4.

With Itari safely returned to the airlock, Kira headed to the galley. There, she grabbed three ration bars and downed a glass of water. Gnawing on one of the bars, she made her way back through the center of the ship to the Wallfish’s machine shop. As once before, she opened the drawers of printing stock and stuck the stump of her arm into the different powders. Eat, she told the Soft Blade.

And it did.

Metals and organics and plastics: the xeno absorbed them all, and in great quantities. It seemed to be fortifying itself against what might come.

While the suit gorged, Kira ate the other two ration bars, although it was difficult to tear open their foil wrappers with just one hand—and her off one at that. Why couldn’t it have been my left? she thought.

In any case, the inconvenience kept her from dwelling upon darker, more dire things.

When she and the suit were both fed, enough time had passed that Kira felt sure Vishal had finished tending to the wounded. At least, enough to spare her a few minutes. So, she closed the drawers of stock and headed to sickbay.

The room was a shambles. Bandages, gauze, empty canisters of medifoam, and scraps of bloody clothes littered the deck. Four of the Marines were there: one on the lone exam table, three more lying on the deck in various stages of undress while the UMC medic attended to them along with Vishal. All of the injured men appeared sedated.

But Kira didn’t see the one person she was most worried about. As Vishal bustled over, she said, “Hey, where’s Trig? Is he okay?”

Vishal’s expression darkened. “No, Ms. Kira. I cut him free from the webbing the Jelly placed on him. It most definitely saved his life, but…” The doc tsked and shook his head as he stripped off his blood-smeared gloves.

“Will he make it?”

Vishal removed another pair of gloves from a box on the counter and donned them before answering. “If we can get Trig to a proper medical facility, then yes, he will survive. Otherwise, not so much.”

“You can’t fix him here?”

Vishal shook his head. “The projectile shattered vertebrae here”—he touched the upper part of her neck—“and sent fragments into his skull. He needs surgery of a sort the medibot here isn’t rated for. He may even be needing to have his brain transferred into a construct while a new body is grown for him.”

The thought made Kira feel even worse. A kid as young as Trig losing his body.… It didn’t seem right. “Is he in cryo now?”

“Yes, yes, in the storm shelter.” Then Vishal reached for the end of her severed arm. “Now then, Ms. Kira, let me see. Ah, what have you been doing?”

“Nothing fun,” she said.

Vishal bobbed his head as he produced a scanner and started to examine the stump of her arm. “No, I would think not.” His gaze flicked up toward her. “The men showed me some of what you did on Nidus. How you fought the Jellies and the nightmares.”