“Cover!” Koyich shouted, diving behind a pile of rubble.
Falconi threw himself across Trig; Kira did likewise, using a net of fibers from the Soft Blade to hold them in place.
She counted the seconds in her head: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—
The floor buckled and the direction of the wind reversed as the shockwave hit, louder and more powerful than a thousand claps of thunder. With it came a wave of suffocating heat. The towers swayed and groaned—chunks of walls flying free—and streamers of dirt blasted through the howling streets. Debris filled the air, deadly as any bullet. Dozens of the fragments shotgunned the rubble they huddled behind. Beneath her arm, Kira saw the cratered body of the pillbug blown away into the dark.
She glanced up. A gigantic mushroom cloud rose above the mountain, climbing toward the stratosphere. The pillar of nuclear fury was staggeringly huge; before it, she felt smaller than she ever had before.
If not for the protection of the mountain, they would all be dead.
She released Falconi and Trig from the net of fibers. Falconi said, “Was that—”
“The Ilmorra’s gone,” said Koyich.
The bulk of the explosion would have come from the antimatter stored within the shuttle’s Markov Drive. What now? Things had just gone from bad to apocalyptically bad.
As the howl of the wind began to subside, they got to their feet. Trig was still twitching; Kira could tell he didn’t have long to live.
The Jellies had gathered close around them during the blast. Now Tschetter stood next to one, and she seemed to be speaking to it, although Kira heard nothing.
The squid started to move toward Trig.
Falconi hissed and lifted his grenade launcher, and Kira crouched, extruding razor-sharp blades from her fingers. “Stay the fuck away or I’ll blast you to pieces,” said the captain.
“My companions say they can help,” said Tschetter.
“Is that why they shot him?”
Tschetter made a regretful expression. “It was a mistake.”
“Sure. And just who the fuck are you?” Falconi’s nostrils were flared, his eyes narrowed and savage.
The woman’s back stiffened. “Major Ilina Tschetter of the UMCI, human and loyal citizen of the League of Allied Worlds.”
“She’s the one I told you about,” Kira muttered to Falconi.
“From the Extenuating Circumstances?”
Kira nodded, keeping her gaze fixed on Tschetter and the Jellies.
Falconi seemed unimpressed. “How—”
Nielsen put a hand on his shoulder. “Trig’s not going to make it if you don’t let them help.”
“Make up your mind, Falconi,” said Koyich. “We don’t have time to be dicking around.”
After a moment, Falconi shook off Nielsen’s hand and backed away from Trig, still pointing Francesca at the aliens. “Fine. But if they kill him, I’ll shoot them, no questions asked.”
Outside, the mushroom cloud continued to climb.
Kira kept the blades on her fingers as the squid crawled over to Trig. Moving as precisely and delicately as any surgeon, the Jelly used its tentacles to disassemble Trig’s power armor until the kid lay on the crumbled floor in nothing but his skinsuit and oxygen mask. Then the Jelly wrapped a single, thick tentacle around him, and within seconds, a thick, gelatinous substance began to ooze from its suckers.
“What the hell is that?” said Falconi in a barely controlled tone.
“It’s okay,” said Tschetter. “They did it to me. It’s safe.”
The Jelly used its tentacle to smear the goo over the whole of Trig’s body. Then the coating grew opaque and hardened, forming a glistening, human-shaped pod. The whole process took less than a minute.
The alien laid the pod on the floor and retreated to Tschetter’s side.
Falconi put a hand on top of the shell. “What did they do? Can he still breathe in there? We don’t have time for—”
“It’s their form of cryo,” said Tschetter. “Trust me. He’ll be fine.” In the distance, gunfire again sounded in the streets, and several of the Jellies slipped away, heading toward the noise. Tschetter drew herself up and looked at Kira, Koyich, and what remained of the rest of their group. “They’ll buy us some breathing room. In the meantime, we need to talk. Now.”
3.
“How do we know you’re really you?” Koyich demanded. He had been present, Kira remembered, when she’d told Akawe about having to leave the major and Corporal Iska on Adrasteia.
Tschetter’s lips quirked as she seated herself on a block of rubble and looked at Kira. “I seem to recall asking you something similar on the Extenuating Circumstances.”
The major was much as Kira remembered, although she seemed thinner—as if she’d lost four or five kilos—and there was a certain manic intensity to her expression that hadn’t been present before. Maybe it was a result of current circumstances or maybe it was indicative of something else. Kira wasn’t sure.
She was having trouble wrapping her mind around Tschetter’s presence. Kira had never expected to see the major again, much less there, on a dead planet at the far end of space. The sheer incongruity left Kira feeling even more dazed than the explosion earlier.
Falconi crossed his arms. “The Jellies could have scanned your implants, learned everything they needed in order to impersonate you.”
“It doesn’t matter if you believe me,” said Tschetter. “Who I am has nothing to do with why I’m here.”
Koyich eyed her skeptically. “And why are you here, Major?”
“First things first. Did you find the Staff of Blue?”
When neither Kira nor anyone else answered, Tschetter snapped her fingers. “This is important. Do you have it or not? We need to know, now.”
Koyich motioned toward the Entropists. “Show her.”
Veera and Jorrus extended their hands. In them lay one fragment of the Staff of Blue.
“It’s broken,” Tschetter said, her tone bleak.
“Yes.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Dammit,” she said quietly. “The Jellies were counting on using the staff against the Corrupted. That’s their name for the nightmares. Without it…” She drew herself upright, stiffening her back. “I’m not sure how much of a chance we stand. Them or us.”
“Is it really that bad?” Kira asked.
The major nodded, grim. “Worse. The Corrupted have been hitting the Jellies throughout their territory. Small raids at first, then bigger and bigger. Some of the Corrupted were already poking around Sigma Draconis when Iska and I got picked up. They took out two of the Jellies’ ships, and the one we were on barely got away.”
“What are the Corrupted?” Kira asked. “Do you know?”
Tschetter shook her head. “Only that the Jellies are scared shitless of them. The Jellies say they’ve fought the Corrupted before. From what I gather, it didn’t go well, and the current batch of Corrupted are supposedly even more dangerous. They have different forms, better ships, that sort of thing. Also, the Jellies seem convinced that we have something to do with the Corrupted, but I’m not clear on the details.”
Nielsen raised a hand. “How do you know what we call the Jellies and the nightmares? And how are you talking with the Jellies?”
“The Jellies,” said Tschetter, “have been monitoring all the broadcasts out of the League. They brought me up to date before we left.” She tapped the front of her helmet. “Talking is scent to sound, and vice versa. Same method the Jellies use for conversion to EM signals. Made it possible to actually learn their language, though it sure as hell wasn’t easy.”