Then Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari were next to her, firing their weapons. Boom! went his grenade launcher. Brrt! went her guns. Bzzt! went its lasers.
At first Kira thought she was saved. But there were too many Jellies. They split into groups, drove Sparrow and Falconi back toward the walls, behind the metal enclosures, forced Itari toward a curved corner.
No! Kira thought as the three of them disappeared behind a wall of twisting bodies.
The Jellies mobbed her then. The big ones and the small ones, those with legs, those with claws, and those with appendages she didn’t even recognize. Heat as hot as a star began to cut its way through her protective skin.
She tried stabbing outward. The blades killed some of the aliens, but the others evaded her, or the blasts of heat stopped her, and the suit recoiled in not-pain.
She kept trying, though the heat was making her light-headed. She tried to reach around the torches, tried to find the microscopic flaws in the Jellies’ armor. And all the while, an almost stupefying sense of disgust surrounded her: the whole crowd of Jellies projecting their hatred and revulsion toward her. [[No-form, wrongflesh!]] they shouted as they stabbed and tore and burned their way toward her flesh. The sheer bulk of them made it difficult to move, even with the full strength of the Soft Blade brought to bear.
So Kira did the only thing she could; she let go. She willingly surrendered control to the Seed and told it to do what was needed. It had to, because she couldn’t. Another few seconds and she would lose consciousness—
The shield and the walls and the squirming things faded and lost color. The room tilted around her. There were flashes and jolts and muted sounds. But none of it meant anything, a winter’s display, abstract and uninteresting.
She felt the Seed expanding, gorging itself upon the Battered Hierophant as never before, springing forth with new life, sprouting and twining and spreading with a multitude of squirming black vines. And Kira was conscious of her increase in size as an expansion of her mental space. What made her her was stretched over an ever larger area, drawn thin by the neural demands of the suit.
The vines reached through the barrier she’d built, extending until they found what lay behind each spot of not-pain. Feeling. Tasting. Understanding. And when she touched chitin and oddly gelatinous muscles, she grasped and held and then wrenched, twisting and tearing until whatever wriggling thing she held wriggled no more.
Slowly the sounds grew louder and color leached back into the universe. First red, so she saw the blood splattered across the walls. Then blue, so she noticed the pressure alerts flashing near the ceiling. Then yellow and green, which drew her attention to the ichor mixed with blood.
Her head cleared even as the air did; the smoke, chalk, and chaff streamed toward three holes in the bulkheads, the largest the size of her fist.
A nano-thin layer of the xeno’s black fibers covered a large portion of the chamber, and she—she floated in the center of the room, suspended there by dozens of spars and lines that radiated from her to the walls. Drifting among the narrow stables where the now-dead pillbugs floated were the remains of dozens of Jellies. A cloud of ichor and viscera surrounded them, a horrible storm front of fluids and mangled body parts, littered with crumpled pieces of equipment. Even as she watched, the escaping air pulled a crab against one of the holes, sealing it shut.
She had done this. Her. A deep ache formed in Kira’s heart. Never had she aspired to hurt, to kill. Life was too precious for that. And yet circumstances had forced her to violence, forced her to become a weapon. The Seed also.
Falconi’s voice crackled in her ears. *Kira! Can you hear me? Let us go!*
11.
“Huh?” She looked and saw that the Soft Blade had extended backwards out of the room and used a mat of fibers to glue Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari to the walls on either side of the scorched entrance. Relief flooded Kira. They were alive. The Jellies hadn’t killed them. The Seed hadn’t killed them. She hadn’t killed them.
With a conscious effort, she retracted the fibers and freed Falconi and the others. She could control any one part of the Seed by concentrating, but as soon as her attention drifted, the part would begin to move and act as the xeno deemed fit. The flood of so much sensory information combined with the shock of her injury left her dazed, light-headed.
*Good god,* said Falconi as he jetted through a patch of viscera on his way to her.
*Don’t think god had anything to do with this,* said Sparrow.
Stopping next to her, Falconi gave Kira a concerned look through his visor. *You okay?*
“Yeah, I just … I—” She didn’t want to, but she looked down at herself again.
Her waist appeared normal. Shapeless and thick as a barrel, because of the suit, but showing no sign of injury. It felt normal too. She took a breath, tried flexing her abs. The muscles worked, but they seemed off, mis-strung piano wires that sounded oddly when struck.
*Can you keep going?* Sparrow asked. She kept her weapons trained on the far doorway.
“Think so.” Kira knew she’d have to let Vishal look her over if they made it off the Hierophant. The main problem wasn’t her muscles (those could be fixed), it was infection. Her intestines had been perforated. Unless the Seed could tell the difference between good and bad bacteria, or good bacteria in a bad place, she was going to end up with sepsis, and fast.
Well, maybe the xeno could. She had more faith in it than she used to. She’d just have to hope for the best, and if she was lucky, she wouldn’t pass out from shock.
Kira retracted some of the suit, freeing her arms. She tapped Falconi’s breastplate. “You have any antibiotics in there?”
He held up a hand, and a small needle popped out of the index finger of his exo. At her command, the Soft Blade exposed a patch of skin on her shoulder; the touch of the air was hot.
The needle stung as it broke her skin, and the antibiotics burned as they forced their way into her delt. Apparently the Soft Blade didn’t consider the injection important enough to block the pain.
“Ouch,” Kira said.
Falconi’s lips twitched in an approximation of a smile. *That’s enough to keep an elephant on its feet. Should work for you.*
“Thanks.” The suit covered her shoulder again. She arched her back and flexed her abs once more. This time she concentrated on how they ought to feel, instead of how they did. A hiss escaped her as the mis-strung fibers popped into a new position with a twang that sent a zing to the tips of her fingers and the core of her bones.
Sparrow shook her head in her helmet. *Thule! What you did, I’ve never seen anything like it, chica.*
Nearscent of reverence. [[Itari here: Idealis.]]
Kira grunted. Now that the Jellies knew how to hurt her, she was going to have to be smarter. A lot smarter. No more charging in headfirst. She’d nearly gotten herself killed, and if she had, the Jellies would have taken out Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari. The thought terrified Kira in a way she hadn’t felt since her time on Adrasteia.
[[Itari here: We should not stay here, Idealis. We are close to Ctein, and more of Ctein’s guard will be approaching.]]
[[Kira here: I know. Down again—]]
A flicker caught Kira’s attention as the shell in front of them pulsed, spitting out something. Before Kira could see what it was, and before she could pull her shield between them and the object, Falconi fired his emergency jets—putting himself in front of her—and she heard two loud bangs.