“Not your fault,” said Falconi. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He maneuvered over to Jorrus. “Hey. Veera’s going to live, yeah? Relax, it’s alright.”

“You don’t understand,” said Jorrus between hitching breaths.

“Explain.”

“She—Me—Us—” He wrung his hands, which caused him to start floating away. Falconi caught him, stabilized him. “There is no us! No we. No I. All gone. Gone, gone, gone, ahhh!” And his voice dropped into meaningless rambles again.

Falconi shook him. “Pull yourself together! The ship’s almost here.” It made no difference.

“Their hive mind is broken,” said Hwa-jung.

“So? He’s still himself, isn’t he?

“That’s—”

Veera woke with a gasp and a wild start that sent her spinning. An instant later she clutched her temples and began to scream. At the sound, Jorrus curled into a fetal ball and whimpered.

“Great,” said Falconi. “Now we’ve got a pair of crazies to deal with. Just great.”

Soft as a falling feather, the Wallfish slowed to a stop outside the airlock. A series of clanks sounded as the docking clamps activated, securing the nose of the ship.

Falconi gestured. “Kira. If you wouldn’t mind?”

As the doctor struggled to calm the Entropists, Kira allowed the mask to cover her face again. The current in the airlock door appeared to her as a thick bar of bluish light, as if part of a lightning bolt had been trapped in the handle of the door. The bar was so bright and wide, she was surprised it hadn’t killed Veera outright.

Extending a pair of tendrils, she sank them into the door and—as she had in her cell—rerouted the flow of electricity through the cabled surface of the Soft Blade.

“It’s safe,” she said.

“Outstanding,” said Falconi, but he still looked wary as he reached for the airlock controls. When no shock hit him, his shoulders relaxed and he quickly activated the release.

There was a beep, and a green light appeared above the control panel. With a hiss of escaping air, the door rolled open.

Kira released her hold then, retracting the Soft Blade and allowing the electricity to resume its normal path. “No one touch the handle,” she said. “It’s still hot.” She repeated herself for Itari.

Falconi went first. He floated over to the nose of the Wallfish, punched a combination of buttons, and the ship’s own airlock popped open. Kira and the others trailed after, Vishal with one arm around Veera while Hwa-jung helped with Jorrus, as he was barely able to move on his own. Last of all was Itari, the Jelly graceful as an eel as it pulled itself through the airlock.

A thought occurred to Kira. A horrible, cynical thought. What if the UMC chose that moment to blow the docking clamps and space her and everyone else? Given everything the League and the military had done, it wasn’t something she’d put past them at that point.

However, the seal between the airlocks held, and once the last centimeter of Itari’s tentacles were inside the Wallfish, Nielsen closed the ship’s door.