To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  Unfortunately, Falconi was right: few details had reached 61 Cygni before the Jellies had started their FTL jamming. There were reports from about a month ago of skirmishes in the outer part of Weyland’s system, but after that, all she could find were rumors and speculation.

  They’re tough, she thought, picturing her family. They were colonists, after all. If the Jellies had showed up on Weyland … she could just imagine her parents grabbing blasters and helping to fight them. But she hoped they wouldn’t. She hoped they would be smart and keep their heads down and live.

  Her next thought was of the Fidanza and what remained of the survey team. Had they made it back?

  System records showed that exactly twenty-six days after departing Sigma Draconis, the SLV Fidanza had arrived at 61 Cygni. No reported damage. The Fidanza docked at Vyyborg Station some days later, and then a week after that, departed for Sol. She searched for a passenger list, but nothing public came up. Hardly a surprise.

  For a moment Kira was tempted to send a message to Marie-Élise and the others, on the off chance they were still in the system. But she resisted. As soon as she logged into her accounts, the League would know where she was. Maybe they weren’t looking, but she didn’t feel ready to take that chance. Besides, what could she say to her former teammates, aside from “sorry”? Sorry wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the pain and devastation she’d caused.

  She shifted her attention back to the news, determined to gain a sense of the overall situation.

  It wasn’t good.

  What had begun as a series of small-scale skirmishes had quickly escalated into a full-scale invasion. The reports were few and far between, but enough information had reached 61 Cygni to get a sense of what was happening throughout human space: stations burning in orbit around Stewart’s World, ships gutted near the Markov Limit at Eidolon, alien forces landing on survey and mining outposts … the litany of events was too long to keep track of.

  Kira’s heart sank. If it wasn’t a coincidence that the Jellies had showed up at Adra so soon after she found the xeno, then in a way … this was her doing. Just like with Alan. Just like with—She ground the heels of her hands against her temples and shook her head. Don’t think about it. Even if she’d played a role in first contact, blaming herself for the war wouldn’t help. That way lay madness.

  She read on, scrolling through page after page until her eyes were blurry as she attempted to cram three months’ worth of information into her head.

  To their credit, the League seemed to have reacted to the invasion with appropriate speed and discipline. What was the point of arguing among yourselves when the monsters in the dark were attacking? Reserves had been mobilized, civilian ships had been commandeered, and on Earth and Venus, mandatory drafts had been enacted.

  The cynic in Kira saw the measures as just another effort on the part of the League to expand their power. Never let a good emergency go to waste, and all that. The realist in her saw the necessity of what they were doing.

  All the experts seemed to agree: the Jellies were at least a hundred years more technologically advanced than humans. Their Markov Drives let them jump in and out of FTL far closer to stars and planets than even the most cutting-edge UMC warships. Their power plants—separate from the fusion drives used for propulsion—generated the staggering amounts of energy needed for the Jellies’ inertial trickery via some as-yet-unidentified mechanism. And yet they didn’t use radiators to dissipate the heat. No one understood that.

  When troops had boarded the first Jelly ship, they had discovered rooms and decks weighted with artificial gravity. And not the spin-an-object-in-a-large-circle kind, but honest-to-god, actual artificial gravity.

  Physicists weren’t surprised; they explained that any species that had figured out how to alter inertial resistance would, by definition, be capable of mimicking a naturally occurring gravitational field.

  And while the aliens didn’t seem to possess any new types of weapons—they still used lasers and missiles and kinetic projectiles—the extreme maneuverability of their ships, combined with the accuracy and efficiency of their weapons, made them difficult to fend off.

  In light of the Jellies’ technological superiority, the League had passed a law asking civilians everywhere to salvage and turn in any pieces of alien equipment they could. As the League spokesperson—a rather oily man with a fake smile and eyes that always seemed a touch too wide—said, “Every little bit is valuable. Every little bit could make the difference. Help us help you; the more information we have, the better we can fight these aliens and end this threat to the colonies and to the Homeworld.”

  Kira hated that expression: Homeworld. Technically it was correct, but it just felt oppressive to her, as if they were all supposed to bow down and defer to those lucky enough to still live on Earth. It wasn’t her homeworld. Weyland was.

  Despite the Jellies’ advantages, the war in space wasn’t entirely one-sided. Humans had won their share of victories, but as a whole, they were few and hard-fought. On the ground, things weren’t much better. From the clips Kira saw, even troopers in power armor had trouble going one-on-one with the aliens.

  Vishal had been right; the Jellies came in different flavors, not just the tentacled monstrosity she’d encountered on the Extenuating Circumstances. Some were large and hulking. Some were small and agile. Some were snakelike. Others reminded Kira more of insects. But no matter their shape, they could all function in a vacuum, and they were all fast, strong, and tough as hell.

  As Kira studied the images, pressure built behind her eyes, until, with sudden sharpness—

  —a shoal of graspers jetted toward her in the darkness of space. Hard-shelled and tentacled, armed and armored. Then a flash, and she was climbing a rocky scarp, firing blasters at dozens of scurrying creatures, many-legged and clawed.

  Again in the ocean, deep below, where the Hdawari hunted. A trio of figures emerged from the shadowed murk. One thick and bulky and nearly invisible with the midnight hue of its armored skin. One sharp and spindly, a broken nest of legs and claws topped by a brazen crest, now pressed flat to better swim. And one long and supple, lined with limbs and trailing a whiplike tail that emitted a tingle of electricity. And though it could not be guessed from appearance alone, the three shared a commonality: they had all been first of their hatching. First and sole surviving …

  Kira gasped and screwed her eyes shut. A pounding spike ran from her forehead to the back of her skull.

  It took a minute for the pain to fade.

  Was the Soft Blade making a conscious effort to communicate, or had the video just triggered fragments of old memories? She wasn’t sure, but she was grateful for the additional information, no matter how confusing.

  “Maybe don’t give me a migraine next time, okay?” she said. If the xeno understood, she couldn’t tell.

  Kira returned to the video.

  She recognized several of the Jelly types from the Soft Blade’s memories, but most were new and unfamiliar. That puzzled her. How long had the xeno been stuck on Adrasteia? Surely it couldn’t have been long enough for new forms of Jellies to have evolved.…

  She detoured to check some of her professional resources. One thing xenobiologists seemed to agree on: all the invading aliens shared the same base biochemical coding. Heavily varied at times, but still essentially the same. Which meant the different types of Jellies belonged to a single species.

  “You have been busy,” she murmured. Was it gene-hacking or did the Jellies have a particularly malleable physiology? If the Soft Blade knew, it wasn’t telling.

  Either way, it was a relief to know humanity wasn’t fighting more than one enemy.

  There were plenty of other mysteries, though. The Jellies’ ships usually traveled in multiples of two, and no one had been able to determine why. They didn’t at Adra, Kira thought. Likewise—

  … the Nest of Transference, round of shape, heavy of purpose …

  Kira winced as another spi
ke shot through her skull. So the xeno was trying to communicate. The Nest of Transference … Still not very informative, but at least she had a name now. She made a mental note to write down everything the Soft Blade had been showing her.

  She just wished it didn’t have to be so damned cryptic.

  No one had been able to identify a planet or system of origin for the aliens. Back-calculating the FTL trajectories of their ships had revealed that the Jellies were jumping in from every direction. That meant they were dropping back to normal space at different points and deliberately altering their course in order to hide their starting locations. In time, the light from their return to normal space would reach astronomers and they would be able to determine where the Jellies were coming from, but “in time” would be years and years, if not decades.

  The Jellies couldn’t be traveling too far, though. Their ships were faster in FTL, that much was apparent, but not so ridiculously fast as to allow them to travel hundreds of light-years in a month or less. So why hadn’t signals from their civilization reached Sol or the colonies?

  As for why the Jellies were attacking … The obvious answer was conquest, but no one knew for sure, and for one simple reason: to date, every attempt to decipher the Jellies’ language had failed. Their language, according to the best evidence, was scent-based and so utterly different from any human tongue that even the smartest minds weren’t sure how to begin translating it.

  Kira stopped reading, feeling as if she’d been struck. Under the jumpsuit, the Soft Blade stiffened. On the Extenuating Circumstances, she’d understood what the Jelly had said as clearly as any English-speaking human. And she could have replied in kind if she’d so wanted. Of that Kira had no doubt.

  A chill spread through her limbs, and she shivered, feeling as if she were encased in ice. Did that mean she was the only person who could communicate with the Jellies?

  It seemed so.

  She stared blankly at her overlays, thinking. If she helped the League talk with the Jellies, would it change anything? She had to believe that her discovery of the Soft Blade was at least part of the reason for the invasion. It only made sense. Maybe the Jellies were attacking as revenge for what they believed to be the destruction of the Soft Blade. Revealing herself to them could be the first step toward peace. Or not.

  It was impossible to know without more information. Information that she had no way of obtaining at the moment.

  But what Kira did know was that if she turned herself over to the League, she’d spend her days locked in small, windowless rooms, being endlessly examined while—if she was lucky—sometimes providing translation services. And if she went to the Lapsang Corp. instead … the outcome would be much the same, and the war would continue to rage on.

  Kira let out a stifled cry. She felt trapped in a crossroads, threatened at every turn. If there were an easy solution to the situation, she wasn’t seeing it. The future had become a black void, unforeseen and unforeseeable.

  She minimized the overlays, pulled the blanket closer around herself, and sat chewing on the inside of her cheek while she thought.

  “Dammit,” she muttered. What am I going to do?

  Amid all the questions and uncertainties and events of galactic importance—amid a sea of choices, any one of which could have catastrophic consequences, and not just for her—a single truth stood out. Her family was in danger. Even though she’d left Weyland, even though it had been years since she’d been back, they still mattered to her. And her to them. She had to help. And if doing so would allow her to help others also, then so much the better.

  But how? Weyland was over forty days away at standard FTL speeds. An awful lot could happen in that time. And besides, Kira didn’t want her family anywhere near the xeno—she worried about accidentally hurting them—and if the Jellies figured out where she was … she might as well paint a giant target on herself and everyone around her.

  She ground her knuckles into the deck, frustrated. The only realistic way she could think to protect her family from a distance would be to help end the war. Which brought her back to the same damn question: How?

  In an agony of indecision, Kira pushed off the blanket and stood, unable to bear sitting any longer.

  3.

  Her head humming with a distraction of thoughts, Kira wandered along the back wall of the cargo hold, trying to burn off the excess energy.

  On a sudden impulse, she turned and headed toward where the Entropists sat kneeling, not far from the knot of people listening to the litany of numbers. The two Entropists were of indeterminate age, and their skin was laced with silver wires about the temples and hairline. They both wore the customary gradient robes with a stylized logo of a rising phoenix blazoned on the middle of the back as well as along the cuffs and hemlines.

  She’d always admired the Entropists. They were famous for their scientific research, both applied and theoretical, and they had adherents working at the highest levels in nearly every field. In fact, it had become a running joke that if you wanted to make a big breakthrough, the first step was to join the Entropists. Their tech was consistently five to ten years ahead of everyone else’s. Their Markov Drives were the fastest in existence, and it was rumored they possessed other, far more exotic advancements, although Kira didn’t put much stock in the really outlandish claims. The Entropists attracted plenty of humanity’s top minds—even a few ship minds, she’d heard—but they weren’t the only smart, dedicated people trying to understand the secrets of the universe.

  For all that, there was something to the rumors.

  Many Entropists engaged in fairly radical gene-hacking. At least that was the theory, based off their often wildly divergent appearance. And it was common knowledge that their clothes were packed full of miniaturized tech, some of which bordered on the miraculous.

  If anyone could help her better understand the Soft Blade and the Jellies (at least when it came to technology), it would be the Entropists. Plus—and this was important from Kira’s point of view—the Entropists were a stateless organization. They didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of any one government. They had research labs in the League, property among the freeholdings, and their headquarters was somewhere out around Shin-Zar. If the Entropists figured out that the Soft Blade was alien tech, they weren’t likely to report her to the UMC, just pepper her with an endless series of questions.

  Kira remembered what her then research boss, Zubarev, had told her during their time on Serris: “If you ever get in a chin-wag with an Entropist, you’re best served not talking about the heat death of the universe, yah hear me? You’ll never get free after that. They’ll chew your ear off for half a day or more, so yah know. Just warning you, Navárez.”

  With that in mind, Kira stopped in front of the man and woman. “Excuse me,” she said. She felt as if she were seven again, when she’d been introduced to the Entropist who had visited Weyland. He’d seemed so imposing at that age: a huge tower of flesh and fabric peering down at her.…

  The man and woman stirred and turned their faces toward her.

  “Yes, Prisoner? How may we help you?” said the man.

  That was the one thing she didn’t like about the Entropists: their insistence on calling everyone prisoner. The universe wasn’t ideal, but it was hardly a prison. After all, you had to exist somewhere; it might as well be here.

  “May I speak with you?” she said.

  “Of course. Please, sit,” said the man. He and the woman shifted to make room for her. Their movements were perfectly coordinated, as if they were two parts of the same body. It took her a moment to realize: they were a hive. A very small hive, but a hive nevertheless. It had been a while since she’d dealt with one.

  “This is Questant Veera,” said the man and gestured at his partner.

  “And this is Questant Jorrus,” said Veera, mirroring his gesture. “What is it you wish to ask us, Prisoner?”

  Kira listened to the measured count of numbers while she thought. The ship
mind, Gregorovich, might be listening, so she had to avoid saying anything that might contradict the story she’d provided in sickbay earlier.

  “My name is Kaminski,” she said. “I was on the shuttle the Wallfish docked with.”

  Veera nodded. “We assumed—”

  “—as much,” Jorrus finished.

  Kira smoothed the front of her jumpsuit while she chose her words. “I’ve been out of touch for the past three months, so I’m trying to catch up on current events. How much do you know about bioengineering?”

  Jorrus said, “We know more than some—”

  “—and less than others,” said Veera.

  They were, she knew, being characteristically modest. “Seeing all the different types of Jellies got me thinking; would it be possible to make an organic skinsuit? Or a set of organic power armor?”

  The Entropists frowned. It was eerie seeing the same expression perfectly synchronized on two different faces. “You seem to already have experience with unusual skinsuits, Prisoner,” said Jorrus. He and his partner gestured toward the Soft Blade.

  “This?” Kira shrugged, as if the suit was of no importance. “It’s a piece of custom work a friend of mine did. Looks cooler than it is.”

  The Entropists accepted her explanation without argument. Veera said, “To answer your question, then, Prisoner, it would be possible, but it would be…”

  “Impractical,” supplied Jorrus.

  “Flesh is not as strong as metal and/or composites,” said Veera. “Even if one were to rely on a combination of diamond and carbon nanotubes, such a thing would not provide the same protection as a normal set of armor.”

  “Powering it would be difficult as well,” said Jorrus. “Organic processes cannot provide enough energy within the requisite timeframes. Supercapacitors, batteries, mini-reactors, and other sources of energy are needed.”

  “Even if energy wasn’t a consideration,” said Veera, “integration between the user and the suit would be problematic.”