Kira was about to head to the storm shelter, to check on the crew, when the intercom crackled and Falconi’s voice emanated from a speaker by her head: “Kira, come see me in Control once you’re up.” He sounded rough, real rough, as if he’d just been puking.
Kira swung by the galley to get herself a pouch of heated chell before heading toward the front of the ship.
As the pressure door to Control swung open with a squeal of protest, Falconi glanced up from the holo-display. His skin was an unpleasant grey, the whites of his eyes were tinged yellow, and he was shivering and chattering as if it were nearly freezing. All the classic signs of cryo sickness.
“Thule,” said Kira, kicking herself over to him. “Here, you need this more than me.” She shoved the packet of chell into his hands.
“Thanks,” said Falconi from between gritted teeth.
“Bad reaction, huh?”
He ducked his head. “Yeah. It’s been getting worse the last few jumps. I don’t think my body likes the chemicals we’ve been using. Have to talk with…” He shivered so hard his teeth clattered. “… have to talk with the doc about it.”
“How are you going to get back?” Kira asked. Going to one of the emergency stations along the wall, she fetched a thermal blanket and brought it to him.
Falconi didn’t resist as she wrapped it around his shoulders. “I’ll survive,” he said with a certain amount of grim humor.
“I’m sure you will,” she said dryly. Then she glanced around the empty room. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Didn’t see any reason to wake them up if they just had to go back into cryo.” Falconi tightened the blanket around himself. “No reason to make them go through this any more times than necessary.”
Kira pulled herself into the seat next to him and strapped herself in. “Have you sent the warning yet?”
He shook his head. “Waiting for Itari. I gave the Jelly a buzz on the intercom. Should be up here before too long.” Falconi gave her a sideways glance. “How about you? All good?”
“All good. But, there’s something you should know.…” Then Kira told him about what she and the Soft Blade had done.
Falconi made an exasperated sound. “Did you really have to start disassembling my ship?”
“Yeah, we did,” she said. “Sorry. It was just a little bit.”
He grunted. “Great. Do we have to worry about it wrecking the rest of the Wallfish?”
“No,” said Kira. “Not unless something happens to me, but even then I don’t think it would do anything to the ship.”
Falconi cocked his head. “So what would the Soft Blade do if you die?”
“I … I’m not sure. I’d guess it would return to its dormant state, the way it was on Adrasteia. That or it would try to bond with someone else.”
“Mmm. Well, that’s not alarming in the slightest.” Falconi took another sip of chell and then gave it back to her. The grey in his cheeks was beginning to fade, replaced by a more healthy color.
As he had predicted, Itari arrived in Control soon after, pieces of its hibernation cocoon still clinging to its many limbs. Kira was impressed to see that the Jelly had regrown most of the tentacle it had cut off during their escape from Orsted (although the replacement was still shorter and thinner than the rest of its siblings).
[[Itari here: How moves the water?]]
She answered as was right and proper: [[Kira here: The water is still.… We are ready to send farscent warning to the Knot of Minds.]]
[[Itari here: Then let us not waste the rightness of time.]]
2.
Transmitting the signal turned out to be more of a hassle than Kira expected. She had to teach Itari how the Wallfish’s FTL comms worked, and the Jelly had to explain—with great difficulty and much backtracking—how to broadcast and encode the message in such a way that the Knot of Minds would not only notice but understand the warning. Lacking the Jelly machine that converted their scents to signals, Kira had to translate Itari’s words—if words was even the right term—into English, in the hope that the Knot would bother translating.
After several hours of work, the warning went out, and Falconi said, “There, it’s done.”
“Now we wait,” said Kira.
It would take half a day for the warning to reach the proposed rendezvous spot—which itself was within a few days’ travel of Cordova-1420, the system where the Jellies were building their fleet—and half a day to receive any answer back. “Any chance that the UMC’s hunters might intercept the signal?” Kira asked.
“Eh,” said Falconi. “There’s a chance, but it’s literally astronomical.”
3.
For the rest of the day, Kira helped Falconi run diagnostics throughout the Wallfish as he checked on the systems necessary for the smooth functioning of the ship. Air duct filters needed to be cleaned, water lines flushed, the fusion drive test fired, computers restarted, and outside sensors replaced, along with all the many little and not-so-little tasks that made survival in space possible.
Falconi didn’t ask for help, but Kira had never been one to sit around when work needed doing. Besides, she could tell he was still suffering from the aftereffects of cryo. She’d only had one bad reaction herself, during her second trip out for the Lapsang Corporation. An error in the cryo tube had resulted in her receiving a slightly higher dose of one of the sedatives. Even that small difference had been enough to keep her in the bathroom, puking her guts out, the whole time she’d been on mission. That had been fun.
So she had sympathy for Falconi’s distress, although in his case, it seemed worse than just an adverse reaction to some sedative. He appeared genuinely ill. Cryo sickness would fade in time—that she knew—but he might not have very long to recover before they would have to start back for the League. And that worried Kira.
Aside from the usual maintenance required, the Wallfish was in generally good shape. The most serious repair that required their attention was a faulty pressure seal in the port cargo hold, but even that was easily dealt with.
Throughout it all, Kira could still feel the contents of her cabin—the black armor the Soft Blade had built upon the walls. She even took Falconi to see what she and the xeno had built. He poked his head in long enough to glance around and then backed out. “Nope,” he said. “No offense, Kira, but nope.”
“None taken,” she said with a grin. She still hadn’t forgotten about their kiss, but she didn’t see a reason to bring it up now. In any case, Falconi wasn’t in any shape for that sort of a conversation.
Following a quiet evening, she and Falconi retired to their respective cabins (and Itari to the cargo hold) for the night. The black casing that now covered Kira’s room made it feel heavy, ominous. But safe too—there was that—and the vines and flowers helped mitigate the heaviness. She worried about the air vents being blocked, but then she realized the Soft Blade would surely see to it that she had enough oxygen to keep from suffocating.
“I’m back,” she whispered, running a hand along the ridged wall.
The wall shivered slightly, like skin crinkling in the cold. And Kira smiled a small smile, feeling an unexpected sense of pride. The room was hers and hers alone, and although it was mostly the work of the Soft Blade, the growth was still a part of her, birthed from her mind, if not her flesh.