To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  “Damage report,” said Falconi.

  In the display, and in Kira’s overlays, a diagram of the Wallfish appeared. A large section of the hab-ring, as well as the cargo holds below, were flashing crimson. Hwa-jung stared like a person possessed while her lips moved with murmured queries to the computer.

  She said, “Decks C and D are breached. Cargo hold A. Massive damage to the electrical system. Main laser is offline. Reclamation unit, hydroponics bay … everything’s been affected. Engine working at twenty-eight percent efficiency. Emergency protocols in effect.” The machine boss gestured and brought up the feed from an outside camera: along the curved hull of the Wallfish’s hab-ring, a large hole cratered inward to reveal internal walls and rooms dark but for an occasional flash of electrical discharge.

  Falconi made a fist and thumped the arm of his chair. Kira winced. She knew how much the ship meant to him.

  “Thule,” said Nielsen.

  “Itari?” Falconi barked. An image popped up in the holo showing the Jelly climbing up the center of the ship. The alien appeared unharmed. “What about Morven?” He craned his neck toward the Entropists.

  Their eyes were half-closed and glowing with the reflected light of their implants. Veera said, “Firewall restored, but—”

  “—some sort of malicious program is still in the—”

  “—mainframe. We’ve confined it to the waste management subroutines while we try to purge it.” Veera made a face. “It’s very…”

  “Very resistant,” said Jorrus.

  “Yes,” said Veera. “It is probably best to avoid using the head for now.”

  Again the pseudo-intelligence announced: “Warning, incoming objects. Collision imminent.”

  “Fuck!”

  This time it was the Jelly boarding vessels. One was headed straight for the Wallfish, the others for the Knot of Minds.

  “Can we evade?” Falconi asked.

  Hwa-jung shook her head. “No. Not possible with thrusters. Aish.”

  “Howitzer?” Falconi asked, turning on Sparrow.

  She grimaced. “We can try, but there’s a good chance we’ll lose it to their countermeasures.”

  Falconi scowled and swore under his breath. In the holo, Tschetter briefly reappeared and said, “Save the nuke for the Battered Hierophant. We’re going to try to get you past their point defenses.”

  “Roger that.… Morven, drop thrust to one g.”

  “Affirmative, Captain. Dropping thrust to one g.” The corresponding alert sounded, and Kira breathed a slight sigh of relief as the weight pressing on her returned to normal. Then Falconi slapped the console and stood. “All hands on deck. We’re about to be boarded.”

  3.

  “Shit,” said Nielsen.

  “Looks like they’re heading for the breach in the cargo hold,” said Sparrow.

  A knocking sounded on the pressure door to the storm shelter. Vishal opened it, and Itari’s tentacled shape pushed forward, filling the frame. [[Itari here: What is the situation?]]

  [[Kira here: Wait. I do not know.]]

  “Six minutes to contact,” said Hwa-jung.

  Falconi tapped the grip of his blaster. “Pressure doors are sealed around the damaged areas. The Jellies will have to cut their way through. That buys us a little time. Once they’re in the main shaft, we’ll ambush them from above. Kira, you’ll have to take point. If you can kill at least two of them, we can probably handle the rest.”

  She nodded. Time to test words with action.

  Falconi started for the door. “Out of the way!” he said, waving at Itari. The Jelly understood well enough to move back, clearing the opening.

  [[Kira here: We are being boarded by Wranaui from the Battered Hierophant.]]

  Nearscent of understanding, colored with some … eagerness. [[Itari here: I understand. I will do my best to protect your co-forms, Idealis.]]

  [[Kira here: Thank you.]]

  Falconi said, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Kira, Nielsen, Doc, go grab weapons for everyone. Sparrow, you’re with me. Move!”

  Along with Vishal, Kira trotted after Nielsen through the darkened corridors to the Wallfish’s small armory. The air in the ship was hot and smelled like burnt plastic.

  At the closet-sized room, they scooped up blasters and firearms both. Kira nearly didn’t bother picking one for herself; if she was going to fight, the Soft Blade would be her best weapon. (It seemed more appropriate to think of the xeno as the Soft Blade when heading into battle, although the prospect of again committing violence with the Seed felt profoundly wrong.) Nevertheless, Kira knew it would be overconfident of her not to have another option, so she grabbed a blaster and slung it over her shoulder.

  Despite the saw-toothed buzz of fear riding on her nerves, she felt relief. The waiting was over. Now, the only thing she had to focus on was survival—hers and the crew’s. Everything else was irrelevant.

  Life became so much simpler when you were faced with a physical threat. The danger was … clarifying.

  The xeno responded to her mood, stiffening and thickening and preparing itself in unseen ways for the chaos about to commence. The change in the suit’s distribution reminded her of her distant flesh: the black coating that had devoured the interior of her cabin. If need be, she could call upon it, draw it to her, and allow the Soft Blade to once more swell in size.

  “Here,” said Nielsen, and tossed Kira several canisters: two blue and two yellow. “Chalk and chaff. Should have some handy.”

  “Thanks.”

  Arms piled high with weapons, the three of them hurried back through the corridors to the main shaft of the Wallfish. Itari and the Entropists were waiting for them there, but Falconi and Sparrow were nowhere to be seen.

  While Nielsen kitted out the Entropists, Kira offered Itari a choice of blasters or slug throwers. The alien chose two blasters, which it grasped with the bony arms that unfolded from the underside of its carapace.

  “Captain,” Kira heard Nielsen say in a warning tone.

  Falconi’s voice sounded over the intercom: “Working on it. Get into position. We’ll be there in two shakes.”

  The first officer hardly seemed reassured. Kira couldn’t blame her.

  Along with Itari, they obeyed the captain and arranged themselves in a ring around the tube, hiding behind the sides of the open pressure doors.

  They’d just finished when first Sparrow and then Falconi came stomping out of the nearest corridor, garbed head to toe in power armor.

  As if by prior agreement, Sparrow positioned herself on one side of the shaft while Falconi did the same on the other. “Thought you might want this,” Nielsen said, and tossed Falconi his grenade launcher.

  He gave her a tense nod. “Thanks. Owe you one.”

  Seeing both Sparrow and Falconi in their armor made Kira feel slightly less apprehensive about facing the incoming Jellies. At least everything wouldn’t be riding on just her. Although she worried about them putting themselves front and center. Especially Falconi.

  The lights flickered, and for a second, red emergency strips illuminated the room. “Power at twenty-five percent and dropping,” Falconi read off his overlays. “Shit. Five more minutes and we’ll be dead in the water.”

  “Contact,” said Hwa-jung, and the Wallfish shuddered as the Jelly pod collided with it somewhere below. A brash tone echoed overhead, and Kira grabbed a handhold as the ship’s engines cut out.

  “Showtime,” Sparrow muttered. She raised her metal-clad arms and aimed the exo’s built-in weapons toward the bottom of the shaft.

  4.

  A series of strange noises sounded to the aft, somewhere in the A cargo hold: bangs and clattering and dull thuds, as of tentacles slapping against the sealed pressure doors.

  Kira allowed the Soft Blade’s mask to cover her face. Taking deep breaths to steady herself, she shouldered her blaster and aimed down the shaft. Soon.…

  “Once they breach,” said Hwa-jung, “they’ll have fourteen seconds unt
il the next set of pressure doors seal.”

  “Got it,” said Sparrow. In her armor, she couldn’t really hide; she filled most of a doorway, like a giant metal gorilla, faceless behind a mirrored helmet. Likewise, Falconi stood mostly exposed in his own set of armor, although he kept his visor semi-transparent, the better to see.

  Bang!

  Kira felt a spike of compressed air in her ears, even through the suit’s mask. She worked her jaw, a dull ache forming along the base of her skull.

  Smoke appeared at what had been the bottom of the shaft and that, in weightlessness, now appeared to be the far end of a long tube. The Wallfish’s pressure alarm began to blare.

  A breath of wind touched Kira’s cheek: the most dangerous of sensations on a spaceship.

  Around her, the crew started firing with blasters and slug throwers as the dark, many-armed shapes of the Jellies swarmed into the central shaft. Graspers, desperate and despised. The aliens didn’t stay to fight. Instead, they darted across the tube and disappeared down another corridor.

  Seconds later, an unseen pressure door by the cargo hold slammed shut with an ominous clang, and the wind ceased.

  “Shit, they’re heading toward engineering,” said Falconi, peering down the shaft.

  “They can incapacitate the whole ship from there,” said Hwa-jung.

  As if to prove her point, the lights flickered again and then went out entirely, leaving them bathed in the dull red radiance of the backups.

  Then the most unexpected sight caught their attention: a single tentacle unfurled from within a doorway at the end of the shaft. Wrapped in its deadly embrace was the transparent cryo box that contained none other than Runcible, still frozen in hibernation.

  Even through his visor, Kira saw Falconi’s face contort with rage. “Goddammit, no,” he growled, and was about to launch himself aftward when Nielsen caught his arm.

  “Captain,” she said, matching his intensity. “It’s a trap. They’ll overpower you.”

  “But—”

  “Not a chance.”

  Sparrow joined them. “She’s right.”

  The only one who could do anything was Kira, and she knew it. Was she really going to risk her life for the pig? Well, why not? A life was a life, and she had to face the Jellies at some point. Might as well be now. She just wished it didn’t have to happen on the Wallfish.…

  The tentacle gently waved the pig back and forth in an unmistakable invitation.

  “Those fuckers,” said Falconi. He half raised the grenade launcher, and then stopped. “Can’t get a good shot.”

  The emergency lights failed then, leaving them in pure and unfriendly darkness for several heartbeats. Via infrared, Kira could still make out the shape of her surroundings, and she noticed an odd confluence of EM fields along the shaft—swirling fountains of violet force.

  “Plasma containment field failing,” Morven announced. “Please evacuate immediately. Repeat, please—”

  Hwa-jung groaned.

  The lights snapped back on, first red, and then the normal, full-spectrum glare of the standard strips, bright enough to hurt. A faint tremor shook the plating of the walls, and then booming through the Wallfish came an enormous bellowing voice:

  “PUT DOWN THAT PIG!”

  Gregorovich.

  5.

  The pressure door at the end of the shaft slammed shut, cutting off the Jelly’s tentacle amid a spurt of orange ichor. The tentacle floated free, twisting and writhing in apparent agony. It threw Runcible’s cryo box against the wall, and the box bounced, tumbling several times in the shaft before Falconi managed to snare it.

  The box and the pig inside appeared unharmed, save for a deep scratch along one side.

  “Perforate that thing,” said Falconi, pointing at the tentacle.

  Nielsen, Sparrow, and Kira happily obliged.

  “Welcome back, my symbiotic infestation!” cried Gregorovich. “O happy day that we should be reunited, my bothersome little meatbags! Such dark times they were with me lost in the twisting maze of fruitless fallacies and you off gallivanting in meddlesome misadventures! How fortunate for you a luminous lantern led me back. Rejoice, for I am reborn! What have you done to this poor snail of a ship, hmm? I’ll assume control of operations, if you don’t mind. Morven, alas poor simulacrum, isn’t fit for the task. First to purge this grotesque bit of alien code infecting my processors, aaand … done. Venting and stabilizing reactor. Now to show these sump-sniffers what I’m really capable of. Whee!”

  “About time,” said Falconi.

  “Heya,” said Sparrow, slapping the bulkhead. “Missed you, headcase.”

  “Don’t get too carried away,” said Nielsen, giving the ceiling a warning glance.

  “Me? Carried away?” said the ship mind. “Well, I never. Please remove all hands and feet from walls, floors, ceilings, and handholds.”

  “Uh…” said Vishal.

  [[Kira here: Itari, move away from the walls!]]

  The Jelly responded to the urgency of her scent with gratifying swiftness. It withdrew its tentacles and stabilized itself in midair with small puffs of gas along the equator of its carapace.

  A dangerous hum filled the air, and Kira felt the skin of the xeno prickle and crawl. Then from behind the door that had severed the tentacle, teeth-jarring discharges sounded: mini-crashes of lightning snapping and crackling and buzzing.

  And a horrible burnt-meat smell drifted toward them.

  “All taken care of,” said Gregorovich with evident satisfaction. “There’s your fried calamari, Sparrow. My apologies, Hwa-jung, but you’ll have to replace some of the wiring.”

  The machine boss smiled. “That’s okay.”

  “You heard what I said earlier?” Sparrow asked.

  The ship mind cackled. “Oh yes, faint as feathers, a voice echoing across misty water.”

  “How?” said Falconi. “We had you isolated from the rest of the ship.”

  Gregorovich sniffed. “Ah well, see now. Hwa-jung may have her little secrets, but I have mine as well. Once my mind was cleared of perfidious visions and debilitating doubts, it was quite a simple challenge to circumvent, oh yes it was. A twist of that, a dab of this, lizard’s leg and adder’s fork, and a sly bit of mischievous torque.”

  “I don’t know,” said Nielsen. “I think I preferred you the way you were before.” But she was smiling.

  “What about Mr. Fuzzypants?” Vishal asked.

  “Safe as buttons,” replied Gregorovich. “Now then, to address our larger situation. You’ve placed us in a most precarious pickle, my friends, yes you have.”

  Falconi fixed his gaze on a nearby camera mounted in the wall. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  A ghostly hand, blue and hairy, appeared projected from the nearest screen. It gave a thumbs-up, and the ship mind said, “Right as horses and twice as obnoxious. Wait, that didn’t make sense. Hmm … But yes, good to go, Cap’n! Even if I weren’t, you really want to take on the many-armed horde without me?”

  Falconi sighed. “You crazy bastard.”

  “That I am.” Gregorovich sounded positively smug.

  Nielsen said, “The plan was—”

  “Yes,” said Gregorovich, “I know the plan. All records and recordings reviewed, filed, and archived. However, the plan is, to put it delicately, well and truly fucked. Twenty-one Jellies are currently inbound, and they appear anything but friendly.”

  “Well? You have any ideas in that big brain of yours?” Sparrow asked.

  “Indeed I do,” whispered Gregorovich. “Permission to take action, Captain? Drastic action is required if you or I or that pig in your arms are to have any chance of seeing the bright light of morn.”

  Falconi hesitated a long moment. Then his chin jerked, and he said, “Do it.”

  Gregorovich laughed. “Ahahaha! Your trust is most precious to me, O Captain. Hold on! Prepare for skewflip!”

  “Skewflip!” exclaimed Nielsen. “What do you think y—”

/>   Kira tightened her hold and closed her eyes as she felt herself and everything around her turn end for end. Then the ship mind said, “Resuming thrust,” and the soles of her feet sank back to the deck, and she again weighed her normal amount.

  “Explain,” said Falconi.

  Seemingly unperturbed, Gregorovich said, “The Knot of Minds cannot defend us against all our foes. Nor can they bring themselves to act against their dear leader. That leaves us with just one choice.”

  “We still have to kill Ctein,” said Kira.

  “Exactly,” said Gregorovich, with much the same pride as an owner talking to a particularly well-behaved pet. “So we shall seize the moment by the throat and throttle it. We shall teach these aquatic reprobates the meaning of human ingenuity. There’s nothing we can’t turn into a weapon or make blow up, ahahaha!”

  “We are not ramming the Hierophant,” said Falconi between clenched teeth.

  “Tsk, tsk. Who said anything about ramming?” The ship mind sounded far too amused for the situation. “Nor are we to use our fusion drive to flambé our target, for then it would explode and destroy us with it. No, that we shall not do.”

  “Stop dancing around,” Sparrow growled. “What are you up to, Greg? Spit it out.”

  The ship mind harrumphed. “Really now, Greg? Fine. Have it your way, birdname. The Battered Hierophant is pulling away from us, but in seven minutes and forty-two seconds, I shall park the nose of the Wallfish into the gaping wound that you gouged out of the Hierophant’s hide.”

  “What?!” Sparrow and Nielsen exclaimed together.

  In his exo, Falconi’s eyes flashed back and forth as he skimmed his overlays. His lips were pressed together, thin and white.

  “Oh yes,” said Gregorovich, sounding immensely pleased with himself. “The Jellies won’t dare fire at us, not when we’re so close to their beloved and feared leader. And once secured in place, then you—and by that I mean most likely you, O Queen of Thorns—may sally forth and dispose of this troublesome Jelly once and for all.”

  Vishal glanced from Falconi to Sparrow, appearing confused. “Won’t the Hierophant shoot us down? What about their defenses?”