Ahead of her, sparks flashed, and with a shock, she realized Ctein was using its other arms to cut off the limb she clung to.

Determined not to lose the advantage, she urged the Soft Blade onward and outward, willing it to do what was needed.

The xeno blossomed into a thousand delicate lines as it burrowed into Ctein. But the threads didn’t cut, as Kira expected. They didn’t slash or tear or maim. Rather, they were soft and supple, and what they touched, they … remade. Nerves and muscles, tendons and bone: all of it was food for the xeno.

Ctein thrashed and writhed. Oh how it thrashed! It beat at her through its own flesh; it gripped and wrung its own limb, seeking to crush her, and a thunder filled her ears.

But the might of the great and terrible Ctein was no match for the persistence of the Soft Blade. The fractal fibers of the organism bent and wove and devoured as it converted the flesh of Ctein. It tore apart the creature’s cells, desiccated and compressed them into something hard and unyielding. The resulting shape was angular, all flat planes and straight lines and sharp edges of atomic precision. A dull, dead object devoid of movement, unable to hurt or harm.

Twenty meters or more, and then her feelers were inside the carapace, and muscle gave way to organs and machines.

From the Soft Blade came a sense of anger over old sorrows, and without meaning to, she found herself crying out: [[Kira here: For Nmarhl!]]

The xeno increased again, doubling and redoubling until it filled the roomy shell, converting each cubic centimeter into brutal perfection.

Ctein shuddered once more—shuddered and then was still.

Kira switched to infrared for a moment and saw the glow from the fusion reactor fading.

The Soft Blade wasn’t finished; it continued to build until it consumed its way through the skin and carapace of the Jelly. Around her, stone-like veins appeared along the tentacle Kira clung to. They spread, expanding across the whole of Ctein.

Uncertain of what the xeno was doing, Kira withdrew the Soft Blade, and with a sense of relief, kicked herself free of the gigantic corpse.

As they drifted apart, she looked back on it.

Where Ctein had been now hung a bristling, dull-black asterisk: an enormous collection of basalt-like pillars, faceted and chisel-tipped. A lifeless lump of restructured carbon. In places, a familiar circuit-board pattern covered the surface.… With a shock, Kira recognized the similarity between the floating pillars and the formation she’d found on Adrasteia. That too, she realized, had once been a living thing. Once, long ago.

Kira stared at the remains of Ctein with a sense of bitter accomplishment. She had done that. She and the Seed. After centuries of rule, the great and mighty Ctein was well and truly dead. Dead and done. And they were responsible.

All that knowledge lost. All those years of memories, lost. All those hopes and dreams and plans, lost and reduced to a lump of stone drifting through space.