“Not bad, Greg,” said Falconi. “Everyone ready?”

“One moment,” said Hwa-jung, still bent over her drones.

Falconi’s eyes narrowed. “Hurry it up. We’re sitting ducks here.”

The machine boss muttered something in Korean. Then she straightened, and the drones rose into the air with an annoying buzz. “Ready,” said Hwa-jung.

“Finally.” Falconi hit the release, and the airlock’s inner door rolled open. “Time to make some noise.”

“Uh…” Kira said, and looked at the Entropists. How were they supposed to breathe in vacuum?

She needn’t have worried. As one, Veera and Jorrus drew their hoods over their faces. The fabric hardened and shimmered, growing transparent and forming a solid seal around their necks, same as any skinsuit helmet.

“Neat trick,” Sparrow said.

The silence of vacuum swallowed them as Falconi vented the airlock and opened the outer door. In an instant, the only sounds Kira could hear were those of her breathing, those of her pulse.

Then her earpiece emitted a scrap of static, and from it Gregorovich said, sounding startlingly close: *Oh dear.*

*Oh dear?* Falconi said, his voice sharp and somewhat tinny over the radio.

The ship mind seemed reluctant to answer. *I’m sorry to say, my dear friends, most sorry indeed, but I fear that cleverness may no longer be sufficient to save us. For all, luck must inevitably run out, and run out it has for us.*

And on Kira’s overlays, an image of the system appeared. At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing: the blue and yellow dots that marked the positions of the Jellies and the UMC respectively were half-hidden behind a constellation of red.

*What—* Sparrow started to say.

*Alas,* said Gregorovich, and for the first time, he seemed genuinely sorry, *alas, the nightmares have decided to join the fight. And this time, they’ve brought something else with them. Something big. It’s broadcasting on all channels. Calls itself … the Maw.*

CHAPTER V

ASTRORUM IRAE

1.

Kira stared with horror.

On her overlays, she beheld a vision of terror. A true nightmare, given shape by the sins of her past. The Maw.… It appeared as a grotesque collection of black and red flesh floating in space, raw, skinless, glossy with oozing fluids. The mass was bigger than the Battered Hierophant. Bigger than any space station she had seen. Nearly the size of the two small moons orbiting the planet R1. In form, it was a branching, cancerous mess, too chaotic for anything resembling order, but with a suggestion—an attempt perhaps—at a fractal shape along its fringe.

At the sight of the Maw, Kira felt an instant, visceral disgust, followed by a sickening, almost debilitating fear.

The obscene tumor had emerged from FTL near the orbit of R1, along with the vast swarm of smaller Corruptions. Already the Maw and its forces were moving in to attack human and Jelly alike, making no distinction between the two.

Kira wrapped her arms around herself and dropped into a hunched crouch, feeling ill. There was no way the Seed could overcome something like the Maw. It was too big, too twisted, too angry. Even if she had time to grow the Seed to an equal size, she would lose herself in the body of the xeno. Who she was would cease to be, or else would become such a small part of the Seed as to be totally insignificant.