“No!” Hwa-jung exclaimed as the alien started to pull at the paneling with one of its tentacles. The machine boss moved across the room with surprising nimbleness and tried to pull the Jelly off the drive, but the creature effortlessly pushed her back with another of its tentacles. “Kira, tell it to stop. If it breaks containment, it’ll kill us all.”
Sparrow was already lifting her blaster, finger on the trigger, when Kira said, “Stop! Everyone be calm. I’ll ask, but don’t shoot. It knows what it’s doing.”
The sound of bending metal made her wince as Itari wrenched free the protective shell from around the guts of the Markov Drive.
“It better,” Sparrow muttered. She lowered her blaster some, but not entirely.
[[Kira here: What are you doing? My shoalmates are worried.]]
[[Itari here: I need to see the way your Orb of Conversion is built. Do not worry, two-form. I will not destroy us.]]
Kira translated, but Itari’s assurances did little to alleviate Hwa-jung’s concern. The machine boss stood next to the Jelly, peering over its humped tentacles, scowling, and knotting her hands. “Shi-bal,” she growled. “Not the … no … ah, you stupid thing, what are you doing?”
After several minutes of tense standoff, the Jelly withdrew its armlike pincers from the insides of the drive and turned to face Kira.
[[Itari here: I cannot make your Orb work better.]] The burn of acid hit Kira’s stomach as the Jelly continued talking: [[I could make it stronger, but—]]
[[Kira here: Stronger?]]
[[Itari here: By increasing the flow of energy, the strength of the bubble can be improved, and the conversion to faster than light will happen closer to the star. But to do that, I would need equipment from one of our ships. There is no time to make the wanted parts from raw materials.]]
“What is it saying?” Hwa-jung asked. Kira explained, and the machine boss said, “How much closer?”
[[Itari here: With your Orb of Conversion … at least half again.]]
“You don’t look impressed,” Kira said, after she finished translating.
Hwa-jung snorted. “I’m not. We already boost the field strength before going FTL. It’s an old trick. The drive can’t handle any more power, though. The reaction chamber will fail or the circuits will burn out. It’s not workable.”
“Doesn’t matter in any case,” said Sparrow. “You already said it: the Jelly can’t do anything without the right equipment. We’re just shitting out an airlock.” She shrugged.
While they talked, Kira had been thinking. At first she wondered if the Soft Blade could provide Itari with the tools and materials it needed. She felt sure it ought to be possible, but she had no idea where or how to start, and the xeno gave her no hint. Then, she ran through everything she knew of on the Wallfish, searching for something—anything—that might help.
The answer sprang to her mind almost at once.
“Hold on,” she said. Hwa-jung and Sparrow paused, looked at her. Kira tabbed her comms and put a call through to the Entropists: “Veera, Jorrus, we need you down in engineering, posthaste. Bring that object you found on the Jelly ship.”
“On our way, Prisoner,” the two replied.
Hwa-jung’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot expect a random piece of machinery scavenged off an alien ship to be of any real use, Navárez.”
“No,” said Kira. “But it’s worth a try.” She explained to Itari, and the Jelly settled onto the deck to wait, tentacles wrapped around itself.
“How can this squid do anything anyway?” Sparrow demanded. She jerked the barrel of her blaster toward Itari. “It’s just a soldier. Are all their soldiers trained engineers?”
“I would like to know that too,” said Hwa-jung, her eyebrows beetling.
Kira relayed the question to the Jelly, and it said: [[Itari here: No, this form is not for making machines, but each form is given a seed of information to serve when needed.]]
“What do you mean by form?” said Sparrow.
Several of the alien’s tentacles twisted in on themselves. [[Itari here: This form. Different forms serve different uses. You should know; you have two forms yourselves.]]
“Do they mean men and women?” said Hwa-jung.
Sparrow also frowned. “Can Jellies change form? Is that what it—”
The arrival of the Entropists interrupted her. The two Questants cautiously approached Kira and—keeping both sets of eyes fixed on Itari—handed her the bluish, oblong-shaped object they had retrieved from the Jelly ship at 61 Cygni.
Nearscent of excitement struck Kira’s nostrils as she handed the piece to Itari. The Jelly turned the fist-sized object over with its crab-like arms, and its tentacles flushed with autumnal reds and oranges.
[[Itari here: This is a nodule from an Aspect of the Void.]]
[[Kira here: Yes. That was the room where my shoalmates found it. Is the nodule of any use?]]
[[Itari here: Perhaps.]]
Then Kira watched with interest and some astonishment as a pair of even smaller arms unfolded from a hidden slot within the rim of the Jelly’s carapace. Like their larger brethren, the limbs were cased in a shiny, chitinous material, but unlike them, they were fine-jointed and tipped with a set of delicate cilia no more than a centimeter or two in length.
With them, Itari rapidly disassembled the nodule. Inside were a number of solid components, none of which resembled any part of a computer or mechanical device Kira was familiar with. If anything, the pieces most closely resembled shaped sections of a gem or crystal.
Components in-cilia, Itari returned to the Markov Drive and reached with its small, tertiary limbs into the depths of the spherical device.
As banging, scrabbling, and sharp metal screeches sounded inside the drive, Hwa-jung said, in a warning tone, “Kira.”
“Give it a chance,” said Kira, though she was equally tense. Along with the Entropists and machine boss, she peered over Itari’s tentacles, into the drive. There, Kira saw the Jelly fitting the crystalline components to different parts of the machine’s innards. Whatever the components touched, they bonded to after a few moments, tiny glittering threads joining them to the nearby material. But only—Kira noticed—where appropriate. Either Itari’s direction or some inbuilt programming guided the threads.
“How are they doing that?” Hwa-jung asked, a strange intensity to her voice.
Upon Kira’s translation: [[Itari here: By the will of the Vanished.]]
The Jelly’s answer did nothing to lessen Kira’s concerns, nor—it seemed—Hwa-jung’s. But they stood by and let the alien work unhindered. Then it said:
[[Itari here: You will need to turn off the rock mind governing the Orb of Conversion for this to work.]]
“Rock mind?” said Hwa-jung. “Does it mean the computer?”
“I think so,” said Kira.
“Mmh.” The machine boss seemed less than pleased, but after several moments of silence as her eyes darted back and forth across her invisible overlays, she said, “Done. Gregorovich is overseeing the drive now.”
After Kira informed the Jelly, it said, [[Itari here: The Orb of Conversion is ready. You may activate it twice as soon as before.]]
Hwa-jung scowled as she bent over the drive, studying the mysterious additions to the machine’s internals. “And afterward?”
[[Itari here: Afterward, the energy flow will be returned to normal, so your ship may swim as fast as always.]]
The machine boss seemed unconvinced, but she grunted and said, “Guess that’s the best we’re going to get.”
“Twice as soon as before,” said Sparrow. “We’re thrusting at two g’s, so that means we can jump out … when?”