“Can’t you locate them with your FTL sensors?” Kira asked.

Tschetter gave her a rather unpleasant smile. “We’ve tried, but they’re not showing up. No idea why. The other Jellies certainly haven’t found them. The Knot of Minds would have heard.”

Kira remembered something Colonel Stahl had mentioned. “On Orsted Station, the officer who debriefed me mentioned that they had some way to keep the Jellies from detecting the Seventh.”

“Is that so?” said Tschetter with a thoughtful expression. “Before I was captured, I remember there were rumors coming out of the research divisions about experimental techniques for hiding a ship in FTL. It had something to do with generating short-range signals—basically white noise—that would disrupt any active scanning attempts. Maybe that’s what he meant.” She shook herself. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, we can’t find the Seventh Fleet in FTL, and once they drop back to sublight, the Jellies are going to jam the system. No signal that’s fast enough to reach the Seventh in time will be powerful enough to punch through the interference. Besides, I doubt they would listen to anything we had to say.”

Kira was starting to feel frustrated. “What are we talking about then? Are you going to fly off and fight alongside the Seventh? Is that it?”

“Not quite,” said Tschetter.

Falconi interceded with a raised hand. “Wait a moment. What was your original plan, Tschetter? I’ve never been entirely clear on it. The Jellies outrun and outgun us from here to Alpha Centauri. Why did they need us to help them off their head honchos? Seems like we would just get in the way.”

“I was getting to that,” said Tschetter. She tugged on the fingers of her skinsuit, pulling out wrinkles on the back of her hands. “The plan was—and still is, I might add—for the Knot of Minds to escort one of our ships past the Jelly defense perimeter. The Knot will say they captured the ship while raiding the League and that it has valuable intel on it. Once in, the Knot will ID the target, and we blow up their leadership for them. Simple as that.”

“Oh, just that,” scoffed Sparrow.

Vishal said, “Such an easy task. We could be done by dinner.” He laughed hollowly.

A ripple ran the length of the Jelly’s limbs. [[Lphet here: We wish your help, Idealis.… We wish your help in killing the great and mighty Ctein.]] And a mélange of sickness, pain, and panic clogged Kira’s nostrils, as if the Jelly had become physically ill.

She couldn’t conceal her shock at its words. [[Kira here: Ctein is here?]]

[[Lphet here: Indeed, Idealis. For the first time in four ripples and uncounted cycles, the huge and terrible Ctein has uprooted its many limbs so as to oversee the invasion of your planets and the crushing of the Corrupted. This is our best and only chance of toppling our ancient tyrant.]]

“Kira?” said Falconi, an edgy tone in his voice. His hand drifted closer to the grip of his blaster.