As Kira arranged the pieces in front of her, a dark stream of material flowed out from within the tangled ruins of the crevice, crawling toward her with a mind of its own. Alarmed, she recoiled, ready to fight off this new enemy.
Then she recognized the familiar feel of the Soft Blade, the lost parts of the xeno come to rejoin her.
With a sensation like cool water on her skin, the orphaned fibers melted into the main part of the xeno, adding much-needed mass to the organism.
Distracted, Kira only managed to stack four pieces of the hull before the writhing behemoth that was Ctein crested the side of the Hierophant and fired its gun at her.
BOOM!
Her makeshift shield stopped the incoming projectile within the first three layers of the hull. Not so much as a single speck of dust got through to the skin of her suit. And while the impact was substantial, the Soft Blade braced and buffered her well enough to keep it bearable.
She wondered how much ammo the Jelly was carrying.
Ctein fired again. Ignoring the blow, Kira sent herself forward. The sections of hull wouldn’t last long; she had to take the opportunity while she could.
The giant creature moved toward her faster than its bulk would seem to allow. Puffs of white appeared along the left side of its carapace, and the whole mess of shell and tentacles jerked to the right. The damn thing had thrusters built or grown or attached to its carapace. That made her plan a little more tricky, but she thought she could deal with it. The Jelly might be fast, but there was no way it could move its thousands and thousands of kilos as quickly as the Soft Blade.
“Dodge this,” Kira muttered, willing hundreds of razor-sharp threads across the surface of the Hierophant. The lines lunged and stabbed and scrambled, one atop another and each at a different angle so that it was impossible to predict which was going to strike where.
Before the great and mighty Ctein could move out of range, the tiny tips of her cutting threads tinked and tickled against the nearest of the Jelly’s tentacles. To her dismay, she realized that the thin, grey armor it wore was a nanomaterial not unlike the fibers that made up the Soft Blade. The suit’s anger blazed anew; it recognized the material as yet another piece of technology the graspers had stolen from its makers. Given time, Kira felt sure the xeno could burrow through the weave, but Ctein wasn’t about to give her that time.
As the behemoth swung its weapon toward her again, Kira allowed the thicket of threads to swarm from one tentacle to the next until she saw and felt the railgun within her thousandfold grasp. She ripped it from the fingers at the end of the Jelly’s bony arm, and threw the railgun away, threw it into the depths of empty space, where it might drift unclaimed for a million years or more.
For just an instant, Kira thought she had the advantage. Then, with one of its unencumbered tentacles, Ctein reached behind itself and retrieved a large white tube that must have been attached to the backside of its carapace. The tube was at least six meters long, and as the Jelly turned it toward her, Kira saw a dark iris at the end.
She half yelled as she tried to move out of the way, but this time, she was the one who was too slow.
The opening of the tube flared white, and a spear of solid flame jabbed toward her. It burned through the suit’s fibers like so much dry tinder; they melted and evaporated, and from them she felt a wave of not-pain great enough to frighten her.
Now Kira was trying to escape. She shoved Ctein away, but it clung to her even as it forced the ravening fire closer and closer. The creature was fearsomely strong—strong enough to hold its own against the Soft Blade.
But the Blade was also Soft; she allowed it to relax and bend before Ctein’s attacks, to run like water and slip through even the tightest of grips. The Jelly’s suckers couldn’t hold her; however they worked, the suit knew how to defeat them.
With a wriggle and a yelp, Kira succeeded in both pushing and pulling herself free.
She fell away from Ctein with a sense of having barely escaped with her life.
The creature gave her no chance to regroup. It leaped after her, and she fled along the length of the Hierophant, toward the distant prow. A pursuit surrounded by silence, mediated only by the pounding of her heart and the rasp of her breathing, and accomplished with the terrible grace that was the natural effect of weightlessness.
The size of Ctein seemed unreal. It felt as if she were being chased by a monster the size of a mountain. Possible names for it flashed through her mind: Kraken. Cthulhu. Jörmungandr. Tiamat. But none of them captured the sheer horror of the beast behind her. A crawling nest of lambent serpents, eager to rend flesh from flesh.
She glanced over her shoulder, and she belatedly realized what the tube actually was. A rocket engine, complete with a fuel supply. The Jelly was actually using a rocket as a weapon.
Ctein had planned for her. For the Idealis. And Kira hadn’t planned at all. She hadn’t realized the true extent of the threat the ancient creature posed.
At any other time, the absurdity of using a rocket engine as a weapon would have dumbfounded her. Now, it was just another factor she included in the calculations running in her mind: speeds, distances, angles, forces, and possible reactions and behaviors. Calculations of survival.
Then it occurred to her: along with the heat it produced, the rocket also produced a fair amount of thrust. That was what rockets did. Which meant Ctein had to hold on to something when using it or the rocket would send the Jelly flying away in the opposite direction. Admittedly, Ctein also had its maneuvering thrusters, but she didn’t think they were as strong as the rocket.
“Ha!” she said.
As if in reply, her earpiece crackled and a man said, *This is Lieutenant Dunroth. Do you copy?*
“Who the hell are you?”
*Admiral Klein’s aide. We have a missile inbound to your location from the Unrelenting Force. Can you lead the Jelly back toward the stern of the Hierophant?*
“You going to blow us both up?”
*That’s a negative, Ms. Navárez. It’s a targeted munition. You shouldn’t be in too much danger. But we need to get a clear line of sight.*
“Roger. On my way.”
Then Tschetter’s voice popped in the channeclass="underline" *Navárez. Make sure you put enough distance between you and Ctein. Remember, there’s no such thing as friendly fire.*
“Got it.”
Kira jabbed the suit toward the hull and stopped herself. Then she threw herself up and back over the approaching Jelly in what would have normally been a stomach-churning somersault but that now felt like a graceful dive. Ctein reached toward her with three of its tentacles, straining its limbs to their fullest extent, but they fell short by a few scant meters. As she’d hoped, the creature continued to cling to the Hierophant, where it could still use its oversized blowtorch.
The Soft Blade arrested her flight and steered her back down to the surface of the battleship. Kira noticed that it moved her faster, more efficiently than before, and she remembered dreams of the suit swooping and soaring through space with the agility of an unmanned drone, something that could only be possible if the organism was able to manufacture thrusters of its own. Actual proper thrusters, capable of sustained output.