Vishal groaned and said, “I believe that removed a few years from my life, but yes.”

“Yeah,” said Sparrow. “Same.”

Nielsen brushed bits of glass out of her hair, sending them drifting forward through the destroyed windshield, like a small cloud of crystal motes. “A bit shaken up, Captain.”

“Second that,” said Veera and Jorrus. The male Entropist had a row of bloody scrapes across his bare ribs, which looked painful but not serious.

Kira pulled herself to the front of the ruined maglev and peered out. She could see Itari several meters ahead of them, clinging to a rail in the hull. Orange ichor oozed from a nasty-looking wound near the base of one of the Jelly’s larger tentacles.

[[Kira here: Are you okay? Can you move?]]

[[Itari here: Worry not about me, Idealis. This form can take much damage.]]

Even as it spoke, one of the Jelly’s bony arms reached out from its carapace and, to Kira’s shock, began to snip away with its pincer at the wounded tentacle.

“What the hell!” said Sparrow, joining Kira.

With startling speed, the alien cut off the tentacle and left it drifting in the air, abandoned amid a cloud of orange blobs. Despite the size of the raw stump left on Itari’s carapace, the Jelly’s bleeding had already stopped.

Hwa-jung coughed and swam her way out of the bolus of smoke, like a ship rising from the depths of oily water. She caught a handhold and pointed out the front. “The next maglev station is just ahead.”

Kira went first, using her suit to knock out the jagged remains of the windshield. Then she pushed herself away from the car, and one by one, the others extricated themselves from the wreckage. Hwa-jung was last; she barely fit through the frame, but with some effort, she made it.

Using maintenance grips on the walls, they crawled along the interior of the black and echoing tube until lights flicked on a few meters ahead of them.

With a sense of relief, Kira aimed herself for them.

As they floated over to the station, a pair of automatic doors in the wall opened and allowed them to dive into the vestibule on the other side.

They paused then to regroup and check their directions.

“Where are we?” Kira asked. She noticed that Vishal had a nasty cut on his right forearm and both of Hwa-jung’s hands were burned and blistering. It must have been excruciating, but the machine boss hid her pain well.

“Two stops past where we should be,” said Nielsen. She pointed downspin (not that they were spinning anymore).

With her in the lead, they started through the abandoned hallways of Orsted’s docking ring.

Occasionally they encountered bots: some recharging from sockets in the walls, some scurrying about on tracks, some jetting about on bursts of compressed air, busy with one of the myriad tasks necessary to the functioning of the station. None of the machines seemed to pay them any mind, but Kira knew each and every one was recording their location and actions.