Nearscent of agreement reached her. [[Lphet here: Your request is reasonable, Idealis. It will be done.]]
And Itari turned blue and purple. [[Itari here: Thank you, Idealis.]]
Kira responded with pleasant nearscent of her own. Then she shifted her attention to the rest of her guests. “I have said what needed saying. Now, I must return to my work. Leave me, and I shall send for you when I am ready to talk again.”
Admiral Klein gave a sharp nod, turned on his heel, and marched toward the back of the chamber. Lphet paused to make a sign of courtesy with its tentacles—a wriggle and a flash of color that Kira recognized from Qwon’s memories—and followed suit. Last of all, the crew of the Wallfish departed also, but not before Falconi gave her one more look and said, “Are you going to be okay, Kira?”
She gazed down at him with fondness, and the whole chamber seemed to bend toward him. “I’m going to be fine, Salvo. Absolutely fine. All is well.” And she meant it with her entire being.
“Alright then,” he said. But he did not appear convinced.
2.
With her visitors departed, Kira returned to the work of building out the station. Lphet’s promised Wranaui soon arrived, and she guided them to their watery quarters. Directly afterward, Klein sent over a contingent of UMC researchers. Those too she provided housing within the frame of her expanding body, and she offered them fruit grown of Mar Íneth. But while the researchers accepted the fruit, they did not taste of it, and they kept their skinsuits on at all times, which she knew was no small discomfort. No matter. It was not her place to force them to trust. The Wranaui were less concerned for their safety and gladly partook of her hospitality, either because of their history with the Seed and its kin or because of their disregard for individual bodies. Kira wasn’t sure which.
Along with the Wranaui came Tschetter. When Kira asked the woman why she had not rejoined the UMC, she said, “After all the time I spent with the Jellies, UMCI would never allow me to have my old job back. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve been irrevocably compromised.”
“So what will you do?” Kira asked.
The once-major gestured at the station around her. “Work as a liaison between humans and Jellies, try to avoid another war. Lphet has chosen me to serve as a translator and facilitator with the UMC and the League, and Admiral Klein has agreed to the same.” She shrugged. “I think I might be able to do some good here. Ambassador Tschetter; it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Kira did. And it heartened her to see the hope Tschetter had in her new work, as well as the woman’s optimism for their shared future.
Outside the station, ships continued to gather: human, Wranaui, and those Kira had built to bring her supplies from throughout Cordova. They clustered around her like bees around a flower full of nectar, and she felt a sense of pride when she looked at them.
A signal beam flashed toward her from the Wallfish. Out of curiosity, she answered, and the familiar sound of Gregorovich’s voice filled her hidden ears:
*Greetings, O Meatsack. Now you are as I am. How do you like being bounded in this particular nutshell?*
“I have transcended the nutshell, ship mind.”
*Oh-ho! A bold claim, that.*
“It is true,” she said. Then: “How do you manage to keep track of everything that is yourself? There’s so … much.”
His answer was surprisingly sober: *It takes time, O Queen of Thorns. Time and work. Do not make any hasty judgments until you are sure of yourself. After I transitioned, it took a year and a half before I knew who the new me was.* He giggled, ruining his serious air. *Not that I ever really know who I am. Who does, hmm? We change as circumstances change, like wisps blown on the wind.*
She thought on that for a time. “Thank you, Gregorovich.”
*Of course, station mind. Whenever you need to talk, call, and I will listen.*
Kira took his advice seriously. Even as she labored on Unity, she redoubled her efforts to sort through the mess of memories strewn throughout her reconstituted brain, struggling to pin down and identify which ones belonged to which parts of herself. Struggling to figure out who exactly she was. She paid particular attention to the memories of the Maw, and it was while studying them that she made a discovery that filled her with cold dread.
Oh no.
For she remembered. Before coming to Cordova-1420, the Maw had taken precautions against its possible defeat (unlikely as that seemed). It had, in the darkest depths of interstellar space, formed seven avatars from its flesh and the flesh of the Seed—seven living, thinking, self-directed copies of itself. And the Maw had sent off its virulent, wrath-filled clones with no knowledge of where they might ultimately go.
Kira thought of the killing command she had broadcast before. Surely that would … But then, from the Seed, she felt an unshakable conviction that the command would not stop the Maw’s avatars, for they were the Seed—twisted and broken as the Maw had been, but still of the same underlying substance. Unlike the Corrupted, she could not unmake the Maw’s poisonous spawn with a single line, just as she could not have unmade the Maw. The Seed did not possess such power over itself. The Old Ones had not seen fit to give their creations that ability, preferring to keep it for themselves in the shape of the Staff of Blue.
But the staff was broken, and Kira knew that even if she had the pieces, she could not repair it. The knowledge was not in her, and that too was the Old Ones’ doing.
They had, she decided, been overconfident in their supremacy.
Her dread deepened as she pondered the situation. The Maw’s offspring would spread their evil wherever they went, blanketing planets with Corrupted, converting or overwriting any existing life. The seven represented an existential threat to every other being in the galaxy.… Their legacy would be one of misery—the exact opposite of everything the Seed was supposed to embody.
The thought haunted her.
With a sense of regret, Kira realized her afterlife was not to be as she’d imagined. The Maw was her responsibility, and so too were the seven deadly darts it had let loose among the stars.
CHAPTER III. DECESSION
1.
Kira acted without hesitation. Time was short, and she had no intention of wasting it.
To the ships assembled around her, she said, “Stand clear.” A scramble of activity followed as the captains pulled their ships back.
Then she ignited thrusters along the ribs of the station and began to move it, slowly and ponderously, toward the planet the Wranaui had been mining. The UMC had called it R1, but Kira thought it deserved a proper name. She would leave it to the people living on Unity to name it, though. It was their right as the inhabitants of the system.
Both Lphet and Admiral Klein signaled her as the station started to shift its position. *Navárez, what are you doing?* Klein asked.
“Taking up high orbit around R1,” she said. “It will be a better location for Unity.”
*Roger that, Navárez. We’ll secure your flight path. Next time, some warning would be appreciated.*
[[Lphet here: Do you require any assistance, Idealis?]]
“None at the moment.”
2.
Moving Unity took several days. Kira used that time to make the preparations she needed. And when she had settled the station into its final orbit, she summoned the crew of the Wallfish to her once again.