To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  Kira felt a slight easing of tension among the others.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tschetter. “You won’t regret it.”

  Klein made a noncommittal noise. “Truth is, going after the Knot of Minds was always a strategic fuckup, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.… If you pull this off, a lot of good men and women are going to owe you their lives.”

  His gaze sharpened. “As for you, Major: if we make it through this, you’re to report to the Seventh without delay. That’s an order. Taking out the head of the Jellies would go a long way toward smoothing your return, but either way Intelligence is going to want a thorough debriefing. You know how it is. After that, we’ll figure out what the hell to do with you.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the major. “Understood.” To Kira’s eye, she didn’t seem too pleased with the prospect.

  “Good.” Klein’s attention returned to the command center around him, and he said, “I have to go. We’ll be engaging the Jellies in just under seven hours. They’re going to give us all we can handle and then some, but we can try to draw their forces away from the Battered Hierophant. The rest will be up to you. Let our ship mind, Aletheia, know if there are any changes to the plan. Good luck and fly safe.” Then he surprised Kira by saluting. “Navárez. Captain Falconi.”

  CHAPTER III

  INTEGRATUM

  1.

  “That went … well,” said Nielsen.

  Sparrow tsked. “What else could he say?”

  “What’s our ETA?” Kira asked.

  Falconi glanced at the holo. “We’re a bit behind the fleet, so … seven hours, give or take, before we’re in range of the Battered Hierophant.”

  “That is,” said Veera, “assuming the Jellies don’t move the Hierophant beforehand, no?” As she spoke, Jorrus mouthed her words in silent mimicry.

  Tschetter’s face now filling the majority of the display, she said, “They shouldn’t. Lphet made it clear we have intel on the Wallfish that Ctein needs to smell.”

  “Smell?” said Hwa-jung, and wrinkled her nose.

  “That’s how Lphet phrased it.”

  Seven hours. Not long at all, and then they’d know if they were going to live or die. Whatever their fate, there was no escaping it. Not that there ever was.

  Falconi seemed to pick up on her thoughts. After ending the call with Tschetter, he said, “It’s been a long day, and if you’re anything like me, this heat has left you feeling like a damp rag that’s been wrung out.”

  A few sounds of agreement came from the crew.

  “Right. Everyone get some food and grab some downtime. Sleep if you can, and if you can’t, the doc can give you some pick-me-ups later. Sleep would be better, though. We need to be sharp when we get to the Hierophant. Make sure you’re all back here in Control an hour before contact. Oh, and full skinsuits. Just in case.”

  2.

  Just in case. The phrase kept ringing in Kira’s ears. What could they do if things went wrong, as they so often did? A single blast from one of the Jelly ships would be more than enough to disable or destroy the Wallfish.… It didn’t bear thinking about, and yet she couldn’t help herself. Preparation was a person’s best ward against the inevitable mishaps of space travel, but opportunities for preparation were limited when the actors deciding outcomes were spaceships and not individuals.

  She helped Hwa-jung with a few service tasks around the ship. Then they adjourned to the galley. Everyone but Vishal was already there, crammed in around the near table.

  Kira fetched some rations and then went to sit next to Nielsen. The first officer nodded and said, “I think … I’m going to record a message for my family and give it to Tschetter and also the Seventh. Just in case.”

  Just in case. “Sounds like a good idea. Maybe I’ll do the same.”

  Like the others, Kira ate, and like the others, she talked, mainly speculations about how best to destroy the Battered Hierophant with one of their Casaba-Howitzers—it seemed unlikely they would be able to fire more than one shot without being noticed—as well as how best to survive the chaos that was sure to follow.

  The consensus that emerged was that they were at a serious disadvantage without Gregorovich to oversee operations throughout the Wallfish. As with most ship minds, it had been Gregorovich’s responsibility to operate the lasers, the Casaba-Howitzers, the countermeasures against both blasters and missiles, and the cyberwarfare suite, as well as oversee the piloting of the Wallfish in combat, which was as much about strategy as it was calculating the uncompromising math of their delta-v.

  The pseudo-intelligence, Morven, was capable enough, but like all such programs, it was limited in ways that a human—or human-derived—intelligence wasn’t. “They lack imagination,” said Sparrow, “and that’s the truth of it. Won’t say we’re sitting ducks, but it’s not ideal.”

  “How big of a drop in operational efficiency do you think we’re looking at?” Falconi asked.

  Sparrow’s bare shoulders rose and fell. “You tell me. Just think back to before you had Gregorovich on board. UMC figures put the difference at somewhere between fourteen to twenty-eight percent. And—”

  “That much?” said Nielsen.

  Hwa-jung was the one to answer: “Gregorovich helps oversee the balance between all the systems in the ship, as well as coordinating with each of us.”

  A quick downward jerk of Sparrow’s chin. “Yeah, and what I was going to say is that when it comes to strategy, logistics—basically any kind of creative problem-solving—ship minds blow everyone and everything out of the water. It’s not the sort of skill you can really quantify, but the UMC estimates that ship minds are at least an order of magnitude better at that stuff than any regular human, much less a pseudo-intelligence.”

  Jorrus said, “But only so long as they—” He hesitated, waiting for Veera to finish the sentence. When she shook her head, seemingly not knowing what to say, he continued on, disconcerted: “Uh, only as long as they are functional.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” said Falconi. “For all of us.”

  Kira picked at her food while she thought about the situation. If only … No. The idea was still too crazy. Then she pictured the Jelly fleet around Cordova. Maybe there was no such thing as too crazy, under the circumstances.

  Conversation throughout the galley stopped as Vishal appeared in the doorway. He looked drained, exhausted.

  “Well?” Falconi asked.

  Vishal shook his head and held up a finger. Not saying a word, he marched to the back of the galley, got himself a pouch of instant coffee, drained it, and then, and only then, returned to stand in front of the captain.

  “That bad, huh?” said Falconi.

  Nielsen leaned forward. “How is Gregorovich?”

  Vishal sighed and rubbed his hands together. “His implants are too damaged for me to fix. I cannot remove or replace the broken leads. And I cannot identify the ones that end in a dead neuron. I tried rerouting signals to different parts of his brain, where the wires still work, but there aren’t enough of them, or Gregorovich could not pick out the signal from the disorganized sensory information he’s receiving.”

  “You still have him sedated?” Falconi asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is he going to be okay, though?” Nielsen asked.

  Sparrow shifted in her seat. “Yeah, is he going to end up impaired or something like that?”

  “No,” Vishal said slowly, cautiously. “But, we will have to take him to a proper facility. The connections are continuing to degrade. In another day, Gregorovich may become completely cut off from his internal computer. He would be totally isolated.”

  “Shit,” said Sparrow.

  Falconi turned toward the Entropists. “Don’t suppose there’s anything you could do to help?”

  They shook their heads. “Alas, no,” said Veera. “Implants are delicate things and—”

  “—we would be reluctant to work on an ordinary-sized neural net, much less—”


  “—that of a ship mind.” The Entropists appeared smug at the smoothness of their exchange.

  Falconi made a face. “I was afraid of that. Doc, you can still put him in cryo, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’d better go ahead and put him under, then. He’ll be safer that way.”

  Kira tapped her fork on her plate. Everyone looked at her. “So,” she said, feeling out her words, “just to be clear: the only thing that’s wrong with Gregorovich are the wires going into his brain, is that right?”

  “Oh, there’s a whole lot more wrong with him than just that,” Sparrow quipped.

  Vishal assumed a long-suffering expression as he said, “You are correct, Ms. Kira.”

  “He doesn’t have large amounts of tissue trauma or anything like that?”

  Vishal started to move toward the door, obviously eager to get back to Gregorovich. He paused at the threshold. “No. The only damage was the neurons he lost at the ends of some wires, but it is a negligible loss for a ship mind of his size.”

  “I see,” said Kira. She tapped her fork again.

  A wary look came over Falconi’s face. “Kira,” he said in a warning tone. “What are you thinking?”

  She took a moment to answer. “I’m thinking … I might be able to use the Soft Blade to help Gregorovich.”

  A babble of exclamations filled the galley. “Let me explain!” said Kira, and they quieted down. “I could do the same thing I did with Akawe, back at Cygni. Connect the Soft Blade to Gregorovich’s nerves, only this time, I’d be hooking them back up to the wires in his neural net.”

  Sparrow let out a long, high whistle. “Thule. You really think you could pull this off?”

  “Yes, I do. But I also can’t make any guarantees.” Kira shifted her gaze back to Falconi. “You saw how I was able to heal your bonsai. And you saw what I did in my cabin. The Soft Blade isn’t just a weapon. It’s capable of so much more.”

  Falconi scratched the side of his chin. “Greg is a person, not a plant. There’s a big difference there.”

  Then Nielsen said, “Just because the Soft Blade is capable, are you, Kira?”

  The question rang in Kira’s mind. It was one she’d wondered often enough since becoming joined with the xeno. Could she control it? Could she use it in a responsible way? Could she master herself well enough to make either of those things possible? She stiffened her back and lifted her chin, feeling the answer rising within her, born of pain and long months spent practicing. “Yes. I don’t know how well it will work—Gregorovich will probably have to readjust to his implants, just like when they were first installed—but I think I can hook him back up again.”

  Hwa-jung crossed her arms. “You should not go rummaging around inside someone’s head if you do not know what you’re doing. He isn’t a machine.”

  “Yeah,” said Sparrow. “What if you turn him into scrambled mush? What if you totally screw up his memories?”

  Kira said, “I wouldn’t be interacting with most of his brain, just the interface where he plugs into the computer.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Nielsen said calmly.

  “Mostly sure. Look, if it’s not worth it, it’s not worth it.” Kira spread her hands. “I’m just saying I could try.” She eyed the captain. “It’s your call.”

  Falconi tapped his leg with a furious rhythm. “You’ve been awfully quiet over there, Doc. What about you?”

  By the door, Vishal ran his long-fingered hands over his equally long face. “What do you expect me to say, Captain? As your ship doctor, I cannot recommend this. The risks are too high. The only reasonable treatment would be to take Gregorovich to a proper medical facility in the League.”

  “That’s not likely to happen any time soon, Doc,” said Falconi. “Even if we make it out of this alive, there’s no telling what shape the League will be in when we get back.”

  Vishal inclined his head. “I am aware of that, Captain.”

  A scowl settled onto Falconi’s face. For several heartbeats, he just looked at Kira, staring at her as if he could see into her soul. She matched his gaze, never blinking, never looking away.

  Then, Falconi said, “Okay. Do it.”

  “Captain, as the attending physician, I must formally object,” said Vishal. “I have serious concerns about the outcome of this procedure.”

  “Objection noted, but I’m going to have to overrule you here, Doc.”

  Vishal didn’t seem surprised.

  “Captain,” said Nielsen in an intense tone. “She could kill him.”

  Falconi wheeled on her. “And we’re flying straight into the Jelly fleet. That takes priority.”

  “Salvo—”

  “Audrey.” Falconi bared his teeth as he talked. “One of my crewmembers is incapacitated, and that’s endangering both my ship and the rest of my crew. This isn’t a cargo run. This isn’t a goddamn fetch-and-retrieve mission. This is life or death. We don’t have a millimeter of wiggle room here. If we screw up, we’re done for. Gregorovich is mission critical, and right now he’s no good to anyone. I’m his captain, and since he can’t make this decision for himself, I have to make it for him.”

  Nielsen stood up and crossed the galley to stand in front of Falconi. “And what if he decides not to follow orders again? Have you forgotten about that?”

  The air between them grew tense. “Greg and I will have a little chat,” said Falconi between set teeth. “We’ll hash it out, trust me. His life is on the line here, same as ours. If he can help, then he will. I know that much.”

  For a moment, it seemed as if Nielsen wasn’t going to budge. Then she relented with a sigh and said, “Alright, Captain. If you’re really convinced this is what’s best…”

  “I am.” Then Falconi shifted his attention back to Kira. “You better hurry. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  She nodded and got to her feet.

  “And, Kira?” He gave her a stern gaze. “Be careful.”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded in return, seeming satisfied. “Hwa-jung, Vishal, go with her. Keep an eye on Gregorovich. Make sure he’s okay.”

  “Sir.”

  “Yessir.”

  3.

  With the doctor and the machine boss at her heels, Kira ran from Control and proceeded down a deck to the sealed room that contained Gregorovich’s sarcophagus. Along the way, Kira could feel her skin prickling as her adrenaline ramped up.

  Was she really going to do this? Shit. Falconi was right; there was no room for error. The weight of sudden responsibility made Kira pause for a second and question her choices. But no, she could do this. She just had to make sure that she and the xeno were working in harmony. The last thing she wanted was for it to take the initiative and start making changes to Gregorovich’s brain on its own.

  At the sarcophagus, Hwa-jung handed Kira the same set of wired headphones she’d used before, and Vishal said, “Ms. Kira, Captain gave the order, but if I think Gregorovich is in any danger, then I will say stop and you will stop.”

  “I understand,” said Kira. She couldn’t think of anything the doctor could actually do to stop her or the Soft Blade from working on Gregorovich once they started, but she intended to respect the doctor’s judgment. No matter what, she didn’t want to hurt Gregorovich.

  Vishal nodded. “Good. I will be monitoring Gregorovich’s vitals. If anything drops into the red, I will tell you.”

  Hwa-jung said, “I will monitor Gregorovich’s implants. Right now, they are at … forty-two percent operation.”

  “Okay,” said Kira, sitting next to the sarcophagus. “I’ll need an access port for the Soft Blade.”

  “Here,” said Hwa-jung, pointing at the side of the sarcophagus.

  Kira fit the headphones over her ears. “I’m going to try talking with Gregorovich first. Just to see if I can check with him.”

  Vishal shook his head. “You can try, Ms. Kira, but I could not speak with him before. The situa
tion will not have improved.”

  “I’d still like to try.”

  The instant Kira plugged in the headphones, a whirling roar filled her ears. In it, she seemed to hear snatches of words—shouts lost in an unrelenting storm. She called out to the ship mind, but if he heard, she could not tell, and if he answered, the roaring obscured his response.

  She tried for a minute or more before pulling the headphones off. “No luck,” she said to Vishal and Hwa-jung.

  Then Kira sent the first tentative tendrils from the Soft Blade into the access port. Careful: that was the directive she gave the Soft Blade now. Careful and do no harm.

  At first she felt nothing but metal and electricity. Then she tasted Gregorovich’s enveloping nutrient bath, and metal gave way to exposed brain matter. Slowly, ever so slowly, Kira sought a point of connection, a way to bridge the gap between matter and consciousness—a portal from brain to mind.

  She allowed the tendrils to subdivide even further, until they formed a bristle of monofilament threads, each as thin and sensitive as a nerve. The threads probed the interior of the sarcophagus until at last they chanced upon the very thing Kira was seeking: the caul of wires that lay atop Gregorovich’s massive brain and that penetrated deep into the folds of grey and formed the physical structure of his implants.

  She twined around each of the tiny wires and followed them inward. Some ended at a dendrite, marking where non-living merged with living. Many more ended in a bead of melted metal or a neuron that was dead and withered.

  Then, delicately, ever so delicately, Kira began to repair the damaged connections. For the melted leads, she smoothed the bead at the tip to ensure a proper connection with its target dendrite. For the leads that stopped at a dead neuron, she repositioned the wire to the nearest healthy dendrite, moving the wires infinitesimal amounts within the tissue of Gregorovich’s brain.