To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  The Hierophant and its escorts were only seven thousand–some klicks out, but even at such a relatively short distance (nearly in spitting range by the standards of interplanetary travel) the giant ship was no more than a fleck of light when seen without magnification.

  “Could be worse,” said Sparrow.

  “Could be a hell of a lot better too,” said Falconi.

  Aside from Itari, who had insisted it would be fine in the cargo hold, all of them were crammed into the Wallfish’s storm shelter. No one looked particularly fresh, but of them, Jorrus and Veera seemed the most tired, the most drawn. Their normally impeccable robes were wrinkled, and they fidgeted in a way that reminded Kira of the wireheads back in Highstone, on Weyland. But they were alert, and they listened with sharp-eyed interest to everything being said.

  When questioned about their choice of attire—with the exception of Kira, the crew had traded their normal clothes for skinsuits—the Entropists said, “We are most well—”

  “—equipped as we are, thank you.” Whereupon Nielsen had shrugged and shelved the suits she’d been offering them.

  To Kira’s amusement, the first officer and Vishal stayed on opposite sides of the shelter, but she noticed secret smiles passing between them, and their lips often moved slightly as if they were texting.

  Tschetter’s face appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the display. Behind her, the Jellies were moving about as they prepared their ship for what was to come. Trig’s cryo tube was visible by a curved wall, secured in place with several strange-looking brackets. “Captain Falconi,” said Tschetter. There were deep bags under her eyes, and Kira realized the woman didn’t have access to any stims or sleep pills.

  “Major.”

  “Have your crew stand by. We’ll be in firing range soon.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” said Falconi. “We’re ready. Just make sure the Knot gives us cover once we go hot.”

  The major nodded. “They’ll do their best.”

  “We’ve still got clearance from the Jellies?”

  A grim smile stretched Tschetter’s face. “They’d be shooting at us if we didn’t. As is, they’re expecting us to bring the Wallfish to the Hierophant so their techs can pick through its computers.”

  Kira rubbed her arms. It was happening. There was no going back now. A sense of inevitability curdled in her veins. The rest of the crew looked similarly apprehensive.

  “Roger that,” said Falconi.

  Tschetter gave him a terse nod. “Wait for my signal. Over and out.” She vanished from the holo.

  “And here we go,” Falconi said.

  Kira pressed on the earpiece Hwa-jung had given her—making sure it was securely seated—and then used her own overlays to check on the progress of the battle. The Seventh Fleet had scattered as it neared the Jellies, drawing them out and around the rocky planet the aliens were strip-mining, luring them toward a pair of small moons. The planet had been dubbed R1 by the UMC, the moons r2 and r3. Hardly elegant names, but convenient for the purposes of strategy and navigation.

  Clouds of smoke and chaff obscured most of the UMC ships (in visible light, at least; they showed up fine in infrared). Sparks flashed within the clouds as the UMC’s point-defense lasers took out incoming missiles. Unlike their spaceships, the Jellies’ missiles weren’t substantially faster or more agile than the UMC’s, which meant the Seventh was able to destroy or disable most of them.

  Most, but not all, and as the lasers overheated, more and more missiles slipped past.

  The shooting hadn’t been going on for long, but three of the UMC cruisers were already out of commission: one destroyed, two incapacitated and drifting helplessly. A cluster of Jellies were attempting to board the pair, but Admiral Klein’s forces were working to keep the aliens tied up, away from the crippled vessels.

  As for the Jellies, hard numbers were difficult to find, but it looked to Kira as if the UMC had destroyed at least four of them and damaged quite a few more. Not enough to put a serious dent in the Jelly fleet, but enough to slow the first wave.

  Even as Kira watched, projectiles slammed into two of the UMC ships, both in the engine area. Their rockets sputtered and died, and the cruisers tumbled away, powerless.

  Near the leading edge of the Seventh Fleet, a Jelly jinked at speeds and angles that would have flattened any human. A half dozen of the Seventh’s capital ships fired their main lasers at the vessel, impaling it with crimson threads. The lights on the Jelly ship went out, and it tumbled end over end, spraying boiling water in an ever-expanding spiral.

  “Oh yeah,” Kira murmured.

  She dug her nails into her palms as a pair of Jellies darted toward a hulking battleship that had somehow ended up alone by the moon r2. Lasers flickered between the battleship and the Jellies, and both sides fired several missiles.

  Without warning, a white-hot spike shot out from one of the battleship’s missiles, snapping across almost nine thousand klicks in the course of a second. The spike obliterated the incoming missiles and vaporized half of the nearest alien ship, like a blowtorch blasting through styrofoam.

  The damaged Jelly ship spun like a top as it vented atmosphere, and then it vanished in an explosion of its own, the annihilating antimatter creating an artificial sun that quickly dissipated.

  The remaining Jelly corkscrewed away from the battleship. A second spike erupted from one of the two remaining UMC missiles—a white-hot lance of superheated plasma. It missed, but the third spike from the last missile didn’t.

  A nuclear fireball replaced the alien ship in the holo-display.

  “You see that?” Kira said.

  Hwa-jung grunted. “Casaba-Howitzers.”

  “Anything from Gregorovich?” Kira asked, looking over at Vishal and Hwa-jung.

  They both shook their heads, and the doctor said, “No change, I am afraid. His vitals are the same as yesterday.”

  Kira wasn’t surprised—if Gregorovich had recovered, he would have been making constant comments—but she was disappointed. Again, she hoped she hadn’t made things worse by using the Soft Blade … using the Seed to touch his mind.

  Tschetter reappeared in the holo. “It’s time. Much closer and the ships guarding the Battered Hierophant are going to get suspicious. Prepare to launch.”

  “Roger,” said Falconi. “Sparrow.”

  “On it.” A hollow thud sounded elsewhere in the Wallfish, and the woman said, “Howitzer is loaded. Missile tubes are open. We’re ready to release.”

  Falconi nodded. “Alright. You hear that, Tschetter?”

  “Affirmative. The Knot of Minds is moving into final position. Transmitting updated targeting data. Stand by for go.”

  “Standing by.”

  On the other side of R1, a UMC cruiser vanished in a flare of light. Kira winced and checked the name: the Hokulea.

  Vishal said, “Ah, poor souls. May they rest in peace.”

  A hush descended upon the storm shelter as they waited, tense and sweating. Falconi moved over to Kira and put an unobtrusive hand on the small of her back. The touch warmed her, and she leaned back slightly. His fingers scratched against her coated skin, light and distracting.

  On her overlays, a line appeared:

  She subvocalized her answer:

 

 

  The corner of his mouth twitched.

 

  Nielsen’s eyes lingered on them, and Kira wondered what the first officer was thinking. Kira lifted her chin, feeling defiant.

  Then Tschetter’s voice intruded. “We’re a go. I repeat, we’re a go. Light them up, Wallfish.”

  Sparrow cackled, and a loud thump resonated through the hull. “Who wants fried calamari?”

  2.

  The Wallfish had been decelerating tail-first toward the Battered H
ierophant. That meant the ravening torch of nuclear death that was the Wallfish’s fusion drive was pointed in the general direction of their target.

  This had two advantages. First was that the drive’s exhaust helped protect the Wallfish from missiles or lasers that might be fired at them from the Jelly flagship or its escorts. Second was that the amount of energy, thermal and EM, radiating from the drive was enough to overload most any sensor aimed at it. The fusion reaction was hotter than the surface of any star and brighter too—the brightest flashlight in the galaxy.

  As a result, the Casaba-Howitzer that Sparrow had just released from the Wallfish’s aft missile tube (port side) would be nearly invisible next to the drive’s blue-white incandescence. And since the howitzer was currently unpowered, its own rocket cold and inactive, it would continue past the slowing Wallfish without any need for a burn that would attract unwanted attention.

  “T-minus fourteen seconds,” announced Sparrow. That was the length of time the Casaba-Howitzer needed to pass behind their shadow shield and reach a safe(ish) distance from the Wallfish before detonating and sending a beam of nuclear energy racing toward the Battered Hierophant.

  The bomb would be going off far, far closer than any sane person would be comfortable with, and—excluding Gregorovich—Kira liked to think that they were all quite sane. The shadow shield ought to protect them from the worst of the radiation, same as it did with the rather nasty by-products of their fusion drive. Likewise, the storm shelter. The main risk would be shrapnel. If the explosion blew a piece of the howitzer’s casing into the Wallfish, it would cut through the hull like a bullet through tissue paper.

  “T-minus ten seconds,” said Sparrow.

  Hwa-jung pulled her lips back, made a disparaging hiss between her teeth. “Time to get a year’s worth of rads, I think.” By the wall, the two Entropists sat holding hands and rocking.

  “T-minus five, four—”

  “Shit! They’re turning!” exclaimed Tschetter.

  “—three—”

  “No time to change!” said Falconi.

  “—two—”

  “Aim for—”

  “—one.”

  Kira’s neck snapped to the side as a violent application of the RCS thrusters pushed the Wallfish off its current trajectory. Then the ship’s acceleration surged at what must have been at least 2 g’s, and she grimaced as she fought the sudden press of force.

  Less than a second later, the Wallfish shuddered around them, and Kira heard several pings and pops across the hull.

  On the display, a burning spike of light raced toward the Battered Hierophant. The Jelly ship had already rotated halfway around, so that its drive was hidden from view, and it was continuing to turn, reorienting itself away from the Wallfish.

  “Goddammit,” muttered Falconi.

  Kira watched with horrified fascination as the blaze of plasma flashed toward the Battered Hierophant. Lphet and the Knot of Minds had given them precise information on where the Hierophant’s Markov Drive was located. Hitting it and breaching the antimatter containment within the drive was their best chance of destroying the ship. Otherwise, they had no guarantee that the Casaba-Howitzer would kill Ctein.

  As Itari had explained, even the smaller Jelly co-forms were hardened against heat and radiation, and as the UMC had discovered to their dismay, the creatures were incredibly hard to kill. A Jelly as large as Ctein—whatever its current form—would be far more resilient. It was, as Sparrow said, more like trying to kill a fungus than a human.

  Black smoke billowed out of vents along the swollen middle of the alien ship—a threatened squid hiding itself in an ever-expanding cloud of ink—but it wouldn’t provide any protection against the howitzer’s shaped charge. Few things could.

  The lance hit the belly of the Hierophant. A hemisphere of vaporized hull exploded outward along with a haze of air and water that had flashed to steam.

  Sparrow groaned as the view cleared.

  The nuclear charge had carved a trough as large as the Wallfish through the Battered Hierophant. Its main drive appeared disabled—propellant spurted from the nozzle, failed to ignite—but the bulk of the vessel remained intact.

  Lasers and missiles shot forth from the Knot of Minds toward the three escort vessels near the Hierophant even as the trio turned to attack. The Wallfish released its own cloud of defenses, shrouding the ship in darkness. The display switched to infrared.

  “Pop off another howitzer,” said Falconi.

  “We’ve only got two more,” said Sparrow.

  “I know. Fire it anyway.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Another thud echoed through the hull, and then the Casaba-Howitzer streaked away from the Wallfish as it headed to the minimum safe distance for detonation.

  The missile never reached its destination. A jet of violet sparks spewed from its nose, and then its rocket sputtered out and the howitzer went tumbling harmlessly off course.

  “Fuck!” said Sparrow. “Laser took it out.”

  “I see that,” said Falconi, calm.

  Kira wished she could still bite her nails. Instead, she found herself clenching the armrests of her crash chair.

  “Is Ctein dead?” she asked Tschetter. “Do we know if Ctein is dead?”

  The major shook her head in the holo. Lights were flashing on the deck behind her. “It doesn’t seem so. I—”

  An explosion rocked the Jelly ship. “Are you okay, Major?” Nielsen asked, leaning in toward the display.

  Tschetter reappeared, appearing shaken. Frizzy strands of hair had come loose from her bun. “We’re okay for now. But—”

  “More Jellies incoming,” Sparrow announced. “A good twenty of them. We’ve got maybe ten minutes. Less.”

  “Of course,” Falconi growled.

  “You still need to kill Ctein,” said Tschetter. “We can’t do it over here. Half the Jellies with me seem to be sick.”

  “I don’t—”

  Morven said, “Admiral Klein for you, Captain Falconi.”

  “Put him on hold. Don’t have time for him right now.”

  “Yessir,” said the pseudo-intelligence, sounding absurdly cheery given the situation.

  A blinking yellow light appeared in the holo, heading toward them from the Battered Hierophant. “What’s that?” Jorrus and Veera asked, pointing.

  Falconi zoomed in. A dark, blob-like object about four meters long came into view. It looked as if several intersecting spheres had been welded together. “That’s no missile.”

  A memory stirred in the back of Kira’s mind: the storage room where she’d seen Dr. Carr and the Jelly Qwon fighting, and on the far end of the room, a hole cut into the hull. A hole glowing with blue light emanating from the small vessel that had clamped barnacle-like onto the outside of the Extenuating Circumstances.

  “It’s a boarding shuttle,” she said. “Or maybe an escape pod. Either way, it can cut right through the hull.”

  “There are more of them,” Vishal said in a warning tone.

  He was right. Another dozen of the blobs were heading their way.

  “Major,” said Falconi. “You have to help us take them out, or—”

  “We’ll try, but we’re slightly busy,” Tschetter said.

  One of the Hierophant’s three escorts exploded, but the other two were still firing at the Knot of Minds, as was the Battered Hierophant itself. So far, the Knot hadn’t lost any of their ships, but several of them were trailing smoke and vapor from hull breaches.

  Falconi said, “Sparrow—”

  “Already on it.”

  On her overlays, Kira watched as lines flashed between the Wallfish and the incoming blobs: laser blasts, highlighted by the computer to make them visible to human eyes.

  She bit her lip. It was horrible not being able to help. If only she had a ship of her own. Better yet if she were close enough to tear apart the approaching enemies with the Soft Blade.

  Then the interior lights flickered and Mor
ven said, “Security breach in progress. Firewall compromised. Shutting down nonessential systems. Please turn off all personal electronic devices until notified otherwise.”

  “They can hack our systems now?” cried Nielsen.

  Jorrus and Veera said, “Give us—”

  “—root access, we—”

  “—can provide assistance.”

  Falconi hesitated, and then nodded. “Password sent to your consoles.” The Entropists hunched over the displays built into their chairs.

  Ruddy flashes appeared within the smoke surrounding the Battered Hierophant—missiles being fired.

  Alarms blared. Morven said, “Warning, incoming objects. Collision imminent.”

  The missiles shot out of the smoke and quickly overtook the approaching blobs, some hurtling toward the Knot of Minds and the rest, all four of them, racing toward the Wallfish.

  A fresh charge of foil chaff launched from the rear of the Wallfish. The ship was still decelerating, but the missiles rushing toward them were accelerating even faster and the distance between them dwindled with horrifying quickness.

  The Wallfish’s laser stabbed out. A missile exploded (sharp blast, there and gone). Then another, closer this time. Two left.

  “Sparrow,” said Falconi from between his teeth.

  “I see it.”

  One ship of the Knot of Minds shot down the third missile. The fourth one kept coming, though, evading the incoming laser blasts with brutally fast jerks up, down, and sideways.

  A sheen of sweat coated Sparrow’s unblinking face as she concentrated fire on the incoming projectile.

  Morven: “Caution, brace for impact.”

  At the last moment, when the missile was nearly upon them, the Wallfish’s blaster finally connected and the missile exploded only a few hundred meters away from their hull.

  Sparrow uttered a triumphant shout.

  The ship rattled and shook, and the bulkheads groaned. More alarms shrieked, and smoke poured out of an overhead vent. Half the lights on the control panels went dark. A strange burst of noise sounded from the speakers: not static—transmitted data?