Kira woke with a pounding heart. She stayed under the blankets for several minutes, reviewing the memories from the Soft Blade. Then she rolled upright and put a call through to both Falconi and Akawe.

As soon as they answered, she said, “We have to find the Staff of Blue.” Then she told them of her dream.

Falconi said, “If even only part of that is true—”

“Then it’s even more important we keep the Jellies from getting their tentacles on this tech,” said Akawe.

The call ended, and Kira checked their location: still on course for planet e. It needs a better name, she thought. At the current distance, and without magnification, the planet was still just a gleaming dot in the ship’s cameras, no different from the other, nearby dots that marked the rest of the system’s closely packed planets.

During the night, the ship minds had found even more structures scattered about Bughunt. The system had clearly been a base for long-term settlement. Kira glanced over the newest discoveries but saw nothing immediately revelatory, so she put them aside for later study.

Then she checked her messages. There were two waiting for her. The first—as she’d half expected—was from Gregorovich:

The dust from your alien companion is clogging my filters again, meatbag. – Gregorovich

She replied:

Apologies. I didn’t have time to clean yesterday. I’ll see what I can do. – Kira

No matter; you’ll likely just make a mess of it. Leave your door unlocked, and I shall send one of my tricksy little service bots to sweep up your leavings. Would you like your sheets turned down as well? Y/N – Gregorovich

… No thank you. I can manage just fine myself. – Kira

As you wish, meatbag. – Gregorovich

The other message was from Sparrow:

Let’s do this. Cargo hold; I’ll be waiting. – Sparrow

Kira ran a hand over the back of her head. She’d been expecting to hear from Sparrow. Whatever the woman had in store for her, it wasn’t going to be easy, but Kira was okay with that. She was curious to find out if her efforts with the Soft Blade were going to pay off. If nothing else, interfacing with the xeno ought to be easier now that she was fully awake and properly fed.

Kira fetched her morning chell from the galley and then headed down to the hold. The Marines were there, prepping their gear for the upcoming trip to the surface of planet e. The squad greeted her with nods and grunts and even a salute on the part of Sanchez. Whether it was their military augments or their natural constitutions, Kira didn’t know, but none of the men looked as drained from cryo as the crew of the Wallfish.

As promised, Sparrow was in the small gym hidden within the racks of equipment. She was chewing gum while doing painful-looking crunches on a mat. “Rehab,” she said in response to Kira’s querying look.

After finishing her set, Sparrow rolled onto her knees. “So?” she said. “Three months. Were you able to keep up with your training?”