To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  The creature was twice the size of a man, with semi-translucent flesh tinted shades of red and orange, like ink dissolving in water. It had a torso of sorts: a tapered ovoid a meter wide covered in a keratinous shell and studded with dozens of knobs, bumps, antennae, and what looked like small black eyes.

  Six or more tentacles—she wasn’t sure how many, as they kept writhing about—extended from the ovoid, top and bottom. Textured stripes ran the length of the tentacles, and near the tips, they seemed to have cilia and an array of sharp, claw-like pincers. Two of the tentacles carried white pods with a bulbous lens. Kira didn’t know much about weapons, but she knew a laser when she saw one.

  Interspersed among the tentacles were four smaller limbs, hard and bony, with surprisingly hand-like appendages. The arms remained folded close to the creature’s shell and didn’t stir.

  Even in her shock, Kira found herself tallying the features of the alien, same as she would with any other organism she’d been sent to study. Carbon based? Seems like it. Radially symmetrical. No identifiable top or bottom.… Doesn’t appear to have a face. Odd. One fact in particular jumped out at her: the alien looked nothing like her suit. Whether the being was sentient or not, artificial or natural, it was definitely different from the xeno bonded with her.

  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 s
o 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.

  Where was she? It was hard to tell; she was still spinning, and it was impossible to focus on any one thing. Adrasteia’s shining bulk swung past—and beyond it, the enormous curve of Zeus’s silhouette—then the broken length of the Extenuating Circumstances. Floating alongside the cruiser was another vessel: a huge blue-white orb covered with smaller orbs and the biggest set of engines she’d ever seen.

  She was hurtling away from the middle of the Extenuating Circumstances, but the forward section of the ship was listing toward her, and ahead of her gleamed a row of the diamond radiators. Two of the fins were broken, and ropes of silver metal leaked from the veins within.

  The fins looked beyond her reach, but Kira tried anyway, unwilling to give up. She stretched out her arms, straining toward the nearest of the radiators as she continued to spin. Stars, planet, ship, and radiators flashed by, again and again, and still she kept straining.…

  The pads of her fingers slipped across the surface of the diamond, unable to find purchase. She screamed and scrabbled but without success. The first fin spun away, then the next and the next, her fingers brushing each in turn. One stood slightly higher than the rest, mounted on a damaged armature. Her palm scraped against the diamond’s polished edge, and her hand stuck—stuck as if covered with a gecko pad—and she came to a stop with a violent jolt.

  Hot pain flooded her shoulder joint.

  Relieved beyond belief, Kira hugged the fin as she peeled her hand free. A soft bed of cilia coated her palm, waving gently in the weightlessness of space. If only the suit had kept her from getting blown out of the Extenuating Circumstances in the first place.

  She looked for the back half of the ship.

  It was several hundred meters away and receding. The two shuttles were still docked along the stem; they both looked intact. Somehow she had to reach them, and fast.

  She really had only one choice. Thule! She braced herself against the diamond fin and then jumped with all her might. Please, she hoped, let her aim be correct. If she missed, she wouldn’t get a second chance.

  As she bored across the fathomless gulf that separated her from the stern of the Extenuating Circumstances, Kira noticed she could see faint lines radiating in loops along the hull. The lines were blue and violet, and appeared to cluster around the fusion engine—EM fields. It was like having her overlays back, at least in part.

  Interesting, if not immediately useful.

  Kira focused on the alien ship. It shone in the sun like a bead of polished quartz. Everything about it was spherical or as close to spherical as possible. From the outside, she couldn’t tell what might be living quarters and what might be fuel tanks, but it looked like it could hold a substantial crew. There were four circular windows dotted around its circumference and one near the prow of the ship, which was surrounded by a large ring of lenses, ports, and what appeared to be various sensors.

  The engine looked no different from any of the rockets she was familiar with (Newton’s third law didn’t care whether you were human or xeno). However, unless the aliens had launched from somewhere extremely close, they had to have a Markov Drive as well. She wondered how they could have snuck up on the Extenuating Circumstances. Could they jump right into a gravity well? Not even the League’s most powerful ships could manage that particular trick.

  The strange, aching pull Kira still felt seemed to originate from the alien vessel. Part of her wished she could follow it and see what happened, but that was the crazy part of her, and she ignored it.

  She could also feel the orphaned piece of the xeno, distant and fading as it receded into space. Would it again become dust? She wondered.

  In front of her, the back half of the Extenuating Circumstances was beginning to yaw. A ruptured hydraulic line in the hull was the culprit, spewing liters of water into space. She estimated the change of angle between her and the ship, compared it to her velocity, and realized that she was going to miss by almost a hundred meters.

  Hopelessness gripped her.

  If only she could go there instead of straight ahead, she would be fine, but—

  She moved to the left.

  Kira could feel it, a brief application of thrust along the right side of her body. Using an arm to counterbalance the motion, she glanced backwards and saw a faint haze of mist expanding behind her. The suit had moved her! For an instant, joy, and then she remembered the danger of the situation.

  She focused on her destination again. Just a little more to the left and then angle up a few degrees, and … perfect! With each thought, the xeno responded by providing the exact amount of thrust needed to reposition her. And now faster! Faster!

  Her speed increased, although not as much as she would have liked. So the suit did have its limits after all.

  She tried to guess how much time had passed. A minute? Two minutes? However long it was, it was too long. The shuttle’s systems would take minutes to start up and ready for departure, even with emergency overrides. She might be able to use the RCS thrusters to put a few hundred meters between her and the Extenuating Circumstances, but that wouldn’t be enough to protect her from the blast.

  One thing at a time. She had to get into a shuttle first, and then she could worry about trying to get away.

  A thin red line swept across the back half of the ship, moving up the truncated stem—a laser beam slicing it apart. Decks exploded in plumes of crystalizing vapor, and she saw men and women ejected into space, their last breaths forming small clouds in front of their contorted faces.

  The laser swerved sideways when it reached the docking section, swerved and sliced through the farthest shuttle. A burst of escaping air pushed the mangled shuttle away from the Extenuating Circumstances, and then a jet of fire erupted from a punctured fuel tank in one of its wings, and the shuttle spiraled away, a top spinning out of control.

  “Goddammit!” Kira shouted.

  The aft part of the Extenuating Circumstances rolled sideways toward her, driven by the decompression of the ruptured decks. She arced around the surface of the pale hull, hurtling over it dangerously fast, and smashed into the fuselage of the remaining shuttle. Printed in large letters along the side was the name Valkyrie.

  Kira grunted and spread her arms and legs, trying to hold on.

  Her hands and feet stuck to the shuttle, and she scrambled across the fuselage to the side airlock. She punched the release button, the light on the control panel turned green, and the door slowly began to slide open.

  “Comeon, comeon!”

  As soon as the gap between the door and the hull was wide enough, she wiggled through to the airlock and activated the emergency pressurization system. Air buffeted her from all directions, and the sound of the whooping siren faded in. The suit’s mask didn’t seem to interfere with her hearing.

  “Self-destruct in T-minus forty-three seconds. This is not a drill.”

  “Fuck!”

  When the pressure gauge read normal, Kira opened the inner airlock and shoved herself through, toward the cockpit.

  The controls and displays were already active. One glance at them, and she saw that the engines were lit and all the preflight checklists and protocols had been taken care of. Bishop!

  She swung herself down into the pilot’s seat and struggled with the harness until she got herself strapped in.

  “Self-destruct in T-minus twenty-five seconds. This is not a drill.”
>
  “Get me out of here!” she shouted through the mask. “Take off! Take—”

  The Valkyrie jolted as it detached from the cruiser, and the weight of a thousand tons crashed into her as the shuttle’s engines roared to life. The suit hardened in response, but still, it hurt.

  The bulbous alien ship flashed past the nose of the Valkyrie, and then Kira glimpsed the forward section of the Extenuating Circumstances half a kilometer away, and she saw a pair of coffin-shaped escape pods shoot out from the prow of the ship and burn toward Adra’s desolate surface.

  In a surprisingly quiet voice, Bishop said, “Ms. Navárez, I left a recording for you on the Valkyrie’s system. Contains all the pertinent information regarding you, your situation, and this attack. Please watch at earliest convenience. Unfortunately, nothing else I can do to help. Safe travels, Ms. Navárez.”

  “Wait! What—”

  The viewscreen flared white, and the aching pull in Kira’s chest vanished. An instant later, the shuttle bucked as the expanding sphere of debris hit. For a few seconds, it seemed as if the Valkyrie would break apart. A panel above her sparked and went dead, and somewhere behind her, a bang sounded, followed by the high-pitched whistle of escaping air.

  A new alarm rang out, and rows of red lights cycled overhead. As the roar of the engines cut out, the weight pressing down on her vanished, and the stomach-churning sensation of free fall returned.

  2.

  “Ms. Navárez, there are numerous hull breaches in the aft,” said the shuttle’s pseudo-intelligence.

  “Yes, thank you,” Kira muttered, unbuckling her harness. Her voice sounded strange and muffled through the mask.

  She’d made it! She could hardly believe it. But she wasn’t safe, not yet.

  “Kill the alarm,” she said.

  The siren promptly cut out.

  Kira was glad the mask stayed in place as she followed the high-pitched whistles toward the back of the shuttle. At least she didn’t have to worry about blacking out if the pressure dropped too low. She wondered, though: Would she have to spend the rest of her life with her face covered?