To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  As Kira arranged the pieces in front of her, a dark stream of material flowed out from within the tangled ruins of the crevice, crawling toward her with a mind of its own. Alarmed, she recoiled, ready to fight off this new enemy.

  Then she recognized the familiar feel of the Soft Blade, the lost parts of the xeno come to rejoin her.

  With a sensation like cool water on her skin, the orphaned fibers melted into the main part of the xeno, adding much-needed mass to the organism.

  Distracted, Kira only managed to stack four pieces of the hull before the writhing behemoth that was Ctein crested the side of the Hierophant and fired its gun at her.

  BOOM!

  Her makeshift shield stopped the incoming projectile within the first three layers of the hull. Not so much as a single speck of dust got through to the skin of her suit. And while the impact was substantial, the Soft Blade braced and buffered her well enough to keep it bearable.

  She wondered how much ammo the Jelly was carrying.

  Ctein fired again. Ignoring the blow, Kira sent herself forward. The sections of hull wouldn’t last long; she had to take the opportunity while she could.

  The giant creature moved toward her faster than its bulk would seem to allow. Puffs of white appeared along the left side of its carapace, and the whole mess of shell and tentacles jerked to the right. The damn thing had thrusters built or grown or attached to its carapace. That made her plan a little more tricky, but she thought she could deal with it. The Jelly might be fast, but there was no way it could move its thousands and thousands of kilos as quickly as the Soft Blade.

  “Dodge this,” Kira muttered, willing hundreds of razor-sharp threads across the surface of the Hierophant. The lines lunged and stabbed and scrambled, one atop another and each at a different angle so that it was impossible to predict which was going to strike where.

  Before the great and mighty Ctein could move out of range, the tiny tips of her cutting threads tinked and tickled against the nearest of the Jelly’s tentacles. To her dismay, she realized that the thin, grey armor it wore was a nanomaterial not unlike the fibers that made up the Soft Blade. The suit’s anger blazed anew; it recognized the material as yet another piece of technology the graspers had stolen from its makers. Given time, Kira felt sure the xeno could burrow through the weave, but Ctein wasn’t about to give her that time.

  As the behemoth swung its weapon toward her again, Kira allowed the thicket of threads to swarm from one tentacle to the next until she saw and felt the railgun within her thousandfold grasp. She ripped it from the fingers at the end of the Jelly’s bony arm, and threw the railgun away, threw it into the depths of empty space, where it might drift unclaimed for a million years or more.

  For just an instant, Kira thought she had the advantage. Then, with one of its unencumbered tentacles, Ctein reached behind itself and retrieved a large white tube that must have been attached to the backside of its carapace. The tube was at least six meters long, and as the Jelly turned it toward her, Kira saw a dark iris at the end.

  She half yelled as she tried to move out of the way, but this time, she was the one who was too slow.

  The opening of the tube flared white, and a spear of solid flame jabbed toward her. It burned through the suit’s fibers like so much dry tinder; they melted and evaporated, and from them she felt a wave of not-pain great enough to frighten her.

  Now Kira was trying to escape. She shoved Ctein away, but it clung to her even as it forced the ravening fire closer and closer. The creature was fearsomely strong—strong enough to hold its own against the Soft Blade.

  But the Blade was also Soft; she allowed it to relax and bend before Ctein’s attacks, to run like water and slip through even the tightest of grips. The Jelly’s suckers couldn’t hold her; however they worked, the suit knew how to defeat them.

  With a wriggle and a yelp, Kira succeeded in both pushing and pulling herself free.

  She fell away from Ctein with a sense of having barely escaped with her life.

  The creature gave her no chance to regroup. It leaped after her, and she fled along the length of the Hierophant, toward the distant prow. A pursuit surrounded by silence, mediated only by the pounding of her heart and the rasp of her breathing, and accomplished with the terrible grace that was the natural effect of weightlessness.

  The size of Ctein seemed unreal. It felt as if she were being chased by a monster the size of a mountain. Possible names for it flashed through her mind: Kraken. Cthulhu. Jörmungandr. Tiamat. But none of them captured the sheer horror of the beast behind her. A crawling nest of lambent serpents, eager to rend flesh from flesh.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and she belatedly realized what the tube actually was. A rocket engine, complete with a fuel supply. The Jelly was actually using a rocket as a weapon.

  Ctein had planned for her. For the Idealis. And Kira hadn’t planned at all. She hadn’t realized the true extent of the threat the ancient creature posed.

  At any other time, the absurdity of using a rocket engine as a weapon would have dumbfounded her. Now, it was just another factor she included in the calculations running in her mind: speeds, distances, angles, forces, and possible reactions and behaviors. Calculations of survival.

  Then it occurred to her: along with the heat it produced, the rocket also produced a fair amount of thrust. That was what rockets did. Which meant Ctein had to hold on to something when using it or the rocket would send the Jelly flying away in the opposite direction. Admittedly, Ctein also had its maneuvering thrusters, but she didn’t think they were as strong as the rocket.

  “Ha!” she said.

  As if in reply, her earpiece crackled and a man said, *This is Lieutenant Dunroth. Do you copy?*

  “Who the hell are you?”

  *Admiral Klein’s aide. We have a missile inbound to your location from the Unrelenting Force. Can you lead the Jelly back toward the stern of the Hierophant?*

  “You going to blow us both up?”

  *That’s a negative, Ms. Navárez. It’s a targeted munition. You shouldn’t be in too much danger. But we need to get a clear line of sight.*

  “Roger. On my way.”

  Then Tschetter’s voice popped in the channel: *Navárez. Make sure you put enough distance between you and Ctein. Remember, there’s no such thing as friendly fire.*

  “Got it.”

  Kira jabbed the suit toward the hull and stopped herself. Then she threw herself up and back over the approaching Jelly in what would have normally been a stomach-churning somersault but that now felt like a graceful dive. Ctein reached toward her with three of its tentacles, straining its limbs to their fullest extent, but they fell short by a few scant meters. As she’d hoped, the creature continued to cling to the Hierophant, where it could still use its oversized blowtorch.

  The Soft Blade arrested her flight and steered her back down to the surface of the battleship. Kira noticed that it moved her faster, more efficiently than before, and she remembered dreams of the suit swooping and soaring through space with the agility of an unmanned drone, something that could only be possible if the organism was able to manufacture thrusters of its own. Actual proper thrusters, capable of sustained output.

  She also noticed that she still hadn’t run out of air. Good. As long as the suit could keep providing her with oxygen, she could keep fighting.

  She pulled herself along the Hierophant, propelling herself faster and faster until she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself before the shadow shield. And yet, she could feel Ctein closing in on her, like a rising wave, vast, uncaring, unstoppable.

  Lt. Dunroth’s clipped voice sounded: *Five seconds to target. Clear the area. Repeat, clear the area.*

  Ahead of her, Kira saw a meteor arcing toward the Hierophant, a shining star bright enough to be visible through the whole thickness of the smoke.

  Time seemed to slow, and her breath caught, and she found herself wishing that she were anywhere but there. The worst thing was, she co
uldn’t change the situation. The missile would either kill her—or it wouldn’t; the outcome was out of her control.

  When the missile was only a second from impact (and still over a hundred meters away), Kira grabbed the hull and pulled herself flat against it, forming the suit into a hard shell.

  As she did, the missile vanished with a disappointingly small blip of light, and a sphere of smoke-free space expanded from the spot where it had been.

  Dammit. Kira had seen enough point-defense lasers in action to know what had happened. A blaster mounted somewhere along the Hierophant had shot down the missile.

  She yanked herself free of the hull and threw herself sideways moments before Ctein would have crashed into her.

  Nearscent of derision engulfed her. [[Ctein here: Pathetic.]]

  *Sorry, Navárez,* said Lt. Dunroth. *Doesn’t look like we can get a missile past the Hierophant’s lasers. We’re looping around r2, and then we’ll be taking another pass. Admiral Klein says you better either kill that son-of-a-bitch or find a way off the Hierophant, because we’ll be hitting it with three more Casaba-Howitzers on the way back.*

  Ctein swung one of its tentacles at her, and Kira jetted out of the way just as the massive trunk of muscle and sinew swept past. Then again, like a hummingbird dodging swipes from an angry octopus.

  The swirling smoke thickened and then cleared as the Hierophant emerged from the haze. For the first time since the explosion had torn her out of the ship, the true darkness of space was visible, and the hull and everything she saw acquired an almost painfully lucid sharpness. At the periphery of her vision, she was aware of distant sparks and flashes (evidence of the battle still ongoing between the Seventh, the Jellies, and the incoming nightmares).

  Kira switched back to the visible spectrum. No need for infrared now that the smoke was gone.

  She hung before the twining monster, a toy, a tiny plaything suspended before a hungry predator. It lunged; she dodged. She darted forward; it ignited the rocket engine for a second, and the scorching heat drove her back. They were at a stalemate, both of them vying for the slightest advantage—and neither of them finding it.

  A spurt of nearscent struck her, ejected from some hidden gland along the Jelly’s body:

  [[Ctein here: You do not understand the flesh you are joined with, two-form. You are unworthy, unsignificant, doomed to failure.]]

  She responded in kind, directing her own nearscent toward the knotted mass of the creature. [[Kira here: You have already failed, grasper. The Corrupted—]]

  [[Ctein here: When I am joined with the Idealis, as I should have been before Nmarhl’s treachery, the Corrupted will fall before me like silt into the abyss. None shall hold against me. This ripple may have been disrupted, but the next will be a triumph for the Wranaui, and all will bend beneath the force of our shoals.]]

  [[Kira here: You will never have the Idealis!]]

  [[Ctein here: I will, two-form. And I will enjoy cracking open your shell and eating your meat from within.]]

  Kira yelled and tried darting behind the Jelly to snatch the rocket from its grasp, but the alien matched her movements, twisting so that its weapon always faced her.

  It was a frantic, ugly dance, but a dance all the same, and despite its ugliness, filled with moments of grace and daring. Ctein was too big and strong for the Soft Blade to restrain (at least not at the suit’s current size). So Kira did her best to avoid its grasp. And in turn, the alien did everything it could to avoid the touch of the Soft Blade. It seemed to know that if it let her hold it for too long, she would be able to pierce its armor.

  Kira advanced; the Jelly retreated. It advanced; she retreated. Twice she caught hold of a tentacle only to have Ctein strike her so hard, she was forced to let go or risk being bludgeoned into unconsciousness. The blows were powerful enough to break off pieces of the suit: small shafts and rods that liquified into amorphous blobs before rejoining her.

  If she could just close the distance between her and Ctein, if she could just wrap the Soft Blade around the alien’s carapace and press herself flat against it, she knew she could kill it. Yet for all her efforts, Kira couldn’t get past the Jelly’s defenses.

  The old and cunning Ctein seemed to realize it had the advantage—seemed to realize that it could cause her more pain than she could cause it—because it started to chase her along the Hierophant, firing its rocket torch, swinging its tentacles in a random rhythm, forcing her back and leaving great furrows in the hull from its failed strikes. And Kira had no choice but to retreat. Meter after meter she surrendered, desperate to keep her distance, for if the behemoth succeeded in catching her between hull and tentacle, the impact would turn her brain into mush, no matter how well the Soft Blade was able to protect her.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps, and even under the suit, Kira could feel herself sweating, her body slick with a film of exertion that the Soft Blade quickly absorbed.

  It couldn’t continue. She couldn’t continue. At some point she’d slip and make a mistake, and Ctein would kill her. Running wouldn’t help; there was nowhere but emptiness to flee to, and she couldn’t leave her friends. Nor the UMC; whatever their faults, they were fighting for the survival of humanity, same as she.

  She zipped past Ctein’s latest attack. How long could she keep going? It felt as if she’d been fighting for days and days. When had the Wallfish crashed into the Hierophant? She couldn’t remember.

  She stabbed at the Jelly’s carapace for the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time, the suit’s atomically sharp spikes skittered across the alien’s shell.

  Kira grunted with strain as she hooked a nearby antenna and pulled herself away from the Jelly, just barely escaping its retaliatory attack. It followed up with another lash of its tentacles, and she hurried toward the prow of the battleship, trying to avoid it, trying to remain free.

  Then Ctein surprised her by jumping toward her, abandoning its grip on the Hierophant.

  “Gah!” The Soft Blade responded by pushing her backwards and maneuvering her around the wide width of the battleship. White puffs emanated from the Jelly’s thrusters as it followed. It succeeded in matching her trajectory and then started to gain on her, rocket extended like a giant accusatory finger.

  Kira scanned the hull of the Hierophant, looking for something, anything that she could use. A jagged uplift of damaged hull caught her eye. If she headed toward it, she could use it to slingshot herself behind the Jelly and maybe—

  *Kira! Get out of the way!* said Falconi.

  Distracted, she twisted awkwardly, tumbling as the Soft Blade sent her flying toward the Hierophant. A tentacle curved toward her, and some distance away, she saw Falconi’s armor-clad torso pop over the edge of the hole in the flagship’s hull. With one arm, he lifted his grenade launcher, a flash illuminated the barrel, and—

  Ctein’s rocket engine exploded in a lopsided plume of burning fuel, spraying liquid fire in every direction.

  Kira flinched as it splashed against her. The fuel didn’t hurt, but old instincts were hard to ignore.

  The explosion knocked the Jelly back, but amazingly, it managed to keep hold of the Hierophant with the tip of one tentacle. Much to her disappointment, it appeared unhurt.

  Nearscent of a vast and terrible anger washed through the nearby space.

  The creature pulled itself back against the battleship and then swung one of its tentacles at Falconi. He ducked beneath the rim of the hole, and Kira saw him vanish through a door an instant before the tentacle slammed down, crushing the exposed walls and girders.

  *All yours, kiddo,* Falconi said.

  “Thanks. Owe you one.” Kira stopped several meters from the Hierophant and turned to face Ctein head-on. No weapons now. Only tentacles and tendrils and their two minds pitted one against the other. She prepared herself to embrace the monstrous Jelly once more, to wrestle with it until one or both of them were dead. Despite the many advantages of the Soft Blade, Kira felt no surety that she could wi
n. All Ctein had to do was slam her against the hull of the Hierophant, and that would be the end of her.

  But she wasn’t about to give up. Not now. Not after everything they’d been through. Not with everything that was at stake.

  “Alright, you big ugly,” she muttered, gathering her strength. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Then Kira saw it: the smallest of tears in the armored skin of one tentacle—the same tentacle, she guessed, that had been holding the rocket. Falconi’s attack had done some damage after all. The tear appeared like a thin crack in the surface of cooling lava, open to reveal the heated flesh within.

  Hope blossomed within her. Small as it was, the crack was an opportunity, and in an instant, Kira imagined how she could use it to kill Ctein. Doing so would be risky, terribly risky, but she wouldn’t get any better chance.

  Her lips twitched with an approximation of a smile. The solution wasn’t to stay away—it was to embrace Ctein, regardless of the cost, and join herself to it in much the same way she was joined to the Seed. The solution was in the melding of their bodies, not in the separation.

  Kira willed herself forward, and the suit responded with a hard kick from whatever thrusters it had constructed on her back. It drove her toward Ctein at over a g of acceleration, causing her to bare her teeth and laugh into the void.

  The Jelly raised its tentacles, not to block her but to catch her in a cradle of grasping flesh. She corkscrewed around two of the tentacles and then latched onto the one with the tear.

  At that point Ctein seemed to realize what she was doing, and it went mad.

  The universe spun around Kira as the Jelly slammed its limb against the Hierophant. She managed to harden the suit an instant before they struck, but her vision still went black for a moment, and she felt slow and disoriented.

  The tentacle started to rise again. If she didn’t act fast, it would beat her to a pulp; that she knew, sure as entropy. And though she hated the thought of dying, she hated the thought of letting Ctein win even more.