[[Itari here: How moves the water?]]

She answered as was right and proper: [[Kira here: The water is still.… We are ready to send farscent warning to the Knot of Minds.]]

[[Itari here: Then let us not waste the rightness of time.]]

2.

Transmitting the signal turned out to be more of a hassle than Kira expected. She had to teach Itari how the Wallfish’s FTL comms worked, and the Jelly had to explain—with great difficulty and much backtracking—how to broadcast and encode the message in such a way that the Knot of Minds would not only notice but understand the warning. Lacking the Jelly machine that converted their scents to signals, Kira had to translate Itari’s words—if words was even the right term—into English, in the hope that the Knot would bother translating.

After several hours of work, the warning went out, and Falconi said, “There, it’s done.”

“Now we wait,” said Kira.

It would take half a day for the warning to reach the proposed rendezvous spot—which itself was within a few days’ travel of Cordova-1420, the system where the Jellies were building their fleet—and half a day to receive any answer back. “Any chance that the UMC’s hunters might intercept the signal?” Kira asked.

“Eh,” said Falconi. “There’s a chance, but it’s literally astronomical.”

3.

For the rest of the day, Kira helped Falconi run diagnostics throughout the Wallfish as he checked on the systems necessary for the smooth functioning of the ship. Air duct filters needed to be cleaned, water lines flushed, the fusion drive test fired, computers restarted, and outside sensors replaced, along with all the many little and not-so-little tasks that made survival in space possible.

Falconi didn’t ask for help, but Kira had never been one to sit around when work needed doing. Besides, she could tell he was still suffering from the aftereffects of cryo. She’d only had one bad reaction herself, during her second trip out for the Lapsang Corporation. An error in the cryo tube had resulted in her receiving a slightly higher dose of one of the sedatives. Even that small difference had been enough to keep her in the bathroom, puking her guts out, the whole time she’d been on mission. That had been fun.

So she had sympathy for Falconi’s distress, although in his case, it seemed worse than just an adverse reaction to some sedative. He appeared genuinely ill. Cryo sickness would fade in time—that she knew—but he might not have very long to recover before they would have to start back for the League. And that worried Kira.

Aside from the usual maintenance required, the Wallfish was in generally good shape. The most serious repair that required their attention was a faulty pressure seal in the port cargo hold, but even that was easily dealt with.

Throughout it all, Kira could still feel the contents of her cabin—the black armor the Soft Blade had built upon the walls. She even took Falconi to see what she and the xeno had built. He poked his head in long enough to glance around and then backed out. “Nope,” he said. “No offense, Kira, but nope.”