A twinge of panic formed in Kira, and for the first time since waking, the Soft Blade stirred in response: a wash of cold prickles rising from thighs to chest. Her panic worsened, now colored by dread. Have to stay calm. If the crew of the Wallfish knew what she was carrying, they’d stick her in quarantine, and she was in no hurry to experience that particular pleasure again. In any case, the UMC wouldn’t look kindly on her revealing the existence of the xeno to civilians. The more her rescuers knew about the Soft Blade, the more trouble she’d be creating, both for them and for herself.
She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”
The doctor hesitated, appearing frustrated. “Ms. Kaminski, I cannot be treating you properly if you won’t let me finish my examination. This is just a simple blood test, and—”
“No blood tests!” Kira said, more loudly than before. The front of her jumpsuit started to tent outward as a patch of short spikes formed on the Soft Blade. Desperate, she did the only thing she could think of: she willed that area of the suit to harden.
It worked.
The spikes froze in place, and she crossed her arms over her chest, hoping neither Vishal nor the kid would notice. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably fast.
From outside the sickbay sounded a new voice: “What are you, Orthodox Hutterite?”
A man stepped through the doorway. He was shorter than her, with sharp blue eyes in startling contrast to his deep spacer’s tan. A day’s worth of black stubble covered his chin and cheeks, but his hair was neat and combed. His apparent age was early forties, although of course, he could have just as easily been sixty as forty. Kira guessed he was on the younger side of that equation, as his nose and ears didn’t show much, if any, age-related growth.
He wore a knit shirt under a vest with military-style webbing, and he had a well-worn blaster strapped to his right thigh. His hand, Kira noticed, never strayed far from the grip of the weapon.
There was an air of command about the man; the kid and the doctor straightened seemingly without noticing as he entered. Kira had known men like him before: hard, no-nonsense SOBs who wouldn’t settle for half-truths. Moreover, if she had to guess, he would sooner stab her in the back than allow anything bad to happen to his ship or crew.
That made him dangerous, but if he wasn’t a complete bastard, and if she dealt with him straight—straight as she could—he would probably treat her fairly.
“Something like that,” Kira said. She wasn’t particularly religious, but it was a convenient excuse.
He grunted. “Let her be, Doc. If the woman doesn’t want to be examined, the woman doesn’t have to be examined.”
“But—” Vishal started to say.
“You heard me, Doc.”
Vishal bobbed his head in agreement, but Kira could see him suppressing his anger.
Then the blue-eyed man said to her, “Captain Falconi at your service.”
“Ensign Kaminski.”
“You have a first name?”
Kira hesitated for a brief moment. “Ellen.” It was her mother’s.
“That’s a hell of a skinsuit you have there, Ellen,” said Falconi. “Not exactly standard-issue UMC gear.”
She tugged on the cuffs of her jumpsuit, pulling them farther down her arms. “It was a gift from my boyfriend, custom-made. I didn’t have time to get into anything else before leaving on the Valkyrie.”
“Uh-huh. And how do you, you know, remove it?” He motioned toward the side of his head.
Self-conscious, Kira touched her scalp, knowing he was looking at the fibers crisscrossing her skin. “It peels right off.” She mimed with her fingers, as if to pull up the edge of the xeno. But she didn’t because she couldn’t.
“Do you have a helmet too?” asked Trig.
Kira shook her head. “Not anymore. But I can use any standard skinsuit helmet.”
“Cool.”
Then Falconi said, “So here’s the deal, Ellen. We got your crewmates transferred to our ship. They’re fine, but we’re leaving them in cryo until we dock, as we’re already packed to the gills. I assume the UMC is eager to debrief you—and I assume you’re eager to report in—but it’ll have to wait. Our transmitter got damaged a few days ago, which means we can’t send data, only receive it.”
“Can’t you use the equipment on the Valkyrie?” Kira asked. She immediately regretted it. Dammit, don’t make their job any easier.
Falconi shook his head. “My machine boss says the damage to your shuttle caused the electrical system to short out when the fusion drive was reactivated. It fried the computer, shut down the reactor, et cetera, et cetera. Your companions are just lucky the power cells on the cryo tubes held.”
“So no one back at Command knows the five of us are alive?” Kira said.
“Not you particularly,” said Falconi. “But they know at least four people were on the shuttle. The thermal signatures were pretty clear. It’s why the UMC put out an open contract for any ship that could rendezvous with the Valkyrie before it ended up out on the far edge of the system. Fortunately for you, we had the delta-v to spare.”
Kira felt possibilities opening up before her. If the UMC didn’t know she was alive, and Orso and the others were still in cryo, maybe—just maybe—there was an opportunity for her to avoid getting disappeared by the UMC and the League.
“How long until we make port?” she asked.
“A week. We’re heading in-system to Ruslan. Got a bunch of passengers in the hold to drop off.” The captain raised an eyebrow. “We ended up pretty far off track going after the Valkyrie.”
A week. Could she keep the Soft Blade a secret for a whole week? She’d have to; there was no other choice.
Then Falconi said, “Your flight path shows you came from Sigma Draconis.”
“That’s right.”
“What happened? Those older drives can only manage, what, point one four light-years per day? That’s a hell of a long trip to tackle without cryo.”
Kira hesitated.
“Did the Jellies hit you?” said Trig.
“Jellies?” she said, puzzled, but grateful for the extra few seconds to think.
“You know, the aliens. Jellies. Jellyfish. That’s what we’re calling them.”
A growing sense of horror filled Kira as he spoke. She glanced between him and the captain. “Jellies.”
Falconi leaned against the frame of the door. “You wouldn’t have heard. It happened after you left Sigma Draconis. An alien ship jumped in around Ruslan—what, two months ago?—and hit three different transports. Destroyed one of them. Then groups of them started popping up all over the place: Shin-Zar, Eidolon, even Sol. Punched holes through three cruisers in orbit around Venus.”
“After that,” said Vishal, “the League formally declared war on the intruders.”
“War,” said Kira, flat. Her worst fears had come true.
“It’s shaping up to be a bad one too,” said Falconi. “The Jellies have been doing their best to knock the fight out of us. They’ve been disabling ships throughout the League, blowing up antimatter farms, landing troops on colonies, that sort of thing.”
“Have they attacked Weyland?”
The captain shrugged. “Hell if I know. Probably. FTL comms aren’t exactly reliable right now. The Jellies have been jamming them all they can.”
The back of Kira’s neck prickled. “You mean they’re here? Now?”
“Yup!” said Trig. “Seven of them! Three of the larger battleships, four of the smaller cruisers with double blasters mounted—”
Falconi raised a hand, and the kid obediently stopped. “They’ve been harassing ships between here and Sixty-One Cygni B for the past few weeks. The UMC are doing their best to keep the Jellies tied up, but they just don’t have enough forces.”