Falconi sighed, and Kira heard the weariness in his voice. She pictured him back in the control room of the Wallfish, floating next to the holo-display, his armor smeared with blood and ichor. She felt a pang. Right then, leaving him and the rest of the Wallfish’s crew was more painful than leaving her family. Falconi and the others were present and immediate; her family seemed distant and abstract—dim specters she had already made her farewells to long ago.

*Kira … * said Falconi, and she could hear the grief building in his voice.

“This is the way it has to be. Get the Wallfish out of here while you still can. The nightmares shouldn’t bother you. Go on, hurry.”

A long pause, and she could almost hear Falconi arguing with Nielsen and Tschetter. Finally, with stiff reluctance he said, *Roger that.*

“Also, I need to know how to detonate this howitzer.”

The pause that followed was even longer. Then: *Gregorovich says there’s an access panel on the side. Should be a keypad inside. Activation code is delta-seven-epsilon-gamma-gamma—* She concentrated on memorizing the string of commands as he rattled them off. *You’ll have ten seconds to get clear once you hit Enter.*

But she wouldn’t be getting clear, and Falconi knew that as well as she did. She would sure as hell try, but Kira didn’t have any illusions about the Seed’s ability to outrun a nuclear explosion.

She concentrated on melding the Seed with the missile, weaving one through the other until it was hard to tell where the organism ended and the Casaba-Howitzer began. So thoroughly did she infiltrate the bomb, she could feel every part of it, down to the micro-welds in the bell of the rocket and the imperfections in the coffin that held the plutonium. She took care with her work, and when she finished, she felt satisfied that even the Maw would be hard-pressed to separate the Seed from the nuke.

She looked for the Maw then. It was still too far away to see, but she could feel its presence, like a storm building on the horizon, clouds heavy with a torrent ready to burst forth.

The distance between them was shrinking rapidly, but not rapidly enough for Kira’s taste. She didn’t want to give the Maw a chance to change its mind—or what was left of it. The Seed was already pushing her along as fast as it seemed capable of, but she wasn’t carrying any propellant with her, so the thrust was limited.

What else could she do?

The answer, when it came to her, gave her a grim smile.

She focused on the image she’d created—the image and the idea—and did her best to hold them in her mind while she impressed them on the Seed.

The xeno grasped her intent almost immediately, and it responded with gratifying speed.