To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  With everyone close at hand, Kira began to rip up the deck, intending to build a protective dome around them. It wouldn’t be long before more Jellies descended upon them, and Hwa-jung, Vishal, and Veera were in no condition to fight.

  As she drove the Soft Blade into the plating, she felt a strange reluctance from the xeno, a reluctance that Kira didn’t understand and didn’t have the time to decipher, so she ignored the feeling and—

  She flinched as Itari wrapped a tentacle around her. The creature’s suckers gripped the Soft Blade in a futile attempt to hold it in place. For an instant, she had to fight the instinct to send a burst of spines through the Jelly.

  [[Kira here: What are—]]

  [[Itari here: Idealis, no. Stop. It is not safe.]]

  She froze, and the xeno froze with her. [[Kira here: Explain.]]

  Falconi eyed them through his visor. *What’s going on, Kira?*

  “Trying to figure that out.”

  [[Itari here: There is a power tube in this floor. See?]] And it pointed with one of its bony arms at a line of markings that ran across the middle of the deck. [[Long current and swift. Very dangerous to break. The explosion would kill us.]]

  Kira withdrew the Soft Blade at once. She should have paid more attention to the xeno. The mistake could have cost them all. [[Kira here: Is the deck above us safe?]]

  [[Itari here: Safe to attack with your second flesh? Yes.]]

  With that assurance, Kira ripped apart the ceiling and used it to build a thick dome around them. As she worked, she said to Falconi, “Power conduit in the floor. I’ll have to cut through somewhere else.” Then she pointed at the doctor and the machine boss and said, “We can’t bring them with us.”

  *Well we sure as hell can’t leave them,* Falconi said, angry.

  She gave him a look to match his own, but she never slowed her construction, tendrils assembling the dome seemingly of their own accord. “Do you want to get them killed? I can’t keep them safe. It’s too much. And we can’t send them back. What do you want me to do?”

  A moment of troubled silence followed. *Can you fix them up, the way you did with my bonsai? You got into Gregorovich’s brain, right? How hard would it be to heal some bones and muscle?*

  She shook her head. “Hard. Very hard. I could try, but not here, not now. Too easy to make mistakes, and I wouldn’t be able to deal with the Jellies at the same time.”

  Falconi grimaced. *Yeah, but if we leave them, the Jellies—*

  “Will focus on me. Hwa-jung, Vishal, Veera—they should be okay for a little while on their own. I don’t know about Sparrow, though. Her—”

  *I can still fight,* Sparrow said, brusque. *Don’t worry about me.* She gave the field dressing on Hwa-jung’s back a final press and then hugged the machine boss’s head and jetted over to where Kira hung suspended amid dozens of dark spines, each one connected to the shell she was assembling.

  “You should stay. You should all stay,” said Kira. “I—”

  *We’re not leaving you,* said Falconi. *End of discussion.*

  Hwa-jung planted her boots on the deck, locking them in place, and hoisted her blaster with her uninjured arm. *Do not worry about us, Kira. We will survive.*

  [[Itari here: We must hurry. The great and mighty Ctein will be preparing for us.]]

  “Shit.… Fine. You three outside the dome. Now.” Kira was in the middle of translating for Itari when the Hierophant jolted a meter to starboard and all the lights flickered. Alarmed, she glanced around. Nothing else seemed to have changed.

  *Gregorovich!* said Falconi. He tapped the side of his helmet. *Come in, Gregorovich!* He shook his head. *Dammit. No signal. We gotta move.*

  And move they did. Kira extracted herself from within the dome and, with a few seconds of frantic work, sealed it up and reinforced it from the outside. The Jellies would still be able to cut their way in, but it would take time, and she felt confident of what she’d said earlier: they were more concerned with her—with the Idealis—than anyone else.

  Hwa-jung and Sparrow kept their eyes locked on each other until the last piece of plating slapped into place, cutting off their view. Then Sparrow set her shoulders and turned away with such a hard, killing expression on her knifelike face that, for the first time since meeting her, Kira actually feared her.

  *Get us to Ctein,* Sparrow growled.

  “This way,” Kira said. Keeping a half meter of decking piled in front of her, she hurried toward the door Itari had pointed out. Sparrow, Falconi, and Itari followed alongside.

  The portal slid open. Through it was a room filled with rows of what looked like giant pillbugs stabled in narrow metal enclosures.

  Kira hesitated. Another trap?

  “Let me go first,” she said, and repeated herself for Itari. Falconi nodded, and he and the two others, human and alien, dropped back, giving her space.

  Kira took a breath and moved forward.

  As she passed through the doorway, a thunderous blast blinded her, and a steel belt seemed to cinch tight around her waist, slicing through skin, muscle, and bone.

  10.

  She wasn’t dead.

  That was Kira’s first thought. And it puzzled her. She ought to be dead if the Jellies had mined the doorway. Her waist didn’t hurt, not really. She just felt pressure and an uncomfortable pinching sensation, along with a copious amount of not-pain.

  The blast had started her spinning. She tried to move and found that only her neck and arms responded. As a volley of laser blasts and slugs slammed into her back, she risked a glance toward her feet.

  She wished she hadn’t.

  The explosion had burned through the half meter of the xeno’s material swaddling her waist. Tattered lengths of grey-white intestines spooled out of the holes, along with sprays of shockingly bright blood. As momentum turned her hips, she glimpsed the white of bone through the gore, and she thought she recognized a vertebra.

  The xeno was already pulling her guts back inside and sealing over the wounds, but Kira knew the injuries were enough to kill her. The Seed’s memories had been more than clear; it was entirely possible for the suit’s host to die.

  As she spun, a bolt of molten metal punched through her shield, like the spear of a god.

  And then another, closer to her vulnerable core. Incandescent drops sprayed her legs; they bounced off the hardened surface of the suit, cooling to ashen black.

  Kira felt no pain, but her vision was blurry, and everything seemed distant and insubstantial. She couldn’t fight; she could barely think.

  She glimpsed an assortment of Jellies jetting toward her: tentacles, claws, graspers reaching toward her. There was no time to evade, no time to escape—

  Then Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari were next to her, firing their weapons. Boom! went his grenade launcher. Brrt! went her guns. Bzzt! went its lasers.

  At first Kira thought she was saved. But there were too many Jellies. They split into groups, drove Sparrow and Falconi back toward the walls, behind the metal enclosures, forced Itari toward a curved corner.

  No! Kira thought as the three of them disappeared behind a wall of twisting bodies.

  The Jellies mobbed her then. The big ones and the small ones, those with legs, those with claws, and those with appendages she didn’t even recognize. Heat as hot as a star began to cut its way through her protective skin.

  She tried stabbing outward. The blades killed some of the aliens, but the others evaded her, or the blasts of heat stopped her, and the suit recoiled in not-pain.

  She kept trying, though the heat was making her light-headed. She tried to reach around the torches, tried to find the microscopic flaws in the Jellies’ armor. And all the while, an almost stupefying sense of disgust surrounded her: the whole crowd of Jellies projecting their hatred and revulsion toward her. [[No-form, wrongflesh!]] they shouted as they stabbed and tore and burned their way toward her flesh. The sheer bulk of them made it difficult to move, even with the full strength of the Soft Blade broug
ht to bear.

  So Kira did the only thing she could; she let go. She willingly surrendered control to the Seed and told it to do what was needed. It had to, because she couldn’t. Another few seconds and she would lose consciousness—

  The shield and the walls and the squirming things faded and lost color. The room tilted around her. There were flashes and jolts and muted sounds. But none of it meant anything, a winter’s display, abstract and uninteresting.

  She felt the Seed expanding, gorging itself upon the Battered Hierophant as never before, springing forth with new life, sprouting and twining and spreading with a multitude of squirming black vines. And Kira was conscious of her increase in size as an expansion of her mental space. What made her her was stretched over an ever larger area, drawn thin by the neural demands of the suit.

  The vines reached through the barrier she’d built, extending until they found what lay behind each spot of not-pain. Feeling. Tasting. Understanding. And when she touched chitin and oddly gelatinous muscles, she grasped and held and then wrenched, twisting and tearing until whatever wriggling thing she held wriggled no more.

  Slowly the sounds grew louder and color leached back into the universe. First red, so she saw the blood splattered across the walls. Then blue, so she noticed the pressure alerts flashing near the ceiling. Then yellow and green, which drew her attention to the ichor mixed with blood.

  Her head cleared even as the air did; the smoke, chalk, and chaff streamed toward three holes in the bulkheads, the largest the size of her fist.

  A nano-thin layer of the xeno’s black fibers covered a large portion of the chamber, and she—she floated in the center of the room, suspended there by dozens of spars and lines that radiated from her to the walls. Drifting among the narrow stables where the now-dead pillbugs floated were the remains of dozens of Jellies. A cloud of ichor and viscera surrounded them, a horrible storm front of fluids and mangled body parts, littered with crumpled pieces of equipment. Even as she watched, the escaping air pulled a crab against one of the holes, sealing it shut.

  She had done this. Her. A deep ache formed in Kira’s heart. Never had she aspired to hurt, to kill. Life was too precious for that. And yet circumstances had forced her to violence, forced her to become a weapon. The Seed also.

  Falconi’s voice crackled in her ears. *Kira! Can you hear me? Let us go!*

  11.

  “Huh?” She looked and saw that the Soft Blade had extended backwards out of the room and used a mat of fibers to glue Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari to the walls on either side of the scorched entrance. Relief flooded Kira. They were alive. The Jellies hadn’t killed them. The Seed hadn’t killed them. She hadn’t killed them.

  With a conscious effort, she retracted the fibers and freed Falconi and the others. She could control any one part of the Seed by concentrating, but as soon as her attention drifted, the part would begin to move and act as the xeno deemed fit. The flood of so much sensory information combined with the shock of her injury left her dazed, light-headed.

  *Good god,* said Falconi as he jetted through a patch of viscera on his way to her.

  *Don’t think god had anything to do with this,* said Sparrow.

  Stopping next to her, Falconi gave Kira a concerned look through his visor. *You okay?*

  “Yeah, I just … I—” She didn’t want to, but she looked down at herself again.

  Her waist appeared normal. Shapeless and thick as a barrel, because of the suit, but showing no sign of injury. It felt normal too. She took a breath, tried flexing her abs. The muscles worked, but they seemed off, mis-strung piano wires that sounded oddly when struck.

  *Can you keep going?* Sparrow asked. She kept her weapons trained on the far doorway.

  “Think so.” Kira knew she’d have to let Vishal look her over if they made it off the Hierophant. The main problem wasn’t her muscles (those could be fixed), it was infection. Her intestines had been perforated. Unless the Seed could tell the difference between good and bad bacteria, or good bacteria in a bad place, she was going to end up with sepsis, and fast.

  Well, maybe the xeno could. She had more faith in it than she used to. She’d just have to hope for the best, and if she was lucky, she wouldn’t pass out from shock.

  Kira retracted some of the suit, freeing her arms. She tapped Falconi’s breastplate. “You have any antibiotics in there?”

  He held up a hand, and a small needle popped out of the index finger of his exo. At her command, the Soft Blade exposed a patch of skin on her shoulder; the touch of the air was hot.

  The needle stung as it broke her skin, and the antibiotics burned as they forced their way into her delt. Apparently the Soft Blade didn’t consider the injection important enough to block the pain.

  “Ouch,” Kira said.

  Falconi’s lips twitched in an approximation of a smile. *That’s enough to keep an elephant on its feet. Should work for you.*

  “Thanks.” The suit covered her shoulder again. She arched her back and flexed her abs once more. This time she concentrated on how they ought to feel, instead of how they did. A hiss escaped her as the mis-strung fibers popped into a new position with a twang that sent a zing to the tips of her fingers and the core of her bones.

  Sparrow shook her head in her helmet. *Thule! What you did, I’ve never seen anything like it, chica.*

  Nearscent of reverence. [[Itari here: Idealis.]]

  Kira grunted. Now that the Jellies knew how to hurt her, she was going to have to be smarter. A lot smarter. No more charging in headfirst. She’d nearly gotten herself killed, and if she had, the Jellies would have taken out Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari. The thought terrified Kira in a way she hadn’t felt since her time on Adrasteia.

  [[Itari here: We should not stay here, Idealis. We are close to Ctein, and more of Ctein’s guard will be approaching.]]

  [[Kira here: I know. Down again—]]

  A flicker caught Kira’s attention as the shell in front of them pulsed, spitting out something. Before Kira could see what it was, and before she could pull her shield between them and the object, Falconi fired his emergency jets—putting himself in front of her—and she heard two loud bangs.

  A shower of sparks and shrapnel knocked Falconi end over end.

  12.

  With Falconi no longer blocking her view, Kira saw one of the Jellies’ drones flitting away from the doorway, trailing a comet-tail of protective smoke. Enraged, she sent a jumble of fibers streaking across the floor and the ceiling until they bracketed the drone. Then she stabbed, and the drone whined as a half-dozen spines impaled it from either side.

  She took a shaky breath. If not for Falconi, the shots might have taken her head off.…

  Sparrow caught the back of Falconi’s armor and pulled him close. The captain’s right arm was smashed all to hell; it reminded Kira of a nut cracked to expose the meat within. She found it hard to look at. A sudden determination came over her: she wasn’t going to lose anyone else. Not again.

  Falconi was panting but still calm; his implants were blocking most of the pain, she guessed. White foam sprayed out of the broken edges of the armor, stopping the bleeding and setting his arm in an instant cast.

  *Shit,* he said.

  “Can you move?” Kira asked. Another tremor shook the Hierophant. She ignored it.

  Falconi’s exo twitched as he checked. *I can still use my left arm, but jets are out.*

  “Dammit.” That made four wounded and one dead. Kira glanced between him, Sparrow, and Itari. “Back. Hurry. You have to go back with the others.”

  Behind his visor, Falconi set his teeth and shook his head. *No chance in hell. We’re not leaving you alone.*

  “Hey.” Kira grabbed him and pressed her forehead against his helmet. His blue eyes were only centimeters away, separated by the curved dome of clearest sapphire. “I have the Soft Blade. You’re just going to get yourself killed if you stay.” Her other thought remained unspoken: with only herself to worry about, she could let loos
e with the Soft Blade without fear of hurting or killing them.

  A handful of breaths, and then Falconi relented. *Fuck. Alright. Sparrow, you too. All of us.*

  The woman shook her head. *I’m not letting Kira—*

  *That’s an order!*

  *Fuck!* But Sparrow started to jet back toward the room they’d just left. Falconi followed close behind, along with Itari.

  “Hurry!” said Kira, shooing them forward. “Go, go, go!”

  With her urging them on, they quickly returned to the dome she’d assembled. It was the work of seconds for Kira to peel open a Jelly-sized hole in the shell. Inside, Hwa-jung had a blaster trained on the opening.

  *You watch yourself,* Falconi said as he prepared to enter.

  Kira hugged him as best she could through the armor. “Don’t keep the scars from this, yeah? Promise me that.”

  * … You’re going to make it, Kira.*

  “Of course I am.”

  *Enough,* said Sparrow. *You gotta move, and now!*

  [[Itari here: Idealis—]]

  [[Kira here: Three down and forward: I know. That’s where Ctein is. Just make sure my co-forms stay safe.]]

  A hesitation, and then: [[Itari here: I promise.]]

  Then Kira sealed them into the dome. And as they vanished from view, Falconi sent her one last message:

  *You can do this. Don’t forget who you are.*

  13.

  Kira pressed her lips together. If only it were that easy. Letting the xeno run rampant would be the safest, easiest way to kill Ctein, but she would risk losing herself and, possibly, creating another Maw. And that was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

  Somehow she had to retain control over the xeno, whatever the cost. Still, she could do more with it than she had, which would require entrusting the Seed with a certain amount of autonomy.

  That scared her. Terrified her even. But it was the balancing act that was needed—a high-wire act she couldn’t afford to slip and fall from even once.

  She rushed back to the room where the pillbugs had been. The air was so thick with gore, it was difficult to see. She pulled the xeno in close around her, compacting it into a dense cylinder of material. Then she sent forth tendrils and grabbed the deck and bored her way through it into a transport shaft.