The Entropist pressed her lips together, nodded, and bowed low. “Thank you, Prisoner Kira. Your concern is comforting.”
Kira inclined her head in return. “Prisoner no more, Questant.”
Surprise widened the Entropist’s features. “What? That isn’t … How do you mean?”
But Kira did not answer. Instead, she looked again at Falconi. “Salvo.”
“Kira,” he replied, somber.
“You brought Trig.”
“Of course.”
“Do you trust us, Salvo?”
He hesitated and then nodded. “I wouldn’t have brought the kid if I didn’t.”
That warmed the center of Kira’s being. Again she smiled. It was fast becoming her favorite expression. “Then trust me once more.”
From the fractal floor, she sent a thicket of tendrils—green this time, not black—sprouting up around Trig’s cryo tube. Sparrow and Hwa-jung cursed and jumped away from the tube, while at the back of the chamber, the ranks of armored Marines stiffened and lifted their weapons.
“Put those down!” Klein barked. “At ease!”
Kira’s smile never wavered as the tendrils twined around Trig’s tube, encasing it in a twisting, squirming embrace—burying it beneath the mass of greenery.
“Kira,” said Nielsen, in a soft tone. Not warning, not angry, but concerned.
“Trust me,” she said. By means of the vines that were her limbs, she reached into the cryo tube and ran a thousand different threads into Trig’s damaged flesh, seeking the source of his injuries. There. A collection of burned cells, torn muscles, bruised and damaged tendons, ruptured blood vessels, and severed nerves—the insults to his body were as easy for her to feel as the internal structure of the station.
How could she have ever found this hard? The thought seemed inconceivable.
Then she poured the needed energy into Trig’s frozen form, guided the Seed as it worked to repair his wounds. When all seemed right, she removed the respirator from his mouth and disconnected the tubes from his arms, separating him from the machine that had kept him in suspended animation for over half a year.
Slowly, carefully, she warmed his body, treating it as gently as a mother hen would a newly laid egg. She felt the heat of his metabolism increase like a kindling fire rising to full flame until, at last, he took his first, unsupported breath.
She released him then. The vines retracted into the floor to reveal Trig’s pale form curled in a fetal shape, bare except for a pair of grey thermal shorts of the sort worn under skinsuits. He gasped, like a drowning man coming to the surface, and hacked up a gob of spit. It melted away, as if it had never existed.
“Trig!” exclaimed Nielsen, and she and Vishal bent over the kid. Sparrow, Hwa-jung, and Falconi crowded in close, watching.
“Wh—Where am I?” Trig said. His voice was weak, hoarse.
“That is somewhat hard to explain,” said Vishal.
Falconi shrugged off his vest and draped it over the kid’s shoulders. “Here, this’ll help keep you warm.”
“Huh? Why are you all wearing skinsuits? Where am I?” Then Sparrow moved out of the way, and Trig saw Kira, suspended as she was in the wall. His mouth dropped open. “That … you, Kira?”
“Welcome back,” she said, and her voice blossomed with warmth. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”
Trig looked around the pillared chamber. His eyes showed white. “Is all this yours?”
“It is.”
The kid tried to get to his feet, but his knees buckled and he would have fallen if Hwa-jung hadn’t caught him by the arm. “Careful,” she rumbled.
“I … I…” Trig shook his head. Then he looked at Falconi with a plaintive expression. “Are we still at Bughunt?”
“No,” said Falconi. “That we aren’t. Let’s get you back to the Wallfish and have the doc check you out, and then you can rest up and we’ll fill you in on everything you’ve missed.”
“It’s been exciting,” Sparrow said in a dry tone.
“Yessir. Rest sounds pretty darn nice right now. Feels like I got worked over by a couple of guys with hammers. I—” The kid’s words cut off as he saw Lphet and, by the back of the chamber, the rest of the Wranaui. He yelped and attempted to scramble backwards, but Hwa-jung grabbed him by the arm again, held him in place. “J-j-jellies! Comeon, we gotta—”
“We know,” said Nielsen in a soothing voice. “It’s okay. Trig, stop, look at me. It’s okay. Take a breath, calm down. We’re all friends here.”
The kid hesitated, glancing between them as if uncertain what to believe. Then Sparrow gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “As I said, it’s been exciting.”
“That’s one way to put it,” muttered Falconi. “Nielsen’s right, though. We’re all friends here.” His gaze darted toward Kira for an instant before returning to the kid.
Trig relaxed then and stopped pulling against Hwa-jung. “Yessir. Sorry sir.”
“Perfectly understandable,” said Falconi, and patted him on the back.
Then Kira shifted her attention back to her other guests. “Admiral Klein, great and mighty Lphet, you have seen what I can do. If you have any other crew members who are wounded—wounded beyond your ability to heal—bring them here, and I will do for them what I did for Trig.”
[[Lphet here: Your generosity is without equal, Idealis, but those of the Wranaui who are hurt beyond repair will transfer to new forms rather than suffer with an injury.]]
“As you wish.”
A deep furrow appeared between Klein’s eyebrows. “That’s a damn kind offer, Navárez, but biocontainment protocol doesn’t allow for—”
“Biocontainment protocol,” said Kira in a gentle voice, “has already been well and truly broken. Wouldn’t you agree, Admiral?”
His scowl deepened. “You may have a point, but the League would court-martial me if I violated quarantine like that.”
“You must have run tests on the men and women I already healed.”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“Nothing,” growled Klein. “The techs can’t find a damned thing wrong with them.”
“So there you go.”
He shook his head. “No, we don’t. The Extenuating Circumstances couldn’t find anything wrong with you either before the xeno came out of you. So forgive me if I’m somewhat less than blasé about the situation, Navárez.”
She smiled, but this time less out of pleasure than a desire to appear unthreatening. “The League holds no sway here, Admiral, nor shall it. I am claiming this system for myself, for Unity, and neither the League nor the Jellies shall dictate laws here. While you are under my protection, you are a free man, Admiral—free to make whatever choices your conscience dictates.”
“A free man.” He snorted and shook his head. “You have some gall, Navárez.”
“Maybe. I made my offer not out of consideration for you, Admiral, but for your crews. If you have men or women who are suffering, whom you can’t heal, I can help. That is all. The decision is yours.”
Then she looked past him, at the Wranaui near the back of the chamber. “Itari, it is good to see you unharmed. I am grateful for the help you provided on the Battered Hierophant.”
A ripple of bright colors passed across the Wranaui’s tentacles. [[Itari here: It pleases this one to have been of use.]]
Kira returned her gaze to the forefront. “Great and mighty Lphet, without Itari’s service during recent events, we might never have defeated Ctein. As a favor to me, I ask that you grant Itari hatching rights, as well as a choice of whatever form it wishes to have.”