To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  “No more,” he said. “Falconi out.” He touched a button, and the holo switched to a map of the system, with all the ships marked for easy viewing.

  As Kira sank into the welcome relief of a padded crash chair, Sparrow glanced at her. The woman’s eyes widened as she noticed what she hadn’t before. “Shit, Kira. What happened to your—”

  “Not now,” said Falconi. “Storytime later.”

  Sparrow bit back her questions, but Kira could feel the weight of her gaze.

  The Jellies and the nightmares were still skirmishing near and around Nidus. But it was a confused fight. The three remaining ships that belonged to the friendly Jellies—including the one carrying Tschetter—were taking potshots at both the nightmares and their own kind. Two Jelly vessels and one of the nightmares had taken off from the planet and were shooting at any and all. Kira suspected the Seeker was in control of them. Likewise, the rest of the nightmares were fighting everyone but themselves.

  As one of the Jellies’ ships—fortunately, not a friendly—exploded in a nuclear flare, Sparrow winced. “What a clusterfuck,” she said.

  At first Kira thought the Wallfish had been lucky enough to escape pursuit, but then she spotted the trajectories plotted from two of the nightmares: intercept courses. The long, angular ships (they looked like bundles of enormous femurs bound together with strips of exposed muscle) were on the opposite side of the planet, but they were accelerating at the same insane, cell-destroying g’s the other nightmares had employed. At the current rate, they’d be in range within fourteen minutes.

  Or maybe not.

  Approaching from the near asteroid belt was the Darmstadt, trailing threads of coolant from its damaged radiators. Kira checked the numbers; the cruiser would just barely cross paths with the nightmares before they shot past. If the nightmares piled on another quarter g of thrust, the UMC would be far too slow.

  The comms crackled, and Akawe’s voice sounded: “Captain Falconi, do you read?”

  “I read.”

  “We can buy you some time here, I think. Maybe enough for you to get to the Markov Limit.”

  Falconi gripped the edge of the table, the tips of his fingers turning white from the force. “What about you, Captain?”

  A chuckle from Akawe surprised Kira. “We’ll follow if we can, but all that matters is that someone lets Command know about the offer from Tschetter’s Jellies, and right now the Wallfish has the best shot of escaping the system. I know you’re a civvy, Falconi—I can’t order you to do jack shit—but it doesn’t get more important than this.”

  “We’ll get the message back to the League,” said Falconi. Then, after a moment’s pause, “You have my word, Captain.”

  A crackle of static and then: “I’ll hold you to that, Captain.… Stand by for a light show. Over.”

  “What are they planning?” said Kira. “They can’t outmaneuver the nightmares.”

  Sparrow wet her lips, her gaze fixed on the holo. “No. But maybe Akawe can hit them hard and fast enough to take them off our tail. Depends on how many missiles the Darmstadt has left.”

  Kira and the others were still sitting, waiting and watching, when Hwa-jung lumbered in through the doorway. Falconi gave her a nod. “Problem fixed?”

  Hwa-jung surprised Kira by bowing past parallel. “It was my fault. The repair I made in Sixty-One Cygni, I made in anger. The work was bad. I am sorry. You should find a better machine boss to work for you.”

  Falconi walked over, put his hands on Hwa-jung’s shoulders, and raised her back into a standing position. “Nonsense,” he said, voice unexpectedly gentle. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

  After a moment, Hwa-jung ducked her head. Tears filled her eyes. “I will not. I promise.”

  “That’s all I ask,” said Falconi. “And if—”

  “Shit,” said Sparrow in a subdued tone, pointing at the holo.

  The nightmares had increased their thrust. The Darmstadt was going to fall short by a good margin. Certainly more than the effective range of the cruiser’s main lasers.

  “Now what?” Kira asked. She felt numb from the rolling series of catastrophes. What else could go wrong at this point? Didn’t matter. Just deal with it. If the nightmares docked with the Wallfish, she might be able to fight off some of the invaders, but if there were more creatures like the one that had grabbed her on the Jelly ship, then she would be lost. They would all be lost.

  “We set up a killing zone in the main shaft,” said Falconi. “Funnel the nightmares into there and hit ’em from every side.”

  “Assuming they don’t just blow us up,” said Sparrow.

  “No,” said Hwa-jung, motioning toward Kira. “They want her.”

  “They do,” Falconi agreed. “We can use that to our advantage.”

  “Bait,” said Kira.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then—”

  A bloom of dazzling white in the center of the holo interrupted her and caused them all to stop and stare.

  Both nightmare ships had exploded, leaving nothing but an expanding cloud of vapor.

  “Gregorovich,” said Falconi. “What just happened?”

  The ship mind said, “Casaba-Howitzers. Three of them.”

  The image in the holo ran in reverse, and they saw the explosions collapse back into the nightmares’ ships and—just before—three needles of light flickering in a scattered line some tens of thousands of klicks away.

  “How?” said Kira, confused. “The Darmstadt isn’t in range.”

  Sparrow seemed about to answer when the comm line crackled again and Akawe came on. “There’s the light show, folks,” he said, sounding grimly amused. “We dropped a few RD Fifty-Twos on approach to Nidus. Something new we’ve been playing with. Hydrogen-cooled Casaba-Howitzers. Makes ’em nearly impossible to spot. In a pinch, they work pretty well as mines. We just had to force the nightmares into range. Stupid fucks didn’t even realize they were flying into a trap. We’re changing course now. Going to do our best to keep the rest of these hostiles off your backs. Just keep up your burn and don’t stop for anything. Over.”

  “Roger that,” said Falconi. “… And thank you, Captain. We owe you one. Over.”

  “There’ll be drinks to go around when this is done, Captain. Over,” said Akawe.

  As the line went dead, Sparrow said, “I’d heard about the RD Fifty-Twos. Never got to play with them, though.”

  Falconi leaned back from the holo. He ran his hands through his bristly hair, scrubbing at his scalp with the tips of his fingers, and then said, “Okay. We’ve got some breathing room. Not much, but a little.”

  “How long until we can jump out?” Kira asked.

  “At our current two g’s of thrust,” whispered Gregorovich, “we shall gain the freedom to depart this hallowed graveyard in exactly twenty-five hours.”

  That’s too long. Kira didn’t have to say it; she could see the others were thinking it as well. The nightmares and the Jellies had only taken a few hours to reach Nidus after dropping out of FTL. If more of them decided to pursue the Wallfish, they’d have no trouble overtaking it.

  “Gregorovich,” said Falconi, “any chance of a solar flare?”

  Smart. Like all red dwarfs, Bughunt would be prone to high variability, which meant enormous and unpredictable solar flares. A large enough outburst would disrupt the magnetic fields used in the exhaust nozzles of their fusion drives and keep the Jellies or the nightmares from overtaking the Wallfish. Assuming they hadn’t found an effective way to shield themselves.

  “None at the moment,” said Gregorovich.

  “Dammit,” Falconi muttered.

  “We’ll just have to hope Akawe and Tschetter’s Jellies can keep everyone off our tail,” said Sparrow.

  Falconi looked like he’d just bitten down on a rock. “I don’t like it. I really don’t like it. If even one of those assholes comes after us, we’re going to be in a world of trouble.”

  Sparrow shrugged. “Not sure
what we can do about it, Captain. The Wallfish ain’t like a horse. She won’t go any faster if you hit her.”

  A thought occurred to Kira: the malformed corruption that was the nightmares had been able to make use of the Jelly tech, so … why couldn’t they?

  The idea was so outlandish, she nearly dismissed it. Only because of the desperate nature of their circumstances did she say, “What about the Jelly, Itari?”

  “What about it?” said Falconi.

  “Maybe it could help us.”

  Hwa-jung’s eyes narrowed, and she sounded outright hostile as she said, “How do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Kira. “But maybe it can tweak our Markov Drive so we can jump to FTL sooner.”

  Hwa-jung cursed. “You want to let that thing tinker with the Wallfish? Gah!”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Sparrow, looking at Falconi.

  He grimaced. “Can’t say I like it, but if the Jelly can help us, we have to give it a shot.”

  Hwa-jung looked profoundly unhappy. “No, no, no,” she muttered. Then, louder: “You do not know what it could do. It could break every system in the ship. It could blow us up. No! The Jelly doesn’t know our computers or our—”

  “So you’ll help it,” Falconi said in a gentle tone. “We’re dead if we can’t get out of this system, Hwa-jung. Anything that can help us is worth trying at this point.”

  The machine boss scowled and rubbed her hands together again and again. Then she grunted and got back to her feet. “Okay. But if the Jelly does anything to hurt the Wallfish, I will tear it apart.”

  Falconi smiled slightly. “I’d expect nothing less. Gregorovich, you keep an eye on things also.”

  “Always,” whispered the ship mind.

  Then Falconi shifted his gaze. “Kira, you’re the only one who can talk with the Jelly. Go see if it thinks it can help, and if it can, then coordinate between it and Hwa-jung.”

  Kira nodded and pushed herself out of the crash chair, feeling every one of the added kilos from their burn.

  The captain was still talking: “Sparrow, you too. Make sure things don’t get out of hand.”

  “Yessir.”

  “When you’re done, take the Jelly back to the airlock.”

  “You’re going to leave it there?” Sparrow asked.

  “Seems like the only semi-secure place for it. Unless you have a better idea?”

  Sparrow shook her head.

  “Right. Then get to it. And Kira? When you’re finished, go see the doc and have him look at that arm of yours.”

  “Will do,” said Kira.

  3.

  As Kira left Control along with the other two women, Hwa-jung gestured at her arm and said, “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” said Kira. “Not really. Just feels weird.”

  “What happened?” said Sparrow

  “One of the nightmares grabbed me. The only way I could escape was by cutting myself free.”

  Sparrow winced. “Shit. At least you made it out.”

  “Yeah.” But privately, Kira wondered if she really had.

  Two of the Marines—Tatupoa and another man whose name Kira didn’t know—stood stationed in the airlock antechamber, keeping watch over the Jelly inside. The rest of the Marines had cleared out, leaving behind bandages and bloody streaks on the deck.

  The two men were wolfing down rations as Kira and her companions approached. They both looked pale and exhausted, stressed. She recognized the look; it was the same way she felt. After the adrenaline wore off, then came the crash. And she’d crashed hard.

  Tatupoa paused with his spork in the air. “You here what to talk with the squid?”

  “Yeah,” said Kira.

  “Gotcha. You need any help, just holler. We’ll be right behind you.”

  Although Kira doubted the Marines could protect her better than the Soft Blade, it made her glad to know they were there, guns at the ready.

  Sparrow and Hwa-jung hung back as she went to the airlock and peered through the diamond pressure window. The Jelly, Itari, was still sitting on the floor, resting amid its knotted tentacles. For a moment, apprehension stalled her. Then Kira hit the release button and the airlock’s inner door rolled back.

  The scent of the Jelly struck her: a smell that reminded her of brine and spice. It had an almost coppery tang.

  The alien spoke first: [[Itari here: How can I help, Idealis?]]

  [[Kira here: We are trying to leave the system, but our ship is not fast enough to outswim the Wranaui or the Corrupted.]]

  [[Itari here: I cannot build you a flow modifier.]]

  [[Kira here: Do you mean a—]] She struggled to find the right word: [[—a weight changer?]]

  [[Itari here: Yes. It lets a ship swim more easily.]]

  [[Kira here: I understand. What about the machine that lets us swim faster than light?]]

  [[Itari here: The Orb of Conversion.]]

  [[Kira here: Yes, that. Can you do anything to make it work better, so we can leave sooner?]]

  The Jelly stirred and seemed to motion at itself with two of its tentacles. [[Itari here: This form is meant for fighting, not building. I do not have the assemblers or the materials needed for this sort of work.]]

  [[Kira here: But do you know how to improve our Orb of Conversion?]]

  The Jelly’s tentacles wrapped over themselves, rubbing and twisting with restless energy. [[Itari here: Yes, but it may not be possible without the proper time, tools, or form.]]

  [[Kira here: Will you try?]]

  … [[Itari here: Since you ask, Idealis, yes.]]

  [[Kira here: Follow me.]]

  “Well?” said Sparrow as Kira left the airlock.

  “Maybe,” Kira replied. “It’s going to take a stab at helping. Hwa-jung?”

  The machine boss scowled and said, “This way.”

  “Whoa, there,” said Tatupoa, holding up a tattooed hand. “No one told us but nothing about this. You want to take the Jelly out?”

  Sparrow had to call Falconi then, and Falconi call Hawes, before the Marines would relent and allow them to escort Itari to engineering. Kira kept close to the Jelly, the Soft Blade covered in short, dull spikes in preparation for potentially having to fight and kill.

  But Kira didn’t think it would be necessary. Not yet.

  Although she was alert and functional, she felt weak, wrung out by the trauma of the day. She needed food. And not just for herself; the Soft Blade needed nourishment as well. The suit felt … thin, as if the energy required for combat and the loss of the material covering her forearm had depleted its reserves.

  “Do you have a ration bar on you?” Kira said to Sparrow.

  The woman shook her head. “Sorry.”

  Where’s Trig when you need him? Kira winced at the thought. No matter; she would wait. She wasn’t about to pass out from hunger, and food—or rather the lack thereof—was far from the top of her priority list.

  Engineering was a cramped room packed full of displays. The walls, floors, and ceiling were painted with the same flat grey Kira remembered from the Extenuating Circumstances. In contrast, every pipe, wire, valve, and handle was a different color: bright reds and greens and blues and even a tangerine orange, each of them distinct and impossible to confuse. Heavy studs of oversized braille marked the objects so they could be identified in the dark and while wearing a skinsuit.

  The floor looked cleaner than the galley counter. Yet the air was thick with heat and moisture, and laden with the unpleasant tang of lubricants, cleaners, and ozone. It left the taste of copper on Kira’s tongue, and she could feel her eyebrows standing on end with static electricity.

  “Here,” said Hwa-jung, leading the way to the back of the room, where one half of a large, black sphere, over a meter across, protruded: the Wallfish’s Markov Drive.

  The quarter hour that followed was a frustration of failed translations for Kira. The Jelly kept using technical terms that she didn’t understand and couldn’t render into comprehen
sible English, and likewise, Hwa-jung kept using technical terms that Kira couldn’t adequately convert into the Jellies’ language. The machine boss toggled a holo-display built into the console next to the Markov Drive and brought up schematics and other visual representations of the machine’s inner workings, which helped some, but—in the end—still failed to fully bridge the language gap.

  The math behind a Markov Drive was anything but simple. However, the execution—as Kira understood it—was fairly straightforward. Annihilation of antimatter was used to generate electricity, which in turn was used to power the conditioned EM field that allowed for transition into superluminal space. The lower the energy density of the field, the faster a ship could fly, as less energy equaled higher speeds when going FTL (exactly the opposite of normal space). Efficiencies of scale meant bigger ships had higher top speeds, but in the end, the ultimate limiting factor was one of engineering. Maintaining the low-energy fields was tricky. They were prone to disruption from numerous sources both within and without a ship, which was why a strong gravity well would force a ship back into normal space. Even during interstellar flight, the field had to be adjusted multiple times every nanosecond in order to maintain some semblance of stability.

  None of which gave Kira much confidence that Itari could somehow redesign their Markov Drive on the fly, without the proper equipment and without understanding English or the coding of human math. Nevertheless, she hoped, despite what reason told her.

  At last, Falconi’s voice came over the comms: “Making any progress? Things aren’t looking too good out there.”

  “Not yet,” said Hwa-jung. She sounded as annoyed as Kira felt.

  “Keep at it,” said the captain and signed off.

  “Maybe—” said Kira, and was interrupted by the Jelly turning away from the holo and crawling over the bulging surface of the Markov Drive.

  “No!” Hwa-jung exclaimed as the alien started to pull at the paneling with one of its tentacles. The machine boss moved across the room with surprising nimbleness and tried to pull the Jelly off the drive, but the creature effortlessly pushed her back with another of its tentacles. “Kira, tell it to stop. If it breaks containment, it’ll kill us all.”