Nielsen yelped as the Seed surged toward them in a black tide of crawling, grasping fibers. “It’s okay,” Kira said, but the crew still jumped back as the fibers flowed across the deck and up and over her feet, legs, hips, and torso—encasing her in a layer of living armor nearly a meter thick.

Though the increased bulk of the xeno restricted Kira’s movements, she felt no sense of weight. No sense of being trapped. Rather, it was as if she were surrounded by muscles eager to do her bidding.

“Goddamn!” Sparrow said. “Anything else you’ve been holding out on us?”

“No, that was it,” said Kira.

Sparrow shook her head and swore again. Only Itari appeared unaffected by the appearance of the Seed—of the Idealis. The Jelly merely rubbed its tentacles and emitted a nearscent of interest.

A crooked smile appeared on Falconi’s face. “Well, that got the pulse going.”

“It nearly gave me a heart attack, it did,” said Vishal. He was kneeling on the floor, repacking the contents of his medical bag. The sight was a grim reminder of what was about to happen.

A sense of unreality gripped Kira. The situation seemed outlandish beyond all expectation. The events that had led them to that exact time and place were so unlikely as to be nigh on impossible. And yet there they were.

An electric discharge lit the antechamber. Hwa-jung growled and bent over the four drones she was fiddling with in the corner. “Those things going to be ready in time?” Sparrow asked.

The machine boss kept her gaze fixed on the drones as she answered: “God willing … yes.” Each drone had a welding attachment built into one manipulator and a repair laser in the other. Either tool, Kira knew, could cause serious injury if misapplied, and she suspected Hwa-jung intended to misapply them most vigorously.

“So how are we going to do this?” said Nielsen.

Falconi pointed at Kira. “Simple. Kira, you’ll take point, give us cover. We’ll watch your flanks and provide supporting fire. Same as on Orsted. We cut straight through the Battered Hierophant, no stopping, no turning around, no slowing down until we reach Ctein.”

“What if someone gets hit?” said Sparrow. She raised one sharp eyebrow. “It’s going to be a shitshow in there, and you know it.”

Falconi tapped his fingers against the stock of his grenade launcher. “If someone’s wounded, we send them back to the Wallfish.”

“That’s—”

“If we can’t send them back to the Wallfish, we keep them with us.” His eyes roamed across their faces. “Either way, no one gets left behind. No one.”

It was a comforting thought, but Kira wasn’t sure if what he was proposing would really be possible. Trig … She didn’t want to lose more of the crew. More of her friends. If there was anything she could do to keep them safe, anything at all, she had to seize it, no matter how frightening she found it herself.

“I’ll go,” she said. No one seemed to notice, so she said it again, louder. “I’ll go. Alone.”