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.