To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  Kira shook her head. The summons was a maddening distraction, like a fly that wouldn’t stop buzzing about her head.

  What she was reading didn’t make sense. The Jellies seemed convinced they were fighting for their very survival, as if they believed the two-forms posed an extinction-level threat.

  As she continued to dig through the archive of messages, Kira began to notice repeated mentions of a … search the Wranaui were carrying out. They were looking for an object. A device of immense importance. Not the Soft Blade—that much she felt confident of, as they made no mention of Idealis—but whatever the object was, the Jellies thought it would allow them to not only defeat the League and win the war, but conquer the whole galaxy.

  The back of Kira’s neck prickled with fear as she read. What could be so powerful? An unknown form of weapon? Xenos even more advanced than the Soft Blade?

  So far, the Jellies didn’t know where the object was. That much was clear. The aliens appeared to believe it lay somewhere among a cluster of stars counter-spinward (by which Kira took them to mean against the galactic rotation).

  One line in particular struck her: [[—when the Vanished made the Idealis.]] She went over it several times to make sure she understood. So the Soft Blade was a constructed thing. Were the Jellies saying that some other species had made it? Or were the Vanished also Jellies?

  Then she chanced upon the name of the object: the Staff of Blue.

  For a moment, the sounds of the ship ceased and all Kira heard was the pounding of her pulse. She knew that name. Unbidden, a spasm roiled the Soft Blade, and with it a wave of information. Understanding. Remembrance:

  She saw a star—the same reddish star she had beheld once before. Then her view rushed outward, and the star appeared set among its nearest neighbors, but the constellations were strange to her, and she felt no sense for how they fit within the shape of the heavens.

  A disjunction, and she saw the Staff of Blue, the fearsome Staff of Blue. It swung, and flesh and fibers tore themselves apart.

  It swung, and ranks of machines crumpled beneath the blow.

  It swung, and a sheaf of shining towers tumbled to the cratered ground.

  It swung, and spaceships blossomed as fiery flowers.

  Another place … another time … a chamber tall and stark, with windows that looked upon a brownish planet wreathed with clouds. Beyond it hung the ruddy star, huge in its nearness. By the largest window, dark against the swirling shine, she saw the Highmost standing. Gaunt of limb, strong of will, the first among the first. The Highmost crossed one set of arms, the other held the Staff of Blue. And she mourned for what now was lost.

  Kira returned to reality with a start. “Shit.” She felt light-headed, overwhelmed. Certainty gripped her that she had just seen one of the Vanished in the form of the Highmost. And it had definitely not been one of the Jellies.

  Which meant?… She was having difficulty focusing, and the throbbing ache of the summons didn’t help.

  The Staff of Blue was terrifying. If the Jellies got their tentacles on it … Kira shuddered at the thought. And not just her; the Soft Blade also. Humanity had to find the staff first. Had to.

  Worried that she’d missed something, she returned to the message logs and started to go over them again.

  The pressure in her skull pulsed, and shimmering halos appeared around the lights in the control room. Kira’s eyes watered. She blinked, but the halos didn’t go away.

  “Enough,” she muttered. If anything, the summons grew stronger, drumming in her head with an inexorable beat, pounding, pulling, probing—drawing her toward the panel, an ancient duty yet unfulfilled …

  She forced her attention back to the display. Surely there was a way to—

  Another pulse of pain made her gasp.

  Fear and frustration spilled over to anger, and she shouted, “Stop it!”

  The Soft Blade rippled, and she felt it respond to the summons, answering it with an echo of her angry denial, an inaudible, invisible echo of radiated energy that raced outward, spreading, spreading … spreading across the system.

  In that instant, Kira knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She lunged forward and plunged her fist through the glassy pane, willing the xeno to break, crush, and shatter in a desperate attempt to destroy the transmitter before it could pick up and rebroadcast her response.

  The suit flowed down her arm and over her fingers. It spread across the wall like a web of tree roots, probing and seeking, burrowing ever deeper. The displays flickered, and those close to her hand guttered and went out, leaving a halo of darkness around her palm.

  Kira felt the tendrils close around the source of the summons. She braced her feet against the wall, yanked on her arm, and tore the transmitter out of the center of the displays. What came free was a cylinder of purple crystal embedded with a dense honeycomb of silver veins that wavered as if distorted with heat ripples.

  She squeezed the cylinder with the tendrils of the suit, squeezed with all her might, and the hunk of engineered crystal split and shattered. Stalks of silver sprouted between the tendrils as the xeno squished the metal like hot wax. And the compulsion diminished from an urgent necessity to a distant inclination.

  Before she could recover, a scent intruded, a scent so strong, it was like a voice screaming in her ear:

  [[Qwar here: Defiler! Blasphemer! Corrupter!]]

  And Kira knew she was no longer alone. One of the Jellies was behind her, close enough she could feel an eddy of disturbed air tickle the back of her neck.

  She stiffened. Her feet were still stuck to the wall. She couldn’t spin around fast enough—

  BAM!

  She flinched and half turned, half crouched while stabbing outward with the Soft Blade.

  Behind her, an alien flopped in the air. It was brown and shiny and had a segmented body the size of man’s torso. A cluster of yellow-rimmed eyes surmounted its flat, neckless head. Pincers and feelers dangled from what could have been its chitinous mouth, and two rows of double-joined legs (each the size and length of her forearms) kicked and thrashed along its armored abdomen. From its lobster-tail rear trailed a pair of antenna-like appendages at least a meter long.

  Orange ichor leaked from the base of the creature’s head.

  BAM! BAM!

  A pair of holes appeared in the alien’s plated side. Gore and viscera sprayed the floor. The alien kicked once more as it spun away and then was still.

  At the far end of the room, Falconi lowered his pistol, a thread of smoke drifting from the barrel. “What in seven hells are you doing?”

  4.

  Kira straightened from her crouch and retracted the spikes that projected from every square centimeter of her skin. Her heart was racing so hard, it took a few seconds before she was able to convince her vocal cords to work.

  “Was it…?”

  “Yeah.” Falconi holstered his pistol. “It was about to take a chunk out of your neck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Buy me a drink sometime and we’ll call it even.” He floated over and examined the oozing corpse. “What do you think it is? Their version of a dog?”

  “No,” she said. “It was intelligent.”

  He eyed her. “And you know that how?”

  “It was saying things.”

  “Charming.” He gestured at her gore-covered arm. “Again: What the hell? You haven’t been answering your comms.”

  Kira looked at the hole she’d torn in the wall. Fear spiked her pulse. Had she (or rather, the Soft Blade) really responded to the summons? The enormity of the situation filled her with rising dread.

  Before she could answer the captain, a beep sounded in her ear, and Gregorovich said: *Calamity, O my delightful infestations.* And he laughed with more than a hint of madness. *Every Jelly ship in the system has set themselves upon an intercept course with the Wallfish. Might I suggest unchecked terror and an expedited retreat?*

  CHAPTER VIII

  NOWHERE TO HIDE
>
  1.

  Falconi swore and gave Kira a flat glare. “Is this your doing?”

  *Yes, what have you been up to, meatbag?* Gregorovich said.

  Kira knew there was no hiding what had happened. She drew herself up, although she felt very small indeed. “There was a transmitter. I destroyed it.”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed. “That—Why? And why would that tip off the Jellies?”

  “That’s not what they call themselves.”

  “Excuse me?” he said, sounding anything but polite.

  “There’s no exact equivalent, but it’s something like—”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what the Jellies call themselves,” said Falconi. “You better start explaining why they’re coming after us, and fast too.”

  So in as brief a manner as possible, Kira told him about the compulsion and how she had—inadvertently—responded to it.

  When she finished, Falconi’s expression was so flat it scared her. She’d seen that look before on miners just before they decided to knife someone.

  “Those spikes, now this—anything else you’re not telling us about the xeno, Navárez?” he said.

  Kira shook her head. “Nothing important.”

  He grunted. “Nothing important.” She flinched as he drew his pistol and pointed it at her. “By all rights I ought to leave you here with a live video feed broadcasting so the Jellies know where to find you.”

  “… But you’re not going to?”

  A long pause, and then the muzzle of the pistol lowered. He holstered the weapon. “No. If the Jellies want you that badly, then it ain’t a good idea to let them have you. Don’t think this means I want you on the Wallfish, Navárez.”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  His gaze shifted, and she heard him say, “Trig, back to the Wallfish, now. Jorrus, Veera, if you want to get anything from the Jelly ship, you have five minutes, max, and then we’re blasting out of here.”

  Then he turned and started to leave. “Come on.” As Kira followed, he said, “Did you learn anything useful?”

  “Lots, I think,” she said.

  “Anything that’ll help us stay alive?”

  “I don’t know. The Jellies are—”

  “Unless it’s urgent, save it.”

  Kira swallowed what she was going to say and trailed behind Falconi as he hurried off the ship. Trig was waiting for them at the airlock.

  “Keep watch until the Entropists are on board,” said Falconi.

  The kid saluted.

  From the airlock, they went to Control. Nielsen was already there, studying the holo projected from the table in the middle. “How’s it look?” Falconi asked, strapping himself into his crash chair.

  “Not good,” said Nielsen. She glanced at Kira with an unreadable expression and then pulled up a map of 61 Cygni. Seven dotted lines arced across the system, intersecting upon the Wallfish’s current location.

  “Time to intercept?” Falconi asked.

  “The nearest Jelly will be here in four hours.” She stared at him, grave. “They’re burning at maximum thrust.”

  Falconi scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Okay.… How fast can we get to Malpert Station?”

  “Two and a half hours.” Nielsen hesitated. “There’s no way the ships there can fight off seven Jellies.”

  “I know,” said Falconi, grim. “But it’s not like we have a lot of choice. If we’re lucky, they can keep the Jellies tied up long enough for us to jump out.”

  “We don’t have the antimatter.”

  Falconi bared his teeth. “We’ll get the antimatter.”

  “Sir,” whispered Gregorovich, “the Darmstadt is hailing us. Most urgently, I might add.”

  “Shit. Stall them until we’re back under thrust.” Falconi stabbed a button on the console next to him. “Hwa-jung, what’s the status of those repairs?”

  The machine boss answered a moment later: “Nearly finished. I’m just pressure testing the new coolant line.”

  “Hurry it up.”

  “Sir.” She still seemed annoyed with the captain.

  Falconi poked a finger toward Kira. “You. Spill it. What else did you find over there?”

  Kira did her best to summarize. Afterward, Nielsen frowned and said, “So the Jellies think that they’re the ones being attacked?”

  “Is there any chance you misunderstood?” asked Falconi.

  Kira shook her head. “It was pretty clear. That part, at least.”

  “And this Staff of Blue,” said Nielsen. “We don’t know what it is?”

  “I think it’s an actual staff,” Kira explained.

  “But what does it do?” said Falconi.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. A control module of some kind?”

  “It could be ceremonial,” Nielsen pointed out.

  “No. The Jellies seem convinced it would let them win the war.” Then Kira had to explain again how she had inadvertently responded to the compulsion. So far she’d avoided thinking about it too much, but as she recounted the events to Nielsen, Kira felt a deep sense of shame and remorse. Even though she couldn’t have known how the Soft Blade was going to respond, it was still her fault. “I fucked up,” she finished by saying.

  Nielsen eyed her with no great sympathy. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Navárez, but I want you off this ship.”

  “That’s the plan,” said Falconi. “We hand her over to the UMC, let them deal with this.” He looked at Kira with slightly more empathy. “Maybe they can stick you in a packet ship, get you out of the system before the Jellies can grab you.”

  She nodded, miserable. It was as good a plan as any. Shit. Going after the Jelly ship might have been worth it for the information she’d uncovered, but it looked as if she and the crew of the Wallfish were going to pay for the attempt.

  She thought again of the ruddy star set amid its companions, and she wondered: Could she locate it on a map of the Milky Way?

  Spurred by a sudden determination, Kira strapped herself into one of the crash chairs and—on her overlays—brought up the largest, most detailed model of the galaxy that she could find.

  The comms snapped on, and Hwa-jung said, “All done.”

  Falconi leaned in toward the holo-display. “Trig, get those Entropists back on the Wallfish.”

  Not a minute later, the kid’s voice sounded: “All green, Captain.”

  “Seal her up. We’re blasting out of here.” Then Falconi called down to the sickbay. “Doc, we gotta scram. Is it safe for Sparrow if we resume thrust?”

  When Vishal answered, he sounded tense: “It’s safe, Captain, but nothing above one g, please.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Gregorovich, take it away.”

  “Roger that, O my Captain. Currently taking it away.”

  There was a series of jolts as the Wallfish disengaged from the alien ship and maneuvered with RCS thrusters to a safe distance. “All that antimatter,” said Falconi, watching a live feed of the undocking. “Pity no one’s figured out how to extract it from their ships.”

  “I’d rather not get blown up experimenting,” Nielsen said dryly.

  “Indeed.”

  Then the deck of the Wallfish vibrated as the ship’s rocket sprang to life, and once more a welcome sense of weight returned as the acceleration pressed them into their seats.

  In her overlays, a panoply of stars shone before Kira’s unblinking eyes.

  2.

  In the background, Kira heard Falconi arguing with someone over the radio. She didn’t listen, lost as she was in her examination of the map. Starting from an overhead view of the galaxy, she zoomed in on the area containing Sol and then slowly started to work her way counter-spinward (as the Jellies had mentioned). At first, it seemed like a hopeless task, but twice among the array of stars Kira felt a sense of familiarity from the Soft Blade, and it gave her hope.

  She paused her study of the constellations when Vishal appeared framed in the doorway o
f the control room. He looked drained, and his face was still red from washing.

  “Well?” Falconi said.

  The doctor sighed and dropped into one of the chairs. “I’ve done all I can. The pole shredded half her organs. Her liver will heal, but her spleen, kidneys, and parts of her intestines, those need to be replaced. It will take a day or two for new parts to print. Sparrow is sleeping now, recovering. Hwa-jung is with her.”

  “Would it be better to put Sparrow in cryo?” Nielsen asked.

  Vishal hesitated. “Her body is weak. Better for her to regain her strength.”

  “What if we don’t have a choice?” Falconi asked.

  The doctor spread his hands, fingers splayed. “It could be done, but it would not be my first choice.”

  Falconi returned to arguing over the comms (something about the Jelly ship, civilian permissions, and docking at Malpert Station), and Kira again concentrated on her overlays.

  She could tell she was getting close. As she flew among the simulated stars, spinning and rotating and searching for shapes she recognized, she kept feeling tantalizing snatches of recognition. They drew her coreward, where the stars were packed closer together.…

  “Dammit,” said Falconi and banged his fist against the console. “They’re refusing to let us dock at Malpert.”

  Distracted, Kira looked over at him. “Why?”

  A humorless smile passed across his face. “Why do you think? Because we’ve got every Jelly in the system hot on our tail. Not sure what Malpert expects us to do, though. We don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  She wet her lips. “Tell the UMC we picked up vital information on the Jelly ship. That’s why the others are after us. Tell them … the information is a matter of interstellar security and the very existence of the League is at stake. If that doesn’t get us onto Malpert, you could always mention my name, but if you don’t have to, I’d prefer—”

  Falconi grunted. “Yeah. Okay.” He tabbed open a line and said, “Get me the liaison officer on the Darmstadt. Yes, I know he’s busy. It’s urgent.”

  Kira knew that the UMC was going to find out about her and the Soft Blade one way or another. But she saw no point in broadcasting the truth across the system, not if it could be avoided. Besides, the instant the UMC and the League learned she was still alive, her options were going to narrow to a limited few, if that.