“Fuck!” said Sparrow. “Laser took it out.”

“I see that,” said Falconi, calm.

Kira wished she could still bite her nails. Instead, she found herself clenching the armrests of her crash chair.

“Is Ctein dead?” she asked Tschetter. “Do we know if Ctein is dead?”

The major shook her head in the holo. Lights were flashing on the deck behind her. “It doesn’t seem so. I—”

An explosion rocked the Jelly ship. “Are you okay, Major?” Nielsen asked, leaning in toward the display.

Tschetter reappeared, appearing shaken. Frizzy strands of hair had come loose from her bun. “We’re okay for now. But—”

“More Jellies incoming,” Sparrow announced. “A good twenty of them. We’ve got maybe ten minutes. Less.”

“Of course,” Falconi growled.

“You still need to kill Ctein,” said Tschetter. “We can’t do it over here. Half the Jellies with me seem to be sick.”

“I don’t—”

Morven said, “Admiral Klein for you, Captain Falconi.”

“Put him on hold. Don’t have time for him right now.”

“Yessir,” said the pseudo-intelligence, sounding absurdly cheery given the situation.

A blinking yellow light appeared in the holo, heading toward them from the Battered Hierophant. “What’s that?” Jorrus and Veera asked, pointing.

Falconi zoomed in. A dark, blob-like object about four meters long came into view. It looked as if several intersecting spheres had been welded together. “That’s no missile.”

A memory stirred in the back of Kira’s mind: the storage room where she’d seen Dr. Carr and the Jelly Qwon fighting, and on the far end of the room, a hole cut into the hull. A hole glowing with blue light emanating from the small vessel that had clamped barnacle-like onto the outside of the Extenuating Circumstances.

“It’s a boarding shuttle,” she said. “Or maybe an escape pod. Either way, it can cut right through the hull.”

“There are more of them,” Vishal said in a warning tone.

He was right. Another dozen of the blobs were heading their way.

“Major,” said Falconi. “You have to help us take them out, or—”

“We’ll try, but we’re slightly busy,” Tschetter said.

One of the Hierophant’s three escorts exploded, but the other two were still firing at the Knot of Minds, as was the Battered Hierophant itself. So far, the Knot hadn’t lost any of their ships, but several of them were trailing smoke and vapor from hull breaches.

Falconi said, “Sparrow—”

“Already on it.”

On her overlays, Kira watched as lines flashed between the Wallfish and the incoming blobs: laser blasts, highlighted by the computer to make them visible to human eyes.

She bit her lip. It was horrible not being able to help. If only she had a ship of her own. Better yet if she were close enough to tear apart the approaching enemies with the Soft Blade.

Then the interior lights flickered and Morven said, “Security breach in progress. Firewall compromised. Shutting down nonessential systems. Please turn off all personal electronic devices until notified otherwise.”

“They can hack our systems now?” cried Nielsen.