He fiddled with the edge of the packet as he considered. “Alright. Fine. But nothing too crazy. The Wallfish has enough holes in her hull already.”

“Give me some credit at least.”

Kira released herself from the floor and crawled across the wall to the desk. There, she pulled the pot close and laid her hands on the trunk. The bark was rough against her palms, and it smelled fresh and green, sea air wafting over cut grass.

Falconi said, “Are you just going to hang there, or—”

“Shh.”

Concentrating, Kira sent the Soft Blade burrowing into the tree, with but one thought, one directive guiding it: heal. Bark creaked and split, and tiny black threads swarmed across the surface of the tree. Kira felt the plant’s internal structures, the layers of bark (inner and outer), the rings, the hard core of heartwood, every narrow branch, and the sprouting base of every fragile, silver-backed leaf.

“Hey,” said Falconi, getting to his feet.

“Wait,” said Kira, hoping the suit could do what she was asking of it.

Across the olive tree, broken branches returned to their rightful place, lifting and straightening until standing to proud effect. The cut-grass smell intensified as sap wept from along the trunk. Crumpled leaves flattened and the holes in them closed up and, where missing, new blades budded and burst forth—silver daggers bright with new life.

At last the changes slowed and stopped, and Kira felt satisfied the damage to the tree was repaired. The Soft Blade could have continued—it wanted to continue—but then the directive would have shifted from heal to grow, and that seemed to her greedy, foolish. An unwise tempting of fate.

So she recalled the suit.

“There,” she said, and lifted her hands. The tree stood whole and healthy, as before. An aura of energy seemed to emanate from it: life newly born and burnished to a high sheen.

Kira felt overcome with a sense of wonder at what the xeno was capable of. At what she was capable of. She’d managed to heal a living thing—to reshape flesh (of a sort) and to give comfort instead of pain, to create instead of destroy. Unbidden, a laugh escaped her. A weight seemed to lift from her shoulders, as if the thrust had dropped to half a g or less.

This was a gift: a precious ability pregnant with potential. With it she could have done so much on Weyland, in the gardens of the colony. With it she could have helped her father with his Midnight Constellations, or on Adrasteia, she could have helped the spread of green across the moon’s rocky crust.

Life, and all that meant. Triumph and gratitude filled her eyes with tears, and she smiled through them, happy.

A similar wonder gentled Falconi’s expression. “How did you learn to do that?” He touched a leaf with the tip of a finger, as if unable to believe.

“I stopped being so afraid.”

“Thank you,” he said, and never had Kira heard him sound so earnest.