When he tried a swimming motion, the armor’s actuators strained against the pressure to move his limbs. Low-level joint-seal warnings splashed up. He fired the suit thrusters, but all that did was send thin streams of phosphorescent bubbles out into the darkness.

The cohort immediately started to move, using their gravitonic drives to tow him along, heading toward the rock wall that lined the passageway. It was tough going. The new tendrils were insidious, coming at them almost like a solid wave. Dellian had given up trying to move his own limbs. Now he was starting to worry about the pressure seals; they’d never been designed for this kind of environment. Being immobilized was also starting to conjure up black phantoms in his mind. Bizarrely, for all the force being exerted on the armor, he was still in zero gee, which was somehow helping the sense of isolation.

Progress was slowing drastically as the tendrils grew thicker. The forward cohort started firing X-ray lasers to break them up; they’d become too thick for the power blades to cope with. Medical monitors showed Dellian’s heart rate increasing. The claustrophobia was getting to him. His plan was to detonate grenades against the rock; that was where the thickest nutrient arteries were supplying the cells. If he could cut those, he might be able to disable more of the passageway and claw his way out of this clot.

One of the cohort stopped moving, every limb overwhelmed by the tendrils, and still they kept coming, wrapping it deeper and deeper in layers of alien cells. And tendrils were gaining on a second cohort.

Deep inside Dellian’s neck one of his new glands discharged a mild tranquilizer into his bloodstream. It was odd. He knew he should be panicking, but he wasn’t. Instead he ordered the cohort to fire a grenade. It barely moved ten centimeters from the launch tube nozzle. Tendrils began to coil around it.

Dellian triggered it. His armor was easily tough enough to withstand the blast, but the pressure waves shook him about violently. “Saints shitting,” he groaned. Some of the suit seal warnings were now turning amber. His gland pulsed out another discharge. It didn’t seem to make any difference. The explosion had died away, but his limbs were still shaking. Body temperature was up, except his skin now felt like ice.

“Calm!” he ordered himself. “For fuck’s sake, keep calm!” His voice sounded thin and pathetic. What would Yirella do? A question that brought about a dangerously wild giggle. Not get into this shit to start with.

It was looking bad. The cohort had come to a halt; their gravitonic drives weren’t strong enough to push any farther through the churning knot of tendrils.

Can’t use grenades again.

Energy weapons are heating the fluid.

Power blades beaten.

Come on, think!