“They’re giving me some … difficulty.” [[Kira here: Hurry if you can, Itari.]]

A wave of colors raced across the Jelly’s skin. Then Itari pulled its tentacle away from the wall. Strands of mucus dripped from the suckers on the alien’s arm. [[Itari here: Ctein is four nsarro ahead of us, and fourteen decks down.]]

[[Kira here: How far is a nsarro?]]

[[Itari here: The distance one can swim in seven pulses.]]

From the Seed’s memories, Kira had a feeling that a pulse wasn’t very long, although she couldn’t put an exact time to it.

An explosion shook the deck underneath them. *Kira,* said Falconi, sounding nervous. Hwa-jung’s drones hovered over his shoulders, bright searchlights glowing beneath their manipulators.

“Everyone hold on!” said Kira. “We’re going down. Fourteen decks.”

She sent black rods shooting back and forth across the latticework cage she’d created, placing them between the people she was protecting. Once Falconi and the others had a secure grip on the beams, Kira dug into the deck with the xeno, letting her thousands of tiny, finger-like fibers rip through the flooring, rip through the pipes and circuitry and strange, pulsing organs that separated one level of the ship from another.

It was a risky thing to do; if she hit a pressurized line, the explosion could kill them all. The Soft Blade knew the danger, though, and she felt confident it would avoid any lethal pieces of equipment.

Within seconds, she’d torn open a hole big enough to encompass their group. Beneath them, blue shadows shifted amid a shimmer of rising motes, bright as embers.

Then Kira released the Seed’s hold upon the walls and the shield, and dropped herself and her charges into the blue dusk.

5.

A whirl of motes blinded Kira for a moment.

They cleared, and she saw a long, low room, scalloped with shallow beds awash with water. The walls were nearly black, and the floor too. Oval orbs the size of a person’s head glowed with soft radiance above altar-like niches set in regular intervals along the bulkheads.

Within the sloshing water, dark shapes skittered, small and insectile. They fled before the harsh searchlights Hwa-jung’s drones cast over them, seeking safety in shadows.

Hatching pools, was Kira’s first thought, but she couldn’t imagine why the Jellies would bother with such a thing on a spaceship of all places. They had other technology for reproduction. The Nest of Transference, for one.

Clear slabs several centimeters thick slammed shut over the pools, sealing them off, and without so much as a whiff of warning from the Hierophant’s nearscent, all sense of weight vanished.

*Ah, shit!* said Falconi. He flailed for a moment and then used the thrusters in his exo to steady himself. Behind him, the others clung to the rods Kira had created out of the Seed.

Normally the shift to zero-g would have upset Kira’s stomach. But this time it didn’t. Her stomach felt the same as before, not dropping or clutching as if she were about to fall to her death. Instead, she felt a new sense of freedom. For the first time, weightlessness was enjoyable (or would have been if not for the circumstances). It was like flying, as if in a dream. Or nightmare.