Even at a distance, Kira would have sworn the Seeker was smiling. And a memory came to her: it was they that enforced the wishes of the Heptarchy, and they that guarded the dangerous depths of space.…
[[Lphet here: This is to no point.]] As it spoke, the Jelly started down the other side of the ridge, along with its comrades.
Lphet’s words needed no translation. Kira followed with everyone else. The knife-edge keening rang out again, and underlying it, she could hear the drumming of approaching feet.
The two Jelly ships were parked at the foot of the ridge. The globular vessels weren’t particularly large by the standards of spaceships—the Darmstadt would dwarf them in length—but sitting there on the ground, they seemed enormous: as large as the administrative building in Highstone, where she’d gotten her seed license.
A loading ramp lowered from the belly of each ship.
The Jellies divided into two groups, one heading for each ship. Tschetter paired off with Lphet and several other Jellies heading toward the left-hand vessel. “You take that one,” she said to Koyich, pointing at the ship on the right.
“Come with us!” said Kira.
Tschetter never missed a step as she shook her head. “It’s safer if we split up. Besides, I’m staying with the Jellies.”
“But—”
“There’s a chance for peace here, Navárez, and I’m not going to give up on it. Go!”
Kira would have argued further, but they were out of time. As she sprinted alongside Falconi toward the other Jelly ship, she couldn’t help but feel grudging admiration for Tschetter. Assuming the major was still in her right mind, what she was doing was incredibly brave, same as her decision to stay behind on Adra.
Kira doubted she would ever like the major, but she would never question the woman’s devotion to duty.
More Jellies were waiting for them at the top of the loading ramp, guarding the opening with an impressive array of weapons. They moved aside as Kira and the others ran up. Koyich shepherded his men aboard, shouting at them to hurry. They stumbled in, dripping blood from bodies and fluids from exos. Nishu and Moros brought up the rear, and then the ramp retracted and the ship’s loading port slid shut and locked in place, sealing the hull.
“I cannot believe we’re doing this,” Falconi said.
2.
[[Wrnakkr here: Secure for ascension.]]
Ridges along the wall made for convenient handholds. Kira snared one, as did the other humans, while the Jellies used their tentacles to do likewise or—in the case of the legged Jellies—scurried off into darkened corridors.
Like the other Jelly ship Kira had been on, this one smelled of brine, and the lighting was a dim, watery blue. The room was an ovoid, with tubes and masses of unidentifiable equipment along one half, and egg-like capsules along the other. Stored on rows of double-layered racks were scores of what she recognized as weapons: blasters, guns, and even blades.
In close quarters, the nearscent of the Jellies accumulated until it nearly obliterated any other odor. The aliens stank of anger and stress and fear, and from them Kira felt a constant shifting of forms, functions, and honorifics.
It seemed to Kira that she and her companions were surrounded by monsters. She kept the Soft Blade on the verge of action, ready to send it spiking out if any of the Jellies made a hostile move. Koyich and his Marines seemed to feel likewise, for they gathered in a defensive half circle near the loading door, and while they kept their weapons aimed at the floor, they did not lower them entirely.
“Can you get us to our ship, the Wallfish?” said Falconi. Then he looked at Kira. “Can they get us to the Wallfish?”
“The Darmstadt is where we need to be, not your rusty old tub,” said Koyich.
“The Wallfish is closer,” said Falconi. “Besides—”
Kira repeated Falconi’s question, and in answer, the Jelly that had spoken earlier said: [[Wrnakkr here: We will try to reach the closer ship, but the Corrupted are near.]]
A distant rumble passed through the curved deck, and Kira felt the strangest dropping, twisting sensation, as if she’d fallen and risen at the same time. It was a similar feeling to jumping in a descending elevator. Then her sense of weight increased to somewhat over 1 g: noticeable but not unpleasant. But she knew they were thrusting at far, far more than 1 g.
This must be the gravity of the Jellies’ homeworld, she realized.
“Jesus Christ,” said Hawes. “Look at our altitude.”
Kira checked her overlays. Her local coordinates were going crazy, as if the computer couldn’t decide where exactly she was nor how fast she was moving.
“Artificial gravity has to be messing with our sensors,” said Nishu.
“Can you get a signal out?” said Falconi, his face pinched with worry.
Hawes shook his head. “Everything’s jammed.”
“Dammit. No way to tell where we’re heading.”
Kira focused on Wrnakkr. The alien had a white streak across its central carapace that made it easy to single out. [[Kira here: Can we see what’s happening outside the ship?]]
With one tentacle, the Jelly caressed the wall. [[Wrnakkr here: Look, then.]]
A curved patch of hull turned transparent. Through it, Kira could see the coin-sized disk of Nidus shrinking into the distance. Explosions flared along the terminator line: bright flashes reminiscent of the florescent discharges of lightning sprites. Even from so far away, the resulting auroras were visible, laced across the top of the turbulent atmosphere.
Kira searched for other ships, but if any were present, they weren’t close enough to spot with the naked eye. Not that that meant much in space.
“How long to reach the Wallfish?” she asked.
The Entropists were the ones to answer: “If we are thrusting at the same—”
“—acceleration generally observed among the Jellies—”
“—and given the prior distance to the Wallfish—”
“—no more than five or ten minutes.”
Nielsen sighed, and the joints of her power armor squealed as she sank into a crouch. She was still holding Trig’s rigid form. “Do we really have any chance of getting out of the system? The—”
The light within the room flashed, and nearscent of alarm suffused the room, clogging Kira’s nostrils.
[[Wrnakkr here: We have Corrupted in pursuit.]]
Kira told the others, and then they sat in silence—waiting—while the ship’s rocket strained. There was nothing else they could do. Outside the window Wrnakkr had created, the stars swung in crazy arcs, but the only centrifugal force Kira felt was a slight pull in the direction of their turns.
As they’d seen at 61 Cygni, the nightmares could out-accelerate even the Jellies. That implied a level of technology that only a highly advanced interstellar civilization could possess, which just didn’t seem to match with the creatures they’d been seeing.
Don’t judge by appearances, Kira cautioned herself. For all she knew, the ravening, animal-like nightmares with the shark teeth were as intelligent as a ship mind.
A burst of silvery chaff glittered through the window. A poof of chalk followed a moment later, obscuring the view for a few seconds.
Koyich and Hawes were murmuring together. Kira could tell they were preparing to fight.
Then the ship jolted underneath them, and her gorge rose as, for a moment, she felt yanked along all three axes at once. The artificial gravity rippled—producing a feeling of rolling compression through her body—before cutting out entirely.