The xeno responded to her mood, stiffening and thickening and preparing itself in unseen ways for the chaos about to commence. The change in the suit’s distribution reminded her of her distant flesh: the black coating that had devoured the interior of her cabin. If need be, she could call upon it, draw it to her, and allow the Soft Blade to once more swell in size.
“Here,” said Nielsen, and tossed Kira several canisters: two blue and two yellow. “Chalk and chaff. Should have some handy.”
“Thanks.”
Arms piled high with weapons, the three of them hurried back through the corridors to the main shaft of the Wallfish. Itari and the Entropists were waiting for them there, but Falconi and Sparrow were nowhere to be seen.
While Nielsen kitted out the Entropists, Kira offered Itari a choice of blasters or slug throwers. The alien chose two blasters, which it grasped with the bony arms that unfolded from the underside of its carapace.
“Captain,” Kira heard Nielsen say in a warning tone.
Falconi’s voice sounded over the intercom: “Working on it. Get into position. We’ll be there in two shakes.”
The first officer hardly seemed reassured. Kira couldn’t blame her.
Along with Itari, they obeyed the captain and arranged themselves in a ring around the tube, hiding behind the sides of the open pressure doors.
They’d just finished when first Sparrow and then Falconi came stomping out of the nearest corridor, garbed head to toe in power armor.
As if by prior agreement, Sparrow positioned herself on one side of the shaft while Falconi did the same on the other. “Thought you might want this,” Nielsen said, and tossed Falconi his grenade launcher.
He gave her a tense nod. “Thanks. Owe you one.”
Seeing both Sparrow and Falconi in their armor made Kira feel slightly less apprehensive about facing the incoming Jellies. At least everything wouldn’t be riding on just her. Although she worried about them putting themselves front and center. Especially Falconi.
The lights flickered, and for a second, red emergency strips illuminated the room. “Power at twenty-five percent and dropping,” Falconi read off his overlays. “Shit. Five more minutes and we’ll be dead in the water.”
“Contact,” said Hwa-jung, and the Wallfish shuddered as the Jelly pod collided with it somewhere below. A brash tone echoed overhead, and Kira grabbed a handhold as the ship’s engines cut out.
“Showtime,” Sparrow muttered. She raised her metal-clad arms and aimed the exo’s built-in weapons toward the bottom of the shaft.
4.
A series of strange noises sounded to the aft, somewhere in the A cargo hold: bangs and clattering and dull thuds, as of tentacles slapping against the sealed pressure doors.
Kira allowed the Soft Blade’s mask to cover her face. Taking deep breaths to steady herself, she shouldered her blaster and aimed down the shaft. Soon.…
“Once they breach,” said Hwa-jung, “they’ll have fourteen seconds until the next set of pressure doors seal.”
“Got it,” said Sparrow. In her armor, she couldn’t really hide; she filled most of a doorway, like a giant metal gorilla, faceless behind a mirrored helmet. Likewise, Falconi stood mostly exposed in his own set of armor, although he kept his visor semi-transparent, the better to see.
Bang!
Kira felt a spike of compressed air in her ears, even through the suit’s mask. She worked her jaw, a dull ache forming along the base of her skull.
Smoke appeared at what had been the bottom of the shaft and that, in weightlessness, now appeared to be the far end of a long tube. The Wallfish’s pressure alarm began to blare.
A breath of wind touched Kira’s cheek: the most dangerous of sensations on a spaceship.
Around her, the crew started firing with blasters and slug throwers as the dark, many-armed shapes of the Jellies swarmed into the central shaft. Graspers, desperate and despised. The aliens didn’t stay to fight. Instead, they darted across the tube and disappeared down another corridor.
Seconds later, an unseen pressure door by the cargo hold slammed shut with an ominous clang, and the wind ceased.
“Shit, they’re heading toward engineering,” said Falconi, peering down the shaft.
“They can incapacitate the whole ship from there,” said Hwa-jung.
As if to prove her point, the lights flickered again and then went out entirely, leaving them bathed in the dull red radiance of the backups.
Then the most unexpected sight caught their attention: a single tentacle unfurled from within a doorway at the end of the shaft. Wrapped in its deadly embrace was the transparent cryo box that contained none other than Runcible, still frozen in hibernation.
Even through his visor, Kira saw Falconi’s face contort with rage. “Goddammit, no,” he growled, and was about to launch himself aftward when Nielsen caught his arm.
“Captain,” she said, matching his intensity. “It’s a trap. They’ll overpower you.”
“But—”
“Not a chance.”
Sparrow joined them. “She’s right.”
The only one who could do anything was Kira, and she knew it. Was she really going to risk her life for the pig? Well, why not? A life was a life, and she had to face the Jellies at some point. Might as well be now. She just wished it didn’t have to happen on the Wallfish.…
The tentacle gently waved the pig back and forth in an unmistakable invitation.
“Those fuckers,” said Falconi. He half raised the grenade launcher, and then stopped. “Can’t get a good shot.”
The emergency lights failed then, leaving them in pure and unfriendly darkness for several heartbeats. Via infrared, Kira could still make out the shape of her surroundings, and she noticed an odd confluence of EM fields along the shaft—swirling fountains of violet force.
“Plasma containment field failing,” Morven announced. “Please evacuate immediately. Repeat, please—”
Hwa-jung groaned.
The lights snapped back on, first red, and then the normal, full-spectrum glare of the standard strips, bright enough to hurt. A faint tremor shook the plating of the walls, and then booming through the Wallfish came an enormous bellowing voice:
“PUT DOWN THAT PIG!”
Gregorovich.
5.
The pressure door at the end of the shaft slammed shut, cutting off the Jelly’s tentacle amid a spurt of orange ichor. The tentacle floated free, twisting and writhing in apparent agony. It threw Runcible’s cryo box against the wall, and the box bounced, tumbling several times in the shaft before Falconi managed to snare it.
The box and the pig inside appeared unharmed, save for a deep scratch along one side.
“Perforate that thing,” said Falconi, pointing at the tentacle.
Nielsen, Sparrow, and Kira happily obliged.
“Welcome back, my symbiotic infestation!” cried Gregorovich. “O happy day that we should be reunited, my bothersome little meatbags! Such dark times they were with me lost in the twisting maze of fruitless fallacies and you off gallivanting in meddlesome misadventures! How fortunate for you a luminous lantern led me back. Rejoice, for I am reborn! What have you done to this poor snail of a ship, hmm? I’ll assume control of operations, if you don’t mind. Morven, alas poor simulacrum, isn’t fit for the task. First to purge this grotesque bit of alien code infecting my processors, aaand … done. Venting and stabilizing reactor. Now to show these sump-sniffers what I’m really capable of. Whee!”