“Yes, yes,” said Stahl, irritable. “I’m fine. Get out of here.”

“Yessir.” The weighted footsteps retreated.

Stahl swore quietly. “Now, Navárez, what the hell do you mean you’ve got a goddamn Jelly on the Wallfish? Explain.”

Kira explained.

When she finished, Stahl swore again.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. If the UMC tried to force their way onto the Wallfish, there wasn’t a whole lot Gregorovich could do to stop them, not without taking drastic and most likely suicidal measures.

“… Give Earth Central a call. This is way above my pay grade, Navárez.”

Then Kira heard Stahl walk away, and the clamor of the troopers’ footsteps followed, rising and swelling until the sound broke like a passing wave, leaving her alone in silence.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said, feeling a certain perverse satisfaction.

3.

Kira looked around.

The inside of the polyhedron was empty. No bed. No toilet. No sink. No drain. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of the same green plating. Above her, a small round light provided the only source of illumination. Slits with fine mesh covers edged the ceiling: vents for airflow, she assumed.

And there was her. The only occupant of the strange, faceted prison.

She couldn’t see them, but she assumed there were cameras recording her, and that Stahl or someone else was watching everything she did.

Let them watch.

Kira willed the Soft Blade to cover her face, and her vision expanded to encompass both the infrared and the electromagnetic.

Stahl hadn’t lied. The walls glowed with bluish loops of force, and between the end points of each loop ran a snake of twisting electricity, bright and shining. The leads weren’t built into the walls; it looked to Kira as if the current was coming from the framework that held the shaped charges, flowing through wire contacts dotted across the entire polyhedron. Even the floor glowed with the soft haze of an induced magnetic field.

Over the door and in the corners of the ceiling, Kira spotted several small disturbances in the fields: knot-like eddies that connected to tiny threads of electricity. She’d been right. Cameras.

She allowed the mask to withdraw and sat on the floor.

There was nothing else to do.

For a moment, anger and frustration threatened to overwhelm her, but then she beat them back. No. She wasn’t going to allow herself to get worked up over things she couldn’t change. Not this time. Whatever was going to happen, she’d strive to face it with a sense of self-control. Things were difficult enough without making them harder on herself.

Besides, coming to Sol had been their only real option. The offer from the Knot of Minds was too crucial to risk delay by trying to pass it along from another system in the League. With all the jamming and fighting going on, there was no guarantee the intel would have gotten through. And then there was Itari; the Jelly was an important link to the Knot of Minds, and Kira needed to be there to translate for it. She supposed they could have just jumped in, transmitted the information to the League, and then jumped out. But that would have been a dereliction of duty. If nothing else, they owed it to Captain Akawe to deliver the Jellies’ message in person.