To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  “And don’t forget the dancing,” said Falconi, grinning.

  Trig shrugged. “So I danced a bit.”

  “I wasn’t there myself,” Nielsen said, putting a hand on Kira’s arm. “But I heard he was very … enthusiastic.” Despite his obvious embarrassment, Trig seemed somewhat proud of the first officer’s praise, humorous though it was.

  “Oh, he was,” said Vishal. “He was.”

  Taking pity on the kid’s discomfort, Kira changed the subject: “What kind of music did you play?”

  “Mostly scramrock. Thresh. That sort of thing.”

  “So why’d you leave?”

  “Didn’t have any reason to stay,” he mumbled, and downed the rest of his water.

  A somber mood quelled the conversation. Then Falconi wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “I know what you need.”

  “What?” said Trig, staring at his plate.

  “A religious experience.”

  The kid snorted. Then his lips curved with a faint, reluctant smile. “Yeah. Okay.… You might be right.”

  “Of course I’m right,” said Falconi.

  With newfound enthusiasm, Trig scraped the rest of his food into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I’m going to regret that,” he said, smiling as he got to his feet.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” said Hwa-jung.

  “Go on, eat the whole thing this time,” called Sparrow.

  “Video! Take video,” said Falconi.

  “Just make sure you wash afterward.” Nielsen grimaced slightly.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Confused, Kira looked between them. “A religious experience?”

  Falconi picked up his plate and carried it to the sink. “Trig has an uncommon love of hot peppers. While back, he picked up a Black Nova off a wirehead on Eidolon.”

  “I take it a Black Nova is a kind of pepper.”

  Trig bounced on his heels. “Hottest one in the galaxy!”

  “It’s so hot,” said Sparrow, “they say you’ll see the face of god if you’re idiot enough to eat one. That or you pass out and die.”

  “Hey now,” Trig protested. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Ha!”

  “Have you tried it?” Kira asked Falconi.

  He shook his head. “I prefer not to wreck my stomach.”

  She eyed Trig. “So why do you like it so much?”

  “Well, uh, if you don’t have enough food, hot sauce really helps, you know? Cuts the hunger. That’s what got me into peppers. That and I kinda like the challenge. Gives me a sense of control. It doesn’t even hurt after a while, and you just feel like, whee!” Trig rolled his head, as if dizzy.

  “Helps with hunger, huh?” Kira was starting to understand.

  “Yeah.” Trig took his dishes to the sink and then hurried out of the galley. “Wish me luck!”

  Kira took a sip of her chell. “Should we wait?” she asked, looking at the others.

  Falconi activated the holo-display on his table. “If you want.”

  “A while back, Trig mentioned there were food shortages on Undset Station.…”

  A frown settled onto Sparrow’s sharp face. “If that’s what you want to call it. Royal fuckup is more like it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Way I understand it, the sublight transport that was supposed to resupply Undset from Cygni A broke down, went off course. No big deal, right? The station had a hydro bay plus plenty of extra food stockpiled. Only problem was—”

  “Only problem was,” said Falconi, looking over the gleaming holo, “the quartermaster had been cutting corners, pocketing the difference. Less than a third of the food was actually there. And most of it was rotten. Faulty seals or something.”

  Kira winced. “Oh shit.”

  “You can say that again. By the time they realized how bad the situation was, the station was nearly out of food, and the replacement tug was still a few weeks out.”

  “Weeks? Why so long? Cygni B isn’t that far from A.”

  “Bureaucracy, time it took to gather the supplies, prep a ship, et cetera. Apparently they didn’t have any FTL transports set up at the time so they had to do it sublight. It was a whole collection of screwups.”

  Sparrow chimed in, “From what Trig’s said, things got real bad on Undset before the new transport showed up. Supposedly, they ended up spacing the quartermaster and the station commander.” And she nodded as if sharing a great secret.

  “Thule.” Kira shook her head. “How long ago was this?”

  Sparrow looked over at Falconi. “What, about ten, twelve years?”

  He nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  Kira picked at her food, thinking. “Trig would have been pretty young, then.”

  “Yup.”

  “No wonder he wanted to get off Undset.”

  Falconi returned his attention to the holo. “Wasn’t his only reason, but … yes.”

  7.

  They were still in the galley forty-some minutes later when Trig strutted back in. His cheeks were bright red; his eyes swollen, bloodshot, glassy; and his skin shiny with sweat, but he looked happy, almost euphoric.

  “How’d it go, kid?” Sparrow asked, leaning back against the wall.

  He grinned and puffed up his chest. “Awesome. But sheesh, my throat burns!”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Nielsen said in a dry tone.

  The kid started toward the kitchen area, and then stopped and looked at Kira. “Can you believe we’re actually going to get to explore alien ruins tomorrow?!”

  “You’re looking forward to it?”

  He nodded, serious but still excited. “Oh yeah. But, well … I was wondering, what happens if they’re still around?”

  “I’d like to know that too,” Nielsen murmured.

  In her mind’s eye, Kira again saw the Highmost sweep the Staff of Blue downward, and a dark and miserable planet vanish from the sky. “We hope they’re in a good mood.”

  8.

  Trig’s final question lingered in Kira’s mind as she returned to her cabin: What happens if they’re still around? What indeed? She checked on the ship’s progress in her console—course unchanged, planet e now brighter than any of the visible stars—and then lay on the bed and closed her eyes.

  Tomorrow’s worries would have to wait for tomorrow.

  She slept, and this time no memories intruded.

  9.

  A persistent beeping roused her.

  Annoyed, Kira forced her eyes open. In the holo, she saw the time displayed: 0345. Fifteen minutes until departure.

  She groaned and rolled out of bed, feeling every second of missed sleep. Then it occurred to her that she’d forgotten to set an alarm. Was Gregorovich responsible for waking her?

  As she dressed, Kira opened a new window and sent a single line to the ship mind:

  Thanks. – Kira

  A second later, a response arrived:

  De nada. – Gregorovich

  It paid to be courteous with ship minds, especially if they were anything less than sane.

  Still groggy, Kira ran through the ship and climbed toward the nose of the Wallfish. The ship hadn’t stopped thrusting, which meant the shuttle had yet to arrive. Good. She wasn’t too late.

  She found the crew—along with the Entropists and the four Marines in power armor—at the top of the ship, by the airlock.

  “About time,” said Falconi, and tossed her a blaster. He was wearing a skinsuit, helmet included, and his oversized grenade launcher, Francesca, was slung across his back.

  “Is the shuttle close?” Kira asked.

  As if in response, the thrust alert sounded and Gregorovich said, “Initiating docking maneuvers with the UMCS Ilmorra. Please secure yourself to the nearest handhold, seat belt, and/or sticky pad.”

  Vishal saw her yawning and offered her a pill of AcuWake. “Here, Ms. Kira. Try this.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “It may not help, but I think it is worth tryin
g.”

  Still doubtful, Kira popped the capsule into her mouth. It burst between her teeth with a sharp, wintergreen tang, strong enough to make her nose tingle and her eyes water. Within seconds, her exhaustion and mental haze began to dissipate, leaving her feeling as if she’d had a full night’s sleep.

  Astonished, she looked back at the doctor. “It worked! How did it work?!”

  A sly smile graced the doctor’s face, and he tapped the side of his nose. “I had a suspicion it might. The medicine, it goes straight into the blood and then to your brain. Very quick, very difficult for the Soft Blade to stop without hurting your brain. And it is supposed to help, yes, so maybe the xeno knows not to interfere.”

  Whatever the explanation, Kira was grateful for the chemical assistance. She couldn’t afford to be sleep-deprived right then.

  Then all sense of weight abandoned her, and bile filled her throat.

  Docking was swift and efficient. The UMC shuttle approached the Wallfish head-on so both ships were safe from radiation within the cones of their shadow shields. They made contact, nose-to-nose, and a light shudder passed through the Wallfish at the touch.

  The joined airlocks rolled open. A Marine poked his head through on the other side. “Welcome aboard,” he said.

  Falconi gave Kira a crooked smile. “Time to go poking around where we don’t belong.”

  “Let’s do this,” she said, and jumped into the Ilmorra.

  CHAPTER II

  A CAELO USQUE AD CENTRUM

  1.

  Kira watched on her overlays as the Wallfish and the Darmstadt receded into the distance: two bright points of light that quickly dwindled to near nothing. The ships moved as a locked pair, on course for the asteroid they’d chosen to mine. Behind them, Bughunt was a dull, ruddy orb—a dying coal set within a field of black.

  Kira sat buckled into a jump seat along the wall, next to Falconi. The rest of the expedition was likewise secured, except for those—like Trig and Nielsen—who were wearing power armor. They stood locked into hard points near the back of the shuttle.

  Their group numbered twenty-one. Fourteen of them, including Hawes and the three other Marines from the Wallfish, were in exos. Two of the UMC exos looked to be heavy armor variants: walking tanks with portable turrets attached to the fronts of their breastplates.

  Most of the Marines were enlisted men, although Akawe had also sent along his second-in-command, Koyich, to oversee the operation.

  The yellow-eyed man was in the middle of saying to Falconi, “—we say you jump, you jump. Clear?”

  “Perfectly,” said Falconi. He didn’t look happy, though.

  Koyich’s upper lip curled. “I don’t know why the captain agreed to let rim runners like you along, but orders are orders. If shit goes down, stay the hell out of our way, you hear? You cross our line of fire, we’re going to shoot through you, not around. Get it?”

  If anything, Falconi’s expression became even more glacial. “Oh I got it.” In her mind, Kira checked the box labeled asshole next to Koyich’s name.

  Overhead, the lightstrips switched from the clean white shine of full-spectrum illumination to the purple glow of irradiating UV, and from jets mounted along the walls, gusts of decon gasses buffeted her and the other passengers.

  The Ilmorra was laid out differently than the Valkyrie, but it was similar enough that Kira felt a strong sense of déjà vu. She tried to put aside the emotion and focus on the present; whatever happened on the planet, they weren’t going to get stuck in the shuttle. Not with the Darmstadt and the Wallfish nearby. Even so, it was unsettling to be in such a small ship, so far from any human-settled system. They were truly explorers of the deep unknown.

  They had enough food to stay on the planet for a week. If more was needed, the Darmstadt could drop it from orbit once the ship got back from the asteroid belt. Barring unforeseen complications, they would stay on the planet until they found the Staff of Blue or were able to determine it wasn’t there. Returning to the ships was going to be a huge hassle, not only because of the propellant needed to lift the shuttle into orbit, but also because of the decontamination they would need to go through before being allowed back on board.

  Like everyone not clad in an exo, Kira had donned a skinsuit and helmet, which she’d be living in until they left the planet. Everyone but the Entropists, who had somehow transformed the smart fabric of their gradient robes into fitted suits complete with helmets and visors. As always, their technology impressed.

  The suits would have been necessary regardless of concerns over biocontainment. Spectrographic analysis had shown that the surface atmosphere on the ground would kill them without protection (not immediately, but fast enough).

  The Wallfish and the Darmstadt had decelerated a considerable amount as they neared the planet, but neither ship had come to a complete, relative stop, which left the Ilmorra with several hours of thrusting before it could enter orbit.

  Kira closed her eyes and waited.

  2.

  The shriek of alarms yanked Kira back to full alertness. Red lights flashed overhead, and the Marines shouted at each other, barking incomprehensible jargon.

  “What’s going on?” she said. No one replied, but Kira saw the answer for herself as she pulled up her overlays.

  Ships.

  Lots of ships popping out of FTL. Jellies.

  A jolt of adrenaline caused Kira’s heart to race, and the Soft Blade roiled underneath her skinsuit. She scanned the details. Four, five, six ships had appeared so far. They’d entered normal space somewhat offset from the heart of the system—an error in their navigation systems, perhaps, but knowing the speed of the Jellies’ drives, they couldn’t be more than a few hours away at max thrust.

  Seven ships.

  Next to her, Falconi was speaking frantically into the microphone of his helmet. Across the middle of the shuttle, Koyich was doing the same.

  “Sheiiit,” said Sanchez. “Guess the Jellies were already out here, searching for the Staff of Blue.”

  A clank as Tatupoa slapped the side of Sanchez’s armored head. “No, dumbass. They went and flash traced us is what they did. Timing’s all wrong elsewise.”

  Corporal Nishu chimed in, “First time we’ve seen them do it too. Fuckers.”

  Then Lt. Hawes: “Somehow they figured out how to track us even with all the course adjustments.” He shook his head. “Not good.”

  “What course adjustments?” Kira asked.

  Nishu was the one to answer: “Whenever we drop out of FTL to bleed off heat, we make a slight course change. No more than a degree or a fraction of a degree, but it’s enough to throw off anyone who is trying to plot your final destination based off your trajectory. Isn’t always helpful in the League, with the stars so close together, but makes a difference if you’re going from, say, Cygni to Eidolon.”

  Koyich and Falconi were still talking into their microphones.

  “And the Wallfish made these corrections too?” Kira said.

  Hawes nodded. “Horzcha coordinated it with your ship mind. Should have kept the Jellies from flash tracing us, but … guess not.”

  Flash trace. Kira remembered the term from Seven Minutes to Saturn, the war movie Alan had loved so much. The concept was pretty simple. If you wanted to see what had happened at a location prior to the time of your arrival, all you had to do was go FTL and fly away from that location until you’d traveled a distance greater than the light from the event. Then you just parked your ship in open space, turned on your telescope, and waited.

  The detail of the images received would be limited by the size of your on-board equipment, but even at interstellar distances, it would be relatively easy to spot something like, say, the Wallfish and the Darmstadt jumping to FTL. Ship drives were hot torches against the cold backdrop of space, and they were dead easy to find and track.

  Kira berated herself for not considering the possibility sooner. Of course the Jellies would do their best to figure out where the So
ft Blade had gone after 61 Cygni. Why wouldn’t they? She knew how important the xeno was to them. Somehow, with the appearance of the nightmares, she’d assumed the Jellies would have bigger things to worry about.

  Apparently not.

  Falconi shouted something in his helmet that Kira only heard a muted version of because his speaker was turned off. Then he let his head fall back against the wall, a grim expression on his face.

  She knocked on his visor, and he looked at her.

  “What is it?” she said.

  He scowled. “We’re too far away for the Wallfish to reach us before the Jellies. Even if she could, her tanks are over half empty, and there’s no way we can…” He stopped, lips pursed, and glanced toward Trig. “The odds aren’t good. Put it that way.”

  “We keep going,” said Koyich, loud enough to be heard throughout the shuttle. “Our only chance now is to find this staff before the Jellies do.” He turned his slitted cat-eyes onto Kira. “If we do, you’d better be able to use it, Navárez.”

  Kira gave a sharp jerk of her chin, and even though she was far from certain, she said, “Get the staff into my hands, we’ll have a real surprise for the Jellies.”

  Koyich seemed satisfied by her statement, but a message popped up in her overlays:

 

 

  Then the thrust alert rang out, and a lead blanket settled over Kira as the Ilmorra kicked up its burn to a full 2 g’s.

  “ETA to Nidus, fourteen minutes,” said the shuttle’s pseudo-intelligence.

  “Nidus?” Nielsen asked before Kira could.