A season of feasting followed. The graspers fought back, but they were unprepared, and they were too slow to replace their fallen. The Maw had no such difficulty. Each system it struck, it quickly established a permanent foothold and began the process of spreading across every available planet.

Progress brought their servants closer to the space of the two-forms. The flesh of the Maw spanned seven systems now, and it felt confident in its strength. So it sent its minions against the two-forms, to drive them back and begin the process of conversion.

And then, when least expected, they had heard a cry in the dark: Stop it! And they recognized the signal and the voice as well. The first belonged to the makers of the flesh, now long vanished, and the second to her, Kira Navárez.

Again she saw her face contort with fear and anger as she fired the pistol.…

The Maw roared, and they told their servants: Find the forgotten flesh! Break it! Smash it! EAT IT!

3.

*Kira … Where are you?… Kira?*

Kira screamed as she returned to herself.

The humanoid nightmare still had the tentacle wrapped around her arm, but there was more to it than that. Black threads joined the surface of the Soft Blade to the flesh of the nightmare, and she could feel the creature’s consciousness pressing against her, seeking to blot her out. The nightmare’s skin was eating into her own as it assimilated the Soft Blade. It wasn’t a process she could stop by force of will; the xeno didn’t recognize the nightmare as an enemy. Rather, it seemed to want to assimilate with the creature’s broken flesh, to become one again with its lost parts.

If she delayed, Kira knew she would die. Or least be converted into something she abhorred.

She tried to yank her arm away from the humanoid, and they spun end over end until they smacked into the deck. The flesh of the nightmare was still melting into her.

“Give up,” said the monster, mandibles clicking. “You cannot win. All will be flesssh for the mouth of many. Join usssss and be eaten.”

“No!” said Kira. She willed the Soft Blade outward, and it responded with a thousand jutting spikes, piercing the nightmare through and through. The creature shrieked and writhed, but it did not die. Then Kira felt the spikes impaling its body dissolve and flow into the nightmare, leaving the Soft Blade thinner, smaller than before.

The tentacle had sunk deep into her arm; only the top of it was visible above the churning surface of the Soft Blade.

No! She refused to die like this. Flesh was expendable. Consciousness wasn’t.

Kira formed the suit on her left arm into a blade, and—with a yell of desperation—she cut twice.

Once through her right arm, severing it at the elbow.

Once through the nightmare, slicing it in two at the waist.

Blood fountained from the stump of her arm, but only for an instant. Then the Soft Blade closed over the raw end of the wound.