He never finished. Sparrow reached around the corner and tossed the fleshy marbles toward the Marines. Three quick bzzts! sounded as the Marines’ exos shot the marbles out of the air.
That was a mistake.
A triple strobe of light flashed the hall, smoke clogged the air, and with her enhanced vision from the Soft Blade, Kira saw flickers of violet EM energy. What the hell?
Sparrow didn’t wait. She sprinted around the corner and disappeared into the smoke. Metallic screeches sounded, and then a moment later, two enormous thuds as the exos crashed to the deck, immobilized.
Kira followed a half step behind. Switching her vision to infrared, she saw the door to biocontainment roll open. Another Marine in power armor stepped out, blaster raised to fire. Behind him or her, she saw three more Marines scrambling to take cover behind desks.
Even with all the sensors of a military-grade exo, the Marine in the doorway never saw her coming. She slammed into his power armor while driving a hundred different fibers from the Soft Blade into the machine. It took her only a fraction of a second to find the weak spots and disable the exo.
The Marine’s armor locked up and began to fall. Kira pulled it to the side, landed inside biocontainment, and rolled across her shoulders and back to her feet. None of the Marines inside were able to triangulate her exact location, but that didn’t stop them from firing blindly toward the spot she’d been.
Too slow. A laser blast seared a hole through the back of a chair next to her, but Kira was already moving, throwing tendrils across the room and snaring each of the Marines.
Don’t kill, she told the Soft Blade, hoping against hope it would heed.
A clutch of heartbeats later, and the other Marines dropped to the floor. The weight of their armor crushed tables, smashed shelves, and dented the deck.
“Get ’em all?” Sparrow asked, poking her head in.
Kira allowed her invisibility to fade and nodded. Deeper into the room was another door leading to what she recognized as an impressively large decon chamber. Past that was a third pressure door, which she assumed opened to the isolation chamber where Itari was being held.
“Watch my back,” she said.
“Roger.”
It might have been possible to get the access codes off the Marines, but Kira saw no point in wasting time. Hurrying forward, she extended her arms and allowed the Soft Blade to flow out and rip open the decon door.
At the other end of the chamber, she saw Itari through the pressure door window. The Jelly was sitting with its tentacles curled underneath it, like the legs of a dead spider.
A flash of relief passed through Kira. At least they were in the right place.
She set herself against the pressure door and again allowed the Soft Blade to worm its way into the mechanism and then to tear.
Clank. The lock broke. Pulling and pushing with the xeno, Kira rolled the door back.
A questioning scent reached her from the Jelly as it unfurled its tentacles. [[Itari here: Idealis?]]
[[Kira here: If you truly want peace, we must leave this place.]]
[[Itari here: Are these two-forms our enemies?]]
[[Kira here: No, but they do not know better. Do not kill them, I ask you. But do not let yourself be killed either.]]
[[Itari here: As you will, Idealis.]]
Kira left to rejoin the others outside biocontainment, and she heard Itari follow with a dry-leaf shuffle of tentacles.
“We good?” Falconi asked as she, Sparrow, and Itari emerged from the smoke. Veera had found a jacket somewhere in the biocontainment offices and was pulling it on, covering herself.
“Yup,” said Sparrow. “Boobs, works every time. Everyone falls for them.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Kira.
Orsted rumbled around them, and Vishal said, “Heavens preserve us, yes.”
“Veera! Jorrus!” said Falconi.
“Yessir?”
“Still nothing from Gregorovich?”
“Nothing.”
“Jamming?”
“No. They have him in lockdown.”
“He’ll be fighting mad,” said Hwa-jung.
“Good. We can use that,” said Falconi. He rounded on the rest of them. “Right. We’ll go up the main passage. Anyone shows up, break right, take cover. Don’t let ’em use you as hostages. Kira, you’ll have to deal with any opposition. None of us have weapons.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Sparrow. She held up her right hand. The glass-like dagger glinted between her fingers.
Kira gestured at the fallen Marines. “What about—”
“No good,” said Falconi. “They’re locked. Civvies can’t use UMC weapons. Not without authorization. Enough yapping. Let’s—”
With a dull thunk, pressure doors slammed shut around the intersection, closing off the corridor everywhere but the direction Kira had originally come from. There, she heard the thunder of approaching power armor, and then twenty or more Marines trotted into view, carrying blasters, railguns, and heavy turrets. A small cloud of wasp-like drones accompanied them.
“Freeze! Don’t move!” shouted an amplified voice.
5.
Kira and the others, including the Jelly, retreated into the hall leading to biocontainment and hid behind the corners of the doorway.
The voice rang out again: “We know you’re trying to rescue the Jelly, Navárez. Private Larrett told us everything.”
Kira guessed Larrett was the Marine she’d talked to outside her imploded cell. “Bastard,” she muttered.
“Unless anyone has any ideas, we’re shit out of luck,” said Falconi, his face grim.
Then Stahl spoke from the speakers embedded within the glowing ceiling, loud enough to cut through the alarms. “Kira, you don’t want to do this. Fighting isn’t going to help anyone, least of all you. Stand down, tell the Jelly to return to its cell, and no one has to—”
The deck rumbled and twisted underneath them again.
Kira didn’t hesitate. She had to do something.
She jumped into the corridor and sent a score of shafts out from her chest and legs. They angled forward and downward, and pierced the deck in different spots.
Don’t lose control. Don’t—
Her ears rang as a bullet skipped off her head, and she felt what were like several punches to her ribs, directly above her heart. Then she pulled the shafts inward, tearing up large chunks of the deck.
At her command, the Soft Blade slammed the pieces of decking together, layering them like scales to form a tall, wedge-shaped shield in front of her.
Finger-sized holes—white-hot around the edges and dripping molten metal—peppered the shield as the angry bzzt! of laser fire sounded throughout the concourse.
Kira took a step forward, and the Soft Blade moved the shield with her. As she did, she reached out farther with the suit and grabbed more pieces of the deck, adding them to the barrier, thickening it, widening it.
“With me!” she shouted, and the crew and the Jelly scurried after her.
“Right behind you!” said Falconi.
Bullets whined overhead, and then an explosion shook the shield, and Kira felt the impact through her body.
“Grenade!” shouted Sparrow.
[[Itari here: Can I help, Idealis?]]
[[Kira here: Do not kill anyone if you can avoid it, and do not get in front of me.]]
A pair of drones appeared around the edge of the shield. Kira lanced them with two quick stabs and continued plodding forward. The floor was a tattered mess of twisted girders and exposed pipes; it was difficult to keep her footing.