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.