The alien moved into the room with unsettling fluidity, as if it had been born in zero-g, turning and twisting with seemingly no preference for which direction its torso pointed.
At the sight, Kira felt a response from her suit: a rising rage as well as a sense of ancient offense.
Grasper! Wrongflesh manyform! Flashes of pain, bright as exploding stars. Pain and rebirth in an endless cycle, and a constant cacophony of noise: booms and cracks and shattering retorts. The pairing was not as it ought to be. The grasper did not understand the pattern of things. It did not see. It did not listen. It sought to conquer rather than to cooperate.
Wrongness!!!
This wasn’t what the xeno had expected from the summons! Fear and hate roared through Kira, and she didn’t know which was the suit’s and which was hers. The tension inside her snapped, and the skin of the xeno rippled and began to spike out, same as on Adra, needle-sharp spears jabbing in random directions. But this time, she felt no pain.
“Shoot it!” Carr shouted. “Shoot it, you fool! Shoot it!”
The grasper twitched, seeming to shift its attention between them. A strange whispering surrounded Kira, like a billowing cloud, and from it she felt currents of emotion: first surprise, and then in quick succession recognition, alarm, and satisfaction. The whispers grew louder, and then a switch seemed to flip in her brain and she realized she could understand what the alien was saying:
[[—and alert the Knot. Target located. Send all arms to this position. Consumption is incomplete. Containment and recovery should be possible, then we may cl—]]
“Self-destruct in T-minus five minutes. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
Carr swore and kicked himself over to the dead Marine and yanked on the man’s blaster, trying to free it from the corpse.
One of the laser-wielding tentacles shifted positions, the gelatinous muscles within flexing and relaxing. Kira heard a bang, and a white-hot spike of metal erupted from the side of the Marine’s blaster as a laser pulse hit it, sending the gun careening across the room.
The alien turned toward her. Its weapon twitched. Another bang, and a bolt of pain lanced her chest.
Kira grunted, and for a moment, she felt her heart falter. The spikes on the suit pulsed outward, but to no avail.
[[Qwon here: Foolish two-form! You profane the Vanished. Foulness in the water, this—]]
She scrabbled for the rungs of the ladder by the access hatch, trying to get away, trying to escape, even though there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Bang. Heat stabbed her leg, deep and excruciating.
Then a third bang, and a scorched crater appeared in the wall to her left. The suit had adapted to the laser frequency; it was shielding her. Maybe—
As if in a daze, Kira spun back around and, somehow, lifted the pistol, held it before her. The barrel of the gun wavered as she struggled to aim at the alien.
“Shoot it, damn you!” the doctor screamed, specks of froth flying from his mouth.
“Self-destruct in T-minus four minutes and thirty seconds. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
Fear narrowed Kira’s vision, constricted her world to a tight cone. “No!” she shouted—a panicked rejection of everything that was happening.
The gun went off, seemingly of its own accord.
The alien darted across the ceiling of the equipment room as it dodged. It was terrifyingly fast, and each tentacle seemed to move with a mind of its own.
Kira yelled and kept squeezing the trigger, the recoil a series of hard smacks against her palm. The noise was muted, distant.
Sparks flew as the grasper’s laser shot two of the bullets out of the air.
The creature swarmed over the skinsuit lockers and paused while clinging to the wall by the red feed pipe—
“Wait! Stop! Stop!” Carr was shouting, but Kira didn’t hear, didn’t care, couldn’t stop. First Alan, then the xeno, and now this. It was too much to bear. She wanted the grasper gone, no matter the risk.
Twice more she fired.
A patch of red crossed her line of sight, beyond the end of the muzzle, and—
…
Thunder cracked, and an invisible hammer slammed Kira against the opposite wall. The blast shattered one of the xeno’s spines. She could feel the fragment spinning across the room, as if she were in two places at once.
As her vision cleared, Kira saw the ruins of the supply room. The grasper was a mangled mess, but several of its tentacles still waved with weak urgency, blobs of orange ichor oozing from its wounds. Carr had been thrown against the shelving. Shards of bones stuck out from his arms and legs. The orphaned piece of the xeno lay against the bulkhead across from her: a slash of torn fibers draped across the crumpled panels.
More importantly, there was a jagged hole in the hull where one of the bullets had hit the oxygen line, triggering the explosion. Through it, the blackness of space was visible, dark and dreadful.
A cyclone of air rushed past Kira, dragging at her with inexorable force. The suction pulled Carr, the grasper, and the xeno fragment out of the ship, along with a stream of debris.
Storage bins battered Kira. She cried out, but the wind stole the breath from her mouth, and she struggled to grab a handhold—any handhold—but she was too slow and the walls were too far away. Memories of the breach on Serris flashed through her mind, crystal sharp.
The split in the hull widened; the Extenuating Circumstances was tearing itself apart, each half drifting in a different direction. Then the outflow of gas sent her tumbling past the bloodstained shelves, past the breach, and into the void.
And all went silent.
CHAPTER VIII. OUT & ABOUT
1.
The stars and the ship spun around her in a dizzying kaleidoscope.
Kira opened her mouth and allowed the air in her lungs to escape, as you were supposed to do if spaced. Otherwise you risked soft tissue damage and, possibly, an embolism.
The downside was, she had only about fifteen seconds of consciousness left. Death by asphyxiation or death by arterial obstruction. Not much of a choice.
She gulped out of instinct and flailed, hoping to catch something with her hands.
Nothing.
Her face stung and prickled; the moisture on her skin boiling off. The sensation increased, becoming a cold fire that crawled upward from her neck and inward from her hairline. Her vision dimmed, and Kira felt sure she was blacking out.
Panic set in then. Deep, overriding panic, and the last remnants of Kira’s training fled her mind, replaced by the animal need to survive.
She screamed, and she heard the scream.
Kira was so shocked, she stopped and then, purely by reflex, took a breath. Air—precious air—filled her lungs.
Unable to believe it, she felt her face.
The suit had molded itself to her features, forming a smooth surface over her mouth and nose. With the tips of her fingers, she discovered that small, domed shells now covered her eyes.
Kira took another breath, still incredulous. How long could the suit keep her supplied with air? A minute? Several minutes? Any more than three and it wouldn’t matter, because nothing would be left of the Extenuating Circumstances but a rapidly expanding cloud of radioactive dust.