The instant the Knot of Minds flagship separated from the airlock, Falconi turned and said, “Time to prep. Nielsen, with me in Control. Hwa-jung, engineering. Sparrow, crack open the armory and get everything ready. Just in case.”

“Yessir.”

“Roger that.”

“Can we make it to Cordova with all of us awake?” Kira asked.

Falconi grunted. “It’s going to get as hot as Satan’s own asshole in here, but yeah, should be possible.”

“Better than having to go back into cryo,” quipped Sparrow on her way out.

“You said it,” said Falconi.

5.

Kira had thought Falconi was exaggerating when he described the impending heat. To her dismay, he wasn’t. The Wallfish was half a day of FTL from Cordova-1420, and with everyone—including Gregorovich—out of cryo, all the ship’s systems running, and no way to dump the thermal energy they were pumping out, the inside of the Wallfish quickly became a hothouse.

The Soft Blade protected Kira from the worst of it, but she could feel her cheeks and forehead burning: a hot stinging that continued to build. Rivulets of sweat dripped into her eyes, annoying her to the point that she used the xeno to make a protective shelf above her brows.

“That,” said Sparrow, pointing at her with rude directness, “looks fucking weird, Kira.”

“Hey, it works,” she said, dabbing her cheeks with a damp cloth.

Half a day was a vanishingly short trip by any measure of stellar or interstellar travel. However, it was a long time to be stuck in a sweltering box of metal where each breath felt suffocating and the walls were unpleasantly warm and no matter what action they took, it only made the situation worse. And it was longer still when waiting to arrive at a location where there was a better than average chance of being vaporized by a laser or missile.

At Kira’s request, Vishal had given her yet another set of contacts before going to examine Gregorovich. She’d taken them and sequestered herself in her cabin. Keeping themselves spread out within the Wallfish helped disperse the heat, so as to avoid overloading the life-support systems in any one room.

“This is not good for the Wallfish,” Hwa-jung had said.

“I know,” Falconi replied. “But she can survive it for a few hours.”

Kira did her best to distract herself from the reality of their situation by reading and playing games. But she kept thinking about Gregorovich—the more time passed without word from Vishal, the more concerned she became—and fears about Cordova continued to intrude: the presence of the great and mighty Ctein, waiting there like a great fat toad, bloated with its arrogant self-confidence, secure in its cruel strength. The likely response of Admiral Klein to the arrival of the Wallfish and the Knot of Minds in the system. The uncertain outcome of their whole precarious venture …

No obvious answers presented themselves, but Kira kept chewing over her worries as she read. The situation was so far from anything familiar, the only beacon she had to guide her was her own sense of self. Although, her self had been somewhat tenuous lately, what with the Soft Blade stretching her out the way it did.