She also noticed that she still hadn’t run out of air. Good. As long as the suit could keep providing her with oxygen, she could keep fighting.
She pulled herself along the Hierophant, propelling herself faster and faster until she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself before the shadow shield. And yet, she could feel Ctein closing in on her, like a rising wave, vast, uncaring, unstoppable.
Lt. Dunroth’s clipped voice sounded: *Five seconds to target. Clear the area. Repeat, clear the area.*
Ahead of her, Kira saw a meteor arcing toward the Hierophant, a shining star bright enough to be visible through the whole thickness of the smoke.
Time seemed to slow, and her breath caught, and she found herself wishing that she were anywhere but there. The worst thing was, she couldn’t change the situation. The missile would either kill her—or it wouldn’t; the outcome was out of her control.
When the missile was only a second from impact (and still over a hundred meters away), Kira grabbed the hull and pulled herself flat against it, forming the suit into a hard shell.
As she did, the missile vanished with a disappointingly small blip of light, and a sphere of smoke-free space expanded from the spot where it had been.
Dammit. Kira had seen enough point-defense lasers in action to know what had happened. A blaster mounted somewhere along the Hierophant had shot down the missile.
She yanked herself free of the hull and threw herself sideways moments before Ctein would have crashed into her.
Nearscent of derision engulfed her. [[Ctein here: Pathetic.]]
*Sorry, Navárez,* said Lt. Dunroth. *Doesn’t look like we can get a missile past the Hierophant’s lasers. We’re looping around r2, and then we’ll be taking another pass. Admiral Klein says you better either kill that son-of-a-bitch or find a way off the Hierophant, because we’ll be hitting it with three more Casaba-Howitzers on the way back.*
Ctein swung one of its tentacles at her, and Kira jetted out of the way just as the massive trunk of muscle and sinew swept past. Then again, like a hummingbird dodging swipes from an angry octopus.
The swirling smoke thickened and then cleared as the Hierophant emerged from the haze. For the first time since the explosion had torn her out of the ship, the true darkness of space was visible, and the hull and everything she saw acquired an almost painfully lucid sharpness. At the periphery of her vision, she was aware of distant sparks and flashes (evidence of the battle still ongoing between the Seventh, the Jellies, and the incoming nightmares).
Kira switched back to the visible spectrum. No need for infrared now that the smoke was gone.
She hung before the twining monster, a toy, a tiny plaything suspended before a hungry predator. It lunged; she dodged. She darted forward; it ignited the rocket engine for a second, and the scorching heat drove her back. They were at a stalemate, both of them vying for the slightest advantage—and neither of them finding it.
A spurt of nearscent struck her, ejected from some hidden gland along the Jelly’s body:
[[Ctein here: You do not understand the flesh you are joined with, two-form. You are unworthy, unsignificant, doomed to failure.]]
She responded in kind, directing her own nearscent toward the knotted mass of the creature. [[Kira here: You have already failed, grasper. The Corrupted—]]
[[Ctein here: When I am joined with the Idealis, as I should have been before Nmarhl’s treachery, the Corrupted will fall before me like silt into the abyss. None shall hold against me. This ripple may have been disrupted, but the next will be a triumph for the Wranaui, and all will bend beneath the force of our shoals.]]
[[Kira here: You will never have the Idealis!]]
[[Ctein here: I will, two-form. And I will enjoy cracking open your shell and eating your meat from within.]]
Kira yelled and tried darting behind the Jelly to snatch the rocket from its grasp, but the alien matched her movements, twisting so that its weapon always faced her.
It was a frantic, ugly dance, but a dance all the same, and despite its ugliness, filled with moments of grace and daring. Ctein was too big and strong for the Soft Blade to restrain (at least not at the suit’s current size). So Kira did her best to avoid its grasp. And in turn, the alien did everything it could to avoid the touch of the Soft Blade. It seemed to know that if it let her hold it for too long, she would be able to pierce its armor.
Kira advanced; the Jelly retreated. It advanced; she retreated. Twice she caught hold of a tentacle only to have Ctein strike her so hard, she was forced to let go or risk being bludgeoned into unconsciousness. The blows were powerful enough to break off pieces of the suit: small shafts and rods that liquified into amorphous blobs before rejoining her.
If she could just close the distance between her and Ctein, if she could just wrap the Soft Blade around the alien’s carapace and press herself flat against it, she knew she could kill it. Yet for all her efforts, Kira couldn’t get past the Jelly’s defenses.
The old and cunning Ctein seemed to realize it had the advantage—seemed to realize that it could cause her more pain than she could cause it—because it started to chase her along the Hierophant, firing its rocket torch, swinging its tentacles in a random rhythm, forcing her back and leaving great furrows in the hull from its failed strikes. And Kira had no choice but to retreat. Meter after meter she surrendered, desperate to keep her distance, for if the behemoth succeeded in catching her between hull and tentacle, the impact would turn her brain into mush, no matter how well the Soft Blade was able to protect her.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, and even under the suit, Kira could feel herself sweating, her body slick with a film of exertion that the Soft Blade quickly absorbed.
It couldn’t continue. She couldn’t continue. At some point she’d slip and make a mistake, and Ctein would kill her. Running wouldn’t help; there was nowhere but emptiness to flee to, and she couldn’t leave her friends. Nor the UMC; whatever their faults, they were fighting for the survival of humanity, same as she.
She zipped past Ctein’s latest attack. How long could she keep going? It felt as if she’d been fighting for days and days. When had the Wallfish crashed into the Hierophant? She couldn’t remember.
She stabbed at the Jelly’s carapace for the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time, the suit’s atomically sharp spikes skittered across the alien’s shell.
Kira grunted with strain as she hooked a nearby antenna and pulled herself away from the Jelly, just barely escaping its retaliatory attack. It followed up with another lash of its tentacles, and she hurried toward the prow of the battleship, trying to avoid it, trying to remain free.
Then Ctein surprised her by jumping toward her, abandoning its grip on the Hierophant.
“Gah!” The Soft Blade responded by pushing her backwards and maneuvering her around the wide width of the battleship. White puffs emanated from the Jelly’s thrusters as it followed. It succeeded in matching her trajectory and then started to gain on her, rocket extended like a giant accusatory finger.
Kira scanned the hull of the Hierophant, looking for something, anything that she could use. A jagged uplift of damaged hull caught her eye. If she headed toward it, she could use it to slingshot herself behind the Jelly and maybe—
*Kira! Get out of the way!* said Falconi.