Lunai was focused enough to see the next projectile thrown at them. It was a type of missile she didn’t recognize from her years of training. One that was wider than what you would typically use for cutting through space. It curved in the front with just enough surface area to accommodate Nula’s symbol: two spears crossing through a fish-creature’s skull.

  Entropi moved her arms within the strange gloves and a black shield appeared in front of the ship. As the missile collided with it, the shield curled inward and the force from the blast dissipating as it filtered through the black space.

  “Pammy, what’s the damage from the first blast?” Entropi asked, her eyes still locked on the front windshield.

  “The hull took the brunt of the damage on the lower right edge with an external piece breaking off. No immediate danger, but the ship’s telling me the damage is expanding.”

  “Nula’s ice, huh? Don’t worry, I’ve got it.” Entropi removed one arm from the glove and moved it towards the right side of the ship before stopping herself. She turned around to face Lunai. “Hey, your roots can dig into things, right? Why don’t you try grabbing the ice in its path and throwing it out of here? I’ll give you a boost of force to get past the first layer of steel.”

  Lunai blinked twice and looked at Kelang, then the pilot, then back to Entropi. “Uh, you really want me to do it?”

  “Why would I take you here if I wasn’t going to train you at all?”

  Pammy did not look quite as enthusiastic about it. “You want her to make another hole in my ship? Once she pulls her root up, there will be a direct line to the outside.”

  “I’ll seal the external hole myself while she does it.” She stared at Pammy with a wide smile. “Come on, Nula almost killed her. This is probably the safest way for her practice for a rematch.”

  Rematch!?

  Kelang raised a fin. “Actually, I can-“

  “You’re a guppy compared to Nula,” Entropi interrupted. “Whatever control over water you have flowing through your arms would feel like a lazy river.”

  Kelang stood frozen in defeat at the scathing comment. Entropi did not pull any punches, but she was right. Lunai wanted to be prepared to face Nula again. Kelang was helpful. She could at least practice resisting water absorption. It was a far cry from putting her roots against ice straight from the source of her defeat.

  “I’ll try it. Just give me a second.”

  Lunai stood up and ran to the barracks of the ship. Her potted plant rested on a small table next to the bunk beds. She scooped it up and returned to the cockpit, stationing herself in the right corner of the room.

  “This will help if I need it, so just show me where to dig! I promise I’ll make the tiniest crack possible until I get close.”

  Pammy sighed, but walked over to direct her. She circled a spot in the floor where Lunai could let loose with carefully targeted destruction. She twirled her pinky into the smallest root possible that could still penetrate the floor. Entropi had a free arm prepared to give Lunai an initial boost. A thin sheet of black space surrounded her pinky and forced it downwards in one quick motion.

  Pushed past the initial metal layer of the floor, the root had the hold it needed to continue drilling through. It was moving slowly, and it only got harder to move as she went deeper. She grabbed the trunk of her extended arm to steady herself, thinking of the simple growth motto offered by her designer plant friend.

  Ions balanced. Energy stored.

  She repeated it in her head like one of her father’s prayers. Steel gave way to her bark as she commanded her body to keep going. There was a sudden release of tension as it popped into the tunnel being dug by the ice shard. She felt a chill as her root brushed against the ice. Her suit’s temperature control protected her at first.

  The root wrapped around the ice and started pushing, finding that the shard would not budge without more pressure. Pain leaked through the suit as the heating mechanism burned out. If Dr. Crux was there, he would tell her to pull back immediately. Entropi expected more of the intern than anyone else so far. She wasn’t going to waste that trust.

  Keep going. Anything lost can be renewed.

  Lunai felt her cells dying one by one as the cold crystallized the water within her. She pushed back and replaced the dead skin with plant matter from her inner reserves. It strained the rest of her body, but the roots managed to get a hold strong enough to reverse the shard’s path. She kept going until she felt the release of pressure signaling that she was holding the shard in space. The roots flicked the shard away and it spun off into the distance.

  Lunai immediately snapped the root back to herself and fell to the ground. She clutched the finger, now white and necrotic, as she groaned in pain. She vaguely heard Pammy start to yell something, then Entropi blurred in the corner of her vision.

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  Come on, stay awake. It’s just one finger!

  She felt a leaf touch her arm and felt the surge of energy through her body. So much backup plant matter died around the shard that her body was almost hollow. Just as she promised herself, what was lost regrew, and her finger shed its dead shell to reclaim its bark-brown hue.

  When she opened her eyes, the cockpit was clear. Kelang was staring at her with the plant in hand. He had its stem dipped down towards Lunai’s head.

  “Oh, thank the Old God!”

  He held out his hand and helped her off the floor. Entropi was back in her chair with both arms in the gloves. The small hole she made with her root was now sealed, the ship slowly repairing itself now that the shard wasn’t actively digging.

  “Thanks for that.” She took the plant of out his hands and held it close to her chest. “Sorry Entropi, I don’t think I’m ready for a rematch.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she yelled without turning around.

  Pammy remained glued to the navigation screen amidst the chaos. “Another one’s coming.” She turned around and saw the two of them standing in the middle of the cockpit. “What are you doing? Get the fuck back in your chairs!”

  They complied and fell back into their chairs, safety belts snapping back into place. They made sense for the initial jump, but now they just felt demeaning. Lunai just stuck her pinky out into the void of space and was rewarded with a time-out chair.

  Frustrated or not, Lunai was determined to watch Entropi in action. Her hand movements were barely visible from the chair, but the battle outside was perfectly clear. Another missile came into view and a perfectly curved wave gently maneuvered it through space. Every action had to be perfectly calculated to apply the right amount of force. Entropi seemed lazy to most close associates, but her brain worked faster than they could imagine.

  The missile surfed the wave of force and lost all momentum, now floating aimlessly in front of them. A black sphere surrounded it, and with a sudden flick from Entropi’s wrist, it flew in the opposite direction towards the attacking ship.

  “Easy there! We’re trying to capture them alive,” Pammy reminded the woman.

  “Not gonna happen if we don’t get closer.”

  Pammy sighed and opened the cabinet holding the reality glue. As she injected herself and Entropi, Lunai’s stomach dropped again. They were actually doing it. They were going directly into the siren cluster. Entropi abducted her arms from her body and formed a tunnel around the ship. The faint humming that the reality glue helped with was now completely gone. They were wrapped in the safety of an insulated tube.

  Entropi looked as relaxed as ever. “Fire her up, Pam.”

  As the ship pressed forward, the tube moved as well, extending just enough ahead of them to block the sight and sound of the encroaching sirens. Even without those senses, Lunai could feel their presence. The reality glue did its job of softening the blow, but jumping into the mouth of the beast was another feat entirely.

  Lunai closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing. The plant in her arms helped guide her thoughts away from the voids around her. The belt keeping her in place now felt appropriate as her mind told her to jump into the unknown’s cold embrace.

  “Rapidly approaching the target. Entropi, be ready to extract the ship.”

  Pammy’s voice remained calm and steady, helping Lunai feel more secure. The voice next to her was less helpful, with Kelang whimpering and seemingly whispering in tongues. Lunai opened her eyes and saw him struggling against his safety belt. Barely hanging on to her own sanity, she extended her arms to wrap him in a hug. His movement started to settle down as the roots both restrained and comforted him.

  “Hey assholes! If you don’t wanna die I’d suggest stepping into the box outside your airlock. Oh, and don’t bring weapons. You know the deal.”

  Lunai looked back at the windshield. The enemy ship was now fully visible. There was an icy hole in its side from the reflected missile. Lunai could only assume it was eating through their hull just as it did to the GSA’s ship. Entropi was speaking into the ship’s intercom and holding a secure box just where she promised it was.

  A gruff voice came shaking through the ship’s communications system. “Ok, we’re leaving the ship now. We’re…sorry. We wouldn’t have attacked if we knew you were on board, ma’am.”

  “Just shut up and quit wasting my time. My interns aren’t used to void sirens and their sanity’s running thin.”

  “Y-yes ma’am!”

  They heard hushed voices moving around on the other end. Once it went silent, Pammy nodded her head.

  “I’m not detecting any life still on the ship. Go ahead and pull them in.”

  Entropi started humming as she pulled the box closer. Lunai watched it disappear behind the windshield to connect to the airlock. Pammy unlocked the outer door from her seat. Lunai sat up in her chair and removed her roots from Kelang just in case the poachers didn’t enter quietly.

  When the inner door screeched open, two armored soldiers walked through with their hands up. Entropi looked them up and down and frowned.

  “Only two?”

  “Yes ma’am. Nula limits crews for trips into siren clusters. Not many of us are trained for it.”

  “Shit. I thought there’d be more of you.” Entropi rested her elbow on the control panel. “Just, go get in the holding room.”

  She shooed them away and they hurried into the back hallway. Lunai heard the sound of frantic footsteps and a door sliding open. Then she heard another door sliding open after the first one closed. She turned around and saw the panicked soldiers blindly searching for the holding room.

  “Uh…It’s the second door on the right.” A helpful root extended to point to the exact door.

  They nodded at her and walked inside. Lunai could hear faint mumbling about Entropi. The word “void-sympathizer” came up a few times, which Lunai took as a reference to her connection with Bliss. Pammy pressed a button and the door was sealed shut. Lunai checked on Kelang, who now appeared to be in a fugue state with a blank expression.

  “Jumping 200,000 astronomical units backwards. Once we’re out of the storm, it’s a clear path to the nearest GSA satellite planet.”

  Lunai had never tried any sort of narcotic, but she imagined it felt similar to leaving a void siren cluster. Everything screaming inside of her head stopped. Her body felt light as a feather. Her breathing slowed and panic melted away. Coming down from existential dread was an exquisite feeling through and through, even if she was just returning to her baseline level of discomfort and self-doubt.

  Kelang was not as fortunate. He was still staring listlessly at the air in front of him. The poor guy had no idea what he was in for as a consultant. Lunai waved an arm in front of his face, then tried pinching him. His body shivered in response and he let out a shaky breath.

  “Kelang?”

  He turned his head to her, opened his mouth, and proceeded to throw up in her face. Seemingly unaware of what he’d just done, his body slumped over his chair, exhausted but breathing. Lunai wasn’t a stranger to messes. She simply wiped the mess away and smiled. They made it out alive. She managed to keep it together. She only hoped it was enough to impress Entropi.