, waving at a patch of wall. He seemed embarrassed. “Old joke.”

The wall looked blank to Kira. “What?”

The kid was confused for a moment. “Oh, right. Your implants.” He tipped a finger toward her. “I forgot. Never mind. Just an overlay we’ve had for a while. The captain thinks it’s funny.”

“Does he now?” What sort of thing would make a man like Falconi laugh? Kira wished she was wearing the contacts.

Trig pulled open the pressure door and ushered her into a long, dark shaft that pierced multiple levels of the ship. A ladder ran through the center, and thin metal grating marked off each deck, although the holes in the grating were so wide, she could see all the way to the bottom of the shaft, four decks below.

A male voice that Kira didn’t recognize emanated from above. “Warning: prepare for free fall in T-minus thirty-four seconds.” A wild quaver laced his words, a theremin-like shimmy that made it seem as if the speaker might at any moment break into tears or laughter or uncontrollable rage. The sound of it caused Kira to tense and the surface of the Soft Blade to become pebble-like.

“Here,” said Trig as he grabbed a convenient handhold on the wall. Kira did the same.

“That your pseudo-intelligence?” she asked, motioning toward the ceiling.

“Nope, our ship mind, Gregorovich,” the kid said proudly.

Kira raised her eyebrows. “You have a ship mind!” The Wallfish didn’t seem large or well-off enough to warrant one. How had Falconi ever managed to talk a mind into joining the crew? Only half-seriously, she wondered if blackmail had been involved.

“Yup.”

“He seems a little … different from the other ship minds I’ve met.”

“Nothing wrong with him. He’s a good ship mind.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“He is!” the kid insisted. “Best one out there. Smarter than any minds but the oldest.” He grinned, baring a set of crooked front teeth. “He’s our secret weapon.”

“Smar—”

An alert sounded—a short beep in a minor tone—and then the floor seemed to drop away, and Kira clutched the handhold tighter as vertigo made the walls and floor swirl about her. Her dizziness passed as she reset her perspective from an up-down view to a forward-backward one where she was floating in a long, horizontal tube.

She’d really had enough of free fall.

Behind her, at the back of the tube, she heard a scrabbling noise. She turned to see a whitish-grey Siamese cat hurtle out of an open doorway and collide with the ladder. The cat caught the ladder with its claws and then, with practiced ease, sprang off the rungs and launched itself toward the other end of the shaft.

Kira watched, impressed, as the cat soared along the ladder, turning slightly as it flew, a long furry missile armed with teeth and claws. The cat glared at her as it passed by, venomous hatred flashing from its emerald eyes.

“That’s our ship cat, Mr. Fuzzypants,” said Trig.

The cat looked more like a murderous little demon than a Mr. Fuzzypants, but Kira took him at his word.

A second later, she heard another noise at the back of the room: this one a metallic-like clatter that reminded her of … hooves?

Then a brown and pink mass rushed through the doorway and bounced off the ladder. It squealed and kicked its stubby legs until it caught one hoof on the ladder. The hoof stuck, and the creature—the pig—jumped after the cat.

The sight of the pig was so surreal, it left Kira flabbergasted. As always, life continued to surprise her with the depths of its weirdness.

The cat landed at the other end of the room and promptly sprang away through another open doorway. A moment later, the pig followed suit.

“What was that?” Kira said, finding her voice.

“That’s our ship pig, Runcible.”

“Your ship pig.”

“Yup. We put some gecko pads on his hooves so he can move around in free fall.”

“But why a ship pig?!”

“’Cause that way we can always bring home the bacon.” Trig cackled, and Kira winced. Eighty-eight days in FTL just to be subjected to bad puns? Where was the justice in that?

Gregorovich’s watery voice sounded above them, again the voice of an uncertain god: “Prepare for resumption of thrust in one minute and twenty-four seconds.”

“So what makes your ship mind so special?” Kira asked.

Trig shrugged. It was an odd motion in free fall. “He’s really, really big.” He eyed her. “Big enough for a capital ship.”

“How’d you manage that?” she said. From what she’d seen of the Wallfish, no mind with more than two or three years of growth should have wanted to serve on board.

“We rescued him.”

“You rescued—”

“He was installed on an ore freighter. The company was mining iridium out around Cygni B, then hauling it back here. A meteoroid hit the freighter, and it crashed on one of the moons.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. And the crash knocked out the comms, so there was no way to signal for help.”

The alert sounded again, and Kira’s feet settled back on the metal decking as her weight returned. Once more she marveled at how well her muscles worked after so long in zero-g.

“So?” she said, frowning. “The freighter’s thermal signature should have been easy enough to spot.”

“Should have,” said Trig, and started to climb down the ladder. “Problem was, the moon is volcanic. All the background heat hid the ship. The company thought it was destroyed.”

“Shit,” said Kira, following him.

“Yeah.”

“How long were they stranded there?” she asked, as they arrived at the bottom of the shaft.

“Over five years.”

“Wow. That’s a long time to be stuck in cryo.”

Trig halted and stared at her with a serious expression. “They weren’t. The ship was too damaged. All the cryo tubes were broken.”

“Thule.” Her own trip had been brutally long. Kira couldn’t even imagine five years of it. “What happened to the crew?”

“Died in the crash or starved to death.”

“And Gregorovich couldn’t go into cryo either?”

“Nope.”

“So he was alone for most of that time?”

Trig nodded. “He might have been there for decades if we hadn’t spotted the crash. It was pure chance; we just happened to look at the screens at the right moment. Up until then, we didn’t even have a ship mind. Just a pseudo-intelligence. Wasn’t that good, either. The captain had Gregorovich transferred over and that was that.”

“You just kept him? What did he have to say about it?”

“Not much.” Trig stopped her with a look before she could object further. “I just mean he wasn’t very conversational-like, you know? Sheesh. We’re not stupid enough to fly with a mind that doesn’t want to be with us. What do you think, we have a death wish?”

“The mining company didn’t have a problem with that?”

They filed out of the central shaft and down another anonymous corridor.

“Wasn’t up to ’em,” said Trig. “They’d already terminated Gregorovich’s contract, listed him as dead, so he was free to sign onto any ship he wanted. ’Sides, even if they tried to get him back, Gregorovich didn’t want to leave the Wallfish. He wouldn’t even let the techs pull him for a proper medscan back at Stewart’s World. I think he didn’t want to be alone again.”

That Kira understood. Minds were human (barely), but they were so much bigger than ordinary brains, they needed stimulation in order to keep from going completely insane. For a mind to be trapped by itself for five years … She wondered how safe she really was on the Wallfish.

Trig stopped by a set of large pressure doors, one on each side of the corridor. “Wait here.” He opened the leftmost door and slipped inside. Kira briefly saw a large cargo hold with racks of equipment and a short, blond-haired woman wrapping padding around large sections of consoles that looked suspiciously like the ones from the Valkyrie. Next to her, on the deck, was a pile of UMC blasters.…

Kira frowned. Had the crew of the Wallfish stripped the shuttle? Somehow she doubted that was entirely legal.

“None of my business,” she murmured.

Trig returned carrying a blanket, a set of gecko pads, and a shrink-wrapped ration pack. “Here,” he said, handing them over. “Control and engineering are off-limits ’less one of us is with you or the captain gives you permission.” He jerked his thumb toward the room he’d just exited. “Same for the port hold. You’re in the starboard. Chemical toilets are at the back. Find a spot wherever you can. Think you can handle yourself from here?”

“I think so.”

“’K. I gotta get back up to Control. If there’s a problem, just ask Gregorovich and he’ll let us know.”

Then the kid hurried off back the way they’d come.

Kira took a breath and then pulled open the door to the starboard cargo hold.

CHAPTER II. WALLFISH

1.

The smell was the first thing Kira noticed: the stench of unwashed bodies, urine, vomit, and moldy food. The ventilation fans were running at full speed—she could feel a faint breeze moving through the hold—but even that wasn’t enough to disperse the smell.

Next was the sound: a constant babble of conversation, loud and overwhelming. Children crying, men arguing, music playing; after so long in the silence of the Valkyrie, the noise was overwhelming.

The starboard hold was a large, curving space that, she assumed, mirrored the port hold, like half a donut nestled around the core of the Wallfish. Thick support ribs arced along the outer wall, and D-rings and other hard points studded the deck and ceiling. Numerous crates were bolted to the deck, and between and among them were the passengers.

Refugees was a more appropriate term, Kira decided. There were between two and three hundred people crammed in the hold. It was a motley collection—young and old, dressed in a bizarre assortment of outfits: everything from skinsuits to glittering gowns and light-bending evening suits. Spread across the decking were blankets and sleeping bags anchored with gecko pads and, in some cases, rope. Along with the bedding, clothing and scraps of trash littered the hold, although a few people had chosen to clean their areas—tiny fiefdoms of order amid the general chaos.

The place, she realized, must have turned to shambles when the ship cut its engines.

Some of the refugees glanced at her; the rest either ignored her or didn’t notice.

Stepping carefully, Kira made her way toward the back of the hold. Behind the nearest crate, she saw a half-dozen people strapped to the deck in sleeping bags. They appeared to be injured; several of the men had scabbed-over burns on their hands, and they all wore bandages of varying sizes.

Past them, a couple with yellow Mohawks were trying to calm a pair of young girls who were shouting and running in circles, waving streamers of foil torn from ration packs.

There were other couples as well, most without children. An old man sat against the inner wall and strummed a small harp-like instrument, singing in a low voice to three glum-looking teenagers. Kira caught only a few lines, but she recognized them from an old spacer poem:

—to search and seek among the outer bounds,

And when we land upon a distant shore,

To seek another yet farther still.—

Near the back of the hold, a group of seven people huddled around a small bronze device, listening intently to the voice that emanated from within: “—two, one, one, three, nine, five, four—” And so forth and so on, counting in a calm, even drone that neither hastened nor slackened. The group seemed transfixed by the voice; several of them stood with their eyes half-closed, swaying back and forth as if listening to music, while the others stared at the floor, oblivious to the rest of the world, or else looked at their companions with obvious emotion.

Kira had no idea what was so important about the numbers.

Close to the group of seven, she spotted a pair of robed Entropists—one man, one woman—sitting facing each other, eyes closed. Surprised, Kira paused, studying them.

It had been a long time since she’d seen an Entropist. For all their fame, there really weren’t that many of them. Maybe a few tens of thousands. No more. Rarer still was to see them traveling on a regular commercial ship. They must have lost their own vessel.

Kira still remembered when one of the Entropists had come to Weyland when she was a kid, bringing seed stock and gene banks and useful bits of equipment that made colonizing a planet easier. After the Entropist had finished his dealings with the adults, he had walked out into the main street of Highstone, and there in the fading dusk, he’d delighted her and the other children with the sparkling shapes he somehow drew in the air with his bare hands—an impromptu fireworks display that remained one of Kira’s favorite memories.

It had almost been enough to make her believe in magic.

Secular though the Entropists were, a tinge of mysticism hung about them. Kira didn’t mind. She enjoyed having a sense of wonder in the universe, and the Entropists helped with that.

She watched the man and the woman for a moment more and then continued on her way. It was difficult to find a free spot with any privacy, but in the end Kira located a narrow wedge of space between a pair of crates. She laid out her blanket—sticking it to the deck with the gecko pads—sat, and for a few minutes, did nothing but rest and gather her thoughts.…

“So, another bedraggled stray Falconi scooped up.”

Across from her, Kira saw a short, curly-haired woman sitting with her back against a crate, knitting away at a long, striped scarf. The sight of the woman’s curls sparked a palpable sense of envy and loss.

“I suppose so,” Kira said. She didn’t much feel like talking.

The woman nodded. Next to her a piled blanket stirred, and a large, tawny cat with black-tipped ears lifted its head and eyed her with an indifferent expression. It yawned, showing impressively long teeth, and then snuggled down again.

Kira wondered what Mr. Fuzzypants thought of the intruder. “That’s a pretty cat.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

“What’s his name?”

“He has many names,” said the woman, pulling more yarn free. “At the moment, he goes by Hlustandi, which means listener.”

“That’s … quite the name.”

The woman paused her knitting to unravel a snarl. “Indeed. Now tell me: how much are Captain Falconi and his merry band of rogues charging you for the privilege of transport?”

“They aren’t charging me anything,” said Kira, slightly confused.

“Is that so?” The woman raised an eyebrow. “Of course, you’re a member of the UMC. It wouldn’t do to try to extort a member of the armed forces. No, not at all.”

Kira looked around the hold at the other passengers. “Wait, you mean they’re charging people for rescuing them? That’s illegal!” And immoral too. Anyone stranded in space was entitled to rescue without having to pay beforehand. Restitution might be required later, depending on the situation, but not in the moment.

The woman shrugged. “Try telling that to Falconi. He’s charging thirty-four thousand bits per person for the trip to Ruslan.”

Kira opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it. Thirty-four thousand bits was twice the normal price for an interplanetary trip, and nearly as much as an interstellar ticket. She frowned as she realized that the crew of the Wallfish was essentially blackmailing the refugees: pay up or we’ll leave you floating in space.

“You don’t seem particularly upset by it,” she said.

The woman eyed Kira with a strangely amused look. “The path to our goal is rarely straight. It tends to turn and twist, which makes the journey far more enjoyable than it would otherwise be.”

“Really? Extortion is your idea of fun?”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” the woman said in a dry tone. Next to her, Hlustandi opened one eye to reveal a slitted pupil and then closed it again. The tip of his tail twitched. “However it beats sitting alone in a room counting pigeons.” She gave Kira a stern look. “To be clear, I own no pigeons.”

Kira couldn’t tell if the woman was joking or serious. In an attempt to change the subject, she said, “So how did you end up here?”

The woman tilted her head, the needles in her hands clacking at a furious rate. She didn’t seem to need to look at them; her fingers flicked and twisted the yarn with hypnotic regularity, never slowing, never faltering. “How did any of us get here? Hmm? And is it even that important? One could argue that all that really matters is that we learn to deal with where we are at any given moment, not where we were.”

“I suppose.”

“Not a very satisfying answer, I know. Suffice it to say, I came to Sixty-One Cygni to meet with an old friend when the ship I was on was attacked. It’s a common enough story. Also”—and she winked at Kira—“I like to be wherever interesting things are happening. It’s a terribly bad habit of mine.”

“Ah. What’s your name, by the way? You never told me.”

“And you never told me yours,” said the woman, peering over her nose at Kira.

“Uh … Ellen. Ellen Kaminski.”

“Very nice to meet you, Ellen Kaminski. Names are powerful things; you should be careful whom you share yours with. You never know when a person might turn your name against you. In any case, you may call me Inarë. Because Inarë is who I am.”

“But it’s not your name?” said Kira, half joking.

Inarë cocked her head. “Oh, you’re a clever one, aren’t you?” She looked down at the cat and murmured, “Why are the most interesting people always found hiding behind crates? Why?”

The cat flicked his ears but didn’t answer.

2.

When it became clear Inarë was no longer interested in talking, Kira ripped open the meal pack and devoured the rather tasteless contents. With each bite, she felt more normal, more grounded.

Food finished, she took the container Vishal had given her and put in the contact lenses. Please don’t remove or disable them, she thought, trying to impress her intention on the Soft Blade. Please.

At first, Kira wasn’t sure if the xeno understood. But then a startup screen flickered to life before her eyes, and she released a sigh of relief.

Without her implants, the functionality of the contact lenses was limited, but it was enough for Kira to create a guest profile and log into the ship’s mainframe.

She pulled up a map of the binary system and checked on the locations of the Jellies. There were now ten alien ships in and around 61 Cygni. Two of the vessels had intercepted a cargo tug near Karelin—Cygni A’s second planet—and were currently grappling with it. Three more Jellies were accelerating toward the ore-processing facilities in the far asteroid belt (which would also place them within relatively close proximity of the Chelomey hab-ring), while a pair of the larger Jelly ships were busy chasing mining drones out by Cygni B, over eighty-six AU away.

The three newcomers had arrived at the far side of Cygni A (high above the orbital plane), at varying distances around the outer asteroid belt.

So far at least, none of the alien ships appeared to be an immediate threat to the Wallfish.

If she concentrated, Kira could feel the same compulsion as she had during the attack on the Extenuating Circumstances—a summons drawing her toward each of the different alien ships. It was a weak sensation, though: faint as faded regret. Which told her that the Jellies were broadcasting but not receiving. Otherwise they would have known exactly where she (and the Soft Blade) were.

A small relief, that.

But it made her wonder. First the how. No one else in the system had noticed the signal. Which meant … it was either incredibly hard to detect or it was using some sort of unfamiliar technology.

That left the why. The Jellies had no reason to think she’d survived the destruction of the Extenuating Circumstances. So why were they still broadcasting the compulsion? Was it to find another xeno like the Soft Blade? Or were they really still looking for her?

Kira shivered. There was no knowing for sure. Not unless she was willing to ask the Jellies in person, and that was one experience she’d rather forego.

She felt a small amount of guilt at ignoring the compulsion, at ignoring the duty it represented. The guilt wasn’t her own but the Soft Blade’s, and it surprised her, given the xeno’s aversion to the graspers.

“What did they do to you?” she whispered. A shimmer passed over the surface of the xeno, a shimmer and nothing more.

Satisfied that she didn’t have to worry about being blown up by the Jellies in the next few hours, Kira left the map and started to search for news about Weyland. She had to know what was happening back home.

Unfortunately, Falconi was right: few details had reached 61 Cygni before the Jellies had started their FTL jamming. There were reports from about a month ago of skirmishes in the outer part of Weyland’s system, but after that, all she could find were rumors and speculation.

They’re tough, she thought, picturing her family. They were colonists, after all. If the Jellies had showed up on Weyland … she could just imagine her parents grabbing blasters and helping to fight them. But she hoped they wouldn’t. She hoped they would be smart and keep their heads down and live.

Her next thought was of the Fidanza and what remained of the survey team. Had they made it back?

System records showed that exactly twenty-six days after departing Sigma Draconis, the SLV Fidanza had arrived at 61 Cygni. No reported damage. The Fidanza docked at Vyyborg Station some days later, and then a week after that, departed for Sol. She searched for a passenger list, but nothing public came up. Hardly a surprise.

For a moment Kira was tempted to send a message to Marie-Élise and the others, on the off chance they were still in the system. But she resisted. As soon as she logged into her accounts, the League would know where she was. Maybe they weren’t looking, but she didn’t feel ready to take that chance. Besides, what could she say to her former teammates, aside from “sorry”? Sorry wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the pain and devastation she’d caused.

She shifted her attention back to the news, determined to gain a sense of the overall situation.

It wasn’t good.

What had begun as a series of small-scale skirmishes had quickly escalated into a full-scale invasion. The reports were few and far between, but enough information had reached 61 Cygni to get a sense of what was happening throughout human space: stations burning in orbit around Stewart’s World, ships gutted near the Markov Limit at Eidolon, alien forces landing on survey and mining outposts … the litany of events was too long to keep track of.

Kira’s heart sank. If it wasn’t a coincidence that the Jellies had showed up at Adra so soon after she found the xeno, then in a way … this was her doing. Just like with Alan. Just like with—She ground the heels of her hands against her temples and shook her head. Don’t think about it. Even if she’d played a role in first contact, blaming herself for the war wouldn’t help. That way lay madness.

She read on, scrolling through page after page until her eyes were blurry as she attempted to cram three months’ worth of information into her head.

To their credit, the League seemed to have reacted to the invasion with appropriate speed and discipline. What was the point of arguing among yourselves when the monsters in the dark were attacking? Reserves had been mobilized, civilian ships had been commandeered, and on Earth and Venus, mandatory drafts had been enacted.

The cynic in Kira saw the measures as just another effort on the part of the League to expand their power. Never let a good emergency go to waste, and all that. The realist in her saw the necessity of what they were doing.

All the experts seemed to agree: the Jellies were at least a hundred years more technologically advanced than humans. Their Markov Drives let them jump in and out of FTL far closer to stars and planets than even the most cutting-edge UMC warships. Their power plants—separate from the fusion drives used for propulsion—generated the staggering amounts of energy needed for the Jellies’ inertial trickery via some as-yet-unidentified mechanism. And yet they didn’t use radiators to dissipate the heat. No one understood that.

When troops had boarded the first Jelly ship, they had discovered rooms and decks weighted with artificial gravity. And not the spin-an-object-in-a-large-circle kind, but honest-to-god, actual artificial gravity.

Physicists weren’t surprised; they explained that any species that had figured out how to alter inertial resistance would, by definition, be capable of mimicking a naturally occurring gravitational field.

And while the aliens didn’t seem to possess any new types of weapons—they still used lasers and missiles and kinetic projectiles—the extreme maneuverability of their ships, combined with the accuracy and efficiency of their weapons, made them difficult to fend off.

In light of the Jellies’ technological superiority, the League had passed a law asking civilians everywhere to salvage and turn in any pieces of alien equipment they could. As the League spokesperson—a rather oily man with a fake smile and eyes that always seemed a touch too wide—said, “Every little bit is valuable. Every little bit could make the difference. Help us help you; the more information we have, the better we can fight these aliens and end this threat to the colonies and to the Homeworld.”

Kira hated that expression: Homeworld. Technically it was correct, but it just felt oppressive to her, as if they were all supposed to bow down and defer to those lucky enough to still live on Earth. It wasn’t her homeworld. Weyland was.

Despite the Jellies’ advantages, the war in space wasn’t entirely one-sided. Humans had won their share of victories, but as a whole, they were few and hard-fought. On the ground, things weren’t much better. From the clips Kira saw, even troopers in power armor had trouble going one-on-one with the aliens.

Vishal had been right; the Jellies came in different flavors, not just the tentacled monstrosity she’d encountered on the Extenuating Circumstances. Some were large and hulking. Some were small and agile. Some were snakelike. Others reminded Kira more of insects. But no matter their shape, they could all function in a vacuum, and they were all fast, strong, and tough as hell.

As Kira studied the images, pressure built behind her eyes, until, with sudden sharpness—

—a shoal of graspers jetted toward her in the darkness of space. Hard-shelled and tentacled, armed and armored. Then a flash, and she was climbing a rocky scarp, firing blasters at dozens of scurrying creatures, many-legged and clawed.

Again in the ocean, deep below, where the Hdawari hunted. A trio of figures emerged from the shadowed murk. One thick and bulky and nearly invisible with the midnight hue of its armored skin. One sharp and spindly, a broken nest of legs and claws topped by a brazen crest, now pressed flat to better swim. And one long and supple, lined with limbs and trailing a whiplike tail that emitted a tingle of electricity. And though it could not be guessed from appearance alone, the three shared a commonality: they had all been first of their hatching. First and sole surviving …

Kira gasped and screwed her eyes shut. A pounding spike ran from her forehead to the back of her skull.

It took a minute for the pain to fade.

Was the Soft Blade making a conscious effort to communicate, or had the video just triggered fragments of old memories? She wasn’t sure, but she was grateful for the additional information, no matter how confusing.

“Maybe don’t give me a migraine next time, okay?” she said. If the xeno understood, she couldn’t tell.

Kira returned to the video.

She recognized several of the Jelly types from the Soft Blade’s memories, but most were new and unfamiliar. That puzzled her. How long had the xeno been stuck on Adrasteia? Surely it couldn’t have been long enough for new forms of Jellies to have evolved.…

She detoured to check some of her professional resources. One thing xenobiologists seemed to agree on: all the invading aliens shared the same base biochemical coding. Heavily varied at times, but still essentially the same. Which meant the different types of Jellies belonged to a single species.

“You have been busy,” she murmured. Was it gene-hacking or did the Jellies have a particularly malleable physiology? If the Soft Blade knew, it wasn’t telling.

Either way, it was a relief to know humanity wasn’t fighting more than one enemy.

There were plenty of other mysteries, though. The Jellies’ ships usually traveled in multiples of two, and no one had been able to determine why. They didn’t at Adra, Kira thought. Likewise—

… the Nest of Transference, round of shape, heavy of purpose …

Kira winced as another spike shot through her skull. So the xeno was trying to communicate. The Nest of Transference … Still not very informative, but at least she had a name now. She made a mental note to write down everything the Soft Blade had been showing her.

She just wished it didn’t have to be so damned cryptic.

No one had been able to identify a planet or system of origin for the aliens. Back-calculating the FTL trajectories of their ships had revealed that the Jellies were jumping in from every direction. That meant they were dropping back to normal space at different points and deliberately altering their course in order to hide their starting locations. In time, the light from their return to normal space would reach astronomers and they would be able to determine where the Jellies were coming from, but “in time” would be years and years, if not decades.

The Jellies couldn’t be traveling too far, though. Their ships were faster in FTL, that much was apparent, but not so ridiculously fast as to allow them to travel hundreds of light-years in a month or less. So why hadn’t signals from their civilization reached Sol or the colonies?

As for why the Jellies were attacking … The obvious answer was conquest, but no one knew for sure, and for one simple reason: to date, every attempt to decipher the Jellies’ language had failed. Their language, according to the best evidence, was scent-based and so utterly different from any human tongue that even the smartest minds weren’t sure how to begin translating it.

Kira stopped reading, feeling as if she’d been struck. Under the jumpsuit, the Soft Blade stiffened. On the Extenuating Circumstances, she’d understood what the Jelly had said as clearly as any English-speaking human. And she could have replied in kind if she’d so wanted. Of that Kira had no doubt.

A chill spread through her limbs, and she shivered, feeling as if she were encased in ice. Did that mean she was the only person who could communicate with the Jellies?

It seemed so.

She stared blankly at her overlays, thinking. If she helped the League talk with the Jellies, would it change anything? She had to believe that her discovery of the Soft Blade was at least part of the reason for the invasion. It only made sense. Maybe the Jellies were attacking as revenge for what they believed to be the destruction of the Soft Blade. Revealing herself to them could be the first step toward peace. Or not.

It was impossible to know without more information. Information that she had no way of obtaining at the moment.

But what Kira did know was that if she turned herself over to the League, she’d spend her days locked in small, windowless rooms, being endlessly examined while—if she was lucky—sometimes providing translation services. And if she went to the Lapsang Corp. instead … the outcome would be much the same, and the war would continue to rage on.

Kira let out a stifled cry. She felt trapped in a crossroads, threatened at every turn. If there were an easy solution to the situation, she wasn’t seeing it. The future had become a black void, unforeseen and unforeseeable.

She minimized the overlays, pulled the blanket closer around herself, and sat chewing on the inside of her cheek while she thought.

“Dammit,” she muttered. What am I going to do?

Amid all the questions and uncertainties and events of galactic importance—amid a sea of choices, any one of which could have catastrophic consequences, and not just for her—a single truth stood out. Her family was in danger. Even though she’d left Weyland, even though it had been years since she’d been back, they still mattered to her. And her to them. She had to help. And if doing so would allow her to help others also, then so much the better.

But how? Weyland was over forty days away at standard FTL speeds. An awful lot could happen in that time. And besides, Kira didn’t want her family anywhere near the xeno—she worried about accidentally hurting them—and if the Jellies figured out where she was … she might as well paint a giant target on herself and everyone around her.

She ground her knuckles into the deck, frustrated. The only realistic way she could think to protect her family from a distance would be to help end the war. Which brought her back to the same damn question: How?

In an agony of indecision, Kira pushed off the blanket and stood, unable to bear sitting any longer.

3.

Her head humming with a distraction of thoughts, Kira wandered along the back wall of the cargo hold, trying to burn off the excess energy.

On a sudden impulse, she turned and headed toward where the Entropists sat kneeling, not far from the knot of people listening to the litany of numbers. The two Entropists were of indeterminate age, and their skin was laced with silver wires about the temples and hairline. They both wore the customary gradient robes with a stylized logo of a rising phoenix blazoned on the middle of the back as well as along the cuffs and hemlines.

She’d always admired the Entropists. They were famous for their scientific research, both applied and theoretical, and they had adherents working at the highest levels in nearly every field. In fact, it had become a running joke that if you wanted to make a big breakthrough, the first step was to join the Entropists. Their tech was consistently five to ten years ahead of everyone else’s. Their Markov Drives were the fastest in existence, and it was rumored they possessed other, far more exotic advancements, although Kira didn’t put much stock in the really outlandish claims. The Entropists attracted plenty of humanity’s top minds—even a few ship minds, she’d heard—but they weren’t the only smart, dedicated people trying to understand the secrets of the universe.

For all that, there was something to the rumors.

Many Entropists engaged in fairly radical gene-hacking. At least that was the theory, based off their often wildly divergent appearance. And it was common knowledge that their clothes were packed full of miniaturized tech, some of which bordered on the miraculous.

If anyone could help her better understand the Soft Blade and the Jellies (at least when it came to technology), it would be the Entropists. Plus—and this was important from Kira’s point of view—the Entropists were a stateless organization. They didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of any one government. They had research labs in the League, property among the freeholdings, and their headquarters was somewhere out around Shin-Zar. If the Entropists figured out that the Soft Blade was alien tech, they weren’t likely to report her to the UMC, just pepper her with an endless series of questions.

Kira remembered what her then research boss, Zubarev, had told her during their time on Serris: “If you ever get in a chin-wag with an Entropist, you’re best served not talking about the heat death of the universe, yah hear me? You’ll never get free after that. They’ll chew your ear off for half a day or more, so yah know. Just warning you, Navárez.”

With that in mind, Kira stopped in front of the man and woman. “Excuse me,” she said. She felt as if she were seven again, when she’d been introduced to the Entropist who had visited Weyland. He’d seemed so imposing at that age: a huge tower of flesh and fabric peering down at her.…

The man and woman stirred and turned their faces toward her.

“Yes, Prisoner? How may we help you?” said the man.

That was the one thing she didn’t like about the Entropists: their insistence on calling everyone prisoner. The universe wasn’t ideal, but it was hardly a prison. After all, you had to exist somewhere; it might as well be here.

“May I speak with you?” she said.

“Of course. Please, sit,” said the man. He and the woman shifted to make room for her. Their movements were perfectly coordinated, as if they were two parts of the same body. It took her a moment to realize: they were a hive. A very small hive, but a hive nevertheless. It had been a while since she’d dealt with one.

“This is Questant Veera,” said the man and gestured at his partner.

“And this is Questant Jorrus,” said Veera, mirroring his gesture. “What is it you wish to ask us, Prisoner?”

Kira listened to the measured count of numbers while she thought. The ship mind, Gregorovich, might be listening, so she had to avoid saying anything that might contradict the story she’d provided in sickbay earlier.

“My name is Kaminski,” she said. “I was on the shuttle the Wallfish docked with.”

Veera nodded. “We assumed—”

“—as much,” Jorrus finished.

Kira smoothed the front of her jumpsuit while she chose her words. “I’ve been out of touch for the past three months, so I’m trying to catch up on current events. How much do you know about bioengineering?”

Jorrus said, “We know more than some—”

“—and less than others,” said Veera.

They were, she knew, being characteristically modest. “Seeing all the different types of Jellies got me thinking; would it be possible to make an organic skinsuit? Or a set of organic power armor?”

The Entropists frowned. It was eerie seeing the same expression perfectly synchronized on two different faces. “You seem to already have experience with unusual skinsuits, Prisoner,” said Jorrus. He and his partner gestured toward the Soft Blade.

“This?” Kira shrugged, as if the suit was of no importance. “It’s a piece of custom work a friend of mine did. Looks cooler than it is.”

The Entropists accepted her explanation without argument. Veera said, “To answer your question, then, Prisoner, it would be possible, but it would be…”

“Impractical,” supplied Jorrus.

“Flesh is not as strong as metal and/or composites,” said Veera. “Even if one were to rely on a combination of diamond and carbon nanotubes, such a thing would not provide the same protection as a normal set of armor.”

“Powering it would be difficult as well,” said Jorrus. “Organic processes cannot provide enough energy within the requisite timeframes. Supercapacitors, batteries, mini-reactors, and other sources of energy are needed.”

“Even if energy wasn’t a consideration,” said Veera, “integration between the user and the suit would be problematic.”

“But implants already use organic circuits,” said Kira.

Jorrus shook his head. “That is not what I mean. If the suit were organic, if it were living, there would always be a risk of cross-contamination.”

Veera said, “Cells from the suit might take root in the user’s body and grow where they shouldn’t. It would be worse than any natural form of cancer.”

“And likewise,” said Jorrus, “cells from the user might end up disrupting the function of the suit. In order to avoid that outcome, and to avoid the user’s immune system attacking the suit wherever the integration points were placed—”

“—the suit would need to be engineered from the DNA of the user. That would limit each suit to just one user. Another impracticality.”

Kira said, “So then the Jellies—”

“Are not using bio-suits as we understand them,” Veera replied. “Not unless their science is far more advanced than it seems.”

“I see,” said Kira. “And you don’t know anything about the Jellies’ language, aside from what’s already published?”

Veera answered: “Unfortunately—”

“—not,” said Jorrus. “Our apologies; much remains a mystery about the aliens.”

Kira frowned. Again the drone of numbers filled her ears, loud and distracting. She made a face. “What are they doing? Do you know?”

Jorrus snorted. “Annoying the rest of us, that’s what. We—”

“—asked them to turn down the volume, but this is as soft as they will make it. If they don’t prove to be—”

“—cooperative in the future, we may have to speak with them more sternly.”

“Yes,” said Kira, “but who are they?”

“They are Numenists,” Veera and Jorrus said together.

“Numenists?”

“It is a religious order that started on Mars during the early decades of settlement. They worship numbers.”

“Numbers.”

The Entropists nodded, a quick, mirrored jerk of their heads. “Numbers.”

“Why?”

Veera smiled. “Why worship anything? Because they believe it contains deep truths about life, the universe, and everything. More specifically—”

Jorrus smiled. “—they believe in counting. They believe that if they count long enough, they can count every whole number and, perhaps, at the very end of time itself, speak the ultimate number itself.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s an item of faith. The man you hear speaking is the Arch Arithmetist, also known as the Pontifex Digitalis, which is—”

“—shockingly bad Latin. The Foxglove Pope as—”

“—many call him. He—”

“—along with assistants from the College of Enumerators—they’re fond of their titles—recites each new number, without break or interruption.” Veera pointed with one crooked finger toward the Numenists. “They consider listening to the enumeration an—”

“—important part of their religious practice. Plus—plus!—”

“—they believe some numbers are more significant than others. Ones that contain certain sequences of digits, primes, and so forth.”

Kira frowned. “That seems pretty strange.”

Veera shrugged. “Maybe. But it gives them comfort, which is more than can be said about most things.”

Then Jorrus leaned toward Kira. “Do you know how they define god?”

Kira shook her head.

“As the greater part of two equal halves.” The Entropists rocked back on their heels, chuckling. “Isn’t that delightful?”

“But … That doesn’t make any sense.”

Veera and Jorrus shrugged. “Faith often doesn’t. Now—”

“—were there any other questions we might help you with?”

Kira laughed ruefully. “Not unless you happen to know the meaning of life.” The moment the words left her mouth, Kira knew they were a mistake, that the Entropists would take her seriously.

And they did. Jorrus said, “The meaning of life—”

“—differs from person to person,” said Veera. “For us it is simple. It is the pursuit of understanding, that we—”

“—may find a way to contravene the heat death of the universe. For you—”

“—we cannot say.”

“I was afraid of that,” Kira said. Then, because she couldn’t help herself: “You take as fact a lot of things others would dispute. The heat death of the universe, for example.”

Together they spoke: “If we are wrong, we are wrong, but our quest is a worthy one. Even if our belief is misplaced—”

“—our success would benefit all,” said Jorrus.

Kira inclined her head. “Fair enough. I didn’t mean to offend.”

Mollified, the two tugged on the cuffs of their robes. Jorrus said, “Perhaps we can help you, Prisoner. Meaning comes from purpose—”

“—and purpose comes in many forms.” Veera steepled her fingers. Surprisingly, Jorrus did not. She said, “Have you ever considered the fact that everything we are originates from the remnants of stars that once exploded?”

Jorrus said, “Vita ex pulvis.”

“We are made from the dust of dead stars.”

“I’m aware of the fact,” said Kira. “It’s a lovely thought, but I don’t see the relevance.”

Jorrus said, “The relevance—”

“—is in the logical extension of that idea.” Veera paused for a moment. “We are aware. We are conscious. And we are made from the same stuff as the heavens.”

“Don’t you see, Prisoner?” said Jorrus. “We are the mind of the universe itself. We and the Jellies and all self-aware beings. We are the universe watching itself, watching and learning.”

“And someday,” said Veera, “we, and by extension the universe, will learn to expand beyond this realm and save ourselves from otherwise inevitable extinction.”

Kira said, “By escaping the heat death of this space.”

Jorrus nodded. “Even so. But the point is not that. The point is that this act of observation and learning is a process we all share—”

“—whether or not we realize it. As such, it gives purpose to everything we do, no matter—”

“—how insignificant it may seem, and from that purpose, meaning. For the universe itself, given consciousness through your own mind—”

“—is aware of your every hurt and care.” Veera smiled. “Take comfort, then, that whatever you choose in life has importance beyond yourself. Importance, even, on a cosmic scale.”

“That seems a little self-aggrandizing,” Kira said.

“Perhaps,” Jorrus replied. “But—”

“—it may also be true,” said Veera.

Kira looked down at her hands. Her problems hadn’t changed, but somehow they felt more manageable now. The idea that she was part of the universe’s consciousness was comforting, albeit in a rather abstract way. No matter what she did moving forward—and no matter what happened to her, even if that meant getting stuck in UMC quarantine again—she would still be part of a cause far larger than herself. And that was a truth no one could ever take from her.

“Thank you,” she said, heartfelt.

The Entropists dipped their heads and touched the tips of their fingers to their foreheads. “You are most welcome, Prisoner. May your path always lead to knowledge.”

“Knowledge to freedom,” she said, completing the refrain. Their definition of freedom differed from hers, but she could appreciate the sentiment.

Then Kira returned to her spot among the crates, called up her overlays, and dove back into the news with a renewed sense of resolve.

4.

Ship-night arrived, and the lights in the hold dimmed to a faint red glow. Kira found it difficult to sleep; her mind was restless, and her body too after so long spent on the Valkyrie. Plus, welcome as it was, it was still strange to have a sense of weight again. Her cheek and hip hurt where they pressed against the deck.

She thought of Tschetter, and then everyone from the survey team. Hopefully the UMC had thawed out the survivors. It wasn’t good to spend too long in cryo; basic biological processes like digestion and hormone production started to go awry after a certain point. And Jenan always had been prone to cryo sickness.…

In the end, Kira did sleep, but her mind was troubled, and her dreams were more vivid than normal. She saw herself at home, as a child—old memories that she hadn’t recalled in years but that seemed fresh and current, as if time were looping in on itself. She was chasing her sister, Isthah, through the rows of plants in the west greenhouse. Isthah shrieked and waved her hands as she ran, her brown ponytail bouncing against the back of her neck.… Their father cooking arrosito ahumado, the dish his family had brought from San Amaro when they emigrated from Earth and the whole reason there was a firepit in the backyard. Ashes for the sugar, sugar for the rice. Her favorite food because it held a flavor of the past.… Then her mind shifted to things more recent, to Adra and Alan, and her worries over the Jellies. A mélange of overlapping memories:

Alan was saying, “Can you get a scan of it? Maybe pick up a few samples?”

Then Neghar: *You’re gonna give up Yugo’s cinnamon rolls for THAT?*

And Kira answered, as she had: “Sorry, you know how it is.” … you know how it is …

In HQ, after waking from cryo. Alan had his arms around her. “It’s my fault. I should never have asked you to check out those rocks. I’m so sorry, babe.”

“No, don’t apologize,” she said. “Someone had to do it.”

And somewhere Todash and the Boys were howling and screaming, “And there’s nothing at the door. Hey, there’s nothing at the door. Babe, what’s that knocking at the door?”

Kira woke in a cold sweat, heart hammering. It was still night, and the hundreds of sleeping people filled the cargo hold with the white noise of their breathing.

She let out a long breath of her own.

Someone had to do it. She shivered and ran a hand over her head. The smoothness of it still surprised her.

“Someone,” she whispered. She closed her eyes, overcome by a sudden sense of Alan’s closeness. For a moment, it felt as if she could smell him.…

Kira knew what he would do. What he would want her to do. She sniffed and wiped away tears. Curiosity had driven both of them to the stars, but in the process of satisfying their curiosity, they’d had to assume a certain responsibility. More so for her than him—xenobiology was a riskier profession than geology—but regardless, the fact remained: for those who ventured into the unknown, there was a duty to protect those left behind, those who lived their lives in familiar bounds.

A line from the Entropists echoed in her mind: Meaning comes from purpose.… And Kira knew then what her purpose was. It was to use her understanding of the Jellies’ language to broker peace between their species. Or, failing that, to help the League win the war.

But on her own terms. If she went to Ruslan, the League would just throw her back into quarantine, and that wouldn’t do anyone good (least of all herself). No, she needed to be out in the field, not stuck in a lab getting scrutinized like a microbe on a petri dish. She needed to be where she could interact with the Jellies’ computers and extract what data she could. Better still would be to speak with a Jelly, but Kira doubted that would be possible in any safe way. At least, not yet. If she could get her hands on a transmitter in one of their ships, that might change.

She’d decided. In the morning, she would talk with Falconi about diverting to a port closer than Ruslan. Somewhere that might have salvaged Jelly tech she could examine or where—if circumstances played out in her favor—she might be able to hitch a ride to a disabled Jelly ship. Falconi would take some convincing, but Kira felt hopeful she could persuade him. No reasonable person could ignore the importance of what she had to say, and while hard-edged, Falconi seemed reasonable enough.

She closed her eyes, feeling a new sense of determination. Even if it was a mistake, she was going to do her damnedest to stop the Jellies.

Maybe then she could save her family and atone for her sins on Adra.

CHAPTER III. ASSUMPTIONS

1.

When the lights brightened in the cargo hold, Kira found herself covered with a fine layer of dust everywhere but her face. Since she had eaten, she’d expected as much. Fortunately, her blanket covered most of the mess, and she managed to brush off the powder without Inarë or anyone else noticing.

She activated her overlays and checked on the activities of the Jelly ships. It was grim stuff. The two Jellies by Karelin were still harassing cargo haulers in the area, and there were unsubstantiated reports that the aliens had landed forces at the small settlement on that planet. Meanwhile, the Jellies in the asteroid belt had destroyed half a dozen ore processors before executing a high-speed flyby of Chelomey. They’d strafed the hab-ring, shooting out most of the station’s defenses, and then continued on toward another set of mining installations.

The damage to the station was ugly to look at but mostly superficial; structurally it still appeared sound. That was a relief. If the hab-ring broke up … Kira shuddered at the thought of thousands of people getting spaced, young and old alike. Few things were as horrible or terrifying. Even as she watched, three different transports departed Chelomey as part of an evacuation effort.

Kira shifted her attention to Cygni B and tapped on a header: one of the Jelly ships there had exploded during the night, leaving behind a bloom of debris and hard radiation.

A group of miners calling themselves The Screaming Clams were claiming responsibility. Apparently they had managed to maneuver a drone up against the Jelly ship and blast it open, breaching the ship’s internal containment.

The destruction of the alien ship was a small thing in the greater scheme of the war, but Kira found it heartening to see. The Jellies had their advantages, but dammit, humans weren’t pushovers.

Still, that didn’t change the fact that the whole system was under attack. Kira could hear people throughout the hold talking about the situation on Chelomey (a large number of the refugees seemed to have come from the station) as well as the destroyed Jelly ship.

Putting aside the news—and ignoring the ongoing chatter—Kira started to look for a place where Falconi could drop her off. Somewhere relatively close that wasn’t currently taking fire from the Jellies. There weren’t many options: a small hab-ring out past Tsiolkovsky’s orbit; a fuel plant stationed at Karelin’s L3 Lagrangian point; a research outpost on Grozny, the star’s fourth planet …

She quickly settled on Malpert Station, a small mining facility within the innermost asteroid belt. 61 Cygni possessed two such belts, and the Wallfish was currently between them. The station had several things to recommend it: the company had a rep posted there, and the UMC had several ships guarding the facilities, including a cruiser, the UMCS Darmstadt.

Kira thought she might be able to play the company off the UMC and convince one or both of them to get her onto a Jelly ship. Besides, it seemed that a UMC commander who was actively engaged in fighting the aliens might appreciate the value of what she had to offer more than an official stuck behind a desk back at Ruslan or Vyyborg Station.

Either way, it was her best bet.

Thoughts of the risk she was running gave her pause. What she was doing could backfire in all sorts of horrible ways. Then she squared her shoulders. Doesn’t matter. It would take a lot more than an attack of nerves to make her give up.

A flag appeared in the corner of her overlays, alerting her to a newly arrived message:

Why are you shedding dust, O Multifarious Meatbag? Your excrescence is clogging my filters. – Gregorovich

Kira allowed herself a grim smile. So she wouldn’t have been able to keep the Soft Blade a secret in any case. Subvocalizing her answer, she wrote:

Now, now. You can’t expect me to give up the answer that easily.

I need to speak with the captain as soon as possible. In private. It’s a matter of life and death. – Kira

A reply appeared a second later:

Your hubris intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. – Gregorovich

She frowned. Was that a yes or a no?

Kira didn’t have to wait long to find out. Not five minutes later, the short, blond-haired woman she’d seen in the other cargo hold appeared in the doorway. The woman was wearing an olive jacket with the sleeves cut off to reveal arms that rippled with the sort of muscle that only came from gene-hacking or many years of lifting weights and controlling your diet. Despite that, her face was sharp and dainty, feminine even. Slung over her shoulder was an ugly-looking slug thrower.

The woman put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Oi! Kaminski! Get over here. Captain wants to see you.”

Kira got to her feet and, with everyone’s eyes on her, made her way to the doorway. The woman gave her a once-over and then jerked her chin toward the hallway outside. “You first, Kaminski.”

The moment the pressure door closed behind them, the woman said, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Kira did just that as they climbed up the central shaft. With her contact lenses, the ship’s public overlays were now visible: colorful projections affixed to the doors and walls and lights and even sometimes points in the air itself. They transformed the Wallfish’s dingy interior into a gleaming, modernesque construction.

There were other options as well; she cycled through them, watching as the shaft flashed between a castle-like appearance; a wooded, Art Nouveau layout; alien vistas (some warm and inviting, some laden with storms and lit with occasional flashes of lightning); and even an abstract, fractal-derived nightmare that reminded her an uncomfortable amount of the Soft Blade.

She suspected the last one was Gregorovich’s favorite.

In the end, Kira settled on the initial overlay. It was the least confusing while also being upbeat and relatively cheery.

“You have a name?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s Shut-the-Hell-Up-and-Keep-Moving.”

When they arrived at the deck that held sickbay, the woman poked her in the back and said, “Here.”

Kira got off the ladder and pushed her way through the pressure door into the corridor beyond. She stopped, then, as she saw the overlay on the wall, the same one Trig had told her to ignore the previous day.

The image covered a good two meters of paneling. In it, a battalion of jackrabbits garbed in power armor charged toward a similarly equipped force (also jackrabbits) upon a battle-ravaged field. Leading the near force was … the pig Runcible, now graced with a pair of boar tusks. And fronting the opposition was none other than the ship cat, Mr. Fuzzypants, wielding a flamethrower in each furry paw.

“What in Thule’s name is that?” said Kira.

The sharp-faced woman had the grace to look embarrassed. “We lost a bar bet with the crew of the Ichorous Sun.”

“It … could have been worse,” said Kira. For a bar bet, they’d gotten off light.

The woman nodded. “If we had won, the captain was going to make them paint—Actually, you don’t want to know.”

Kira was inclined to agree.

A nudge from the barrel of the slug thrower was enough to start Kira down the corridor again. She wondered if she ought to have her hands above her head.

Their walk ended at another pressure door on the other side of the ship. The woman banged on the wheel in the center, and a moment later, Falconi’s voice sounded: “It’s unlocked.”

The wheel produced a satisfying clunk as she turned it.

The door swung open, and Kira was surprised to see they weren’t meeting in a control center, but rather a cabin. Falconi’s cabin, to be precise.

The room was just large enough to walk a few steps without banging into the furniture. Bunk, sink, lockers, and walls were all as plain as could be, even with overlays. The only decoration sat on the built-in desk: a gnarled bonsai tree with silvery-grey leaves and a trunk twisted in the shape of an S.

Despite herself, Kira was impressed. Bonsai were hard to keep alive on a ship, yet the tree seemed healthy and well cared for.

The captain was sitting at the desk, a half-dozen windows arrayed in his holo-display.

The top few buttons of his shirt were undone to reveal a wedge of tanned muscle, but it was his rolled-up sleeves and bare forearms that caught her attention. The exposed skin was a twisted mass of mottled scar tissue. It looked like partially melted plastic, hard and shiny.

Kira’s first reaction was revulsion. Why? Burns, and scars in general, were easy to treat. Even if Falconi had been injured somewhere without medical facilities, why wouldn’t he have had the scars removed later? Why would he allow himself to be … deformed?

Lying on Falconi’s lap was Runcible. The pig’s eyes were half-closed, and his tail wiggled with satisfaction as the captain scratched behind his ears.

Nielsen stood next to the captain, arms crossed and an expression of impatience on her face.

“You wanted to see me?” Falconi said. He smirked, seeming to enjoy Kira’s discomfort.

She reassessed her initial impression of him. If he was willing to use his scars to put her off balance, then he was smarter, more dangerous than she had thought. And if the bonsai was anything to go by, more cultured too, even if he was an exploitive asshole.

“I need to speak with you in private,” she said.

Falconi gestured at Nielsen and the blond-haired woman. “Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of them.”

Irritated, Kira said, “This is serious … Captain. I wasn’t joking when I told Gregorovich it was a matter of life and death.”

The mocking smile never left Falconi’s lips but his eyes hardened into spikes of blue ice. “I believe you, Ms. Kaminski. However, if you think I’m going to meet with you all on my own, with no witnesses, you must think I was a born idiot. They stay. That’s final.”

Behind her, Kira heard the muscled woman readjust her grip on the slug thrower.

Kira pressed her lips together, trying to decide whether she could force the issue. There didn’t seem to be any way, so finally, she caved. “Fine,” she said. “Can you close the door at least?”

Falconi nodded. “I think we can manage that. Sparrow?”

The woman who had accompanied Kira pulled the pressure door shut, although she left it unlatched and unlocked—easy to open in an emergency.

“Well? What is it, then?” Falconi said.

Kira took a breath. “My name isn’t Kaminski. It’s Kira Navárez. And this isn’t a skinsuit. It’s an alien organism.”

2.

Falconi burst out laughing so loudly that he disturbed Runcible; the pig snorted and looked up at his master with what seemed to be a worried expression.

“Riiight,” Falconi said. “Good one. That’s real funny, Ms.…” His smile vanished as he studied her face. “You’re serious.”

She nodded.

A click sounded next to her, and out of the corner of her eye, Kira saw Sparrow aiming the slug thrower at her head.

“Can you not do that,” said Kira, her voice tight. “Seriously, it’s a really bad idea.” Already she could feel the Soft Blade preparing itself for action across her body.

Falconi waved a hand, and Sparrow reluctantly lowered the gun. “Prove it.”

“Prove what?” said Kira, confused.

“Prove that it’s an alien artifact,” he said, pointing at her arm.

Kira hesitated. “Just promise you won’t shoot, okay?”

“That depends,” Sparrow growled.

Then Kira coaxed the suit’s mask into sliding across her face. She did it slower than normal, to avoid frightening anyone, but even so, Falconi stiffened, and Nielsen half pulled her blaster out of its holster.

Runcible looked at Kira with large, wet eyes. His snout wiggled as he sniffed in her direction.

“Goddamn,” said Sparrow.

After a few seconds, when her point was made, Kira allowed the Soft Blade to relax, and the mask retreated, exposing her face again. The air in the cabin was cool against her newly exposed skin.

Falconi remained very still. Too still. Kira was worried; what if he decided to just space her and be done with it?

Then he said, “Explain. And you better make it good, Navárez.”

So Kira started talking. For the most part she told the truth, but instead of admitting it was the Soft Blade that had killed Alan and her other teammates on Adra, she put the blame on the Jellies’ attack—partly to avoid frightening Falconi, and partly because she didn’t want to discuss her own role in the event.

When she finished, there was a long silence in the cabin.

Runcible grunted and wiggled, trying to get down. Falconi put the pig on the floor and pushed him toward the door. “Let him out. He needs to use the box.”

The pig trotted past Kira as Sparrow opened the door.

As Sparrow closed the door again, Falconi said, “Gregorovich?”

After a few seconds, the ship mind’s voice sounded from the ceiling: “Her story checks out. News reports mention one Kira Navárez as the senior xenobiologist on the Adrasteia survey mission. The same Navárez was listed on the crew manifest of the SLV Fidanza. Biometrics are a match to public records.”

Falconi tapped his fingers against his thigh. “You sure this xeno isn’t infectious?” The question was directed toward Kira.

She nodded. “If it were, the rest of my team would have ended up infected, and also the crew of the Extenuating Circumstances. The UMC worked me over real good, Captain. They didn’t find any risk of it spreading.” Another lie, but a necessary one.

He frowned. “Still…”

“This is my area of expertise,” said Kira. “Trust me, I know the risks better than most people.”

“Alright, Navárez, let’s say that’s true. Let’s say all of this is true. You found alien ruins and you found this organism. Then a few weeks later the Jellies show up and start shooting. Have I got that right?”

An uncomfortable pause followed. “Yes,” Kira said.

Falconi tilted his head back, gaze unsettlingly intense. “Seems like you might have more to do with this war than you’re letting on.”

His words struck uncomfortably close to Kira’s own fears. Damn. She wished he weren’t so smart. “I don’t know about that. All I know is what I’ve told you.”

“Uh-huh. And why are you telling us?” Falconi leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What exactly do you want?”

Kira licked her lips. This was the most delicate part. “I want you to divert the Wallfish and drop me off at Malpert Station.”

This time, Falconi didn’t laugh. He exchanged glances with Nielsen and then said, “Every single person in the hold is paying us to take them to Ruslan. Why in three hells would we change course now?”

Kira bit back a comment about his use of the word paying. Now wasn’t the time to be antagonistic. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “Because, I can understand the Jellies’ language.”

Nielsen’s eyebrows rose. “You can what?”

Then Kira told them about her experience with the Jelly on the Extenuating Circumstances. She skipped the dreams and memories from the Soft Blade; no point in making them think she was crazy.

“So why not go to Ruslan?” asked Sparrow, her voice harsh.

“I need to get onto one of the Jelly ships,” said Kira, “and my best chance of doing that is out here. If I go to Ruslan, the League is just going to stick me in a box again.”

Falconi scratched his chin. “That still doesn’t explain why we should change course. Sure, if what you’re saying is true, this is important, alright. But seven days isn’t going to make much of a difference in who wins the war.”

“It could,” said Kira, but she saw he wasn’t convinced. She changed tack: “Look, the Lapsang Corporation has a rep on Malpert. If you can get me to him, I guarantee the company will pay a significant fee for your assistance.”

“Really?” Falconi’s eyebrows rose. “How significant?”

“For privileged access to a unique piece of alien tech? Enough to buy all the antimatter you need.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. It is.”

Nielsen uncrossed her arms and in a low tone said, “Malpert isn’t that far away. A few days, and we could still take everyone to Ruslan.”

Falconi grunted. “And what am I supposed to say when the UMC brass on Vyyborg start jumping on my ass for changing course? They were pretty damn eager to get their hands on everyone from the Valkyrie.” He spoke with a brash flatness, as if daring Kira to challenge him over the admission that the ship’s transmitter worked.

She eyed him. “Tell them something broke on the ship and you need assistance. I’m sure they’d believe you. You’re so good at coming up with stories.”

Sparrow snorted, and a faint smile touched the corners of Falconi’s mouth. “Okay, Navárez. It’s a deal, on one condition.”

“What?” Kira said, wary.

“You have to let Vishal give you a proper examination.” Falconi’s expression grew flat, deadly. “I’m not having this xeno of yours on my ship unless the doc gives it the all-clear. You good with that?”

“I’m good,” said Kira. She didn’t have much choice, in any case.

The captain nodded. “Alright then. You just better not be bullshitting about that fee, Navárez.”

3.

From Falconi’s cabin, Sparrow escorted Kira directly to sickbay. Vishal was waiting for them, dressed in full hazard gear.

“That really necessary, Doc?” Sparrow asked.

“We shall see,” said Vishal.

Kira could tell that the doctor was angry; through the visor of his helmet, his expression was pinched and tight.

Without being asked, she hopped onto the exam table. Feeling a need to smooth the waters, she said, “Sorry for breaking containment, but I didn’t think there was any risk of the xeno spreading.”

Vishal busied himself gathering the tools of his trade, starting with an old and clunky chip-lab that had been stored under the sink. “You can’t know that for sure. You are supposed to be a xenobiologist, Ms. Yes? You should have had the sense to follow proper protocol.”

His rebuke stung. Yes, but … He wasn’t wrong, but at the same time, she hadn’t had much of a choice, now had she? Kira kept the thought to herself; she wasn’t there to start an argument.

She bounced her heels against the drawers built into the base of the exam table while she waited. Sparrow remained lounging in the doorway, watching.

“What exactly is it you do on the ship?” Kira asked her.

Sparrow’s expression stayed flat, emotionless. “I pick up heavy things and put them down.” She lifted her left arm and tensed her biceps and triceps, showing off the muscles.

“I see that.”

Then Vishal began by asking Kira a long series of questions. She answered to the best of her ability. In that, she didn’t hold back. Science was sacred, and she knew the doctor was just trying to do his job.

At Vishal’s request, Kira showed him how she could harden the surface of the Soft Blade in patterns of her choosing.

Then the doctor tapped the control screen of the medibot mounted overhead. As the machine moved toward her, the mechanical arm unfolding like metal origami, Kira flashed back to her cell on the Extenuating Circumstances and the S-PACs built into the walls, and she flinched without meaning to.

“Hold still,” snapped Vishal.

Kira looked down and concentrated on her breathing. The last thing she needed was for the Soft Blade to react to an imagined threat and tear apart the medibot. Captain Falconi most definitely wouldn’t be pleased with that.

For the next two hours, Vishal tested her in many of the ways that Carr had, and perhaps a few more. He seemed very creative. While the medibot hovered about her, poking and prodding and running every diagnostic in its extensive programming, Vishal carried out his own investigation, peering into her ears, eyes, and nose; taking swabs and scrapings for his chip-lab; and generally making Kira uncomfortable.

He kept his helmet on the whole time, visor closed and locked.

They spoke little; Vishal gave her orders, and Kira complied with a minimum of fuss. She just wanted the ordeal to be over.

At one point, her stomach rumbled, and she realized she still hadn’t eaten breakfast. Vishal noticed and, without hesitation, provided her with a ration bar from a nearby cupboard. He watched with sharp-eyed interest while she chewed and swallowed.

“Fascinating,” he muttered, holding the chip-lab to her mouth and staring at the readings.

He continued to talk to himself from then on, cryptic utterances such as: “… three percent diffusion” and “Can’t be. That would—” and “The ATP? Doesn’t make any…” None of which helped Kira’s understanding.

Finally, he said, “Ms. Navárez, a blood test is still necessary, yes? But the only place I can draw from is—”

“My face.” She nodded. “I know. Go ahead and do what you have to.”

He hesitated. “There is no good place to draw blood from head or face, and many nerves that can be injured. You showed how the suit can move at your command—”

“Sort of.”

“But you know it can move. So I ask: Can you move it to expose part of your skin elsewhere? Perhaps here?” And he tapped the inside of her elbow.

The idea caught Kira by surprise. She hadn’t even thought to try. “I … don’t know,” she said, honest. “Maybe.”

In the doorway, Sparrow unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it in her mouth. “Well, give it a shot, Navárez.” And she blew a large, pink bubble until it exploded with a sharp pop.

“Give me a minute,” said Kira.

The doctor sat back on his stool, waiting.

Kira concentrated on the inside of her elbow—concentrated as hard as she ever had—and with her mind, pushed.

The surface of the suit shimmered in response. Kira bore down harder, and the shimmer became a ripple as the fibers of her second skin melted one into another to form a glassy black surface.

And yet the Soft Blade remained fixed to her arm, shifting and flowing with liquid brilliance. But when she touched the softened area, her fingers sank through the surface, and skin contacted skin with unexpected intimacy.

Kira’s breath caught. Her heart was pounding from strain and excitement. The mental effort was too great to sustain for long, and the instant her attention wavered, the suit hardened and returned to its normal, striated shape.

Frustrated and yet encouraged, Kira tried again, driving her mind against the Soft Blade again and again.

“Come on, damn you,” she muttered.

The suit seemed confused by her intentions. It churned against her arm, agitated by her assault. Kira pushed even harder. The churning increased, and then a cold tingle spread across the inside of her elbow. Centimeter by centimeter, the Soft Blade retreated to the sides of the joint, exposing pale skin to the chill of the air.

“Quick,” said Kira from between clenched teeth.

Vishal scooted forward and pressed his hypo against Kira’s elbow. She felt a slight pinch, and then he withdrew. “Done,” he said.

Still fighting with all her might to keep the Soft Blade pulled back, Kira touched her fingers to her arm, to bare skin. She savored the feeling; a simple pleasure that had seemed forever lost. The sensation was no different than touching the suit, but it meant so much more. Without the layer of separating fibers, she felt far more herself.

Then the effort proved too much and the Soft Blade rebounded and again covered the inside of her elbow.

“Hot damn,” said Sparrow.

Kira let out her breath, feeling as if she’d run a flight of stairs. Her whole body tingled with an electric thrill. If she practiced, maybe, just maybe it would be possible to free her whole body of the xeno. The thought gave her the first real sense of hope she’d had since waking up in quarantine on the Extenuating Circumstances.

Her eyes filmed over with tears, and she blinked, not wanting Sparrow or the doctor to see.

With the blood he’d collected, Vishal ran still more tests, muttering to himself the whole while. Kira zoned out while listening to his fragmented comments. There was a spot on the opposing wall—a spot shaped like star anise or maybe a dead spider that had been squashed beneath a flat-bottomed glass—and she stared at it, her mind empty.

…

With a start, Kira realized that Vishal had fallen silent and that he’d been silent for some time. “What?” she said.

The doctor looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I do not know what to make of your xeno.” He made a slight back-and-forth wobble of his head. “It’s like nothing I’ve studied before.”

“How so?”

He pushed his stool back from the table. “I would need several months before I could answer that. The organism has…” He hesitated. “It is interacting with your body in ways I don’t understand. It shouldn’t be possible!”

“Why not?”

“Because it does not use DNA or RNA, yes? Neither do the Jellies, for that matter, but—”

“Can you tell if they’re related?”

Vishal waved his hands with frustration. “No, no. If the organism is artificial, as it most assuredly is, then its makers could have built it using whatever arrangement of molecules they wanted, yes? They weren’t limited to their own biology. But that’s not what’s important. Without DNA or RNA, how does your suit know how to interact with your cells? Our chemistry is totally different!”

“I’ve wondered that myself.”

“Yes, and—”

A short beep emanated from the main sickbay console, and then a tinny version of Falconi’s voice came over the speakers: “Hey, Doc, what’s the verdict? You’ve been awfully quiet down there.”

Vishal grimaced. Then he unlocked the seal around his neck and pulled off his helmet. “I can tell you Ms. Navárez doesn’t have measles, mumps, or rubella. She has healthy blood sugar levels, and although her implants are non-functional, whoever oversaw their installation did a good job of it. Gums look fine. Ears aren’t blocked. What do you expect me to say?”

“Is she contagious?”

“She isn’t. I am not so sure about the suit. It sheds dust”—at that Sparrow appeared alarmed—“but the dust seems completely inert. Who can tell, though? I don’t have the tools I need. If only I was back at my old lab.…” Vishal shook his head.

“Did you ask Gregorovich?”

The doctor rolled his eyes. “Yes, our blessed ship mind deigned to look at the data. He wasn’t much help, unless you count quoting Tyrollius back at me.”

“Everything with the suit—”

An excited squeal interrupted the captain as Runcible trotted into the sickbay. The little brown pig came over to Kira and sniffed her foot, then hurried back to Sparrow and wound between her legs.

The woman reached down to give Runcible a scratch behind the ears. The pig lifted its snout and almost seemed to be smiling.

Falconi resumed talking: “Everything with the suit match up with what she said?”

Vishal spread his hands. “As far as I can tell. Half the time I don’t know if I’m looking at an organic cell, a nanomachine, or some sort of weird hybrid. The molecular structure of the suit seems to change by the second.”

“Well, are we going to start frothing at the mouth and keel over? Or is it going to kill us in our sleep? That’s what I want to know.”

Kira shifted uncomfortably, thinking of Alan.

“It seems … unlikely, at the moment,” said Vishal. “There is nothing in these tests to indicate the xeno is an immediate threat. However, I must warn you, there is no way of being sure with the equipment I have.”

“Understood,” said Falconi. “Right. Well, I guess we’ll risk it then. I’ve got confidence in you, Doc. Navárez, you there?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll be changing course to Malpert Station directly. ETA is just under forty-two hours.”

“Understood. And thank you.”

He grunted. “Not doing it for you, Navárez.… Sparrow, I know you’re listening. Take our guest to the spare cabin on C-deck. She can stay there for the duration. Best to keep her away from the rest of the passengers.”

Sparrow straightened off the doorframe. “Yessir.”

“Oh, and Navárez? You’re welcome to join us in the galley if you want. Dinner is at nineteen hundred sharp.” Then the line went dead.

4.

Sparrow popped another bubble of gum. “Okay, ground-pounder, let’s go.”

Kira didn’t obey at first. She looked at Vishal and said, “Can you forward your results to me, so I can look at them myself?”

He bobbed his head. “Yes, of course.”

“Thanks. And thanks for being so thorough.”

Vishal seemed surprised by her response. Then he bowed slightly and laughed, a quick, melodic sound. “When the risk is dying from an alien infestation, how could I not be thorough?”

“That’s an excellent point.”

Then Kira followed Sparrow back out into the corridor. “You have anything in the hold you need to get?” the shorter woman asked.

Kira shook her head. “I’m good.”

Together, they proceeded down to the next level of the ship. As they walked, the thrust alert sounded, and the deck seemed to tilt and twist underneath them as the Wallfish reoriented along its new vector.

“Galley is through there,” said Sparrow, gesturing at a marked door. “Feel free to help yourself if you get hungry. Just don’t. Touch. The. Damn. Chocolate.”

“That’s been a problem?”

The woman snorted. “Trig keeps eating it and claiming he didn’t realize the rest of us wanted some.… Here, this is you.” She stopped in front of another door.

Kira nodded and ducked inside. Behind her, Sparrow stayed in place, watching, until the door swung shut.

Feeling more like a prisoner than a passenger, Kira surveyed her surroundings. The cabin was half the size of Falconi’s. Bunk and storage locker on one side, sink and mirror, toilet, and desk with a computer display on the other. The walls were brown, like the corridors, and there were just two lights, one on each side: white patches caged with metal bars.

The handle on the locker stuck when she tried it. She leaned on it, and the door popped open. A thin blue blanket lay folded inside. Nothing else.

Kira started to remove her jumpsuit and then hesitated. What if Falconi had the cabin under surveillance? After a moment’s thought, she decided she didn’t give a damn. Eighty-eight days and eleven light-years was far too long to have worn the same piece of clothing.

Feeling something close to relief, Kira unseamed the jumpsuit, pulled her arms free, and stepped out of it. A trickle of dust fell from the cuffed legs.

She draped the suit over the back of the chair and went to the sink, intending to take a sponge bath. The sight in the mirror stopped her.

Even on the Valkyrie, Kira had never been able to see herself properly, only partial glimpses, dark and ghostlike on the glassy surfaces of the displays. She hadn’t really cared; she just had to look down to get a good idea of what the Soft Blade had done to her.

But now, seeing herself reflected nearly in whole, it struck her just how much the alien organism had changed and … infested her, occupying what no one else had any right to occupy, not even a child, if ever she had a child. Her face and body were thinner than she remembered, too thin—a consequence of so many weeks spent at half rations—but that itself didn’t bother her.

All she could look at was the suit. The shiny, black, fibrous suit that clung to her like a layer of shrink-wrapped polymer. It looked as if her skin and fascia had been stripped away to expose a gruesome anatomy chart of muscles.

Kira ran a hand over the strange shape of her bare scalp. Her breath caught and a tight knot formed in her gut. She felt as if she were going to be sick. She stared, and she hated what she saw, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away. The surface of the Soft Blade grew rough as it echoed her emotions.

Who could find her attractive now … the way Alan had? Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

She felt ugly.

Disfigured.

Outcast.

And there was no one to comfort her.

Kira took a shuddering breath, reining in her emotions. She’d grieved and would continue to grieve, but there was no changing the past, and dissolving into a sobbing mess wasn’t going to do her any good.

All was not lost. There was a way forward now: a hope, if however slight.

Forcing her gaze away from the mirror, she used the cloth by the sink to wash herself and then retreated to the bed and crawled under the blanket. There, in the filtered gloom, she again worked on forcing the Soft Blade to retreat from a patch of skin (this time the fingers of her left hand).

Compared with before, it felt as if the Soft Blade better understood what she was trying to accomplish. The effort required was more manageable, and there were moments when the sense of struggle vanished and she and xeno were working in harmony. Those moments encouraged her, and Kira pushed even harder as a result.

The Soft Blade retreated from her nails with a sticky, peeling sound. It halted at the first joint of each finger, and try as she might, Kira couldn’t coax it past.

She reset.

Three more times Kira willed the suit to expose her fingers, and three more times it responded to her satisfaction. With each success, she felt the neural links between her and the suit deepening, becoming increasingly efficient.

She tried elsewhere on her body, and there too the Soft Blade obeyed her commands, though some areas were more challenging than others. To free herself entirely of the xeno would require more strength than she could muster, but Kira wasn’t disappointed. She was still learning to communicate with the xeno, and the fact that freedom might just be possible—if even only as a distant prospect—kindled such a sense of lightness within her, she grinned with an idiot’s delight into the blanket.

Ridding herself of the Soft Blade wouldn’t solve all her problems (the UMC and the League would still want her for observation, and without the suit she’d be completely at their mercy), but it would solve the biggest one and clear the way for her to someday—somehow!—have a normal life again.

Once more she willed the Soft Blade to retract. Holding it in place was like trying to hold two magnets face-to-face with the same polarity. At one point, a noise on the other side of the room caught her attention, and a thin spike stabbed out from her hand, pierced the blanket, and struck the desk (she could feel it, same as an extended finger).

“Shit,” Kira muttered. Had anyone seen that? With a struggle, she convinced the Soft Blade to reabsorb the spike. She looked out at the desk; the spike had left a long scratch on the top.

When she could no longer maintain her concentration, Kira abandoned her experiments and went to the desk. She pulled up the built-in display, linked it to her overlays, and scanned the files Vishal had messaged her.

It was her first time getting to see actual test results from the xeno. And they were fascinating.

The material of the suit consisted of three basic components. One, nanoassemblers, which were responsible for shaping and reshaping both the xeno and surrounding material, though where the assemblers drew their power wasn’t obvious. Two, dendriform filaments that extended throughout every part of the suit and which displayed consistent patterns of activity that seemed to indicate the organism was acting as a massively interconnected processor (whether or not it was alive in the traditional sense was hard to determine, but it certainly wasn’t dead). And three, an enormously complex polymeric molecule, copies of which Vishal had found attached to nearly every assembler, as well as the dendriform substrate.

Like so many things regarding the xeno, the purpose of the molecule was a mystery. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the repair or construction of the suit. The length of the molecule meant it contained an enormous amount of potential information—at least two orders of magnitude more than base-human DNA—but as yet, there was no way to determine what use, if any, the information was supposed to have.

There was a chance, Kira thought, that the only real function of the xeno was to protect and pass on the molecule. Not that that told her very much. From a biological point of view, the same was true with humans and DNA, and humans were capable of far more than just propagation.

Kira went over the results four times before she was satisfied she’d committed them to memory. Vishal was right: to learn more about the xeno would require better equipment.

Maybe the Entropists could help.… She filed away the thought for future consideration. Malpert would be the place to approach the Entropists about examining the xeno, if indeed she decided to.

Then Kira returned to the news and started to dig into the research concerning the Jellies’ biology, eager to bring herself up to date with the current literature. It, too, was fascinating stuff: all sorts of things could be inferred from the aliens’ genome. They were omnivores, for one, and large chunks of their DNA-equivalent seemed to have been custom-coded (natural processes never produced such clean sequences).

Nothing in the Jellies’ biology resembled what Vishal had found in the xeno. Nothing seemed to indicate a shared biological heritage. That in and of itself didn’t mean anything. Kira knew of more than a few human-made artificial organisms (mostly single-celled creations) that contained no obvious chemical link to Earth-derived life. So it didn’t mean anything … but it was suggestive.

Kira read until early afternoon, and then she broke for a quick visit to the galley, where she made herself some chell and grabbed a meal pack from a cupboard. She didn’t feel comfortable eating any of the fresh food in the ship’s cooler; that stuff was rare and expensive in space. It would be bad manners to chow it down without permission, even if the sight of an orange had started her mouth watering.

Upon her return to the cabin, she found a message waiting for her:

The spaces around your answers invite inspection, meatbag. What things did you leave unsaid? I wonder, yes I do. Tell me this at least, ere you deprive us of your shedding presence: What are you really, O Infested One? – Gregorovich

Kira pursed her lips. She didn’t want to answer. Trying to win a battle of wits with a ship mind was a fool’s game, but pissing him off would be far more stupid.

I’m alone and afraid. What are you? – Kira

It was a calculated risk. If she allowed herself to appear more vulnerable to him—and Gregorovich was most definitely a him—then maybe she could distract him. It was worth a shot.

To her surprise, the ship mind didn’t answer.

She continued to read. Not long afterward, the Wallfish went zero-g and then performed a skew-flip before starting to decelerate toward Malpert Station. As always, the weightlessness left Kira with the taste of bile in her mouth and a renewed sense of appreciation for gravity, simulated or otherwise.

When it was nearly 1900, she closed down her overlays, pulled on her jumpsuit, and decided to risk venturing out to face the crew at dinner.

What was the worst that could happen?

5.

The hum of conversation in the galley stopped the moment Kira entered. She paused in the doorway while the crew looked at her and she at them.

The captain was sitting at the near table with one leg pulled up against his chest and his arm resting on his knee while he spooned food into his mouth. Across from him was Nielsen, stiff and straight-backed as always.

At the far table sat the doctor and one of the largest women Kira had ever seen. She wasn’t fat, just wide and thick, with bones and joints nearly a third bigger than those of most men. Each of her fingers was the equivalent of two of Kira’s, and her face was flat and round, with enormous cheekbones.

Kira recognized the face as the one she’d seen upon waking in the shuttle, and she instantly identified the woman as a former denizen of Shin-Zar. She could hardly be mistaken for anything else.

It was unusual to see a Zarian in the League. Theirs was the one colony that insisted on staying independent (at no small cost in ships and lives). During her time with the company, Kira had only worked with a few people from Shin-Zar—all men—at different postings. To a person they’d been tough, reliable, and as expected, strong as hell. They’d also been able to drink a staggering amount, far more than their size would seem to indicate. That had been one of the first lessons Kira had learned working on mining rigs: don’t try to drink a Zarian under the table. It was a fast way to end up in sickbay with alcohol poisoning.

On an intellectual level, Kira understood why the colonists had gene-hacked themselves—they wouldn’t have survived in Shin-Zar’s high-g environment otherwise—but she’d never really gotten used to how different they looked. It hadn’t bothered Shyrene, her roommate during corporate training. She’d kept a picture of a pop star from Shin-Zar projected on the wall of their apartment.

Like most Zarians, the woman in the Wallfish galley was of Asian descent. Korean no doubt, as Koreans made up the majority of immigrants to Shin-Zar (that much Kira remembered from her class on the history of the seven colonies). She wore a rumpled jumpsuit, patched on the knees and elbows and stained with grease along the arms. The shape of her face made her age impossible for Kira to guess; she might have been in her early twenties or she might have been almost forty.

Trig was sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter, chewing on another of his seemingly endless supply of ration bars. And ladling out meatballs from a pot on the stove was Sparrow, still in the same outfit as before. The cat, Mr. Fuzzypants, rubbed against her ankles, meowing piteously.

A delicious, savory smell suffused the air.

“Well, you going to come in or not?” Falconi asked. His words broke the spell, and motion and conversation resumed.

Kira wondered if the rest of the crew knew about the Soft Blade. Her question was answered as she made her way to the back and Trig said, “So that skinsuit was actually made by aliens?”

Kira hesitated and then nodded, aware of the eyes focused on her. “Yeah.”

The kid’s face brightened. “Cool! Can I touch it?”

“Trig,” said Nielsen in a warning tone. “That’s enough of that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the kid, and a bright red spot appeared on each of his cheeks. He gave Nielsen a shy, sideways glance and then stuffed the last of his ration bar into the side of his mouth and hopped down from the counter. “You lied to me, Ms. Navárez. You said your friend made the suit.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Kira, feeling awkward.

Trig shrugged. “’S okay. I get it.”

Sparrow moved away from the stove. “All yours,” she said to Kira.

As Kira went to get a bowl and spoon, the cat hissed at her and ran to hide under one of the tables. Falconi pointed with his middle finger. “Seems he’s taken a real disliking to you.”

Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious. Scooping meatballs into her bowl, Kira said, “What did the UMC say when you told them we were changing course?”

Falconi shrugged. “Well, they weren’t happy about it, I can tell you that.”

“Neither are our passengers,” said Nielsen, more to him than to Kira. “I just spent half an hour getting yelled at by everyone in the hold. The mood down there is pretty ugly.” The look she gave Kira suggested she blamed her for the trouble.

It wasn’t an unwarranted reaction, in Kira’s opinion.

Falconi picked at his teeth with a nail. “Noted. Gregorovich, make sure you keep a closer eye on them from now on.”

“Yesssssir,” the ship mind answered, his voice unnervingly sibilant.

Kira took her bowl and sat on the nearest free chair, facing the Zarian. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name before,” Kira said.

The Zarian regarded her with a flat expression and then blinked once. “Were you the one who patched the holes at the back of the shuttle?” Her voice was calm and vast.

“I did my best.”

The woman grunted and looked back at her food.

Okay then, Kira thought. So the crew weren’t going to welcome her with open arms. That was fine. She’d been the outsider on most of her postings. Why would it be any different now? She just had to put up with them until Malpert Station. After that, she’d never have to deal with the Wallfish crew again.

Then Trig said, “Hwa is the best machine boss this side of Sol.”

At least the kid seemed friendly.

The Zarian frowned. “Hwa-jung,” she said firmly. “My name is not Hwa.”

“Aww. You know I can’t pronounce it right.”

“Try.”

“Hwa-yoong.”

The machine boss shook her head. Before she could speak again, Sparrow came over and dropped into Hwa-jung’s lap. She leaned back against the larger woman, and Hwa-jung wrapped an arm around her waist in a possessive manner.

Kira raised an eyebrow. “So you pick up heavy things and put them down, huh?” At the other table, she thought she heard a suppressed snort from Falconi.

Sparrow matched her expression, cocking one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “So your hearing works. Good for you.” And she craned her neck to give Hwa-jung a peck on the cheek. The machine boss made a sound, as if annoyed, but Kira saw her lips curve in a small smile.

Kira took the opportunity to start eating. The meatballs were warm and rich, with just the right mixture of thyme, rosemary, salt, and a few other things she couldn’t identify. Were those tomatoes fresh? She closed her eyes, luxuriating in the taste. It had been so long since she’d had anything but dehydrated, pre-packaged food.

“Mmm,” she said. “Who made this?”

Vishal lifted his head. “You like it that much?”

She opened her eyes and nodded.

For a moment, the doctor seemed conflicted, and then a modest smile split his face. “I’m glad. Today was my day to cook.”

Kira smiled back and took another bite. It was the first time she’d felt like smiling since … before.

With a clatter of plates and silverware, Trig switched tables and sat next to her. “Captain said you found the xeno in some ruins on Adrasteia. Alien ruins!”

She swallowed the mouthful of food she was working on. “That’s right.”

Trig nearly bounced on the bench. “What was it like? Do you have any recordings?”

Kira shook her head. “They were on the Valkyrie. But I can tell you.”

“Yes, please!”

Then Kira described how she had found the cradle of the Soft Blade and what it had been like inside. The kid wasn’t the only one listening; she could see the rest of the crew watching as she talked, even those who had heard the story earlier. She tried not to let it make her self-conscious.

When she finished, the kid said, “Wow. The Jellies built stuff really close to us, even way back when, huh?”

Kira hesitated. “Well, maybe.”

Sparrow lifted her head off Hwa-jung’s chest. “Why maybe?”

“Because … the xeno doesn’t seem to like the Jellies very much.” Kira traced a finger across the back of her left hand as she struggled to put dreams into words. “I’m not sure why exactly, but I don’t think the Jellies treated it very well. Also, none of the readings Vishal took of the xeno match what’s published about the Jellies’ biology.”

Vishal put down the cup he’d been about to drink from. “Ms. Navárez is right. I also checked, and nothing else like this is known. At least not according to our current files.”

Nielsen said, “Do you think your suit was made by the same species or civilization that made the Great Beacon?”

“Maybe,” said Kira.

A clink as Falconi tapped his fork against his plate. He shook his head. “That’s a lot of maybes.”

Kira made a noncommittal sound.

Then Trig said, “Hey, Doc, so how’d you manage to miss that she’s covered in an alien skinsuit, huh?”

“Yeah, Doc,” said Sparrow, twisting around to look at Vishal. “Awfully shortsighted of you. Not sure if I should trust you with an exam now.”

Even with the darkness of his skin, Kira could see Vishal flush. “There was no evidence of alien infestation. Even a blood test would not have—”

Trig interrupted: “Maybe some of the flatheads in the hold are actually Jellies in disguise. You’d never know, would you?”

The doctor pressed his lips together, but he didn’t lash out. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on his food and said, “Indeed, Trig. What might I have been missing?”

“Yeah, there could—”

“We know you did your best, Doc,” said Falconi in a firm tone. “No need to feel bad about it. No one would have caught this thing.” Next to him, Kira noticed Nielsen give Vishal a sympathetic glance.

Feeling a bit sorry for the doctor, Kira took the initiative. “So you enjoy cooking?” She held up a spoon with a meatball on it.

After a moment, Vishal nodded, met her gaze. “Yes, yes, very much. But my food is not as good as my mother’s or my sisters’. They put my poor efforts to shame.”

“How many sisters do you have?” she asked, thinking of Isthah.

He held up fingers. “Three sisters, Ms. Navárez, all older.”

After that, an unnatural silence settled over the galley. None of the crew seemed to want to talk while she was there; even Trig kept quiet, although Kira felt sure he was buzzing with a thousand more questions.

It surprised her, then, when Nielsen said, “I hear you come from Weyland, Ms. Navárez.” Her tone was more formal than that of the rest of the crew; Kira didn’t recognize her accent.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Do you have family there?”

“Some, although it’s been a while since I visited.” Kira decided to take a chance and ask a question of her own: “Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Nielsen wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “Here and there.”

“She’s from Venus!” Trig blurted out, eyes shining. “One of the biggest cloud cities!”

Nielsen pressed her lips together in a flat line. “Yes, thank you, Trig.”

The kid seemed to realize he’d screwed up. His face dropped, and he fixed his gaze on his bowl. “I mean,” he muttered, “… I don’t really know or anything, so…”

Kira studied the first officer. Venus was nearly as rich as Earth. Not too many folks from there went wandering around outside Sol, and certainly not in a dinky rust bucket like the Wallfish. “Are the cities as impressive as they appear in vids?”

For a moment Nielsen looked as if she wouldn’t answer. Then, in a clipped tone, she said, “You get used to it.… But yes.”

Kira had always wanted to visit the floating cities. Just another life goal the Soft Blade had put out of reach. If only—

An excited squeal distracted her as Runcible trotted into the galley. The pig ran straight to Falconi and leaned against the side of his leg.

Nielsen made an exasperated sound. “Who left the latch on his cage loose again?”

“That would be me, boss lady,” said Sparrow, raising her hand.

“He just wants to be with us. Don’t you now?” said Falconi, and he scratched the pig behind the ears. The pig lifted his snout, eyes half-closed in an expression of bliss.

“What he wants is our food,” said Nielsen. “Captain, it really isn’t appropriate to have him here. A pig doesn’t belong in the galley.”

“Not unless it’s as bacon,” said Hwa-jung.

“There’ll be no talking of bacon around Runcible,” said Falconi. “He’s part of the crew, same as Mr. Fuzzypants, and they get the same rights as any of you. That includes access to the galley. Is that clear?”

Hwa-jung said, “Clear, Captain.”

“It’s still not hygienic,” said Nielsen. “What if he goes to the bathroom again?”

“He’s a well-trained pig now. He would never embarrass himself like before. Would you, Runcible?” The pig snorted happily.

“If you say so, Captain. It still feels wrong. What if we’re eating ham or pork—” Falconi gave her a look, and she raised her hands. “Just saying, Captain. Seems a bit like, like…”

“Cannibalism,” said Trig.

“Yes, thank you. Cannibalism.”

The kid seemed pleased Nielsen agreed with him. A slight flush crept up his neck, and he stared at his plate while fighting back a grin. Kira hid a smile of her own.

Falconi took a bit of food off his plate and gave it to the pig, who gratefully snapped it up. “Last I checked, we have no, ah, porcine products on the ship, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s a moot point.”

“Moot point.” Nielsen shook her head. “I give up. Arguing with you is like arguing with a wall.”

“A very handsome wall.”

As the two of them continued to bicker, Kira looked over at Vishal and said, “What’s with the pig? Is it new?”

The doctor shook his head. “We’ve had him on board six months, not counting cryo. The captain picked him up on Eidolon. They’ve been arguing about him ever since.”

“But why a pig?”

“You would have to ask the captain that yourself, Ms. We have no more an idea than you. It’s a mystery of the universe.”

6.

The rest of the meal passed in an awkward semblance of normalcy. They didn’t say anything more serious than “Pass the salt.” or “Where’s the trash?” or “Get Runcible his dish.” Terse, utilitarian exchanges that served only to make Kira aware of how out of place she was.

Normally dinner was when she would pull out her concertina and play a few rounds to break the ice. Buy some drinks, smack down the clumsy attempts to hit on her—unless she was in a mood. The usual, before Alan. But here it didn’t matter; she’d be off the Wallfish by the end of next day, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about Falconi and the rest of his ragtag crew.

Kira had just emptied her bowl and was taking it back to the sink when a short, loud beep sounded. It froze them in place, and everyone’s eyes grew hazy as they focused on their overlays.

Kira glanced at her own but saw no alerts. “What is it?” she asked, noting the sudden tension in Falconi’s posture.

Sparrow was the one who answered: “Jellies. Four more of them, heading for Malpert Station.”

“ETA?” Kira asked, dreading the answer.

Falconi’s eyes cleared as he looked at her. “Noon tomorrow.”

CHAPTER IV. KRIEGSSPIEL

1.

Four blinking red dots arrowed across the system toward Malpert Station. A set of dotted lines—bright green—showed their calculated trajectory.

Tapping her overlays, Kira zoomed in on the station. It was a disorganized pile of sensors, domes, docking bays, and radiators built around a hollowed-out asteroid. Embedded within the rock (barely visible from the outside) was a rotating hab-ring where most of the station citizens lived.

Next to Malpert, some kilometers away, was a Hydrotek refueling platform.

Ships swarmed around the two structures. A different icon marked each ship: civilians in blue, military vessels in gold. Without closing her overlays, Kira said, “Can they stop the Jellies?”

On the other side of the translucent overlays, Falconi frowned. “Not sure. The Darmstadt is their only real firepower. The rest of the ships are just locals. PDF cutters and the like.”

“PDF?”

“Planetary Defense Force.”

Sparrow clicked her tongue. “Yeah, but those Jelly ships are the small ones. Naru-class.”

To Kira, Trig said: “The Naru-class ships only carry three squids, two or three crawlers, and about the same number of snappers. ’Course, some of ’em have heavy crabs as well.”

“Sure they do,” said Sparrow with a humorless smirk.

Vishal chimed in: “And that before they start turning out reinforcements from their birthing pods.”

“Birthing pods?” Kira asked, feeling totally out of the loop.

Hwa-jung answered: “They have machines that let them grow new fighters.”

“I … I didn’t see anything about that in the news,” said Kira.

Falconi grunted. “The League has been keeping it under wraps to avoid scaring people, but we caught wind of it a few weeks ago.”

The concept of a birthing pod seemed dimly familiar to Kira, as a half-forgotten memory. If only she could get her hands on a Jelly computer! The things she could learn!

Sparrow said, “The Jellies must be pretty confident if they think they can take out Malpert and the Darmstadt with just those four ships.”

“Don’t count out the miners,” said Trig. “They’ve got plenty of weapons, and they won’t run. Swear to god they won’t.”

Kira gave him a questioning look, and the kid shrugged. “I grew up on Undset Station, over at Cygni B. I know ’em. Those space rats are tough as titanium.”

“Yeah, well,” said Sparrow, “they ain’t going to be fighting no half-starved jackers this time.”

Nielsen stirred. “Captain,” she said, “we still have time to change course.”

Kira cleared her overlays in order to better see Falconi’s face. He appeared distracted as he studied screens she couldn’t see. “Not sure it would make any difference,” he murmured. He tapped a button on the kitchen wall, and a holo of 61 Cygni appeared suspended in the air. He pointed at the red dots that marked the Jellies. “Even if we turn tail and run, there’s no way we can escape them.”

“No, but if we put some distance between us and them, they might decide the chase isn’t worth the effort,” said Nielsen. “It’s always worked before.”

Falconi made a face. “We’ve already burned through a good chunk of hydrogen. Getting to Ruslan now would be dicey. We’d have to coast at least half the distance. Would be sitting ducks the whole time.” He scratched his chin, eyes still fixed on the holo.

Sparrow said, “What are you thinking, Captain?

“We let the Wallfish live up to its name,” he said. He highlighted an asteroid some distance from Malpert Station. “Here. There’s an extraction outfit on this asteroid—asteroid TSX-Two-Two-One-Two. Says there’s a hab-dome, refueling tanks, the whole lot. We can cozy up to the asteroid and wait until the fighting is over. If the Jellies decide to come after us, we’d have tunnels to hide in. As long as they don’t drop a nuke on us or something like that, we’d at least have a chance.”

On her overlays, Kira looked up the definition of wallfish. Apparently it was A regional term for “snail” in the country of Britain on Earth; presumably of Anglo-Saxon origin. She eyed Falconi, again thrown askance by his sense of humor. He’d named his ship the Snail?

The crew continued debating possibilities, while Kira sat and thought.

Then she went to Falconi and bent close to his ear. “Can I talk with you for a moment?”

He barely glanced at her. “What?”

“Outside.” She motioned toward the door.

Falconi hesitated, and then to Kira’s surprise, shoved himself out of his chair. “Be right back,” he said, and followed her out of the galley.

Kira turned on him. “You have to get me onto one of those Jelly ships.”

The look of incredulousness on the captain’s face was nearly worth everything she’d gone through. “Nope. Not going to happen,” he said, and started back in.

She caught his arm, stopping him. “Wait. Hear me out.”

“Get your hand off me before I remove it for you,” he said with an unfriendly expression.

Kira let go. “Look, I’m not asking you to charge in guns blazing. You said the UMC has a chance of fighting off the Jellies.” He nodded, reluctant. “If they disable one of the Jelly ships—if—you could get me on it.”

“You’re crazy,” Falconi said, still half in the doorway of the galley.

“I’m determined. There’s a difference. I told you; I need to get onto one of the Jellies’ ships. If I can, I might be able figure out why they’re attacking us, what they’re saying over their comms, all sorts of stuff. Just think of the possibilities.” She could still see reluctance on Falconi’s face, so she kept talking: “Look, you’ve been flying around the system right under the Jellies’ noses or whatever the hell they use to smell. That means you’re either stupid or you’re desperate, and you might be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

Falconi shifted. “What’s your point?”

“You need a payday. You need a big payday or else you wouldn’t be risking your ship or your crew like this. Am I wrong?”

A hint of unease flitted across his eyes. “Not entirely.”

She nodded. “Okay. So, how would you like to be the first person to get your hands on info from the Jellies? Do you know how much my company would pay for it? Enough to build your own hab-ring. That’s how much. There’s still tech on the Jellies’ ships that no one has been able to back-engineer. I could get specs on their artificial gravity. That would be worth a few bits.”

“Just a few,” he murmured.

“Hell, you have a couple of Entropists in the hold. Ask them to come along in exchange for a copy of any interesting discoveries. With them helping me”—she spread her hands—“who knows how much we could find? It’s not even just about the war; we could jump-start our tech level by a hundred years or more.”

Falconi faced her full on. His middle finger tapped the grip of his blaster in an irregular tempo. “I get it. But even if the UMC does disable a ship, that won’t mean all the Jellies on it will be killed.” He motioned downward. “I have everyone in the hold to think about. Lotta people could get hurt if we have fighting on the ship.”

Kira couldn’t help herself: “And how much were you thinking about their welfare when you started charging for rescue?”

For the first time, Falconi seemed offended. “Doesn’t mean I want to see them killed,” he said.

“What about the Wallfish? Does it have any weapons?”

“Enough to stop a rim runner or two, but this isn’t a warship. We can’t go up against one of the Jellies and hope to survive. They’d cut us to shreds.”

Kira stood back, put her hands on her hips. “So what are you going to do?”

Falconi studied her, and she saw the calculations going on behind his eyes. Then he said, “We’ll still head for that asteroid, because we might need it in the worst-case scenario. But if one of the Jellies’ ships gets disabled, and if it looks doable, we’ll board it.”

A sense of enormity filled Kira as she considered the possibility. “Okay then,” she said quietly.

Falconi chuckled and ran a hand through his bristle-like hair. “Shit. If we pull this off, the UMC is going to be so mad we got the jump on them, they won’t know whether to give us a medal or throw us in the brig.”

And for the first time since she’d woken up on the Wallfish, Kira laughed as well.

2.

The waiting was torturous.

Kira stayed in the galley with the crew, watching the progress of the Jellies. She quickly decided she would rather be shot at than sit around waiting to find out what might or might not happen. The uncertainty drove her to bite her nails, but the slightly metallic taste of the Soft Blade filled her mouth and her teeth bounced off the fibrous coating.

The last time it happened, she sat on her hands to stop herself. Which made her wonder; why hadn’t her nails grown in the past few months? The xeno hadn’t replaced them; she’d seen the nails on her left hand—pink and healthy as ever—when she’d caused the suit to retract. The only explanation she could think of was that the Soft Blade was maintaining the same nail length she had when it first emerged.

When she couldn’t bear sitting anymore, Kira made her excuses and went to Trig. “Do you have any spare clothes on the ship? Or a printer that could make me some?” She plucked at the jumpsuit. “After a couple of months in this thing, I could use a change.”

The kid blinked as he switched his focus from his overlays to her. “Sure,” he said. “We don’t have nothing fancy, but—”

“Plain and simple is fine.”

They left the galley, and he took her to a storage locker set within the inner ring of the corridor. As he rummaged inside, she said, “Seems like Nielsen and the captain bicker a lot. That normal for them?” If she was going to be stuck on the Wallfish for longer than planned, Kira wanted to get a better feel for the crew and for Falconi specifically. She was trusting a lot to him.

A small thud as Trig hit his head on a shelf. “Nah. The captain doesn’t like to be rushed; that’s all. Most times they get along fine.”

“Uh-huh.” The kid liked to talk. She just needed to provide the right encouragement. “So have you been with the Wallfish long?”

“’Bout five years, not counting cryo.”

That raised Kira’s eyebrows. The kid must have been really young when he joined the crew. “Yeah? Why did Falconi bring you on?”

“The captain needed someone to show him around Undset Station. Afterward, I asked if I could go with the Wallfish.”

“Station life wasn’t to your liking?”

“It sucked! We had pressure breaches, food shortages, power outages, you name it. Not. Nice.”

“And is Falconi a good captain? Do you like him?”

“He’s the best!” Trig pulled his head out of the locker, a pile of clothes in his hands, and looked at her with a somewhat hurt expression, as if he felt she were attacking him. “Couldn’t ask for a better captain. No, ma’am! It’s not his fault we got stranded here.” As soon as the words left the kid’s mouth, he seemed to realize he’d said too much, because he clamped his lips shut and held out the clothes for her.

“Oh?” Kira crossed her arms. “Whose fault is it, then?”

The kid shrugged, uncomfortable. “No one’s. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. We’ve got Jellies incoming, and my neck is on the line, same as yours. I’d like to know who I’m working with. The truth, Trig. Tell me the truth.”

The stern tone of her voice made the difference. The kid wilted before it and said, “It’s not … Look, Ms. Nielsen usually books our jobs. That’s why the captain hired her last year.”

“Real time?”

He nodded. “Minus cryo it’s been a lot less.”

“You like her as first officer?” The answer was obvious enough to Kira, but she was curious what he would say.

The kid shifted, color darkening his cheeks. “I mean, uh … She’s real sharp, and she doesn’t order me around like Hwa-jung. And she knows an awful lot about Sol. So, uh, yeah, I think she’s nice.…” His flush deepened. “Uh, not like that, but, uh, as a first officer and all. W-we’re lucky to have her on board.… You know, as crew, not, uh—”

Kira took mercy on him and said, “I get it. But Nielsen didn’t book this job, the one to Sixty-One Cygni, did she?”

Trig shook his head. “The skut-work we were doing—cargo, packet missions, that sort of thing—it wasn’t paying the bills. So the captain found us this other job, but it went sour. It could have happened to anyone, though. Really.” He peered at her, earnest.

“I believe you,” Kira said. “Sorry things didn’t work out.” She knew enough to read between the lines: the job had been something dodgy. Nielsen had probably only been accepting legitimate commissions, which for an old, refit cargo ship like the Wallfish weren’t a whole lot.

Trig made a face. “Yeah, thanks. It sucks, but that’s what it is. Anyway, these alright for you?”

Kira decided it was best not to push any harder. She accepted the pile of clothes and flipped through them. Two shirts, a pair of pants, socks, and boots with gecko pads for use during zero-g maneuvers. “They’ll do just fine. Thanks.”

The kid left her then—heading back to the galley—and Kira continued to her cabin, thinking. So Falconi was willing to bend the law in order to keep his crew paid and his ship flying. Nothing new there. But she believed Trig when he said that Falconi was a good captain. The kid’s reaction had been too genuine to be faked.

A light was flashing on the desktop display when Kira entered. Another message. With a sense of trepidation, she pulled it up.

I am the spark in the center of the void. I am the widdershin scream that cleaves the night. I am your eschatological nightmare. I am the one and the word and the fullness of the light.

Would you like to play a game? Y/N – Gregorovich

As a rule, ship minds tended to be eccentric, and the larger they were, the more eccentricities they displayed. Gregorovich was on the outer tail of that bell curve, though. She couldn’t tell if it was just his personality or if his behavior was the result of too much isolation.

Surely Falconi isn’t crazy enough to fly around with an unstable ship mind.… Right?

Either way, best to play it safe:

No. – Kira

An instant later, a reply popped up:

– Gregorovich

Trying to ignore a sense of foreboding, Kira stowed her jumpsuit, washed her new clothes in the tiny sink, and hung them to dry along the top of her bunk.

She checked on the position of the four Jellies—still no change in their trajectory—and then spent the next hour practicing with the Soft Blade, retracting it from different parts of her body and trying to improve her control.

At last, exhausted, she slid under the blankets, turned off the lights, and did her best not to think about what morning would bring.

3.

Drifts of silt sifted through the purple depths of the Plaintive Verge, soft as snow, silent as death. Nearscent of unease suffused the icy water, and the unease became her own. Before her loomed the crusted rock that sat proud among the Abyssal Conclave. And upon that rock squatted a massive bulk with heaving limbs and a thousand lidless eyes that glared with dire intent. As the veils of silt descended, so too a name descended through her mind, a whisper weighted with fear, fraught with hate … Ctein. The great and mighty Ctein. The huge and ancient Ctein.

And the flesh she was joined with—she that was the Shoal Leader Nmarhl—yearned to turn and flee, to hide from the wrath of Ctein. But it was too late for that. Far, far too late.…

The gradual brightening of the cabin’s lights woke Kira as ship-dawn arrived. She rubbed the crust from her eyes and then lay staring at the ceiling.

Ctein. Why did the name inspire such a sense of fear? The fear wasn’t coming from her either, but the Soft Blade.… No, that wasn’t right. It came from the one the Soft Blade had been bonded with in its memory.

The xeno was trying to warn her, but of what? Everything it had shown her had happened long ago, before the Soft Blade had been laid to rest on Adrasteia.

Maybe, she thought, the xeno was just anxious. Or maybe it was trying to help her understand how dangerous the Jellies were. Not something she really needed help with.

“It would be a lot easier if you could talk,” she murmured, tracing a finger across the fibers on her sternum. It was clear the xeno understood something of what was happening around it—but it was equally clear there were gaps in its comprehension.

She opened a file and recorded a detailed account of the dream. Whatever the Soft Blade was trying to tell her, Kira knew it would be a mistake to discount the xeno’s concern. If indeed concern it was. It was hard to be sure of anything when it came to the suit.

She rolled out of bed and sneezed as a thin cloud of dust flew up around her. Waving her hand to clear the air, she went to the desk and opened a live map of the system.

The four Jellies were only hours away from Malpert Station. The Darmstadt and the other spaceships had positioned themselves in a defensive formation several hours’ burn away from the station, where they would have room to fight and maneuver.

Malpert had a mass driver it used to fling loads of metal, rock, and ice deeper into the system, but it was a huge, cumbersome thing not meant for tracking small, mobile targets like ships. Nevertheless, whoever was in command of the station was currently turning it as fast as its thrusters would allow, in an attempt to bring the mass driver to bear on the Jellies.

Kira freshened up, donned her new clothes (now dry), and hurried to the galley. It was empty, save for Mr. Fuzzypants, who was sitting on the counter, licking the sink faucet.

“Hey!” said Kira. “Shoo!”

The cat flattened its ears and gave her an angry, unappreciative stare before hopping down and trotting past along the wall.

Kira held out a hand in an attempt at friendship. The cat responded with raised hackles and bared claws.

“Fine, you little bastard,” Kira muttered.

While she ate, she watched the advance of the Jellies on her overlays. It was a useless exercise, but she couldn’t help herself. It was the most interesting show airing right now.

The Wallfish was closing in on the asteroid Falconi had named before: TSX-2212. Via the feed from the ship’s nose, the rock appeared as a bright, pinhead speck directly in their path.

Kira looked up as Vishal entered the galley. He greeted her and then went to make himself a cup of tea.

“Are you watching?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Mug in hand, he headed back toward the door. “Come with, if you want, Ms. Navárez. We’re monitoring events in Control.”

Kira followed him to the central shaft, up a level, and then into a small, shielded room. Falconi and the rest of the crew stood or sat around a table-sized holo-display. Banks of electronics covered the walls, and bolted at various stations were a half-dozen battered crash chairs. The room was stuffy and stank of sweat and cold coffee.

Falconi glanced at her as she and Vishal entered.

“Anything new?” Kira asked.

Sparrow popped the gum she was chewing. “Lotta chatter on MilCom. Looks like the UMC is coordinating with the civvies around Malpert to set up a bunch of nasty surprises for the Jellies.” She nodded toward Trig. “You were right. Should make for a hell of a show.”

The back of Kira’s neck prickled. “Wait, you’ve got access to the UMC’s channels?”

Sparrow’s expression grew closed off, and she glanced at Falconi. A tense silence filled the space. Then, in an easy manner, the captain said, “You know how it is, Navárez. Ships talk, word gets around. There aren’t many secrets in space.”

“… Sure.” Kira didn’t believe him, but she wasn’t going to press the point. It did make her wonder just how shady some of Falconi’s past dealings had been. Also whether Sparrow had been in the military. It would make sense.…

Nielsen said, “The Jellies are nearly within firing range. It won’t be long before the shooting starts.”

“When do we reach the asteroid?” Kira asked.

Gregorovich was the one to answer: “ETA fourteen minutes.”

So Kira took one of the empty crash chairs and waited along with the crew.

In the holo, the four red dots separated and arced around Malpert Station in a classic flanking maneuver. Then white lines began to flicker between the aliens and the defending vessels. Falconi brought up the live feed from the Wallfish’s telescopes, and white flowers of chaff and chalk bloomed in the darkness around the unlovely chunk of rock that was Malpert Station.

Sparrow made an approving noise. “Good coverage.”

Flashes of absorbed lasers illuminated the insides of the clouds, and barrages of missiles launched from both the Darmstadt and the other, smaller UMC ships. The Jellies replied in kind. Small sparks winked in and out of existence as point-defense lasers crippled the missiles.

Then the Malpert mass driver fired, slinging a slug of refined iron toward one of the Jelly ships. The slug missed and disappeared into the depths of space on a long orbit around the star. The projectile was moving so fast, the only way any of them could see it was as an icon in the holo-display.

More chaff and chalk clogged the area surrounding the station. Some of it came from the base itself. The rest from the ships swirling about.

“Whoa!” Falconi said as a white-hot needle erupted from a patch of seemingly empty space, snapped across almost nine thousand klicks, and lanced one of the spherical Jelly ships through the middle, like a blowtorch through styrofoam.

The damaged ship spun out of control, wobbling like a top, and then exploded in a blinding blast.

“Oh fuck yeah!” Sparrow shouted.

The live feed darkened for a moment to accommodate the surge in light.

“What the hell was that?” Kira asked. A twinge at the back of her skull made her wince … ships burning in space, motes glittering in the blackness, the dead uncounted …

Falconi glanced at the ceiling. “Gregorovich, pull in our radiators. Don’t want them getting shredded.”

“Captain,” said the ship mind, “the odds of a wayward particle disrupting our most necessary thermoregulation at this range is—”

“Just yank them. Not going to risk it.”

“… Yessir. Currently yanking them.”

Another white-hot needle shot across the screen, but it only managed to singe a Jelly, which corkscrewed away far faster than seemed possible.

To Kira, Hwa-jung said, “Those are Casaba-Howitzers.”

“That … means nothing to me,” said Kira, not wanting to spare the time to look up a definition.

“Bomb-pumped shaped charges,” said the machine boss. “Only in this case—”

“—the bomb is a nuke!” said Trig. He seemed overly excited by the fact.

Kira’s eyebrows climbed. “Shit. I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

“Oh yeah,” said Sparrow. “We’ve had Casaba-Howitzers for ages. Don’t use them much, for obvious reasons, but they’re fuck-simple to build, and the plasma moves at a good chunk of light speed. Makes it nearly impossible for anyone to dodge at close ranges, even those squirrely bastards.”

In the display, more explosions flared: human ships this time, the smaller support vessels around Malpert bursting like popcorn as the Jellies hit them with lasers and missiles.

“Dammit,” said Falconi.

Another Casaba-Howitzer darkened the display, taking out a second Jelly. Even as the crew of the Wallfish cheered, one of the two remaining Jellies blasted straight toward the Darmstadt while the other opened fire on the refueling platform next to Malpert Station.

The platform erupted in an enormous fireball of burning hydrogen.

Then the mass driver fired again: jets of plasma shooting out from vents along the acceleration tube. The slug missed the Jelly by the destroyed platform—the aliens weren’t stupid or careless enough to fly across the line of the muzzle—but the slug hit something else Kira hadn’t noticed: a satellite floating close to Malpert.

The satellite vanished in a blast of light, vaporized by the force of the impact. The spray of superheated materials shotgunned the nearby Jelly, peppering the ship with what amounted to thousands of micrometeoroids.

“Shi-bal,” Hwa-jung breathed.

Falconi shook his head. “Whoever pulled off that shot deserves a raise.”

The damaged Jelly jetted away from Malpert at speed, and then the ship’s engine sputtered and went dead, and the vessel started to spin as it drifted away, powerless. A large gash marred one side of the hull. From it spewed gas and crystalizing water.

Kira watched the ship with fierce interest. That one, she thought. As long as it didn’t explode, maybe they could board it. She offered quick thanks to Thule and glanced at Falconi.

He noticed, but he didn’t react, and Kira wondered what sort of thoughts were turning over behind his hard blue eyes.

The Wallfish swung into position behind the asteroid TSX-2212 and cut its thrust as the Darmstadt and the sole remaining Jelly continued to duel. The few remaining support vessels hurried to assist the UMC cruiser, but they were no match for the alien ship and only served as brief distractions.

“They’re going to overheat soon,” said Sparrow, pointing at the Darmstadt, which—like the Wallfish—had retracted its radiators. Even as she spoke, a plume of unburnt propellant sprayed from valves around the waist of the cruiser. “See,” she said. “They’re venting hydrogen so they can keep the lasers firing.”

The end, when it came, was fast. One of the smaller ships—a manned mining rig, Kira thought—did a burn straight toward the remaining Jelly in an attempt to ram it.

The rig didn’t get anywhere near the Jelly, of course. The aliens blasted it to bits before it got close. Those bits continued on their previous trajectory, though, and they forced the Jelly out of its protective cloud of chaff in order to avoid being hit.

The Darmstadt started to accelerate even before the Jelly did, executing an emergency burn out of its own envelope of defensive measures. It broke free just as the Jellies emerged into the clear and promptly nailed the alien ship with a center-mass shot from its main laser cannon.

A jet of ablated material ejected from the side of the gleaming Jelly ship, and then the vessel vanished in a fireball of annihilating antimatter.

Kira released her death grip on the crash chair’s arms.

“So that’s it,” said Falconi.

Vishal made a motion in the air. “God be praised.”

“Only leaves nine more Jellies,” said Sparrow, gesturing at the rest of the system. “Hopefully they won’t come looking to settle the score.”

“If they do, we should be gone by then,” said Nielsen. “Gregorovich, lay in a course for Malpert Station.”

Kira looked at the captain again, and this time, he nodded. “Belay that,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “Gregorovich, put us on an intercept for that damaged Jelly. All possible speed.”

“Captain!” said Nielsen.

Falconi looked round at the stunned crew. “On your toes, people. Let’s go salvage an alien spaceship.”

CHAPTER V. EXTREMIS

1.

Kira stayed silent while Falconi explained the plan. The captain was the one who needed to convince the crew; they trusted him, not her.

“Sir,” said Sparrow, more serious than Kira had seen her before, “there may still be Jellies on that ship. There’s no way to be sure they’re all dead.”

“I know,” said Falconi. “But there should only be a few of the big squid-creatures on there. Right, Trig?”

The kid bobbed his head, and his Adam’s apple went up and down. “Right, Captain.”

Falconi nodded, satisfied. “Right. No way all of them have survived. No way, no how. Even if there are two of them still kicking, those are pretty good odds.”

Around them, the ship rumbled and weight returned as the Wallfish resumed thrust.

“Gregorovich!” said Nielsen.

“My apologies,” the ship mind said, sounding as if he were on the verge of laughing. “It seems a fine adventure the captain has put us on, yes it does.”

Then Sparrow said, “Good odds can turn bad real fast when the shooting starts, and we have a whole lot of passengers to worry about.”

Falconi eyed her, his expression hard as iron. “You don’t have to tell me.… Think you can handle it?”

After a moment’s consideration, Sparrow cracked a lopsided grin. “What the hell. But you’re going to owe me double hazard pay for this.”

“Deal,” Falconi said without hesitation. He looked at Nielsen. “You still disapprove.” It wasn’t a question.

The first officer leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “That ship is damaged. It could explode at any moment. Plus the possibility Jellies could be waiting to kill us. Why risk it?”

“Because,” Falconi said, “we do this—this one trip—and we can wipe out our debt. And we can get all the antimatter we need to get out of this damn system.”

Nielsen appeared oddly calm. “And?”

“And it’s a chance to do something about the war.”

After a moment Nielsen nodded. “Okay. But if we’re going to do this, we do it smart.”

“That’s my department,” Sparrow said, hopping to her feet. She pointed at Kira. “Will the Jellies recognize that thing on you if they see it?”

“Maybe.… Yeah, probably,” said Kira.

“Okay. So we gotta keep you out of sight until we’re sure the ship is clear. Noted. Trig, you’re with me.” And the short woman hurried out of the command center with the kid in tow. Hwa-jung followed a moment later, heading down to engineering to personally oversee the Wallfish’s systems while on approach.

“ETA?” Falconi asked.

“Sixteen minutes,” Gregorovich answered.

2.

“Where are we going?” Kira asked as she jogged after Falconi, Nielsen, and Vishal.

“You’ll see,” said the captain.

Halfway around the curve of the ship, Nielsen stopped at a narrow door set in the wall. She entered a code on the access panel, and after a moment, the door popped open.

Inside was a cramped supply closet no more than a meter and a half across. A rack on the left-hand wall held an assortment of rifles and blasters (several of which Kira recognized from the Valkyrie) and other weapons. The right-hand wall was lined with charging plugs for the blasters’ supercapacitors, as well as belts, holsters, and boxes of ammo and magazines for the firearms. At the back of the closet was a stool and small bench overhung by a shelf piled high with tools for maintaining the weapons (all of which were held in place by a clear plastic lid). A flickering holo was mounted above the shelf; it showed a unicorn cat resting in the arms of a bony, pink-haired man with the letters Bowie Lives printed in fancy script at the bottom.

The sight of the arsenal took Kira aback. “That’s an awful lot of guns.”

Falconi grunted. “Better to have them when you need them. Like today. Never know what you’ll run into in the outer reaches.”

“Rim runners,” said Nielsen, pulling down a short rifle with a mean-looking muzzle.

“Wireheads,” said Vishal, opening a container of bullets.

“Large toothy animals,” said Falconi, shoving a rifle into Kira’s arms.

She balked, remembering what she’d heard on the news. “Aren’t blasters more effective against the Jellies?”

Falconi fiddled with the display on the side of her gun. “Sure. They’re also more effective at punching holes in the hull. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get spaced. Outside the ship, we use blasters. Inside, we use firearms. Bullets still do a hell of a lot of damage, and there’s no chance of them getting through our Whipple shield.”

Kira reluctantly accepted his reasoning. Every spaceship had a Whipple shield built within the outer hull: staggered layers of differing material that served to break up incoming projectiles (natural or artificial). Micrometeoroids were a constant threat in space, and as a rule, bullets moved far slower and contained far less energy per gram.

“Also,” said Vishal, “lasers bounce, and we have our passengers to think of. If even a small part of the energy from a laser deflects into person’s eye—” He shook his head. “Very bad, Ms. Kira. Very bad.”

Falconi straightened. “That, and bullets don’t get fuzzed out by countermeasures. It’s always a trade-off.” He tapped Kira’s rifle. “I linked this to your overlays. Everyone on the Wallfish is marked as friendly, so you don’t need to worry about shooting us.” He flashed her a grin. “Not that you should need to do any shooting. This is just a precaution.”

Kira nodded, nervous. She could feel the Soft Blade molding itself to the grip of the gun, and a terrible sense of familiarity came over her.

A targeting reticule popped up in the center of her vision, red and round, and she experimented with it by focusing on different objects within the armory.

Nielsen handed her a pair of extra magazines. Kira stuffed them into the side pocket of her pants.

“Do you know how to reload?” Nielsen asked.

Kira nodded. She had gone shooting with her father on Weyland more than once. “Think so.”

“Show me.”

So Kira removed and replaced the magazine several times.

“You’ve got it,” Nielsen said, appearing satisfied.

“Here we go,” said Falconi, unshelving the largest gun of them all. Kira wasn’t even sure what it was: not a blaster, that much was for sure, but the barrel was nearly as wide as her fist. Far too large for a rifle.

“What the hell is that?” she said.

Falconi burst out with an evil laugh. “It’s a grenade launcher. What else? Bought her at a militia surplus sale a few years ago. Her name is Francesca.”

“You named your gun,” said Kira.

“Of course. It’s common courtesy if you’re going to be trusting your life to something. Ships get names. Swords used to get names. Now guns get names.” Falconi laughed again, and Kira wondered if Gregorovich was really the only crazy one on the ship.

“So blasters are too dangerous, but a grenade launcher isn’t?” she said.

Falconi gave her a wink. “Not if you know what you’re doing.” He patted the drum magazine. “These babies are concussive grenades. No shrapnel. They’ll blow you to pieces, but only if they go off right next to you.”

A voice sounded over the intercom: Hwa-jung. “Captain, do you read?”

“Yeah. Go ahead, over.”

“I have an idea for how to distract any Jellies. If we send out the repair drones and use them to—”

“Do it,” he said.

“Are you sure? If—”

“Yes. Just do it; I trust you.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

The line clicked off. Then Falconi clapped Vishal on the shoulder. “Got everything you need, Doc?”

Vishal nodded. “I swore to do no harm, but these aliens lack all sense of mercy. Sometimes the best way to avoid harm is minimizing it. If that means shooting a Jelly, then so be it.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Falconi, and led the way back into the corridor.

“What am I going to be doing?” Kira asked as she followed him down the ladder in the central shaft.

“You’re going to stay out of sight until it’s safe,” Falconi called back at her. “Besides, this isn’t really your area of expertise.”

Kira wasn’t about to disagree. “But it’s yours?”

“We’ve had our share of scrapes.” Falconi jumped off the ladder at D-deck, the lowest deck above the cargo holds. “You go ahead and—”

“Sir,” said Gregorovich. “The Darmstadt is hailing us. They want to know, I quote, ‘What in bloody hell are you doing chasing that Jelly ship?’ End quote. They seem quite irritated.”

“Dammit,” said Falconi. “Okay, stall for a minute.” He pointed at Kira. “Go get those two Entropists. If we’re going to use them, we might not have a lot of time.” He didn’t wait for an answer but hurried off with Nielsen and Vishal in tow.

Kira slid down the rest of the ladder and jogged through the corridor to the starboard hold. She spun the wheel, pulled open the door, and was surprised to find the Entropists waiting for her on the other side.

They bowed, and Veera said, “The ship mind, Gregorovich—”

“—told us to meet you,” said Jorrus.

“Good. Follow me,” said Kira.

Just as they arrived at D-deck, the zero-g alert sounded. The three of them grabbed handholds just in time to keep themselves from floating away.

The Wallfish turned end for end, pressing them against the outer wall, and then thrust resumed and Gregorovich said, “Contact in eight minutes.”

Kira could feel the alien vessel drawing closer, the swift reduction in distance multiplying the force of the compulsion it was broadcasting. The summons was a dull throb at the back of her head, a constant tug on her internal compass that, while easy to ignore, refused to abate.

Jorrus said, “Prisoner Kaminski—”

“Navárez. My name is Kira Navárez.”

The Entropists exchanged a look. Veera said, “We are most confused, Prisoner Navárez, as is—”

“—everyone in the hold. What is—”

“—our course, and why have you summoned us?”

“Listen,” said Kira, and she gave them a brief summary of the situation. It felt as if she were telling everyone about the Soft Blade now. The Entropists’ eyes widened in simultaneous astonishment as they listened, but they didn’t interrupt. She finished by saying, “Are you willing to help?”

“We would be honored,” said Jorrus. “The pursuit of knowledge—”

“—is a most worthy endeavor.”

“Uh-huh,” said Kira. Then, just for the hell of it, she sent them the results of Vishal’s exam. “Here, look at these while you wait. Once we’re sure the Jelly ship is safe, we’ll call for you.”

Veera said, “If it is a question of conflict—”

“—we would—”

But Kira was already moving, and she didn’t hear the rest. She ran back through the dingy hallways until she found the crew gathered in front of the port airlock.

Dominating the center of the antechamber were Trig and Sparrow, like a pair of battered metal pillars, each over two meters high. Power armor. Military grade, so far as Kira could tell. Civilian shells didn’t usually have missile packs mounted on the shoulders.… Where had the crew gotten that sort of hardware? Hwa-jung moved between the two, adjusting the fit of their armor and issuing a steady stream of advice to Trig:

“—and don’t get excited and move too fast. There isn’t room. You’ll just hurt yourself. Let the computer do most of the work. It will make it easy for you.”

The kid nodded. His face was pasty and beaded with sweat.

The sight of Trig bothered Kira. Was Falconi really going to put him front and center, where he might get hurt? Sparrow she could understand, but Trig …

Nielsen, Falconi, and Vishal were busy bolting a line of packing crates to the deck, just behind Trig and Sparrow. The crates were large enough to hide behind: cover for combat.

All the crew not in exos—Hwa-jung included—had donned skinsuits.

The machine boss went to Sparrow and tugged on her thruster pack hard enough to shift the smaller woman’s armor, moving several hundred kilos of mass with casual effort. “Hold still,” Hwa-jung growled, tugging again.

“Hold still, yourself,” muttered Sparrow, fighting to keep her balance.

Hwa-jung slapped Sparrow’s shoulder guard with the flat of her hand. “Aish! Punk. Be more respectful of your elder! Do you want to lose power in the middle of a fight? Really.”

Sparrow smiled down at the machine boss; she seemed to appreciate the fussing.

“Hey,” said Kira, startling them. She pointed at Trig. “What’s he doing in that thing? He’s just a teenager.”

“Not for long! I’ll be twenty year after next,” said Trig, his voice muffled as he pulled on his helmet.

Falconi turned to face her. His skinsuit was matte black (the visor was up), and in his arms he cradled Francesca. “Trig knows how to run an exo better than any of us. And he’s sure as hell safer in that armor than out of it.”

“Fine, but—”

The captain frowned. “We’ve got work to do, Navárez.”

“What about the UMC? Are they going to be a problem? What’d you tell them?”

“I told them we’re going after salvage. They’re not happy, but there’s nothing illegal about it. Now scram. We’ll call you when it’s safe.”

As she started to leave, Hwa-jung tromped over and handed her a pair of earbuds. “So we can stay in touch with you,” the machine boss said, and tapped the side of her temple.

Grateful, Kira left, but she only went so far as the first turn in the corridor. There, she sat, put in the earbuds, and pulled up her overlays.

“Gregorovich,” she said, “can I see the feed from outside?”

A moment later, a window popped up in her vision, and she saw an image of the alien ship just astern. The long, narrow gash along one side had exposed a cross-section of several decks: dark, half-lit rooms filled with indistinct shapes. Even as she tried to make sense of them, puffs of vapor appeared around the waist of the spherical vessel, and it turned so the damage was no longer visible.

Through her earbuds, Kira heard Nielsen say, *Captain, the Jellies are firing their thrusters.*

A moment, and then Falconi said, *Automatic spin-stabilization? Repair systems kicking in?*

Hwa-jung answered: *Unknown.*

*Thermal scan. Any living creatures show up?*

*Indeterminate,* said Gregorovich. On Kira’s overlay, the view of the Jelly ship swapped to an impressionistic blotch of infrared. *Too many heat signatures to identify.*

Falconi swore. *Okay. We play this real safe, then. Trig, you follow Sparrow’s lead. Like Hwa-jung said, let the computer do the hard work. Wait for the repair drones to give the all-clear before you move into a room.*

*Yessir.*

*We’ll be right behind you, so don’t worry.*

As the gleaming mass of the Jelly ship swelled in size on her overlays, the ache of the summons acting upon the Soft Blade increased in direct proportion. Kira rubbed her sternum with the heel of her hand; it almost felt like she had heartburn—an uncomfortable pressure that made it difficult for her to stay still. But it wasn’t a discomfort she could dispel with a burp or a pill or a drink of water. Deep in the recesses of her mind, she could feel a certainty from the xeno that the only cure would be for the two of them to present themselves before the source of the summons, as duty demanded.

Kira shivered, a surge of nervous energy coursing through her. Not knowing what was going to happen was terrifying. She felt weird—sick almost, as if something horrible was about to take place. Something irrevocable.

The suit reacted to her distress; Kira could feel it contracting around her, thickening and hardening with practiced efficiency. It was ready. Of that she was sure. She remembered her dreams of battle; the Soft Blade had faced mortal danger many, many times over the course of the eons, but while it had always endured, she wasn’t so sure about those it had been joined with.

All the Jellies would have to do would be shoot her in the head, and suit or not, the shock of the impact would kill her. No amount of tissue restructuring on the part of the Soft Blade would save her. And that would be that. No reloading from a checkpoint or save file. Nope. One life, one attempt to get things right, and perma-death if she failed. Of course, the same was true for everyone else. No one got to run the level beforehand, as it were.

And yet, even though she was in danger because of the Soft Blade, Kira found herself perversely grateful for its presence. Without the xeno, she’d be all the more vulnerable, a shell-less turtle waving its legs in the air, exposed before its enemies.

She clutched her rifle tighter.

Outside, the wheeling stars vanished behind the huge white hull of the Jelly ship, which gleamed and shone like the shell of an abalone.

Kira struggled to suppress another pulse of fear. Beneath her clothes, the Soft Blade spiked out in response, small, razor-tipped studs roiling across her coated flesh. She hadn’t realized just how big the ship was. But it only held three of the tentacled aliens. Only three, and most or all of them should be dead. Should …

With the ship so close, the compulsion was stronger than ever; she found herself leaning forward, pressing against the wall of the corridor as if to crawl through it.

She forced herself to relax. No. She wasn’t about to give in to the desire. That was the dumbest thing she could do. No matter how tempting it was, she had to keep the compulsion from controlling her actions. And it was tempting, dreadfully so. If she just obeyed as was expected and answered the summons, the ache would vanish, and from ancient memories, she knew the reward of satisfaction that would follow.…

Again Kira struggled to ignore the intrusive sensation. The Soft Blade might feel the imperative to obey, but she didn’t. Her instinct for self-preservation was too strong to just do whatever some alien signal was telling her to.

Or so she wanted to believe.

While she fought her inner fight, the Wallfish cut its engines. Kira flailed for a moment, and then the Soft Blade adhered to the floor and wall wherever she touched, anchoring her in place much as it had done with the radiators of the Extenuating Circumstances after she’d been blown into space.

The Wallfish maneuvered with RCS thrusters around the swollen bulk of the Jelly ship until it arrived at a three-meter-wide dome that projected from the hull. Kira recognized it from videos as the airlock used by the aliens.

*Everyone ready!* Falconi barked, and from around the corner, she heard the bolts of weapons being racked and the hum of capacitors charging. *Visors down.*

Then, for a seemingly endless moment, nothing happened, and all Kira felt was tension and anticipation and the rising hammer of her pulse.

On the cameras, the dome began to move closer. When the Wallfish was only a few meters away, a thick, hide-like membrane retracted from the dome, exposing the polished, mother-of-pearl-esque surface underneath.

*Looks like they’re expecting us,* said Sparrow. *Great.*

*At least we won’t have to cut our way in,* said Nielsen.

Hwa-jung grunted. *Maybe. Maybe not. It could be automated.*

*Focus!* said Falconi.

Gregorovich said, *Contact in three … two … one.*

The deck lurched as the Wallfish and the alien ship touched. Silence followed then, shocking in its completeness.

CHAPTER VI. NEAR & FAR

1.

With a start, Kira remembered to breathe. She inhaled twice, quickly, and tried to calm herself so she didn’t pass out. Almost there; just a few seconds more …

Her overlays flickered, and instead of the feed from outside, she saw a view of the airlock antechamber from a camera mounted above the entrance: Gregorovich letting her watch what was happening.

“Thanks,” she murmured. The ship mind didn’t reply.

Falconi, Hwa-jung, Nielsen, and Vishal were hunched behind the packing crates bolted to the deck. Sparrow and Trig stood in front of them in their power armor, facing the airlock, like a pair of hulking giants, arms raised, weapons aimed.

Through the windows of the inner and outer doors of the airlock, Kira saw the curved, iridescent surface of the Jelly ship. It appeared flawless. Impregnable.

*Repair bots deployed,* Hwa-jung announced in a preternaturally calm voice. She crossed herself.

Across the antechamber, Vishal bowed in what Kira suspected was the direction of Earth, and Nielsen touched something under her skinsuit. On the off chance it would do something, Kira offered up a quiet prayer to Thule.

*Well?* Falconi said. *Do we have to knock?*

As if in response, the dome rotated, an eyeball rolling in its socket to reveal … not an iris, but a circular tube, three meters long, that led straight through the sphere. At the other end was a second hide-like membrane.

It was fortunate, Kira thought, that Jelly microbes seemed to pose no risk of human infection. At least none that had been discovered. Still, she wished that she and the Wallfish crew could have observed proper containment procedures. When it came to alien organisms, it was always better to err on the side of caution.

A soft pressure tube extended a few centimeters from the outside of the Wallfish airlock and pressed in around the circumference of the tube.

*We have a positive seal,* Gregorovich announced.

As if in response, the inner membrane retracted. The angle of the camera didn’t give Kira a good view into the Jelly ship: she could see a slice of shadowy space lit by a dim blue glow that reminded her of the abyssal sea where the great and mighty Ctein had ruled.

*My God, it’s huge!* Vishal exclaimed, and she fought the urge to peek around the corner to see with her own eyes.

*Pop the airlock,* said Falconi.

The thud of locking lugs snapping back echoed down the corridor, and then both the inner and outer airlocks rolled open.

*Gregorovich,* said Falconi. *Hunters.* A pair of whirring, orb-shaped drones descended from the ceiling and darted into the alien ship, their unmistakable hum quickly fading to nothing.

*No movement showing from the outside,* Hwa-jung said. *All clear.*

Then Falconi said, *Okay. Hunters aren’t picking up anything either. We’re a go.*

*Watch your six,* Sparrow barked, and heavy footsteps shook the deck as the two suits of power armor headed toward the airlock.

At that exact moment, Kira felt it: a nearscent of pain and fear intermingled in a toxic brew. “No! Wait!” she started to shout, but she was too slow.

*Contact!* Sparrow yelled.

She and Trig started shooting at something in the airlock: a barrage of gunfire and laser blasts. Even around the corner, Kira could feel the thump of the guns. The sounds were brutally intense: physical assaults in their own right.

A hemisphere of sparks formed in front of Sparrow and Trig as their lasers immolated incoming projectiles. Chalk and chaff exploded outward from their exos, the glittering clouds expanding outward in near-perfect spheres until they collided with the walls, the ceiling, and each other.

Then a spike of fire jumped from Falconi’s massive grenade launcher. An instant later, a harsh, blue-white flash illuminated the depths of the airlock, and a dull boom rolled through the ship. The blast tore apart the cloud, allowing a clear view—between ragged strips of haze—in and around the airlock.

Something small and white whizzed out of the alien ship, moving faster than Kira could follow. Then the camera feed went dead, and a concussion slammed into her, knocking her head against the wall and making her teeth slam together hard enough to hurt. The pulse of over-pressurized air was so loud it went beyond hearing; she felt it in her bones and in her lungs, and as a painful spike in each ear.

With no urging on her part, the Soft Blade crawled across her face, covering her completely. Her vision flickered and then returned to normal.

Kira was shaking from adrenaline. Her hands and feet felt cold, and her heart was slamming against her ribs as if trying to escape. Despite that, she mustered her courage enough to poke her head around the corner. Even if it was a mistake, she had to know what was happening.

To her horror, she saw Falconi and the others drifting in the air, dead or stunned. Drops of blood wept from a cut in the shoulder of Nielsen’s skinsuit, and there was a piece of metal sticking out of Vishal’s thigh. Trig and Sparrow seemed to have fared better—she could see their heads turning in their helmets—but both their suits of power armor were locked up, inoperable.

Past them lay the airlock and—through it—the alien ship. She glimpsed a deep, dark chamber with strange machines looming in the background, and then a tentacled monstrosity moved into view, blocking the light.

The Jelly nearly filled the airlock. The creature appeared wounded; orange ichor oozed from a dozen or more gashes across its arms, and there was a crack in the carapace of its body.

Wrongflesh!

Kira watched, frozen, as the Jelly crawled toward the Wallfish interior. If she fled, she’d only attract attention to herself. Her rifle was too small to have much chance of killing the Jelly, and the creature would surely shoot her in return if she opened fire.…

She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry as dust.

A soft, dead-leaf shuffle sounded as the Jelly entered the antechamber. The sound caused Kira’s scalp to prickle with cold recognition; she remembered it from times long past. Accompanying the sound was a shift in the nearscent from fear to anger, contempt, and impatience.

The Soft Blade’s natural instinct was to respond to the scent—Kira could feel the urge—but she resisted with all her strength.

None of the crew had started moving again, and now the Jelly was maneuvering among their floating bodies.

Kira thought of the children in the cargo hold, and her resolve stiffened. This was her fault; boarding the Jelly ship had been her idea. She couldn’t allow the alien to reach the hold. And she couldn’t stand by and watch while it killed Falconi and the rest of the crew. Even if it meant her own life, she had to do something.

Her deliberations took only an instant. Then she fixed the overlay targeting reticule on the Jelly and raised her gun with intent to fire.

The motion caught the Jelly’s attention. A cloud of white smoke erupted around it, and there was a swirl of tentacles and a spray of ichor as the creature spun around. Kira fired blindly into the center of the smoke, but if the bullets hit, she couldn’t see.

A tentacle lashed out and wrapped around the ankle of Trig’s power armor.

“No!” Kira shouted, but it was too late. The Jelly swarmed back into its ship, dragging Trig behind it, using him as a shield.

The curls of smoke dispersed into the antechamber vents.

2.

“Gregoro—” Kira started to say, but the ship mind was already talking:

“It’s going to take me a few minutes to get Sparrow’s armor back online. Don’t have any more hunters, and point-defense lasers took out all the repair bots.”

The rest of the crew still drifted limp and helpless. There was no assistance to be had from them, and the refugees in the hold were too far away, too unprepared.

Kira’s mind raced as she considered options. Every second that passed, Trig’s chances of survival dropped.

In a soft voice, so soft it seemed out of place, Gregorovich said, “Please.”

And Kira knew what she had to do. It wasn’t about her anymore, and somehow that made it easier, despite the fear clogging her veins. But she needed more firepower. Her rifle wasn’t going to be very effective against the Jelly.

She willed the Soft Blade to unstick from the wall, kicked herself over to Falconi’s grenade launcher—Francesca—and hooked her arm through the sling.

The counter on the top of the launcher showed five shots remaining in the drum magazine.

It would have to do.

Gripping the gun tighter than was necessary, Kira turned to face the airlock. White streams of air escaped through a cluster of hairline cracks along the inside of the lock, but the hull didn’t seem to be in immediate danger of failing.

Before she could lose her nerve, Kira braced herself against a crate and jumped.

3.

As she hurtled through the short tube, toward the alien ship, Kira scrutinized the rim of the Jelly airlock, ready to shoot at the slightest hint of movement.

Thule. What the hell was she doing? She was a xenobiologist. Not a soldier. Not a gene-hacked, muscle-bound killing machine like the UMC turned out.

And yet there she was.

For a moment Kira thought of her family, and anger hardened her determination. She couldn’t let the Jellies kill her. And she couldn’t let them hurt Trig.… She felt a similar anger from the Soft Blade: old hurts piled onto new offenses.

The dim blue light of the alien ship enveloped her as she exited the airlock.

Something large slammed into her from behind and sent her tumbling into a curved wall. Shit! Fear made a quick return as pain exploded along her left side.

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a mass of knotting tentacles, and then the Jelly was upon her, smothering her with its banded arms, as hard and strong as woven cables. Nearscent clogged her nostrils, suffocating in its strength.

One of the slithering arms wrapped itself around Kira’s neck and yanked.

The motion was so violent, it should have killed her. It should have torn her head right off her body. But the Soft Blade went rigid, and the strange recesses and odd angles of the room blurred around her as she twisted topsy-turvy.

Kira’s stomach lurched, and she vomited into the suit’s flexible mask.

The vomit had nowhere to go. It filled her mouth—hot, bitter, burning—and then poured back down her throat. She gagged and out of sheer, misplaced instinct, tried to take a breath and inhaled what felt like a liter of searing liquid.

Kira panicked then: blind, unreasoning panic. She thrashed and flailed and tore at the mask. In her frenzy, she only dimly noticed the fibers of the suit parting beneath her clawing.

Cold air struck her face, and she finally was able to spew the vomit from her mouth. She coughed with painful force while her stomach clenched in pulsing waves.

The air smelled of brine and bile, and if the Soft Blade hadn’t still covered her nose, Kira thought she might have passed out from the alien atmosphere.

She tried to regain control of herself, but her body refused to cooperate. Coughing bent her double, and all Kira saw was the mottled orange flesh wrapped around her and suckers the size of dinner plates.

The rubbery limb began to tighten. It was as thick as her legs and far stronger. She hardened the suit in defense (or perhaps it hardened itself), but regardless, she could feel the pressure building as the Jelly tried to crush her.

[[Cfar here: Die, two-form! Die.]]

Kira couldn’t stop coughing, and every time she exhaled, the tentacle tightened further, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. She twisted in a frantic attempt to free herself but to no avail. A terrible conviction filled her then. She was going to die. She knew it. The Jelly was going to kill her and take the Soft Blade back to its own kind, and that would be the end of her. The realization was terrifying.

Crimson sparks filled her vision, and Kira felt herself teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. In her mind, she pleaded with the Soft Blade, hoping it could do something, anything to help. Come on! But her thoughts seemed to have no effect, and all the while, the sense of strain increased, rising until Kira felt her bones would snap and the alien would reduce her to a bloody pulp.

She groaned as the tentacle squeezed the last bit of air from her lungs. The fireworks in her eyes faded, and with them, any sense of urgency or desperation. Warmth suffused her, comforting warmth, and the things she’d been concerned with no longer seemed important. What had she been so worried about after all?

…

…

…

She floated before a fractal design, blue and dark and etched into the surface of a standing stone. The design was complicated beyond her ability to comprehend, and it shifted as she watched, the edges of the shapes shimmering as they changed, growing and evolving according to the precepts of some unknown logic. Her sight was more than human; she could see lines of force radiating from the infinitely long border—flashes of electromagnetic energy that betrayed vast discharges of energy.

And Kira knew this was the pattern the Soft Blade served. Served or was. And Kira realized there was a question inherent in the design, a choice related to the very nature of the xeno. Would she follow the pattern? Or would she ignore the design and carve new lines—lines of her own—into the guiding scheme?

To answer required information she didn’t have. It was a test she hadn’t studied for, and she didn’t understand the parameters of the inquiry.

But as she gazed upon the shifting shape, Kira remembered her pain and her anger and her fear. They burst forth, hers and the Soft Blade’s combined. Whatever the pattern meant, she was certain of the wrongness of the graspers and of her desire to live and of her need to rescue Trig.

To that end, Kira was willing to fight, and she was willing to kill and destroy in order to stop the graspers.

Then her vision sharpened and telescoped, and she felt as if she were falling into the fractal. It expanded before her in endless layers of detail, flowering into an entire universe of theme and variation.…

Pain roused Kira. Shocking, searing pain. The pressure around her torso vanished, and she filled her lungs with a desperate gasp before loosing a scream.

Her vision cleared, and she saw the tentacle still encircling her. Only now a belt of thorns—black and shiny and tangled in a familiar fractal shape—extended from her torso, piercing the twitching limb. She could feel the thorns, same as her arms or legs, new additions but familiar. And surrounding them a heated press of flesh and bone and spurting fluids. For a moment the memory of the suit impaling Alan and the others intruded, and Kira shuddered.

Without thinking, she shouted and chopped at the tentacle with her arm. As she did, she felt the suit reshape itself, and her arm sliced through the Jelly’s translucent flesh as if it were hardly there.

A spray of orange liquid splattered her. It smelled bitter and metallic. Disgusted, Kira shook her head, trying to shake off the blobs of ichor.

Severing the tentacle freed her from the alien. The Jelly twitched in its death throes as it drifted toward the far side of the room, leaving its amputated limb behind. The tentacle twisted and coiled in the air like a headless snake. A core of bone showed in the center of the stump.

Unbidden, the thorns retracted into the Soft Blade.

Kira shivered. So the xeno had finally decided to fight alongside her. Good. Maybe she had a chance after all. At least there was no one around she had to worry about stabbing by accident. Not at the moment.

She scanned her surroundings.

The chamber had no identifiable up or down, same as the aliens themselves. What light there was emanated in an even field from the forward half of the space. Clumps of mysterious machines, black and glossy, protruded from the curving walls, and two-thirds of the way around the dusky expanse—half-lost in the gloom—was a large, barnacle-like shell that Kira assumed was an interior door of some kind.

At the sight of the room, Kira felt an overpowering sense of déjà vu. Her vision swam, and the walls of another, similar ship appeared ghost-like before her. For a moment, it felt as if she were in two different places, in two different ages—

She shook her head, and the image disappeared. “Stop it!” she growled at the Soft Blade. She couldn’t afford distractions like that.

If not for the dire nature of the situation, Kira would have loved to examine the chamber in exhaustive detail. It was a xenobiologist’s dream: an actual alien ship filled with living aliens, macro and micro. A single square inch of the space would be enough to make an entire career. More than that, Kira just wanted to know. She always had.

But now wasn’t the time.

There was no sign of Trig in the room. That meant one or more Jelly was still alive.

Kira spotted Falconi’s grenade launcher floating by the wall some distance away. She pulled herself toward it, palms sticking to the inside of the hull.

She’d killed an alien! Her. Kira Navárez. The fact disturbed and astonished her as much as it gave her a certain grim satisfaction.

“Gregorovich,” she said. “Any idea where they took—”

The ship mind was already talking: *Keep going forward. I can’t give you an exact fix, but you’re heading in the right direction.*

“Roger that,” said Kira as she snared the launcher.

*Jorrus and Veera are helping me with Sparrow. I’m jamming all outgoing frequencies, so the Jellies might not be able to signal if they recognize you. They can still use a laser for line-of-sight comms, though. Be careful.*

While he spoke, Kira willed the suit to propel her toward the barnacle-like shell. As in vacuum, the Soft Blade was able to provide her with a modest amount of thrust—more than enough to traverse the distance within a few seconds.

The compulsion was headache-strong now, insistent and insidious. She scowled and tried to concentrate past the throbbing.

The shell parted in three wedge-shaped segments that retracted into the bulkhead to reveal a long, circular shaft. More of the doors dotted the shaft at irregular intervals, and at the far end, there twinkled a panel of lights: a computer console perhaps, or maybe just a piece of art. Who could tell?

Kira kept the grenade launcher at the ready as she maneuvered into the shaft. Trig could be in any of the rooms; she’d have to search them all. There were engines at the back of the ship, but Kira didn’t have a clue as to where anything else might be. Did the Jellies have a centralized command station? She couldn’t remember mention of one in the news reports.…

A flicker of motion appeared along the near wall. She twisted just in time to see a crab-like alien slip out of a parted door.

The Jelly fired a cluster of laser beams at her. They curved harmlessly around her torso. The laser blasts were too fast for normal human vision to detect. But with the mask over her face, the pulses were visible as nanosecond flashes: incandescent lines that blinked in and out of existence.

Without thinking, Kira fired the grenade launcher. Or rather, the Soft Blade fired it for her; she wasn’t even conscious of pulling the trigger, and then the buttstock kicked her shoulder and sent her spinning backwards.

The damn thing was big enough to be artillery.

BOOM!

The grenade detonated with a pulse of light so bright, Kira’s vision dimmed almost to black. She felt the force of the explosion in her organs: her liver hurt, and her kidneys too, and all through her body, tendons and ligaments and muscles that Kira had previously been unaware of made themselves known with a chorus of sharp complaints.

She scrabbled to grab something, anything, within reach. By sheer chance, she brushed against a ridge along the wall, and the xeno adhered to the smooth, stonelike surface, stopping her tumble. She gulped for air and hung there while she regained her bearings, pulse racing with frantic speed. Across from her floated the pulped and shredded remains of the Jelly. Orange mist coated the passageway.

What had the creature been trying to do? Sneak up on her? A sinking sensation wholly unrelated to weightlessness formed in Kira’s stomach as she thought of an explanation. The crab had been sent to slow her—knowing it would fail—while the rest of the Jellies prepared a nasty surprise for her somewhere else.

She swallowed hard, the sour taste of vomit still strong in her mouth. The best thing she could do was keep searching, hope the aliens weren’t able to predict her every move.

A glance at the grenade launcher. Four shots left. She’d have to make them count.

She pushed herself back around to look at the barnacle door where the Jelly had emerged. The wedges of broken shell hung loose. Past them was a globular room half-full of greenish water. Ribbons of what resembled algae floated within the tranquil reservoir, and tiny insect-like creatures skated upon the bowed surface, tracing lines and rings. The word sfennic rose unbidden within her mind, along with a sense of crunchy, quick upon the skin.… At the bottom of the pool was a pod or workstation of some sort.

The water ought to have been drifting around in blobs, free to wander the interior of the room so long as the ship was in free fall. Instead, it clung to one half of the room, as still and steady as any planet-bound pool.

Kira recognized the effect of the Jellies’ artificial gravity. It seemed to be a localized field, as she didn’t feel anything at the entrance to the room.

The artificial gravity didn’t interest her much. What she really wanted to study were the sfennic and the algae-like growths. Even a few cells would be enough to run a full genomic analysis.

But she had to keep moving.

Fast as she dared, she cleared the next several rooms. None of them held Trig, and none had any recognizable function. Maybe this one was a bathroom. Maybe that one was a shrine. Maybe something else entirely. The Soft Blade wasn’t telling, and without its help, any explanation seemed likely. That was the problem when dealing with alien cultures (human or otherwise), the lack of context.

One thing Kira knew for certain: the Jellies had changed the layout of their ships since the Soft Blade had been on them. The arrangement of rooms felt wholly unfamiliar.

She saw plenty of evidence of battle damage: holes from shrapnel, laser burns, melted composites—evidence of the ship’s clash with the UMC at Malpert Station. The light flickered, and warping, whale-song alarms sounded elsewhere in the ship. The scents of … warning, danger, and fear stained the air.

At the end of the shaft, the passageway forked. Kira’s gut told her to go left, so left she went, driven onward by desperation. Where is he? She was starting to worry it was already too late to save the kid.

She passed through three more of the ubiquitous shell doors, and then a fourth one opened to another spherical chamber.

The room felt enormous—the walls barely curved as they extended out from her—but it was hard to be sure of the true size of the space. A thick bank of smoke clogged the air, dimming the usual blue illumination to the point that it was difficult to see much past the ends of her arms.

Fear crept up Kira’s side. The room was the perfect place for an ambush.

She needed to see. If only … She concentrated upon her need, concentrated with all her might, and she felt a tickle atop her eyeballs. Her vision twisted, like a sheet being wrung dry, and then it snapped flat and the haze seemed to retreat (though the far end of the room remained obscured) as everything went monochrome.

The chamber must have been over thirty meters across, if not more. Unlike the other rooms, it had structures throughout: branches of pale scaffolding pocked with a bone-like matrix. A black walkway lined the inner circumference of the back half of the space. Mounted to the walls on either side of the walkway were rows upon rows of what appeared to be … pods. Huge and solid, they hummed with electrical power, and bright rings of magnetic force chained them to hidden circuits.

Dread mingled with curiosity as Kira looked at the nearest one.

The front of the pod was made of a translucent material, milky and pale, like the skin of an egg. Through it, she saw an indistinct shape, hazy, convoluted, and difficult to resolve into anything recognizable.

The object shifted, unmistakably alive.

Kira gasped and jerked back, raising the grenade launcher. The thing inside the pod was a Jelly, its tentacles wrapped around itself and bobbing softly in a viscous liquid.

She nearly shot the creature; only the fact that it didn’t react to her sudden movement—and her desire to avoid unwanted attention—stopped her. Were they birthing chambers? Cryo tubes? Sleeping containers? Some sort of crèche? She glanced around the room. Her lips moved under the mask as she counted: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven … Forty-nine in total. Fourteen of the pods were smaller than the rest, but even so, forty-nine more Jellies, if all the pods were full. More than enough to overwhelm her and everyone on the Wallfish.

Trig.

She’d worry about the pods later.

Kira braced herself against the rim of the portal and then kicked off toward one of the spars of scaffolding. As she flew toward it, a silvery rod shot out of the haze deeper in the chamber.

She jerked up her arm and knocked it aside. The xeno hardened around her forearm enough to keep her wrist from breaking.

Her motion and the impact sent her spinning away. She tried to grab the spar, and for a moment her fingers swung through empty air—

She ought to have missed. She ought to have kept spinning. But instead, Kira reached and the Soft Blade reached with her, extruding tendrils in a natural extension of her fingers until they looped around the spar and brought her to a teeth-clattering stop.

Interesting.

Behind her, Kira saw a clawed something leap from spar to spar as it pursued her. In the shadows, the creature looked dark, almost black. Spikes and claws and odd little limbs protruded from it at unexpected angles. A Jelly of a sort she hadn’t seen before. The creature’s size was difficult to gauge, but it was bigger than her. In one of its claws, it carried another of the silvery rods: a meter long and mirror bright.

She fired Francesca at the alien, but it was moving too fast for her to hit, even with the suit’s help. The grenade exploded against the opposite side of the chamber, destroying one of the pods and providing a lightning-flash of illumination.

By it, Kira glimpsed two things: near the back of the room, a bulky, human-shaped figure tethered among the spars. Trig. And also the alien’s claw lashing out as it sent the second rod hurtling toward her.

She couldn’t dodge in time. The rod struck her in the ribs, and although the Soft Blade did its best to protect her, the impact still left her dazed and gasping in pain. Half her side went numb, and she lost her grip on the grenade launcher. It spun away.

Trig! Somehow she had to get to the kid.

The alien snapped its claws and sprang toward her. The creature wasn’t like the other Jellies; it didn’t have tentacles, and she saw what seemed to be a cluster of eyes and other sensory organs along one side of its rubbery, soft-skinned body: a rudimentary face that gave her a definite sense of which end was the front and which end the back.

Desperate, Kira tried to attack with the Soft Blade. Strike! Slash! Tear! She wished the xeno would do all those things.

It did. But not as she expected.

Clusters of spikes erupted from her body and jabbed in random directions, wild and undisciplined. Each was like a punch to her body, pushing her in the opposite direction of the deadly shards. She tried to direct them with her mind, and while she could feel the xeno respond to her commands, the response was badly coordinated—a blind beast flailing in pursuit of its prey, overreacting to ill-mated stimuli.

The reaction was instantaneous. The clawed alien twisted in midair, throwing off its trajectory so it just missed being impaled. At the same time, a spurt of nearscent tainted the air with shock, fear, and something Kira felt was akin to reverence.

[[Kveti here: The Idealis! The Manyform lives! Stop it!]]

Kira retracted the spikes and was about to jump after the grenade launcher when a soft, slithery shape crawled around the spar she was clinging to: a tentacle, thick and probing. She slashed at it, but she was too slow. The trunk-like slab of muscle slapped her and sent her flying head over heels until her back slammed into another piece of scaffolding.

Even through the suit, the impact hurt. Despite the pain, she concentrated on holding her position, and the Soft Blade clung to the spar for her and stopped her from spiraling away.

The clawed monstrosity clung to a forked shaft some distance away, beyond the reach of the blade. There, it raised its bony arms and shook them at her, snapping its claws like a crazed castanet dancer.

Past it, she saw the owner of the tentacle—another of the squid-like Jellies—emerge from behind the spar she’d been knocked off of. The squid’s tentacles pulsed with luminous bands, startlingly bright in the gloom. In one tentacle, the alien held … not a laser. A long, flat-barreled weapon of some kind. A portable railgun?

Ten, twelve meters away, Kira spotted the grenade launcher.

She jumped for it.

There was a bang like two boards clapping together, and a bolt of pain punched through her ribs.

Her heart faltered, and for a moment her vision went black.

Panicked, Kira lashed out with the Soft Blade, stabbing in every direction. But it didn’t help, and another bolt of pain struck her right leg. She felt herself start to spin.

Her vision cleared as she collided with the grenade launcher. She grabbed it, and as she did, she saw the clawed, crab-like alien jumping toward her.

Her suit continued to send forth spikes, but the alien evaded them with ease. The arms on its segmented body unfolded, reaching toward her head with jagged spurs, sharp and sawlike. Electricity sparked between the tips of them, bright as a welding arc.

In a detached, almost analytical manner, Kira realized the alien was trying to decapitate her, so as to break her bond with the Soft Blade.

She raised the rifle, but too slow. Far, far too slow.

Just before the creature collided with her, a jet of ablated flesh erupted from the alien’s side. Across the room, Trig’s power armor lowered its arm.

Then the alien crashed into Kira’s face. Its legs wrapped around her skull, and everything went black as its soft belly covered her face. Pain bloomed in her left forearm as a crushing weight seemed to pinch it from either side. The pain was so intense, she saw it as much as she felt it—saw it as a flood of lurid yellow light radiating from her arm.

Kira screamed into her mask and punched the alien with her other arm, punched and punched and punched. Muscle gave beneath her fist, and bones or something like bones cracked.

The pain seemed to last an eternity.

As suddenly as it had started, the pressure on her arm vanished, and the clawed alien went limp.

Shaking, Kira shoved the corpse away. In the shadowy light, the creature looked like a dead spider.

Her forearm hung from the elbow at an unnatural angle, half-severed by a jagged gash that passed through both the suit and the muscles below. But even as she looked, black threads wove back and forth across the wound, and she felt the Soft Blade beginning to draw the gash closed and repair her arm.

While she’d been occupied, the other Jelly had jetted back to Trig and wrapped itself around his armor. A tentacle pulled on each arm and leg, twisting and straining as the creature struggled to tear the exoskeleton (and Trig himself) into pieces.

Another few seconds, and Kira felt sure it would.

There was a spar close to the Jelly. She aimed the grenade launcher at it, said a quick prayer to Thule for the kid’s safety, and fired.

BOOM!

The shockwave tore off three of the Jelly’s tentacles, smashed open its carapace, and sprayed ichor in a sickly fountain. The severed tentacles flew away, twisting and flopping.

Trig was knocked away as well. For a moment he didn’t move, and then his power armor jerked and reoriented itself, tiny attitude jets firing along its legs and arms.

Kira pushed herself toward the kid, hardly able to believe that he was still alive—that either of them had survived. Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him.… She pleaded with the Soft Blade in her mind, hoping it would listen.

As she drew near, Trig’s visor faded clear to reveal his face. The kid was pale and sweating, and the bluish light made him appear ghastly ill.

He stared at her, his pupils rimmed by white. “What the hell?!”

Kira looked down to see spikes still protruding from the Soft Blade. “I’ll explain later,” she said. “You okay?”

Trig nodded, shaking sweat off his nose. “Yeah. I had to reboot the exo. Took me this long to get it powered back up.… My, uh, wrist might be broken, but I can still—”

Falconi’s voice broke in: *Navárez, you read? Over.* In the background, Kira heard shouts and the pop! pop! pop! of gunfire.

“I’m here. Over,” she said.

*Did you find Trig? Where are—*

“He’s here. He’s fine.”

At the same time, Trig said, “I’m fine, Captain.”

*Then get your ass down to the starboard hold. There’s another Jelly here. Cut its way through the hull. We’ve got it pinned down, but we can’t get a good angle—*

Kira and Trig were already moving.

4.

“Grab hold,” shouted Trig. Kira hooked an arm through a handle at the top of his exo, the kid fired his thrusters, and the two of them flew toward the door where they’d entered.

This time the shell didn’t open, and they nearly crashed into it before Trig was able to stop. He raised an arm and fired a laser into the surrounding wall. With three quick cuts, he parted whatever control mechanisms the door had, and the wedges of the shell separated and hung loose, pale fluid oozing from the seals around their base.

Kira shuddered as they flew through the opening and the tip of a wedge scraped across her back.

Outside the room, the compulsion was insistent and seductive, impossible to ignore. It drew Kira toward a curved section of the near bulkhead—toward and past. Were she to pursue the signal, Kira knew with certainty she would find its source, and perhaps then she might have respite and some answers to the nature and origin of the Soft Blade.…

“Thanks for coming after me,” Trig said. “Thought I was a goner.”

She grunted. “Just go faster.”

None of the other doors would part to let them through. It took Trig only a few seconds to slice them open, but every delay worsened Kira’s sense of dread and urgency.

Past the panel with the blinking lights they flew. Down the circular shaft and over the room with the algae-laden water and the tiny insects with their feathery crests. And then toward the ship’s airlock chamber, where the corpse of the first Jelly floated, leaking ichor and other fluids.

Kira separated from Trig as they reached the airlock. “Don’t shoot!” the kid shouted. “It’s us.”

The warning was a good idea. Vishal, Nielsen, and the Entropists were waiting for them in the Wallfish antechamber, weapons trained on the open airlock. The doctor had a bandage wrapped around his leg, where the shrapnel had struck him.

Relief swept across Nielsen’s face as they flew into view. “Hurry,” she said, moving out of the way.

Kira followed Trig to the center of the ship, and then aft toward the lowest level and the cargo holds. The sounds of lasers and gunfire echoed as they neared, and also the screams of terrified passengers.

At the starboard hold, they paused behind the pressure door—cautious—and then peeked around the frame.

All the refugees huddled at one end of the hold, gathered behind crates and using them as cover, meager though it was. At the opposite end of the hold lurked the tentacled Jelly; it was pressed flat behind a crate of its own. A ragged hole, half a meter across, marred the hull next to it. The wind screaming through the opening had pulled a loose wall panel against the breach, blocking part of it. A small bit of good fortune. Through the narrowed opening, the dark of space showed.

Falconi, Sparrow, and Hwa-jung were spread out across the middle of the hold, clinging to the support ribs and taking occasional shots at the Jelly.

The refugees, Kira realized, couldn’t leave without being shot by the Jelly. And the Jelly couldn’t move without being shot by Falconi and his crew.

Even with the door to the hold open, they only had a few minutes before the air ran out. No longer. Already she could feel the thinness of it, and there was a dangerous chill to the wind.

“Stay here,” Kira said to Trig. Before he could respond, she took a breath and, despite her fear, jumped toward Falconi.

She heard a half-dozen bzzts as the Jelly fired a laser. The alien couldn’t have missed, but she only felt one of the hits: a white-hot needle that stabbed deep into her shoulder. She barely had time to gasp before the pain began to subside.

A burst of gunfire erupted as Falconi and Sparrow attempted to give her cover.

As Kira landed next to Falconi, he grabbed her arm to keep her from drifting away. “Shit!” he growled. “The hell were you thinking?”

“Helping. Here.” And she shoved the grenade launcher toward him.

The captain’s face lit up. He snatched the weapon from her and, without a moment’s hesitation, swung it over the rib and fired at the Jelly.

BOOM! A white flash obscured the crate hiding the Jelly. Metal fragments splattered the surrounding walls, and smoke billowed outward.

Several of the refugees screamed.

Sparrow twisted back toward Falconi. “Watch it! Not so close to the civvies!”

Kira gestured at the crate. It hardly appeared dented. “What’s that thing made of? Titanium?”

“Pressure container,” said Falconi. “Biocontainment. Damn thing is built to survive reentry.”

Sparrow and Hwa-jung let off a burst of shots toward the Jelly. Kira stayed where she was. What else could she do? The Jelly was at least fifteen meters away. Too far for—

A fresh set of screams sounded from among the refugees. Kira looked back to see a tiny body squirming in the air, a child no more than six or seven years old. The girl had somehow lost her handhold and floated away from the deck.

A man scrambled free of the mass of refugees and threw himself after the child. “Stay down!” Falconi shouted, but too late. The man caught the girl, and the impact sent them into an uncontrolled tumble down the middle of the hold.

Surprise made Kira slow to react. Sparrow beat her to it; the armored woman abandoned the rib she was behind and flew at full thruster speed toward the two refugees.

Falconi cursed and lunged in a failed attempt to stop Sparrow from leaving cover.

A fan of inky smoke sprayed around the Jelly, hiding it. With her enhanced vision, Kira could still see a tangled outline of the Jelly’s tentacles as it crawled toward a service ladder attached to the wall.

She fired into the smoke, as did Hwa-jung.

The Jelly flinched even as it wrapped a tentacle around one of the ladder’s side struts and, seemingly without effort, tore it free.

Fast as a striking snake, it threw the strut at Sparrow.

The jagged piece of metal struck Sparrow in the abdomen, between two segments of her power armor. Half of the strut emerged from her back.

Hwa-jung screamed, a horrible, high-pitched sound that seemed impossible coming from someone her size.

5.

A rush of blinding anger washed away Kira’s fear. Swinging herself around the edge of the rib, she launched herself after the Jelly.

Behind her, Falconi shouted something.

As she hurtled toward the Jelly, the alien spread its tentacles, as if to welcome her into its embrace. From it emanated nearscent of contempt, and for the first time, she responded in kind:

[[Kira here: Die, grasper!]]

An instant of astonishment that the Soft Blade let her not only comprehend but communicate in the alien language. Then she did what seemed only right: she stabbed with her arm, and she stabbed with her heart and her mind, and she channeled all of her fear, pain, and anger into the act.

In that moment, Kira felt something break in her mind, like a glass rod snapping in two, followed by fractures and fragments fitting into place throughout her consciousness—puzzle pieces sliding into their appointed slots, and accompanying the joining, a sense of profound completeness.

To her astonished relief, the xeno fused solid around her fingers and a thin, flat blade shot from her hand and pierced the alien’s carapace. The creature thrashed from side to side, its tentacles knotting and squirming in a helpless frenzy.

Then, of their own accord, a pincushion of black spines sprouted from the end of the blade and impaled every part of the Jelly.

Her momentum carried the alien back against the far wall. There they stuck, the nanoneedles from the suit pinning the Jelly to the hull.

The alien shuddered and ceased thrashing, although the tentacles continued to turn and twist in a lazy rhythm, pennants rippling in the breeze. And the nearscent of death filled the hold.

CHAPTER VII. ICONS & INDICATIONS

1.

Kira waited a moment more before allowing the blade and spines to retract. The Jelly deflated like a balloon, ichor oozing from the countless wounds across its body.

The cloud of smoke was already dispersing, streaming into space. Kira kicked herself away from the Jelly, and the raging wind pushed the corpse into the breach. The alien lodged there on top of the loose wall panel, blocking most of the hole. The scream of wind lessened to a high whistle.

Kira turned to see the refugees staring at her with shock and fear. With some regret, she realized there was no hiding the Soft Blade now. The secret was out, for good or for ill.

Ignoring the refugees, she pulled herself over to where Trig, Falconi, and Hwa-jung were gathered around Sparrow’s limp form.

The machine boss had her forehead pressed against Sparrow’s faceplate, and she was speaking in a low tone, the words an indistinct murmur. Smoke drifted from the back of Sparrow’s armor, and an exposed wire was sparking. A ring of white medifoam had welled out around the strut that impaled her. The foam would have stopped the bleeding, but Kira wasn’t sure if that would be enough to save her.

“Doc, get down here. On the double!” said Falconi.

Kira swallowed, her mouth dry. “What can I do?” Up close, Hwa-jung’s murmurs were no more distinct than before. Globules of tears clung to the machine boss’s red-rimmed eyes, and her cheeks were pale, save for a bright, feverish spot on each side.

“Hold her feet,” said Falconi. “Keep her from moving.” He looked over at the refugees—who were starting to emerge from cover—and shouted, “Get out of here before we run out of air! Get into the other hold. Scram!”

They complied, giving a wide berth to not only Sparrow but Kira.

“Gregorovich, how long until air pressure drops below fifty percent?” Kira asked.

The ship mind answered with sharp efficiency, “At current rates, twelve minutes. If the Jelly is dislodged, no more than forty seconds.”

The sides of Sparrow’s boots were cool against her hands as Kira gripped them. For a moment she wondered how it was possible to feel that when even the cold of space hadn’t fazed her.

Then she realized her mind was wandering. Now that the fighting was over, the adrenaline was starting to drain out of her system. Another few minutes and she was going to crash.

Vishal came flying through the door to the cargo hold, carrying with him a satchel with a silver cross sewn on the front.

“Move,” he said as he collided with the crate next to Kira.

She obliged, and he rotated himself over Sparrow and stared through her faceplate, same as Hwa-jung. Then he pushed himself down to where the strut jutted out of her abdomen. The wrinkles on his face deepened.

“Can you—” Trig started to say.

“Quiet,” Vishal snapped.

He studied the rod for another few seconds and then moved around to Sparrow’s back and examined the other end. “You,” he pointed at Trig, “cut here and here.” With his middle finger, he drew a line across the rod, a hand’s breadth above Sparrow’s stomach, and the same above her back. “Use a beam, not a pulse.”

Trig positioned himself next to Sparrow so the laser wouldn’t hit anyone else. Through his visor, Kira could see his face was coated with sweat and his eyes were glassy. He lifted one arm and aimed the emitter on his gauntlet at the rod. “Eyes and ears,” he said.

The strut flared white hot, and the composite tubing vaporized with a popping sound. An acrid, plastic smell filled the air.

The strut parted, and Falconi grabbed the loose section and gave it a gentle push toward the far end of the hold.

Then Trig repeated the operation on the other side of the strut. Hwa-jung snared that piece and threw it away with a vicious gesture; it bounced against a wall.

“Good,” said Vishal. “I locked her armor; she is safe to move. Just do not bang her into anything.”

“Sickbay?” Falconi asked.

“Posthaste.”

“I’ll do it,” said Hwa-jung. Her voice was as hard and rough as broken stone. Without waiting for them to agree, she grabbed a handle on Sparrow’s armor and pulled the rigid shell of metal toward the open pressure door.

2.

Trig and Vishal accompanied Hwa-jung as she guided Sparrow out of the hold. Falconi stayed behind, and Kira with him.

“Hurry up,” he shouted, gesturing at the remaining refugees.

They pulled themselves past in a confused bunch. Kira was relieved to see that the girl and man Sparrow had been attempting to protect were unharmed.

When the last refugees had left, she followed Falconi into the corridor outside. He closed and locked the pressure door behind them, isolating the damaged hold.

Kira allowed the mask to retract from her face, glad to be rid of it. Color diffused through her vision, returning a sense of reality to her surroundings.

A hand on her wrist surprised her. Falconi held her, his gaze disconcertingly intense. “What the hell were those spikes back there? You didn’t say anything about them before.”

Kira yanked her hand free. Now wasn’t the time to explain, not about the suit and certainly not about how her teammates had died. “I didn’t want to scare you,” she said.

His face darkened. “Anything else you didn’t—”

Just then, four refugees—all men—walked over, using the gecko pads on their boots. None of them looked happy. “Hey, Falconi,” said the leader. He was a tough, thickset man with a short circle beard. Kira vaguely remembered seeing him in the cargo hold before.

“What?” said Falconi, brusque.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but we didn’t agree to go chasing after Jellies. You’re already screwing us over with how much you’re charging us; now you’re dragging us into battle? And I don’t know what she’s got going on, but normal it’s not.” He pointed at Kira. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you? There are women and children here. If you don’t get us to Ruslan—”

“You’ll do what?” Falconi said sharply. He eyed them, his hands still on the grip of his grenade launcher. The weapon was empty, but Kira didn’t feel the need to mention that. “Try to fly out of here with a pissed-off ship mind?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Gregorovich from above, and he tittered.

The man shrugged and cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, yeah. You know what, wiseguy? I’d rather take a chance with your crazy-ass ship mind than chance getting shish-kebabbed by the Jellies, like your crewmember did. And I’m not the only one that feels so.” He wagged a finger at Falconi and then he and the other men returned to the other cargo hold.

“Well that went well,” said Kira.

Falconi grunted, and she followed him as he hurried back to the center of the ship and kicked his way up the main shaft. He said, “Are there any other Jellies on their ship?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m pretty sure Trig and I found their birthing chamber.”

The captain snared the handhold next to the doorway to deck C, where the sickbay was. He paused and held up a finger. “Trig, you copy?… Navárez says you found birthing pods?… You got it. Burn them out. And fast, too, or we’re going to be in a shit-ton of trouble.”

“You’re sending him back out there?” Kira said as Falconi headed through the doorway and down the adjacent corridor.

The captain nodded. “Someone’s got to do it, and he’s the only one with functioning armor.”

The thought bothered Kira. The kid had a broken wrist; if he were attacked again …

Before she could voice her concern, they arrived at sickbay. Nielsen floated outside, an arm around Hwa-jung’s shoulders, comforting the machine boss.

“Any news?” Falconi asked.

Nielsen looked at him with a worried expression. “Vishal just kicked us out. He’s working on her now.”

“Will she live?”

Hwa-jung nodded. Her eyes were red from crying. “Yes. My little Sparrow will live.”

Some of the tension in Falconi’s posture eased. He ran a hand over his head, tousling his hair. “Damn foolish of her to jump out the way she did.”

“But brave,” said Nielsen firmly.

Falconi tipped his head. “Yes. Very brave.” Then to Hwa-jung: “The pressure breach in the hold needs fixing, and we’re out of repair bots.”

Hwa-jung nodded slowly. “I’ll fix it once Vishal is finished operating.”

“That could take a while,” said Falconi. “Better to get started on it now. We’ll let you know if there’s any news.”

“No,” said Hwa-jung in her deep rumble. “I want to be here when Sparrow wakes.”

Falconi’s jaw muscles bunched. “There’s a goddam hole in the side of the ship, Hwa-jung. It needs to get patched, now. I shouldn’t have to tell you.”

“I’m sure it can wait a few minutes,” said Nielsen in a placating tone.

“Actually, it can’t,” said Falconi. “The Jelly ripped open a coolant line when it cut its way in. We’re dead in the water until a replacement is hooked up. I also don’t want our passengers roaming around the other hold.”

Hwa-jung shook her head. “I won’t leave until Sparrow wakes.”

“Gods above and—”

The machine boss continued as if he hadn’t spoken: “She will expect me to be here when she wakes. She’ll be upset if I’m not, so I will wait.”

Falconi planted his boots flat on the deck, anchoring them so he stood upright, swaying in the zero-g. “I’m giving you a direct order, Song. As your captain. You understand that, don’t you?” Hwa-jung stared at him, her face immobile. “I’m ordering you to go down to the cargo hold and fix that shi-bal breach.”

“Yes, sir. As soon as—”

Falconi scowled. “As soon as? As soon as what?!”

Hwa-jung blinked. “As soon as—”

“No, you head down there right now and you get this ship running again. Right now, or you can consider yourself relieved, and I’ll put Trig in charge of engineering.”

Hwa-jung clenched her hands, and for a moment Kira thought she would strike Falconi. Then the machine boss broke; Kira saw it in her eyes and the slump of her shoulders. A dark scowl on her face, Hwa-jung pushed herself down the corridor. She paused at the end and, without looking back, said, “If anything happens to Sparrow while I’m gone, you’ll have to answer to me, Captain.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Falconi said in a tight voice. Then Hwa-jung vanished around the corner, and he relaxed slightly.

“Captain…” said Nielsen.

He sighed. “I’ll sort it out with her later. She’s not thinking clearly.”

“Can you blame her?”

“I suppose not.”

Kira said, “How long have they been together?”

“Long time,” said Falconi. Then he and Nielsen began to discuss the state of the ship, trying to figure out which systems were compromised, how long they could keep the refugees in the other hold, and more.

Kira listened, feeling increasingly impatient. The thought of Trig alone on the alien ship continued to bother her, and she was eager to start digging answers out of the Jellies’ computers before anything happened to disable them.

“Listen,” she said, interrupting. “I’m going to go check on Trig, see if he needs help. Then I’m going to try and find out what I can.”

Falconi gave her a critical look. “Sure you’re up for it? You look a little off.”

“I’m fine.”

“… Alright. Let me know once the ship is clear. I’ll send over the Entropists. That is, if they’re interested in examining the Jellies’ tech.”

3.

Kira made her way to deck D and then flew along the curve of the outer hull until she arrived at the airlock that joined them with the alien vessel.

Again she had the Soft Blade cover her face, and then with a twinge of apprehension, she dove back through the short, white tube of the Jellies’ airlock into the murky shadows beyond.

The aching pull was as strong as ever, but Kira ignored it for the time being.

When she arrived at the chamber with the birthing pods, she found Trig going around to each cloudy pod and incinerating it with a flamethrower mounted on his forearm. As he played the jet of fire across one of the larger pods, something thrashed within: an unsettling collection of arms, legs, claws, and tentacles.

“All good?” Kira asked as the kid finished.

He gave her two thumbs up. *I still have another dozen or so to go. The captain sent me here just in time; at least two of the pods were about to hatch.*

“Charming,” Kira said. “I’m going to go poke around. If you need any help, just let me know.”

*Same.*

As she left the chamber, Kira put a call through to Falconi: “You can send the Entropists over. Ship should be safe now.”

*Roger that.*

Kira took her time exploring. Her impatience was stronger than ever, but there was no telling what dangers the Jelly ship held, and she was in no hurry to fall into a trap. She kept close to the walls and, wherever possible, made sure to have a clear line to the exit.

The siren-call seemed to be coming from the front of the ship, so Kira headed in that direction, passing through circuitous corridors and half-lit rooms that, more often as not, were half-full of water. Now that she wasn’t in immediate fear of her life, Kira noticed patches of nearscent at certain points within the ships.

One said: [[Forward]]

Another said: [[Co-form Restriction Sfar]]

Yet another said: [[Aspect of the Void]]

And more besides. There was writing also: branching lines that repeated the message of the nearscent. That she could read the lines gave Kira hope: the Jellies were still using a written language the Soft Blade recognized.

At last she arrived at the very front of the ship: a hemispherical room wedded to the prow of the vessel. For the most part it was empty, save for a twisting, branching structure that dominated the center of the room. The material was red (the only red she’d seen on the ship) and textured with tiny pits. Overall, it reminded her of nothing so much as coral. The structure aroused her professional interest, and she detoured to examine it.

When she tried to touch one of the branches, an invisible force repelled her hand. She frowned. Naturally occurring gravity fields were attractive (or at least gave the appearance of such). But this … The Jellies had to be using their inertial tech to increase the flow and density of spacetime around the branches to create an area of positive pressure. That would mean their artificial gravity was a push not a pull. As in, it would push her against the floor. Still, she could be wrong. That sort of thing was way outside her area of expertise.

The Entropists have to see this.

Strong as the field was, by anchoring herself against the floor with the Soft Blade, she was able to push her hand through it. The coral-like structure (growth? sculpture?) was chill to the touch, and slick from condensed moisture. Despite the pits in the material, it was smooth. When she tapped it, a sharp, brittle tink sounded.

It sure felt like calcium carbonate, but Kira wasn’t sure of anything when it came to the Jellies.

Leaving the structure, she followed the tug of obscure sorrow to a section of wall covered with glassy panes and dotted with starry lights. She stood before it, and the ache within her was so strong, it caused her eyes to water.

A double blink, and then she studied the panes, searching for a hint of where to begin. She touched the glass—afraid of what might happen if she activated machines or programs without intending to—but there was no response. She wished the xeno would tell her how to work the console. Maybe it couldn’t.

She ran her hand across the glass, again with no results. Then, for the first time, she tried to consciously produce nearscent. The Soft Blade responded with gratifying ease:

[[Kira here: Open … Activate … Access … Computer…]]

She tried all the normal words and phrases she would use with her overlays, but the glass remained dark. Kira began to wonder if she was even in front of a computer. Maybe the panels were just decorative elements. But that didn’t seem right; the transmitter for the summons was obviously near. There ought to be controls of some sort nearby.

She considered going back to the birthing chamber and cutting off a tentacle from the corpse of the dead Jelly. Maybe DNA or a tentacle-print was needed to access the computer.

She put off the thought as an option of last resort.

Finally, she tried saying:

[[Kira here: Two-form … Manyform … Idealis…]]

A kaleidoscope of colors blossomed across the panels: a dazzling display of icons, indicators, images, and writing. At the same time, puffs of nearscent wafted past, pungent in their intensity.

Her nose itched, and a sharp pain formed behind her right temple. Words jumped out at her—some written, some scented—words freighted with meaning and memories not her own.

[[… the Sundering…]]

The spike of pain intensified, blinding her—

Battles and bloodshed against the spread of stars. Planets won and lost, ships burned, bodies broken. And everywhere, graspers killing graspers.

She fought for the flesh, and she was not the only one. There had been six others set in the ancient reliquary, placed there to wait in readiness for the expected summons. Like her, they joined with the grasping flesh, and like her, the flesh drove them to violence.

Some fights she and her siblings were allied. Some fights, they found themselves pitted one against the other. And that too was a perversion of the pattern. Never had it been intended, not in all the fractures they served.

The conflict had roused a Seeker from its crystalline cocoon. It looked upon the torment of the war and moved to eradicate all such wrongness, as was its wont. And the Sundering had consumed flesh old and new.

Of the six, three were slain in battle, while one more fell into the heart of a neutron star, one went mad and killed itself, and one was lost in the bright realm of superluminal space. The Seeker too had perished; its abilities in the end no match for the swarms of flesh.

Only she, of all her siblings, remained. Only she still carried the shape of the pattern within the fibers of her being.…

Kira let out a low cry and hunched over, her mind spinning. A war. There had been a terrible war, and the Soft Blade had fought in it along with others of its kind.

Blinking away the tears, she forced her gaze back to the panel. More words sprang out at her:

[[… now the Arms…]]

She cried out again.

Ctein. The great and mighty Ctein. It basked in the wash of heat from the nearby vent in the ocean floor, and its tendrils and feelers (too numerous to count) waved in gentle accord.

[[Ctein here: Speak your news.]]

Her flesh answered: [[Nmarhl here: The spinward shoal has been destroyed by the indulgence of the Tfeir.]]

Upon its mounded rock the terrible Ctein pulsed with bands of color, luminous in the purple depths of the Plaintive Verge. It smote the rock with a thrashing arm, and from the prominence rose a billow of blackened mud flecked through with pieces of chitin, broken and decaying.

[[Ctein here: TRAITORS! HERETICS! BLASPHEMERS!]]

Kira winced and looked at the deck by her feet while she regained a sense of place and being. Her head was throbbing enough to make her want to take a pill.

As she reviewed the memory, she felt a sense of … not affection but perhaps regard for Nmarhl from the Soft Blade. The xeno didn’t seem to hate that particular Jelly the way it did the others. Odd.

She took a fortifying breath and again braved the panel.

[[… Whirlpool…]] An impression of hunger and danger and distortion intertwined—

[[… farscent, lowsound…]] FTL communications—

[[… forms…]] Jellies, in all their different shapes—

[[… Wranaui…]] At the word, Kira stopped, feeling as if she’d crashed into a wall. Recognition emanated from the Soft Blade, and with a slight sense of shock, Kira realized that Wranaui was the name the Jellies used for themselves. She couldn’t tell if it was a racial or species term or just a cultural designation, but from the Soft Blade at least, there was no doubt whatsoever: this was what the Jellies called themselves.

[[Kira here: Wranaui.]] She explored the feel of the smell. There was no exact vocal equivalent; nearscent was the only way to properly say the name.

With trepidation, she resumed studying the displays. To her relief, the flashes of memories grew shorter and more infrequent, although they never entirely stopped. It was a mixed blessing; the intrusive visions kept her from focusing, but they also contained valuable information.

She persisted.

The Jellies’ language seemed relatively unchanged since the last time the Soft Blade had encountered it, but the terms Kira encountered were context dependent, and context was something she so often lacked. It was like trying to understand technical jargon in a field she wasn’t familiar with, only a thousand times worse.

The effort exacerbated her headache.

She tried to be methodical. She tried to keep track of every action she took and every piece of information the computer threw at her, but it was too much. Far, far too much. At least her overlays were keeping an audiovisual record. Maybe she could make more sense of what she was seeing once she was back in her cabin.

Unfortunately, she had no way to copy the nearscent for later study. Again Kira wished she had implants, ones capable of full-spectrum sensory recordings.

But she didn’t, and there was no changing it.

Kira frowned. She had hoped it would be easier to find useful information on the Jellies’ computer. After all, it wasn’t hard for her to understand the aliens when they spoke. Or at least that was the impression the Soft Blade gave her.

In the end, she resorted to pushing random icons on the panels, hoping that she wouldn’t accidently vent the air or fire a missile or somehow trigger a self-destruct. That would be a bad way to go.

“Come on, you piece of shit,” she muttered, and hit the paneling with the heel of her hand.

Alas, percussive maintenance didn’t help.

She was just grateful there was no sign of pseudo-intelligences or other forms of digital assistants guarding the computer system, and no indication that the Jellies had anything similar to human ship minds.

What Kira really wanted to find was the Jelly equivalent of a wiki or an encyclopedia. It seemed obvious that an advanced species like theirs ought to carry a repository of scientific and cultural knowledge in their computer banks, but—as she was painfully aware—few things were obvious when it came to an alien species.

When button-pushing failed to yield helpful results, she forced herself to stop and reevaluate. Surely there was something else she could try.… Nearscent had worked before; perhaps it would work again.

She mentally cleared her voice and then said: [[Kira here: Open … open … shell records.]] Shell felt like the correct word for ship, so that was what she used.

Nothing.

She tried twice more with different wording. On her third try, a new window opened in the display, and she caught a whiff of welcome.

Gotcha!

Kira’s grin widened as she started to read. Just as she’d hoped: message logs. Not a wiki, but equally as valuable in their own way.

Most of the entries didn’t make sense to her, but some things started to become clear. First was that the Jellies had a highly stratified, hierarchical society, with one’s rank determined by all sorts of complicated factors, including which Arm you belonged to and which form you had. The specifics escaped Kira, but the Arms seemed to be some sort of political or military organizations. Or at least, that was what she assumed.

Many times in the messages she saw the phrase two-form. At first she thought it was a term for the Soft Blade. But as she read, it became clear that couldn’t possibly be the meaning.

It was with a sense of revelation that she realized two-form had to be the Jellies’ term for humans. She spent some time puzzling over that. Do they mean men and women? Or something else? Interestingly enough, the Soft Blade didn’t seem to recognize the term. But then, why would it? Humans were newcomers to the galactic stage.

With that crucial piece of information, the messages began to make more sense, and Kira read with increasing avidness of ship movements, battle reports, and tactical assessments of 61 Cygni and other systems in the League. There were numerous mentions of travel times, and from the Soft Blade, Kira was able to glean a sense of the distances involved. The nearest Jelly base (system, planet, or station, she wasn’t sure) was several hundred light-years away. Which led her to wonder why no hint of the aliens had shown up in the League’s telescopes. The Jellies’ civilization had to be far older than two or three hundred years, and the light from their worlds had long since reached human-settled space.

She kept reading, trying to pick out confluences of meaning—trying to see the larger patterns.

Perversely, the more she understood of the aliens’ writing, the more confused she became. There were no references to the events at Adrasteia or to the Soft Blade, but there were references to attacks she’d never heard of: attacks not of Jellies on humans but of humans on Jellies. She also found lines that seemed to indicate the aliens believed that humans were the ones who had started the war by destroying … the Tower of Yrrith, and by tower she understood them to mean a space station.

At first Kira had difficulty believing that the Jellies—the Wranaui—thought they were the victims. A dozen different scenarios flashed through her mind. Maybe a deep-space cruiser like the Extenuating Circumstances had stumbled across the Jellies and, for whatever reason, initiated hostilities.

Kira shook her head. The summons was a maddening distraction, like a fly that wouldn’t stop buzzing about her head.

What she was reading didn’t make sense. The Jellies seemed convinced they were fighting for their very survival, as if they believed the two-forms posed an extinction-level threat.

As she continued to dig through the archive of messages, Kira began to notice repeated mentions of a … search the Wranaui were carrying out. They were looking for an object. A device of immense importance. Not the Soft Blade—that much she felt confident of, as they made no mention of Idealis—but whatever the object was, the Jellies thought it would allow them to not only defeat the League and win the war, but conquer the whole galaxy.

The back of Kira’s neck prickled with fear as she read. What could be so powerful? An unknown form of weapon? Xenos even more advanced than the Soft Blade?

So far, the Jellies didn’t know where the object was. That much was clear. The aliens appeared to believe it lay somewhere among a cluster of stars counter-spinward (by which Kira took them to mean against the galactic rotation).

One line in particular struck her: [[—when the Vanished made the Idealis.]] She went over it several times to make sure she understood. So the Soft Blade was a constructed thing. Were the Jellies saying that some other species had made it? Or were the Vanished also Jellies?

Then she chanced upon the name of the object: the Staff of Blue.

For a moment, the sounds of the ship ceased and all Kira heard was the pounding of her pulse. She knew that name. Unbidden, a spasm roiled the Soft Blade, and with it a wave of information. Understanding. Remembrance:

She saw a star—the same reddish star she had beheld once before. Then her view rushed outward, and the star appeared set among its nearest neighbors, but the constellations were strange to her, and she felt no sense for how they fit within the shape of the heavens.

A disjunction, and she saw the Staff of Blue, the fearsome Staff of Blue. It swung, and flesh and fibers tore themselves apart.

It swung, and ranks of machines crumpled beneath the blow.

It swung, and a sheaf of shining towers tumbled to the cratered ground.

It swung, and spaceships blossomed as fiery flowers.

Another place … another time … a chamber tall and stark, with windows that looked upon a brownish planet wreathed with clouds. Beyond it hung the ruddy star, huge in its nearness. By the largest window, dark against the swirling shine, she saw the Highmost standing. Gaunt of limb, strong of will, the first among the first. The Highmost crossed one set of arms, the other held the Staff of Blue. And she mourned for what now was lost.

Kira returned to reality with a start. “Shit.” She felt light-headed, overwhelmed. Certainty gripped her that she had just seen one of the Vanished in the form of the Highmost. And it had definitely not been one of the Jellies.

Which meant?… She was having difficulty focusing, and the throbbing ache of the summons didn’t help.

The Staff of Blue was terrifying. If the Jellies got their tentacles on it … Kira shuddered at the thought. And not just her; the Soft Blade also. Humanity had to find the staff first. Had to.

Worried that she’d missed something, she returned to the message logs and started to go over them again.

The pressure in her skull pulsed, and shimmering halos appeared around the lights in the control room. Kira’s eyes watered. She blinked, but the halos didn’t go away.

“Enough,” she muttered. If anything, the summons grew stronger, drumming in her head with an inexorable beat, pounding, pulling, probing—drawing her toward the panel, an ancient duty yet unfulfilled …

She forced her attention back to the display. Surely there was a way to—

Another pulse of pain made her gasp.

Fear and frustration spilled over to anger, and she shouted, “Stop it!”

The Soft Blade rippled, and she felt it respond to the summons, answering it with an echo of her angry denial, an inaudible, invisible echo of radiated energy that raced outward, spreading, spreading … spreading across the system.

In that instant, Kira knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She lunged forward and plunged her fist through the glassy pane, willing the xeno to break, crush, and shatter in a desperate attempt to destroy the transmitter before it could pick up and rebroadcast her response.

The suit flowed down her arm and over her fingers. It spread across the wall like a web of tree roots, probing and seeking, burrowing ever deeper. The displays flickered, and those close to her hand guttered and went out, leaving a halo of darkness around her palm.

Kira felt the tendrils close around the source of the summons. She braced her feet against the wall, yanked on her arm, and tore the transmitter out of the center of the displays. What came free was a cylinder of purple crystal embedded with a dense honeycomb of silver veins that wavered as if distorted with heat ripples.

She squeezed the cylinder with the tendrils of the suit, squeezed with all her might, and the hunk of engineered crystal split and shattered. Stalks of silver sprouted between the tendrils as the xeno squished the metal like hot wax. And the compulsion diminished from an urgent necessity to a distant inclination.

Before she could recover, a scent intruded, a scent so strong, it was like a voice screaming in her ear:

[[Qwar here: Defiler! Blasphemer! Corrupter!]]

And Kira knew she was no longer alone. One of the Jellies was behind her, close enough she could feel an eddy of disturbed air tickle the back of her neck.

She stiffened. Her feet were still stuck to the wall. She couldn’t spin around fast enough—

BAM!

She flinched and half turned, half crouched while stabbing outward with the Soft Blade.

Behind her, an alien flopped in the air. It was brown and shiny and had a segmented body the size of man’s torso. A cluster of yellow-rimmed eyes surmounted its flat, neckless head. Pincers and feelers dangled from what could have been its chitinous mouth, and two rows of double-joined legs (each the size and length of her forearms) kicked and thrashed along its armored abdomen. From its lobster-tail rear trailed a pair of antenna-like appendages at least a meter long.

Orange ichor leaked from the base of the creature’s head.

BAM! BAM!

A pair of holes appeared in the alien’s plated side. Gore and viscera sprayed the floor. The alien kicked once more as it spun away and then was still.

At the far end of the room, Falconi lowered his pistol, a thread of smoke drifting from the barrel. “What in seven hells are you doing?”

4.

Kira straightened from her crouch and retracted the spikes that projected from every square centimeter of her skin. Her heart was racing so hard, it took a few seconds before she was able to convince her vocal cords to work.

“Was it…?”

“Yeah.” Falconi holstered his pistol. “It was about to take a chunk out of your neck.”

“Thanks.”

“Buy me a drink sometime and we’ll call it even.” He floated over and examined the oozing corpse. “What do you think it is? Their version of a dog?”

“No,” she said. “It was intelligent.”

He eyed her. “And you know that how?”

“It was saying things.”

“Charming.” He gestured at her gore-covered arm. “Again: What the hell? You haven’t been answering your comms.”

Kira looked at the hole she’d torn in the wall. Fear spiked her pulse. Had she (or rather, the Soft Blade) really responded to the summons? The enormity of the situation filled her with rising dread.

Before she could answer the captain, a beep sounded in her ear, and Gregorovich said: *Calamity, O my delightful infestations.* And he laughed with more than a hint of madness. *Every Jelly ship in the system has set themselves upon an intercept course with the Wallfish. Might I suggest unchecked terror and an expedited retreat?*

CHAPTER VIII. NOWHERE TO HIDE

1.

Falconi swore and gave Kira a flat glare. “Is this your doing?”

*Yes, what have you been up to, meatbag?* Gregorovich said.

Kira knew there was no hiding what had happened. She drew herself up, although she felt very small indeed. “There was a transmitter. I destroyed it.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed. “That—Why? And why would that tip off the Jellies?”

“That’s not what they call themselves.”

“Excuse me?” he said, sounding anything but polite.

“There’s no exact equivalent, but it’s something like—”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what the Jellies call themselves,” said Falconi. “You better start explaining why they’re coming after us, and fast too.”

So in as brief a manner as possible, Kira told him about the compulsion and how she had—inadvertently—responded to it.

When she finished, Falconi’s expression was so flat it scared her. She’d seen that look before on miners just before they decided to knife someone.

“Those spikes, now this—anything else you’re not telling us about the xeno, Navárez?” he said.

Kira shook her head. “Nothing important.”

He grunted. “Nothing important.” She flinched as he drew his pistol and pointed it at her. “By all rights I ought to leave you here with a live video feed broadcasting so the Jellies know where to find you.”

“… But you’re not going to?”

A long pause, and then the muzzle of the pistol lowered. He holstered the weapon. “No. If the Jellies want you that badly, then it ain’t a good idea to let them have you. Don’t think this means I want you on the Wallfish, Navárez.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

His gaze shifted, and she heard him say, “Trig, back to the Wallfish, now. Jorrus, Veera, if you want to get anything from the Jelly ship, you have five minutes, max, and then we’re blasting out of here.”

Then he turned and started to leave. “Come on.” As Kira followed, he said, “Did you learn anything useful?”

“Lots, I think,” she said.

“Anything that’ll help us stay alive?”

“I don’t know. The Jellies are—”

“Unless it’s urgent, save it.”

Kira swallowed what she was going to say and trailed behind Falconi as he hurried off the ship. Trig was waiting for them at the airlock.

“Keep watch until the Entropists are on board,” said Falconi.

The kid saluted.

From the airlock, they went to Control. Nielsen was already there, studying the holo projected from the table in the middle. “How’s it look?” Falconi asked, strapping himself into his crash chair.

“Not good,” said Nielsen. She glanced at Kira with an unreadable expression and then pulled up a map of 61 Cygni. Seven dotted lines arced across the system, intersecting upon the Wallfish’s current location.

“Time to intercept?” Falconi asked.

“The nearest Jelly will be here in four hours.” She stared at him, grave. “They’re burning at maximum thrust.”

Falconi scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Okay.… How fast can we get to Malpert Station?”

“Two and a half hours.” Nielsen hesitated. “There’s no way the ships there can fight off seven Jellies.”

“I know,” said Falconi, grim. “But it’s not like we have a lot of choice. If we’re lucky, they can keep the Jellies tied up long enough for us to jump out.”

“We don’t have the antimatter.”

Falconi bared his teeth. “We’ll get the antimatter.”

“Sir,” whispered Gregorovich, “the Darmstadt is hailing us. Most urgently, I might add.”

“Shit. Stall them until we’re back under thrust.” Falconi stabbed a button on the console next to him. “Hwa-jung, what’s the status of those repairs?”

The machine boss answered a moment later: “Nearly finished. I’m just pressure testing the new coolant line.”

“Hurry it up.”

“Sir.” She still seemed annoyed with the captain.

Falconi poked a finger toward Kira. “You. Spill it. What else did you find over there?”

Kira did her best to summarize. Afterward, Nielsen frowned and said, “So the Jellies think that they’re the ones being attacked?”

“Is there any chance you misunderstood?” asked Falconi.

Kira shook her head. “It was pretty clear. That part, at least.”

“And this Staff of Blue,” said Nielsen. “We don’t know what it is?”

“I think it’s an actual staff,” Kira explained.

“But what does it do?” said Falconi.

“Your guess is as good as mine. A control module of some kind?”

“It could be ceremonial,” Nielsen pointed out.

“No. The Jellies seem convinced it would let them win the war.” Then Kira had to explain again how she had inadvertently responded to the compulsion. So far she’d avoided thinking about it too much, but as she recounted the events to Nielsen, Kira felt a deep sense of shame and remorse. Even though she couldn’t have known how the Soft Blade was going to respond, it was still her fault. “I fucked up,” she finished by saying.

Nielsen eyed her with no great sympathy. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Navárez, but I want you off this ship.”

“That’s the plan,” said Falconi. “We hand her over to the UMC, let them deal with this.” He looked at Kira with slightly more empathy. “Maybe they can stick you in a packet ship, get you out of the system before the Jellies can grab you.”

She nodded, miserable. It was as good a plan as any. Shit. Going after the Jelly ship might have been worth it for the information she’d uncovered, but it looked as if she and the crew of the Wallfish were going to pay for the attempt.

She thought again of the ruddy star set amid its companions, and she wondered: Could she locate it on a map of the Milky Way?

Spurred by a sudden determination, Kira strapped herself into one of the crash chairs and—on her overlays—brought up the largest, most detailed model of the galaxy that she could find.

The comms snapped on, and Hwa-jung said, “All done.”

Falconi leaned in toward the holo-display. “Trig, get those Entropists back on the Wallfish.”

Not a minute later, the kid’s voice sounded: “All green, Captain.”

“Seal her up. We’re blasting out of here.” Then Falconi called down to the sickbay. “Doc, we gotta scram. Is it safe for Sparrow if we resume thrust?”

When Vishal answered, he sounded tense: “It’s safe, Captain, but nothing above one g, please.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Gregorovich, take it away.”

“Roger that, O my Captain. Currently taking it away.”

There was a series of jolts as the Wallfish disengaged from the alien ship and maneuvered with RCS thrusters to a safe distance. “All that antimatter,” said Falconi, watching a live feed of the undocking. “Pity no one’s figured out how to extract it from their ships.”

“I’d rather not get blown up experimenting,” Nielsen said dryly.

“Indeed.”

Then the deck of the Wallfish vibrated as the ship’s rocket sprang to life, and once more a welcome sense of weight returned as the acceleration pressed them into their seats.

In her overlays, a panoply of stars shone before Kira’s unblinking eyes.

2.

In the background, Kira heard Falconi arguing with someone over the radio. She didn’t listen, lost as she was in her examination of the map. Starting from an overhead view of the galaxy, she zoomed in on the area containing Sol and then slowly started to work her way counter-spinward (as the Jellies had mentioned). At first, it seemed like a hopeless task, but twice among the array of stars Kira felt a sense of familiarity from the Soft Blade, and it gave her hope.

She paused her study of the constellations when Vishal appeared framed in the doorway of the control room. He looked drained, and his face was still red from washing.

“Well?” Falconi said.

The doctor sighed and dropped into one of the chairs. “I’ve done all I can. The pole shredded half her organs. Her liver will heal, but her spleen, kidneys, and parts of her intestines, those need to be replaced. It will take a day or two for new parts to print. Sparrow is sleeping now, recovering. Hwa-jung is with her.”

“Would it be better to put Sparrow in cryo?” Nielsen asked.

Vishal hesitated. “Her body is weak. Better for her to regain her strength.”

“What if we don’t have a choice?” Falconi asked.

The doctor spread his hands, fingers splayed. “It could be done, but it would not be my first choice.”

Falconi returned to arguing over the comms (something about the Jelly ship, civilian permissions, and docking at Malpert Station), and Kira again concentrated on her overlays.

She could tell she was getting close. As she flew among the simulated stars, spinning and rotating and searching for shapes she recognized, she kept feeling tantalizing snatches of recognition. They drew her coreward, where the stars were packed closer together.…

“Dammit,” said Falconi and banged his fist against the console. “They’re refusing to let us dock at Malpert.”

Distracted, Kira looked over at him. “Why?”

A humorless smile passed across his face. “Why do you think? Because we’ve got every Jelly in the system hot on our tail. Not sure what Malpert expects us to do, though. We don’t have anywhere else to go.”

She wet her lips. “Tell the UMC we picked up vital information on the Jelly ship. That’s why the others are after us. Tell them … the information is a matter of interstellar security and the very existence of the League is at stake. If that doesn’t get us onto Malpert, you could always mention my name, but if you don’t have to, I’d prefer—”

Falconi grunted. “Yeah. Okay.” He tabbed open a line and said, “Get me the liaison officer on the Darmstadt. Yes, I know he’s busy. It’s urgent.”

Kira knew that the UMC was going to find out about her and the Soft Blade one way or another. But she saw no point in broadcasting the truth across the system, not if it could be avoided. Besides, the instant the UMC and the League learned she was still alive, her options were going to narrow to a limited few, if that.

Unsettled, she returned her attention to the map and tried to ignore what was happening. It was out of her control, in any case.… There! A certain pattern of stars struck her. She stopped, and a bell-like tone seemed to echo in her head: confirmation from the Soft Blade. And Kira knew she had found what she was looking for: seven stars in the shape of a crown, and near the center, the old, red spark that marked the location of the Staff of Blue. Or, at least, where the Soft Blade believed it to be.

Kira stared, at first disbelieving and then with a sense of growing confidence. Whether or not the xeno’s information was up to date, the location of the system was more than they’d had before, and for once, it put her—and humanity as a whole—a step ahead.

Excited, she began to announce her discovery. A loud beep interrupted her, and dozens of red dots appeared scattered through the holo of the system projected in the center of the room.

“More Jellies,” said Nielsen, a fatalistic note in her voice.

3.

“Goddammit. I don’t believe it,” said Falconi. For the first time, he seemed at a loss for what to do.

Kira opened her mouth and then closed it.

Even as they slipped into normal space, the red dots began to move, burning in all different directions.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t believe it,” said Gregorovich. He sounded oddly puzzled.

“What do you mean?” Falconi leaned forward, the usual razor-edge returning to his gaze.

The ship mind was slow to respond: “This latest batch of uninvited guests is behaving contrary to expectations. They are … calculating … calculating.… They aren’t just flying toward us, they’re also flying toward the other Jellies.”

“Reinforcements?” Nielsen asked.

“Uncertain,” Gregorovich replied. “Their engine signatures don’t match the ships we’ve seen from the Jellies so far.”

“I know there are different factions among the Jellies,” Kira offered.

“Perhaps,” said Gregorovich. Then: “Oh my.… Well, then. Isn’t that interesting?”

The main holo switched to show a view from elsewhere in the system: a live feed of three ships converging on one.

“What are we looking at?” Falconi asked.

“A transmission from Chelomey Station,” said Gregorovich. A green outline appeared around one of the ships. “This is a Jelly.” Red outlined the three other ships. “These are some of our newcomers. And this”—a set of numbers appeared next to each ship—“is their acceleration and relative velocity.”

“Thule!” Falconi exclaimed.

“That should not be possible,” said Vishal.

“Indeed,” said Gregorovich.

The newcomers were accelerating faster than any Jelly ship on record. Sixty g’s. A hundred g’s. More. Even through the display, their engines were painful to look at—bright torches powerful enough to spot from light-years away.

The three ships had jumped in close to the Jelly they were pursuing. As they converged, the Jelly released clouds of chalk and chaff, and the computer marked otherwise invisible laser bursts with lines of red. The intruders fired back, and missiles streaked between the combatants.

“Well that answers one question,” said Nielsen.

Then one of the three newcomers shot ahead of its companions and, with hardly any warning, rammed the Jelly ship.

Both vessels vanished in an atomic flash.

“Whoa!” said Trig. He walked in from the corridor and sat next to Nielsen. He’d changed out of his power armor, back into his normal, ill-fitting jumpsuit. A foam cast encased his left wrist.

“Gregorovich,” said Falconi, “can you get us a close-up of one of those ships?”

“A moment, please,” said the ship mind. For a few seconds, a piece of mindless, waiting-room music played through the Wallfish’s speakers. Then the holo changed: a blurred still of one of the new ships. The vessel was dark, almost black, and shot through with veins of bloody orange. The hull was asymmetric, with odd bulges and angles and scabrous protuberances. It looked more like a tumor than a spaceship, as if it had been grown rather than built.

Kira had never seen anything like it, and neither, she thought, had the Soft Blade. The unbalanced shape gave her an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach; she had difficulty imagining a reason for constructing such a twisted, lopsided machine. It certainly wasn’t the handiwork of the Jellies; most everything they built was smooth and white and seemed to be radially symmetrical.

“Look,” said Falconi, and he switched the holo back to a view of the system. All across 61 Cygni, the red dots were streaking toward Jellies and humans alike. The Jellies were already altering their courses to face the incoming threats, which meant—for the time being—the Wallfish had some breathing room.

“Captain, what’s going on?” said Trig.

“I don’t know,” said Falconi. “All the passengers back in their hold?” The kid nodded.

“Those ships aren’t the Jellies’,” said Kira. “They’re not.”

“Do the Jellies think they’re ours?” said Nielsen. “Is that why they think we’ve been attacking them?”

Vishal said, “I don’t see how.”

“Neither do I,” said Falconi, “but seems there’s a whole lot we don’t understand right now.” He tapped his fingers against his leg, then glanced at Kira. “What I want to know is whether they jumped in because of that signal you sent.”

“They would’ve had to been waiting just outside Sixty-One Cygni,” said Nielsen. “That seems … unlikely.”

Kira was inclined to agree. But it seemed even more unlikely that the newcomers would have arrived at that exact moment through sheer chance. As with the Jellies showing up at Adra, space was too big for that sort of coincidence.

The thought made her skin itch. Something was wrong here, and she didn’t know what. She opened a message window on her overlays and sent the captain a text: