Kira nodded and started to trudge toward Control, each weighted step jarring her heels.

2.

Falconi was hunched over the central display along with Sparrow. In the holo, a window displayed the feed from a skinsuit headcam of someone moving about on the outside of the Wallfish’s hull.

Hwa-jung’s voice sounded through the comms: “—checking the welds. I promise. Five minutes, no more, Captain.”

“No more,” he said. “Falconi out.” He touched a button, and the holo switched to a map of the system, with all the ships marked for easy viewing.

As Kira sank into the welcome relief of a padded crash chair, Sparrow glanced at her. The woman’s eyes widened as she noticed what she hadn’t before. “Shit, Kira. What happened to your—”

“Not now,” said Falconi. “Storytime later.”

Sparrow bit back her questions, but Kira could feel the weight of her gaze.

The Jellies and the nightmares were still skirmishing near and around Nidus. But it was a confused fight. The three remaining ships that belonged to the friendly Jellies—including the one carrying Tschetter—were taking potshots at both the nightmares and their own kind. Two Jelly vessels and one of the nightmares had taken off from the planet and were shooting at any and all. Kira suspected the Seeker was in control of them. Likewise, the rest of the nightmares were fighting everyone but themselves.

As one of the Jellies’ ships—fortunately, not a friendly—exploded in a nuclear flare, Sparrow winced. “What a clusterfuck,” she said.

At first Kira thought the Wallfish had been lucky enough to escape pursuit, but then she spotted the trajectories plotted from two of the nightmares: intercept courses. The long, angular ships (they looked like bundles of enormous femurs bound together with strips of exposed muscle) were on the opposite side of the planet, but they were accelerating at the same insane, cell-destroying g’s the other nightmares had employed. At the current rate, they’d be in range within fourteen minutes.

Or maybe not.

Approaching from the near asteroid belt was the Darmstadt, trailing threads of coolant from its damaged radiators. Kira checked the numbers; the cruiser would just barely cross paths with the nightmares before they shot past. If the nightmares piled on another quarter g of thrust, the UMC would be far too slow.

The comms crackled, and Akawe’s voice sounded: “Captain Falconi, do you read?”

“I read.”

“We can buy you some time here, I think. Maybe enough for you to get to the Markov Limit.”

Falconi gripped the edge of the table, the tips of his fingers turning white from the force. “What about you, Captain?”

A chuckle from Akawe surprised Kira. “We’ll follow if we can, but all that matters is that someone lets Command know about the offer from Tschetter’s Jellies, and right now the Wallfish has the best shot of escaping the system. I know you’re a civvy, Falconi—I can’t order you to do jack shit—but it doesn’t get more important than this.”

“We’ll get the message back to the League,” said Falconi. Then, after a moment’s pause, “You have my word, Captain.”