Li’s attempt to poison the yrr

Judith Li’s attempt to poison the Yrr is a last, high-stakes effort to turn the Independence’s equipment and the Yrr’s own biology into weapons against the collective. As the ship floods and tilts, Li retrieves torpedoes, fits Deepflight 3 with radioactive pheromone cylinders, and prepares to send the craft through the sluice. Her plan depends on the sea carrying the toxin into the blue cloud and on the Yrr responding to contamination with programmed cell death. The scene ends at the point of imminent deployment: the systems are ready, but the evidence does not confirm that Li fires the weapon.

The crisis surrounding the plan

The poisoning attempt takes place amid a widening pattern of marine attacks that has made ordinary maritime risk calculations seem inadequate. Sal Peak describes mussels whose adhesive byssus has become a means of propulsion and navigation: on the Barrier Queen, the rudder was covered while the sea-chests remained clear. In the account he presents, the mussels’ effect is not isolated from the whales’ actions; cooperation between the two makes the attack on the vessel and its rescuing tug more effective.

The sinking of the Sansuo shows how quickly such incidents can escalate. Mussels jammed the car freighter’s rudder off the coast of Los Angeles; rough seas and a wave then contributed to the vessel taking on water, and shifting trucks were thought to have ruptured its side. It split open and sank shortly after the rudder jammed. Peak reports that similar incidents are increasing and that rescue tugs, too, are being attacked. This wider context establishes a world in which ships and their crews are exposed to coordinated threats, while also making clear that the poison plan is not a routine defensive measure: Li is preparing to attack the Yrr collectively.

The immediate emergency aboard the Independence sharpens that context. A pod of orcas patrols beneath the ship, and one carries Alicia Delaware out of sight. Jack Greywolf swims towards the gap between the steel plates and is struck by a force that sends him reeling; he sees the Deepflight trapped between the flaps. The scene connects the ship’s physical danger to the marine forces outside it, while Li’s later effort to arm the submersible takes place in the same collapsing vessel. The weapon she intends to send into the water is being prepared as the ship itself becomes harder to control and escape.

Retrieving the torpedoes

Li’s immediate obstacle is finding the torpedoes. She runs through the passageways, searching open doors and scolding herself for having lost track of them. When the deck shudders, she loses her balance and clings to the side. Water has apparently torn down more bulkheads, and the vessel tilts further, its bow-heavy position making the flight deck increasingly vulnerable to the waves. The ship’s changing orientation turns the search into a race against a structure that is no longer stable.

She finds one torpedo after it has rolled out of an open passageway. Li carries it back towards the companionway, where Peak’s body blocks the entrance; she pulls the body aside and climbs down, then finds the second torpedo at the bottom. Her route is not yet clear. Fallen objects block several companionways, and moving them would take too long, so she changes course, going back up, across to the hangar deck, and down the ramp. She makes her way upward hugging the torpedoes. Each interruption is practical rather than strategic: the ship’s damage repeatedly forces her to revise how she will get the weapons to the submersible.

Converting Deepflight 3 into a delivery system

At the control desk, Li raises Deepflight 3 and swings it above the jetty. She sees that two smaller tubes are empty. The larger torpedoes remain in their usual positions, but the smaller ones have been removed to make room for radioactive cylinders. She pushes the cylinders into the empty tubes and locks them in place. This is the plan’s decisive material step: the submersible is being equipped to deliver a toxin rather than merely to move through the water.

The mechanism depends on a specific chain of effects. A detonator is meant to force the contaminated pheromone out under high pressure when the cylinders are fired. Li expects the sea to disperse it over the blue cloud, after which the Yrr will take care of the rest. The intended outcome is collective self-destruction through a chain reaction, based on Mick Rubin’s use of programmed cell death. The plan therefore turns a biological process into a weapon: contamination is supposed to provoke the Yrr’s own system of cellular death rather than simply kill individual organisms on contact.

Li checks that the cylinders are firmly secured, moves Deepflight back over the sluice, and lowers it until it is floating on the water. She has not put on a wetsuit and must proceed carefully, but she descends the ladder and climbs aboard. Inside, she discovers Sigur Johanson lying inert in the pilot’s pod. She reasons that the craft can still be steered from the co-pilot’s pod by transferring the controls, so his presence does not immediately stop her. As the vessel groans and breaking steel sounds nearby, she closes the pods and operates the controls. Lights and screens come on; the systems are ready, and the Deepflight is positioned to pass through the three-metre sluice.

The unresolved outcome

The sequence builds towards an attempted strike but stops before confirming one. Li has recovered the torpedoes, installed the radioactive cylinders, checked their placement, and brought the submersible to the water. Her confidence culminates in the conviction that she has succeeded in preparing the craft. Yet preparation and release remain distinct: the cylinders have not been shown firing, the contaminated pheromone has not been shown entering the blue cloud, and the predicted chain reaction is not shown occurring.

That pause matters to the action’s significance. The Independence’s damaged passageways, blocked routes, exposed equipment, and failing structure shape every stage of Li’s effort, while the toxin plan relies on a delicate sequence of devices and biological responses. Her weapon is not a simple explosive but a proposed means of making the Yrr’s collective process turn against itself. The narrative leaves the reader at the threshold between design and consequence, with Li in control of a ready submersible and the fate of the planned attack still unconfirmed.