She could feel the tear underneath her belly, a small patch of softness on the otherwise hard surface of the tentacle. So she stabbed, she jabbed, and she twisted as she drove the suit’s fibers into the wound. The tentacle convulsed, and then it whipped from side to side in a frantic attempt to shake her loose. But there was no getting rid of her. Not now.
The flesh of Ctein was hot against her blades, and globules of ichor spurted forth and coated her skin with a thick slime. Kira extended her reach within the creature, extended and extended until she found the bones at the center of the tentacle. Then she grabbed the bones and spread the flesh, forcing the tear to split and widen, and she poured the Soft Blade into the body of the alien.
The tentacle coiled around her, dark and moist and clutching. Claustrophobia clogged her throat, and though the suit continued to provide her with air, Kira felt as if she were on the verge of suffocating.
Ahead of her, sparks flashed, and with a shock, she realized Ctein was using its other arms to cut off the limb she clung to.
Determined not to lose the advantage, she urged the Soft Blade onward and outward, willing it to do what was needed.
The xeno blossomed into a thousand delicate lines as it burrowed into Ctein. But the threads didn’t cut, as Kira expected. They didn’t slash or tear or maim. Rather, they were soft and supple, and what they touched, they … remade. Nerves and muscles, tendons and bone: all of it was food for the xeno.
Ctein thrashed and writhed. Oh how it thrashed! It beat at her through its own flesh; it gripped and wrung its own limb, seeking to crush her, and a thunder filled her ears.
But the might of the great and terrible Ctein was no match for the persistence of the Soft Blade. The fractal fibers of the organism bent and wove and devoured as it converted the flesh of Ctein. It tore apart the creature’s cells, desiccated and compressed them into something hard and unyielding. The resulting shape was angular, all flat planes and straight lines and sharp edges of atomic precision. A dull, dead object devoid of movement, unable to hurt or harm.
Twenty meters or more, and then her feelers were inside the carapace, and muscle gave way to organs and machines.
From the Soft Blade came a sense of anger over old sorrows, and without meaning to, she found herself crying out: [[Kira here: For Nmarhl!]]
The xeno increased again, doubling and redoubling until it filled the roomy shell, converting each cubic centimeter into brutal perfection.
Ctein shuddered once more—shuddered and then was still.
Kira switched to infrared for a moment and saw the glow from the fusion reactor fading.
The Soft Blade wasn’t finished; it continued to build until it consumed its way through the skin and carapace of the Jelly. Around her, stone-like veins appeared along the tentacle Kira clung to. They spread, expanding across the whole of Ctein.
Uncertain of what the xeno was doing, Kira withdrew the Soft Blade, and with a sense of relief, kicked herself free of the gigantic corpse.
As they drifted apart, she looked back on it.
Where Ctein had been now hung a bristling, dull-black asterisk: an enormous collection of basalt-like pillars, faceted and chisel-tipped. A lifeless lump of restructured carbon. In places, a familiar circuit-board pattern covered the surface.… With a shock, Kira recognized the similarity between the floating pillars and the formation she’d found on Adrasteia. That too, she realized, had once been a living thing. Once, long ago.
Kira stared at the remains of Ctein with a sense of bitter accomplishment. She had done that. She and the Seed. After centuries of rule, the great and mighty Ctein was well and truly dead. Dead and done. And they were responsible.
All that knowledge lost. All those years of memories, lost. All those hopes and dreams and plans, lost and reduced to a lump of stone drifting through space.
Kira felt a curious sadness. Then she shivered and loosed a bark of laughter. She didn’t know what she felt; so much adrenaline was rushing through her system, she might as well have been high. But she did know she’d won. She and the Seed had won.
Multiple people were clamoring in her ears, too many to follow. Then Tschetter’s voice broke through the din. *You did it, Kira! You did it! The Jellies have broken off! Lphet and the Knot of Minds are taking control of their fleet. You did it!*
Good. Maybe now there was hope for the future. Kira wiped a smear of gore off her face and scanned the hull of the Battered Hierophant, reorienting herself. “Gregorovich, where are—”
A shadow fell across her, cutting off the light from the nearby star. With it came an icy chill that settled deep into her bones. Kira looked toward the obstruction, and her sense of triumph evaporated.
Four meat-red ships sailed overhead, their tortured hulls glistening like raw flesh. Nightmares.
2.
Dread spiked Kira’s pulse, and she jetted past the rocky corpse of Ctein and back toward the Hierophant, desperate for cover. More nightmares were approaching: dozens of them, burning in as fast as the missile from the Unrelenting Force. Their silhouettes appeared as blots against the field of stars—shadows nearly lost against the blackness of the void. And behind them, too far to see, she knew the clotted mass of the Maw was fast incoming, moving toward them with insatiable intent.
Kira glanced about, hoping against hope she might see some form of salvation.
Between her feet was the planet the Jellies had been mining, R1—about the size of an airlock door, rust-red and marbled with clouds—and some distance from the orb, the moons r2 and r3, pirouetting around their parent. Behind them she saw the sparks and flashes that marked the larger battle as the UMC and the Jellies joined forces against the nightmares. Each flare of light was a stab to her heart, for Kira knew they marked the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of sentient beings. And nightmares too, for whatever that was worth.
At the distances involved, she couldn’t tell who was winning. Only the explosions were visible, not the individual ships. But in her gut Kira knew the battle wasn’t going well for either the Seventh Fleet or the Jellies. There were too many nightmares, and the Maw itself still had to be dealt with.
The four nightmare ships that had passed overhead slowed atop spears of nuclear fire, blue-white and brighter than the sun. They turned and nosed in toward the Hierophant until they made contact, several hundred meters aft of Kira’s position.
A deep tremor ran through the hull.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, dreading what was about to happen. There was no helping it; the only thing she could do now was fight and hope the crew of the Wallfish could escape. Fight and fight, until either the nightmares gave up or the Maw came to devour her. And devour her it would, if given the chance.
Kira took a deep breath. She already felt half-dead. Her body was in one piece, thanks to the Soft Blade, but whole and sound were two different concepts, and right then, sound wasn’t how she’d describe herself.
At her command, the xeno started to rip a hole back into the Hierophant.
*Whoa! Hold on to your hats!* said Falconi. *Couple of the Jellies and one of the UMC cruisers are taking a run at the Maw.*
A prickle ran down Kira’s neck. She swiveled toward the quadrant of the sky that she knew held the monstrosity. She held her breath, waiting.
Farther down the Hierophant, small explosions bellied out of the hull. Breaching charges, or something of that nature.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
A moment passed before Falconi replied. *The Maw just farted out a cloud. Looks like lasers won’t get through very easily. Wait … They’re trying to hit it with missiles. Bunch of ’em.* A tense silence followed. Then, with audible disappointment, he said, *Missiles are a no-go. The Maw picked them off like flies. Shit. A couple dozen nightmares are heading back to the Maw. If the Jellies or the UMC are going to take it out, they don’t have long.… Ah shit! Shit!* And among the stars, Kira saw a flare of light, like a miniature supernova.
“Was that�
�”
*The Maw has some sort of crazy powerful laser, particle-beam combo. It just blew up two of the Jelly ships. Punched right through their chalk and chaff. Looks like the cruiser is going to try—*
Three more streaks of light pulsed and then faded against the velvet backdrop, vanishingly small for all their destructive potential.
In a flat voice, Falconi said, *Another no-go. The cruiser got off two howitzers. Should have been direct hits, but the Maw shot the incoming streams, blasted them apart with its beam weapon. It deflected nuclear explosions with goddamn counter shots!*
“How are we going to take it out?” Kira asked, struggling with a hopeless feeling. The hull of the Hierophant vibrated beneath her.
*I don’t think we can,* said Falconi. *There’s no way to get enough ships close enough to overwhelm its—*
As he talked, a cluster of flashes appeared in the upper-right part of her vision, close to the hazy orange dot that was r2.
Kira clenched her fists, driving her nails into her palms. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. “Gregorovich. What was that?”
*Oh. You saw, huh?* he said in a dull tone.
“Yeah. What was it?”
*More nightmares.*
The words were the ones she’d dreaded, and they struck her like hammer blows. “How many?”
*Two hundred and twenty-four.*
3.
“Godda—” Kira’s voice gave out, and she closed her eyes, unable to bear the weight of existence. Then she set her jaw and steeled herself to face unpleasant reality.
Without consciously meaning to, she let go of the Battered Hierophant and hung floating above the hull while she thought. She had to think; she didn’t feel as if she could act until she’d come to some sort of understanding of what was happening.
In her ear, Falconi said, *Kira, what are you doing? You gotta get back here, before—*
His voice faded into the background as she ignored him.
She took a breath. And then another one.
There was no way they could win now. It was one thing to fight knowing that while she might die it was also possible they could drive off their enemies. It was an altogether different thing to know that she would die and that victory was impossible.
She resisted the urge to scream. After all they’d done, all they’d lost and sacrificed, it felt wrong to lose now. It felt unfair in the deepest possible sense, as if the two hundred and twenty-four nightmares that had just arrived were an affront to nature itself.
One more breath, this one longer and slower than before.
Kira thought of the greenhouses on Weyland—the fragrance of the loam and flowers, the lazy drift of dust in the sunbeams, the taste of the warm summer tomatoes—and of her family also. Then too of Alan and the future they’d planned, the future that she’d long since had to accept would never happen.
The memories left her with a bittersweet ache. All things came to an end, and it seemed her own end was swiftly approaching.
Her eyes filled with tears. She sniffed and looked at the stars, at the glowing band of the Milky Way that spanned the boundless sphere of the heavens. The universe was so beautiful it hurt. So very, very beautiful. And yet, at the same time, so full of ugliness. Some born of the inexorable demands of entropy; some born of the cruelty that seemed innate to all sentient beings. And none of it made any sense. It was all glorious, horrible nonsense, fit to inspire both despair and numinosity.
The perfect example: even as she looked at the galaxy and marveled in its radiance, another of the nightmare ships sailed into view, a torpedo-shaped growth of crimson carnality. From it she could feel a distant tug, an affinity drawing flesh to flesh, like a wire pulling at her navel—pulling at her very essence.
A new sensation broke upon Kira: determination. And with it, sorrow. For she understood: she had a choice where, before, she didn’t. She could allow events to continue unchecked, or she could wrench them out of joint and force them into a new pattern.
It was no choice at all.
Eat the path. That was what she would do. She would eat the path and bypass bare necessity. It wasn’t what she wanted, but her wants were no longer important. By her act, she could help not just the Seventh, but her friends, her family, and her entire species.
It was no choice at all.
If she and the crew of the Wallfish weren’t going to survive, she could at least try to stop the Maw from spreading. Nothing else really mattered now. Left unchecked, the corrupted Seed would spread across the whole of the galaxy in the blink of a cosmic eye, and there was little that the Jellies or the humans could do to stop it.
There was a certain beauty to her choice as well: a symmetry that appealed to Kira. With one clean slash, she could resolve the whole problem of her existence, a problem that had been troubling not just her, but all of settled space since she’d stumbled upon that hidden chamber on Adrasteia. The Seed had taught her its true purpose, and now she understood her own purpose as well, and the two halves of her being were of accord.
“Gregorovich,” she said, and the sound of her voice was shocking in the silence of the void. “Do you still have that Casaba-Howitzer left?”
EXEUNT V
1.
*Kira,* said Falconi. *What’s going on? We can’t see you on our screens.*
“You made it back to the Wallfish?”
*Barely. Now—*
“I said: I need a Casaba-Howitzer.”
*What for? We have to get the fuck out of here before the nightmares blow us out of the sky. If we head straight for the Markov Limit, we might reach it before—*
“No,” she said quietly. “There’s no way we can outrun the nightmares, and you know it. Now send over the Casaba-Howitzer. I think I figured out how to stop the Maw.”
*How?!*
“Do you trust me?”
There was a moment of weighted hesitation on his end. *I trust you. But I don’t want to see you get killed.*
“We don’t have a lot of options, Salvo.… Get me that bomb. Fast.”
He was silent for a while—long enough that she began to wonder if he would refuse. Then: *Casaba-Howitzer launched. It’s going to take up position half a klick from the dark side of the Hierophant. Can you get to it?*
“I think so.”
*’K. If you position yourself with your feet toward the stern, facing away from the Hierophant, the howitzer will be at your seven. Gregorovich is lighting it up with a targeting laser. Should show up nicely in infrared.*
Kira scanned the darkness, and then she saw it: a bright little dot, alone in the void. It looked close enough to touch, though she knew better. Distance was always hard to judge absent any reference points.
“Got it,” she said. “On my way now.” Even as she spoke, the Soft Blade pushed her toward the dormant bomb.
*Great. You mind explaining what exactly you’re planning? Please tell me it’s not what I think it is.*
“Wait.”
*Wait?! Come on, Kira, what the—*
“I need to concentrate. Give me a minute.”
Falconi grunted and stopped bothering her.
To herself, Kira said, “Faster. Faster!” urging the Soft Blade on with her mind. She knew she had only a short time before the nightmares came to investigate. If she could just reach the Casaba-Howitzer first …
The missile swelled in size ahead of her: a thick cylinder with a bulbous nose and red stenciling along the side. Its main engine was off, but the nozzle still glowed with residual heat.
Her breath escaped with a low huh as the Casaba-Howitzer slammed into her chest. She grabbed it, wrapping her arms around it. The tube was too thick for her fingers to touch on the other side. The impact started her and the missile spinning, but the Seed quickly stabilized them.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kira saw the nightmare ship that had been on approach to the Hierophant was now heading in her direction, and quickly too.
Falconi’s voice broke on her ear: *Kira�
��*
“I see them.”
*We can—*
“Stay where you are. Don’t interfere.”
Kira thought furiously as she enveloped the Casaba-Howitzer with the suit, sending countless fibers burrowing through its outer casing. With them she felt out the wires and switches and various structures that made up the bomb. And she felt the heat of the stored plutonium, felt the warm bath of its radiation and from it, took sustenance.
Somehow she had to stop the nightmares from stopping her. If she tried to fight them, they would slow her down long enough for more of them to join in. Besides, she remembered how she’d lost herself when she touched the one nightmare during their escape from Bughunt. She couldn’t risk that again. Not until she reached the Maw.
The harsh light of retro-thrusters bathed her as the nightmare ship slowed to a stop relative to her. It was only a few dozen meters away. At that distance, she could see veins throbbing beneath its abraded exterior. Just looking at the vessel made her wince with sympathetic pain.
A thought stirred within her, a thought not of her own making: That which is heard may yet be answered. And she remembered how the suit had responded to the summons when she’d boarded the Jelly ship back at Sigma Draconis. More memories came to her then, and they transported her to another time and another place, in a part of the galaxy far-flung and forgotten, when she had felt the call of her masters and answered as was only right and proper. As was her duty.
Kira knew what to do then.
She gathered her strength, and via the Seed, she sent forth a message to the nightmares and to the Maw that had created them, blasting forth the signal with all the power at her disposal: Stay back! You can have what you want. Let my friends leave, and I will come to you. This I promise.
2.
The ship beside her didn’t respond with voice or action. But neither did it attack, and as Kira began to accelerate away from the Battered Hierophant, the nightmares’ crimson vessel remained behind.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Page 88
