Seven ships.

Next to her, Falconi was speaking frantically into the microphone of his helmet. Across the middle of the shuttle, Koyich was doing the same.

“Sheiiit,” said Sanchez. “Guess the Jellies were already out here, searching for the Staff of Blue.”

A clank as Tatupoa slapped the side of Sanchez’s armored head. “No, dumbass. They went and flash traced us is what they did. Timing’s all wrong elsewise.”

Corporal Nishu chimed in, “First time we’ve seen them do it too. Fuckers.”

Then Lt. Hawes: “Somehow they figured out how to track us even with all the course adjustments.” He shook his head. “Not good.”

“What course adjustments?” Kira asked.

Nishu was the one to answer: “Whenever we drop out of FTL to bleed off heat, we make a slight course change. No more than a degree or a fraction of a degree, but it’s enough to throw off anyone who is trying to plot your final destination based off your trajectory. Isn’t always helpful in the League, with the stars so close together, but makes a difference if you’re going from, say, Cygni to Eidolon.”

Koyich and Falconi were still talking into their microphones.

“And the Wallfish made these corrections too?” Kira said.

Hawes nodded. “Horzcha coordinated it with your ship mind. Should have kept the Jellies from flash tracing us, but … guess not.”

Flash trace. Kira remembered the term from Seven Minutes to Saturn, the war movie Alan had loved so much. The concept was pretty simple. If you wanted to see what had happened at a location prior to the time of your arrival, all you had to do was go FTL and fly away from that location until you’d traveled a distance greater than the light from the event. Then you just parked your ship in open space, turned on your telescope, and waited.

The detail of the images received would be limited by the size of your on-board equipment, but even at interstellar distances, it would be relatively easy to spot something like, say, the Wallfish and the Darmstadt jumping to FTL. Ship drives were hot torches against the cold backdrop of space, and they were dead easy to find and track.

Kira berated herself for not considering the possibility sooner. Of course the Jellies would do their best to figure out where the Soft Blade had gone after 61 Cygni. Why wouldn’t they? She knew how important the xeno was to them. Somehow, with the appearance of the nightmares, she’d assumed the Jellies would have bigger things to worry about.

Apparently not.

Falconi shouted something in his helmet that Kira only heard a muted version of because his speaker was turned off. Then he let his head fall back against the wall, a grim expression on his face.

She knocked on his visor, and he looked at her.

“What is it?” she said.

He scowled. “We’re too far away for the Wallfish to reach us before the Jellies. Even if she could, her tanks are over half empty, and there’s no way we can…” He stopped, lips pursed, and glanced toward Trig. “The odds aren’t good. Put it that way.”