“Gregorovich,” she said, continuing to scan. “You see anything out here?”

*Alas, the Wallfish is still lodged in the Hierophant. My sensors are blocked.*

“Check with Tschetter. Maybe the Knot—”

A bar of smoke-free space, half a meter across, flashed in front of her. It ran straight from the horizon of the Hierophant’s hull, past her chest, and continued on into deep space. A mass of swirling curlicues expanded through the smoke, pressing it outward, and the glow of transferred heat spread through the haze.

Kira swore. At her command, the xeno reversed their course and shoved her toward the damaged ship. They were an easy target, hanging out in the open. She had to get to cover before—

From behind the curve of the Battered Hierophant, an enormous tentacle emerged, twisting and grasping with malevolent intent. In infrared, the tentacle was a tongue of fire, its suckers incandescent craters, its skeletal interior a flexible column of white-hot ingots stacked end to end, bright within the translucent flesh. Cilia lined the last third of the limb, each snakelike structure several meters long and seemingly possessed of its own restless intelligence, for they moved and waved and knotted independent of their neighbors. A second tentacle joined the first, and then a third and a fourth as the rest of the gigantic Ctein hove into view.

The skin of the Jelly had changed: it was smooth and colorless now, as if coated with pewter paint. Armor of some kind, she supposed. Worse yet, the creature still held the ship-sized railgun with its clawed arm.

Kira shouted into the void as she urged the Soft Blade on even faster. She jetted back among the exposed decks of the Hierophant, but just when she began to relax slightly, Ctein’s multifarious shadow eclipsed her and the monster fired its weapon.

The blast hit her with numbing force and sent her tumbling into a bulkhead.

But she was still alive.

The xeno had poofed out around her, like a giant black balloon, covering her whole body, including her head, though it didn’t block her vision any more than the mask had. She could feel structures within the balloon: complicated matrices of fibers and rods and plastic-like filling—all of which the Soft Blade had manufactured in a mere fraction of a second.

Another explosion went off in her face, jarring her so hard, it left her dazed. This time she felt the suit counter the incoming projectile with an explosion of its own, diverting the deadly spray of metal to either side, leaving her untouched.

With a hint of astonishment, Kira realized the xeno had constructed some form of reactive armor, similar to what the military used on their vehicles.

She would have laughed if she’d had the chance.

There was no telling how long the Soft Blade could keep her safe, and she had no intention of staying to find out. She couldn’t go head-to-head with Ctein. Not while it was armed. The only way she could fight was to duck and run and wait for the Jelly to run out of ammo. That or find a way to close with it so she could use the Soft Blade to tear it apart.