EXEUNT I. CHAPTER I

Kira pulled herself along the walls to the front of the Valkyrie and strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. She checked the display: the Extenuating Circumstances was gone. So too was the alien ship, destroyed by the explosion of the UMC cruiser. “Ando, are there any other ships in the system? ”

“Negative. ”

That was one piece of good news. “Ando, does the Valkyrie have a Markov Drive? ”

“Affirmative. ”

Another piece of good news. The shuttle was capable of FTL. Even so, the lack of cryo might still kill her. It depended on the speed of the drive. “Ando, how long will it take the Valkyrie to reach Sixty-One Cygni if the shuttle makes an emergency burn to the Markov Limit? ”

“Seventy-eight and a half days. ”

Kira swore. The Fidanza had only taken about twenty-six days. She supposed the shuttle’s slowness shouldn’t be a surprise. The ship was intended for short-range hops and not much more.

Don’t panic. She wasn’t completely out of luck. The next question would be the determining one.

“Ando, how many ration packs does the Valkyrie carry? ”

“The Valkyrie carries one hundred and seven ration packs. ”

Kira had the pseudo-intelligence do the math for her. Not having her overlays was frustrating; she couldn’t solve even basic calculations on her own.

Adding in the days needed to decelerate at 61 Cygni resulted in a total travel time of 81. 74 days. At half rations, the food would only last Kira eight weeks, which would leave her without food for another 25. 5 days. Water wasn’t a problem; the reclamation equipment on the shuttle would keep her from dying of dehydration. The lack of food, on the other hand …

Kira had heard of people fasting for a month or more and surviving. She’d also heard of people who’d died in far less time. There was no telling. She was in reasonably good shape, and she had the suit to help her, so there was a chance she could make it, but it was a real gamble.

She rubbed her temple, feeling a headache forming. “Ando, play the message Bishop left for me. ”

An image of a harsh-faced man appeared on the display in front of her: the ship mind’s avatar. His brows were drawn, and he seemed in equal parts concerned and angry. “Ms. Navá rez, time is short. Aliens are jamming our comms, and they shot down the one signal drone I was able to launch. Not good. Only hope now is you, Ms. Navá rez.

“I’ve included all of my sensor data with this message, as well as records from Doctor Carr, Adrasteia, et cetera. Please forward to the relevant authorities. Destruction of Extenuating Circumstances should remove source of jamming. ”

Bishop appeared to lean forward, then, and even though his face was only a simulation, Kira could still feel the force of his personality emanating from the screen: an overwhelming ferocity and intelligence bound to a single-minded purpose. “Apologies for the quality of your treatment, Ms. Navá rez. Cause was just and—as attack has proven—concern was warranted, but still sorry you had to suffer. Regardless, counting on you now. We all are. ”

He returned to his former position. “And Ms. Navá rez, if you see General Takeshi, tell him … tell him I remember the sound of summer. Bishop out. ”

A strange wistfulness came over Kira. For all their intelligence, ship minds were no more immune to regret and nostalgia than the rest of non-augmented humanity. Nor should they be.

She stared at the weave of fibers on her palm. “Ando, describe the first appearance of the alien ship. ”

“An unidentified vessel was detected via satellite sixty-three minutes ago, thrusting around Zeus on an intercept course. ” A holo popped up from the cockpit display, showing the gas giant, its moons, and a dotted line tracing the path of the graspers’ ship from Zeus to Adra. “The vessel was accelerating at twenty-five g’s, but—”

“Shit. ” That was a monstrously hard burn.

Ando continued, “—its rocket exhaust was insufficient to produce observed thrust. The vessel then executed a skew-flip and decelerated for seven minutes to match orbits with the UMCS Extenuating Circumstances. ”

A cold sense of apprehension gripped Kira. The only way the graspers could pull off maneuvers like that would be by reducing the inertial drag of their ship. Doing so was theoretically possible, but it wasn’t something humans were capable of. The engineering challenges were still too great (the power requirements, for one, were prohibitive).

Her apprehension deepened. It really was the nightmare scenario. They’d finally made contact with another sentient species, but the species was hostile and able to fly circles around any human ship, even the unmanned ones.

Ando was still talking: “Unidentified vessel failed to respond to hails and initiated hostilities at—”

“Stop, ” said Kira. She knew the rest. She thought for a moment. The graspers must have jumped into the system on the far side of Zeus. It was the only way they could have avoided being immediately picked up by the Extenuating Circumstances. That or the graspers had launched from inside the gas giant, which seemed unlikely. Either way, they’d been cautious, using Zeus for cover and—as she looked at the holo Ando was playing—waiting for the Extenuating Circumstances to orbit around the backside of Adra before they’d started their burn.

It couldn’t be coincidence that the graspers had showed up a few weeks after she’d found the xeno on Adra. Space was too big for that sort of serendipity. Either the graspers had been watching the moon or a signal had gone out from the ruins when she fell into them.

Kira rubbed her face, feeling suddenly tired. Okay. She had to assume the graspers had reinforcements that could show up at any moment. There was no time to lose.

“Ando, are we still being jammed? ”

“Negative. ”

“Then—” She stopped. If she sent an FTL signal to 61 Cygni, could it lead the graspers back to the rest of human-settled space? Maybe, but they’d find it anyway if they were looking—assuming they didn’t already have every human planet under observation—and the League needed to be warned about the aliens as soon as possible. “Then send a distress call to Vyyborg Station, including all pertinent information concerning the attack on the Extenuating Circumstances. ”

“Unable to comply. ”

“What? Why? Explain. ”

“The FTL antenna is damaged and unable to maintain a stable field. My service bots can’t repair it. ”

Kira scowled. “Reroute distress call through the commsat in orbit. Satellite Twenty-Eight G. Access code—” And she rattled off her company authorization.

“Unable to comply. Satellite Twenty-Eight G is non-responsive. Debris in the area indicate it was destroyed. ”

“Dammit! ” Kira slumped back in the chair. She couldn’t even get a message to the Fidanza. It had only left a day ago, but without FTL comms, the ship might as well be on the other side of the galaxy as far as she was concerned. She could still transmit slower than light (and she would), but it would take eleven years to reach 61 Cygni, which wouldn’t do her or the League any good.

She took a steadying breath. Stay calm. You can get through this. “Ando, send an encrypted report flagged eyes-only to the ranking UMC officer at Sixty-One Cygni. Use best means available. Include all relevant information pertaining to myself, Adrasteia, and the attack on the Extenuating Circumstances. ”

An almost imperceptible pause, and then the pseudo-intelligence said, “Message sent. ”

“Good. Now, Ando, I want to make a broadcast on all available emergency channels. ”

A small click. “Ready. ”

Kira leaned forward, putting her mouth closer to the display microphone. “This is Kira Navá rez on the UMCS Valkyrie. Does anyone read me? Over. …” She waited a few seconds and then repeated the message. And again. The UMC might not have treated her very well, but she couldn’t leave without checking for survivors. The sight of the escape pods jettisoning from the Extenuating Circumstances still burned in her mind. If anyone was left alive, she had to know.

She was just about to have Ando automate the message when the speaker crackled and a man’s voice answered, sounding eerily close. “This is Corporal Iska. What is your current location, Navá rez? Over. ”

Surprise, relief, and a sense of mounting worry took hold of Kira. She hadn’t actually expected to hear from anyone. Now what? “I’m still in orbit. Over. Uh, where are you? Over. ”

“Planetside, on Adra. ”

Then a new voice sounded, a youngish woman: “Private Reisner reporting. Over. ”

Another three followed, all men: “Specialist Orso, reporting. ” “Ensign Yarrek. ” “Petty Officer Samson. ”

Last of all, a hard, tight-clenched voice that made Kira stiffen: “Major Tschetter. ”

Six survivors in total, with the major being the highest ranking. After a few questions, it became clear that all six had landed on Adra, their escape pods scattered across the equatorial continent, where the survey HQ was located. The pods had attempted to land as close as possible to the base, but with their small thrusters, close had ended up being tens of kilometers away for the nearest pod and, in the case of Tschetter’s, over seven hundred klicks.

“Right, what’s the game plan, ma’am? ” said Iska.

Tschetter was silent for a moment. Then: “Navá rez, have you signaled the League? ”

“Yup, ” said Kira. “But it’s not going to reach them for over a decade. ” And she explained about the FTL antenna and the commsat.

“Fug-nuggets, ” Orso swore.

“Cut the chatter, ” said Iska.

They could hear Tschetter take a breath, shift position in her escape pod. “Shit. ” It was the first time Kira had heard her curse. “That changes things. ”

“Yeah, ” said Kira. “I checked the amount of food here on the Valkyrie. There’s not a whole lot. ” She recited the numbers Ando had given her and then said, “How long until the UMC sends another ship to investigate? ”

More sounds of movement from Tschetter. She seemed to be having difficulty finding a comfortable position. “Not soon enough. At least a month, maybe more. ”

Kira dug her thumb into her palm. The situation kept getting worse.

Tschetter continued: “We can’t afford to wait. Our first priority has to be warning the League about these aliens. ”

“The suit calls them graspers, ” Kira offered.

“Is that so? ” said Tschetter, her tone cutting. “Any other pertinent pieces of information you’d care to share with us, Ms. Navá rez? ”

“Just some weird dreams. I’ll write them down later. ”

“You do that. … Again, we have to warn the League. That and the xeno you’re carrying, Navá rez, are more important than any one of us. Therefore, I’m ordering you under special provision of the Stellar Security Act to take the Valkyrie and leave for Sixty-One Cygni right now, without delay. ”

“Ma’am, no! ” said Yarrek.

Iska growled. “Keep it down, Ensign. ”

The thought of abandoning the survivors didn’t sit right with Kira. “Look, if I have to go to Cygni without cryo, I’ll do it, but I’m not going to just leave you guys. ”

Tschetter snorted. “Very commendable of you, but we don’t have time to waste on you flying around Adrasteia picking us up. It would take half a day or more, and the graspers could be on us by then. ”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take, ” Kira said in a quiet voice. And it was, she realized somewhat to her surprise.

She could almost hear Tschetter shake her head. “Well, I’m not, Navá rez. Besides, the shuttle only carries four cryo tubes, and we all know it. ”

“Sorry, Major, I can’t just fly off and abandon you. ”

“Dammit, Navá rez. Ando, command override, authorization—” Tschetter recited a long, meaningless password.

“Override denied, ” said the pseudo-intelligence. “All command functions in the Valkyrie were assigned to Kira Navá rez. ”

If anything, the major’s voice grew even colder: “On whose authority? ”

“Ship mind Bishop. ”

“I see. … Navá rez, get your head on straight and do the responsible thing. This is bigger than all of us. Circumstances demand—”

“They always do, ” Kira murmured.

“What? ”

She shook her head, although no one could see. “Doesn’t matter. I’m coming down there for you. Even if—”

“No! ” said Tschetter and Iska nearly at the same time. Tschetter continued: “No. Under no circumstances are you to land the Valkyrie, Navá rez. We can’t afford to have you caught flat-footed. Besides, even if you fill up at your base before blasting off again, you’ll use up a good portion of your propellant getting back into orbit. You’re going to need every bit of delta-v to decelerate once you reach Sixty-One Cygni. ”

“Well, I’m not just going to wait up here and do nothing, ” said Kira. “And there’s nothing you can do to force me to leave. ”

An uncomfortable silence filled the comms.

There has to be a way to save at least some of them, thought Kira. She imagined being alone on Adra, starving or trying to hide from the graspers. It was a horrifying prospect, and one she wouldn’t have wished on even Dr. Carr.

The thought of Carr stopped her for an instant. The terror on his face, the warnings he’d shouted, the bones sticking from his skin … If she hadn’t shot the oxygen line, maybe he could have escaped the Extenuating Circumstances. No. The grasper would have killed both of them if not for the explosion. Still, she felt sorry. Carr might have been a bastard, but no one deserved to die like that.

Then she snapped her fingers. The sound was surprisingly loud in the cockpit. “I know, ” she said. “I know how to get you off-planet. ”

“How? ” Tschetter asked, wary.

“The drop shuttle back at HQ, ” said Kira.

“What shuttle? ” said Orso. He had a deep voice. “The Fidanza took it with them when they left. ”

Impatient, Kira barely waited for him to stop speaking: “No, not that one. The other shuttle. The one Neghar was flying the day I found the xeno. It was going to be scrapped because of possible contamination. ”

A sharp tapping came over the speakers, and Kira knew it was Tschetter’s nails. The woman said, “What would it take to get the shuttle into the air? ”

Kira thought. “The tanks probably just need to be filled up. ”

“Ma’am, ” said Orso. “I’m only twenty-three klicks away from the base. I can be there in under fifty minutes. ”

Tschetter’s answer was immediate: “Do it. Move. ”

A faint click sounded as Orso dropped off the line.

Then Iska said in a somewhat tentative voice, “Ma’am…”

“I know, ” said Tschetter. “Navá rez, I need to talk with the corporal. Hold position. ”

“Okay, but—”

The comms went dead.

Kira reviewed the shuttle’s controls while she waited. When several minutes passed and Tschetter still hadn’t called back, Kira unstrapped herself and rummaged around in the shuttle’s storage lockers until she found a jumpsuit.

She didn’t need it—the xeno kept her plenty warm—but she’d felt naked ever since she’d woken up on the Extenuating Circumstances. Something about having a set of proper clothes comforted her, made her feel safer. Silly or not, it made a difference.

Then she went to the shuttle’s small galley area.

She was hungry, but knowing how limited the supply of rations were, she couldn’t bring herself to eat a meal pack. Instead, she got a pouch of self-heating chell—her favorite—and brought it back to the cockpit.

While she sipped the tea, she viewed the patch of space where the Extenuating Circumstances and the graspers’ ship had been.

Nothing but empty blackness. All those people, dead. Humans and aliens alike. Not even a cloud of dust remained; the explosion had obliterated the ships and scattered their atoms in every possible direction.

Aliens. Sentient aliens. The knowledge still overwhelmed her. That and the fact that she had helped kill one … Maybe the tentacled creatures could be negotiated with. Maybe a peaceful solution was still possible. However, any such solution would probably involve her.

At the thought, the backs of her hands crinkled, the crosswoven fibers bunching like knotted muscles. Since the encounter with the grasper, the suit had yet to fully settle down; it seemed more sensitive to her emotional state than before.

If nothing else, the attack on the Extenuating Circumstances had settled one debate: humans weren’t the only self-aware species to be violent, even murderous. Far from it.

Kira switched her gaze to the front viewport and the gleaming bulk of Adrasteia beyond. It was strange to realize that the six crew members—Tschetter included—were somewhere down on the surface.

Six people, but the shuttle only held four cryo pods.

An idea occurred to Kira. She opened the comm channel again and said, “Tschetter, do you read? Over. ”

“What is it, Navá rez? ” said the major, sounding irritated.

“We had two cryo pods at HQ. Remember? The ones Neghar and I were in. One of them might still be there. ”

“… Noted. Would there be anything else of use at the base? Food, equipment—that sort of thing? ”

“I’m not sure. We hadn’t finished cleaning the place out. There might still be some plants alive in the hydro bay. Maybe a few meal packs in the galley. Plenty of survey equipment, but that won’t put food in your stomach. ”

“Roger that. Over and out. ”

Another half hour passed before the line sprang to life again and the major said, “Navá rez, do you read? ”

“Yes, I’m here, ” said Kira, quickly.

“Orso found the drop shuttle. It and the hydro cracker seem to be functional. ”

Thule! “Good! ”

“Now, here’s what is going to happen, ” said Tschetter. “Once he finishes refueling the shuttle—which should be in … seven minutes—Orso is going to collect Samson, Reisner, and Yarrek. This will require two separate trips. They will then rendezvous with you in orbit. The shuttle will return under its own power to the base, and you, Ms. Navá rez, will give the order to Ando and leave on the Valkyrie. Are we clear? ”

Kira scowled. Why did the major always irritate her so? “What about the cryo tube I mentioned? Is it there at the base? ”

“Badly damaged. ”

Kira winced. The suit must have hit the tube when it emerged. “Understood. Then you and Iska—”

“We’re staying. ”

A strange sense of affinity came over Kira. She didn’t like the major—not one bit—but she couldn’t help but admire the woman’s toughness. “Why you? Shouldn’t—”

“No, ” said Tschetter. “If you’re attacked, you need people who can fight. I broke my leg during the landing. I wouldn’t be any good. As for the corporal, he volunteered. He’ll make the trip on foot to the base over the next few days, and when he gets there, he’ll fly out to bring me in. ”

“… I’m sorry, ” said Kira.

“Don’t be, ” said Tschetter, stern. “Can’t change what is. In any case, we need observers here in case the aliens return. I’m Fleet Intelligence; I’m the one best suited for the job. ”

“Of course, ” said Kira. “By the way, if you dig around in Seppo’s workstation at HQ, you might find some seed packs. I don’t know if you can get anything to grow, but—”

“We’ll check, ” said Tschetter. Then, in a slightly softer tone, “I appreciate the thought, even if you’re a real pain in the ass sometimes, Navá rez. ”

“Yeah, well, takes one to know one. ” Kira scuffed her palm against the edge of the console, watching how the surface of the suit flexed and stretched. She wondered: If she were in Tschetter’s position, would she have the courage to make the same decision?

“We’ll let you know when the shuttle launches. Tschetter out. ”

“Display off, ” said Kira.

She studied her reflection in the glass, a dim, ghostly double. It was her first time getting a good look at herself since the xeno had emerged.

She almost didn’t recognize herself. Instead of the normal, expected shape of her head, she saw the outline of her skull, bare and hairless and black beneath the layered fibers. Her eyes were hollow, and there were lines on either side of her mouth that reminded her of her mother.

She leaned closer. Where the suit faded into her skin, it formed a finely detailed fractal, the sight of which struck a strange chord in her, as if she’d seen it before. The sense of dé jà vu was so strong, for a moment she felt as if she were in another place and another time, and she had to shake herself and move back.

Kira thought she looked ghoulish—a corpse risen from the grave to haunt the living. Loathing filled her, and she averted her gaze, not wanting to see the evidence of the xeno’s effects. She was glad Alan had never seen her like this; how could he have liked or loved her? She imagined a look of disgust on his face, and it matched her own.

For a moment, tears filled her eyes, but Kira blinked them back, angry.

She put on the brimmed cap she’d dug out of a locker and turned up the collar of the jumpsuit to hide as much of the xeno as possible. Then: “Display on. Start recording. ” The screen lit up, and a yellow light appeared next to the camera in the bezel.

“Hi, Mom. Dad. Isthah … I don’t know when you’ll see this. I don’t know if you ever will, but I hope you do. Things haven’t gone too well here. I can’t tell you the details, not without getting you in trouble with the League, but Alan is dead. Also, Fizel and Yugo and Ivanova and Seppo. ”

Kira had to look away for a moment before she could continue. “My shuttle is damaged, and I don’t know if I’m going to make it back to Sixty-One Cygni, so if I don’t: Mom, Dad, I have you listed as my beneficiaries. You’ll find the info attached to this message.

“Also, I know this might sound strange, but I need you to trust me. You have to prepare. You have to really prepare. There’s a storm coming, and it’s going to be a bad one. Worse than ’thirty-seven. ” They’d understand. The joke had always been that only the apocalypse could be worse than the storm that year. “Last thing: I don’t want the three of you to get depressed because of me. Especially you, Mom. I know you. Stop it. Don’t just stay at home moping. That goes for all of you. Get out. Smile. Live. For my sake, as well as your own. Please, promise me that you will. ”

Kira paused and then nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for putting you through this. I wish I’d returned home to see you before this trip. … Love you. ”

She tapped the Stop button.

For a few minutes, she sat and did nothing, just stared at the blank screen. Then she forced herself to record a message for Sam, Alan’s brother. Since she couldn’t tell the truth about the xeno, she blamed his death on an accident at the base.

By the end, Kira found herself crying again. She didn’t try to stop the tears. So much had happened in the past few days, it was a relief to let go, if only for a short while.

On her finger, she felt a phantom weight where the ring Alan had given her should have been. Its absence only worsened the flow of tears.

Her turmoil left the fibers restless beneath the jumpsuit, bead-like bumps forming along her arms and legs and across her upper back. She snarled and slapped the back of her hand, and the beads subsided.

Once she regained her composure, she made similar recordings for the rest of her dead teammates. She didn’t know their families—she didn’t even know if some of them had families—but Kira still felt it was necessary. She owed it to them. They’d been her friends … and she’d killed them.

The last recording was no easier than the first. Afterward, Kira had Ando send the messages, and then she closed her eyes, drained, exhausted. She could feel the suit’s presence in her mind—a subtle pressure that had appeared sometime during their escape from the Extenuating Circumstances—but she sensed no hint of thought or intent from it. Still, she had no doubt: the xeno was aware. And it was watching.

…

A burst of static sounded in the speakers.

Kira started and realized she must have nodded off. A voice was speaking: Orso. “—do you read? Over. Repeat, do you read, Navá rez? Over. ”

“I hear you, ” she said. “Over. ”

“We’re just refueling the drop shuttle. We’ll be blasting off this forsaken rock soon as our tanks are full. Rendezvous with the Valkyrie in fourteen minutes. ”

“I’ll be ready, ” she said.

“Roger that. Over. ”

The time passed quickly. Kira watched through the shuttle’s rear-facing cameras as a shining dot rose from the surface of Adrasteia and arced toward the Valkyrie. As it neared, the familiar shape of the drop shuttle came into view.

“I can see them, ” she reported. “No signs of trouble. ”

“That’s good, ” said Tschetter.

The drop shuttle came up alongside the Valkyrie, and the two vessels fired their RCS thrusters as they gently mated, airlock to airlock. A faint shudder passed through the Valkyrie’s frame.

“Docking maneuver successfully completed, ” said Ando. He sounded entirely too cheery for Kira’s taste.

The airlocks popped open with a hiss of air. A hawk-nosed man with a buzz cut stuck his head through the opening. “Permission to come aboard, Navá rez? ”

“Permission granted, ” said Kira. It was just a formality, but she appreciated it.

She stuck out a hand as the man floated over to her. After a moment’s hesitation, he accepted it. “Specialist Orso, I presume? ” she said.

“You presume correctly. ”

Behind Orso came Private Reisner (a short, wide-eyed woman who looked as if she’d signed up for the UMC right out of school), Petty Officer Samson (a red-haired beanpole of a man), and Ensign Yarrek (a heavyset man with a large bandage on his right arm).

“Welcome to the Valkyrie, ” said Kira.

They all looked at her somewhat askance, and then Orso said, “Glad to be here. ”

Yarrek grunted and said, “We owe you one, Navá rez. ”

“Yes, ” said Reisner. “Thank you. ”

Before sending the drop shuttle back to Adra, Orso went to a row of cabinets set flush to the hull at the back of the Valkyrie. Kira hadn’t even noticed them before. Orso entered a code, and the lockers popped open to reveal several racks of guns: blasters and firearms alike.

“Now we’re talking, ” said Samson.

Orso picked out four guns, as well as a collection of battery packs, magazines, and grenades, and then carried them over to the drop shuttle. “For the major and the corporal, ” he explained.

Kira nodded, understanding.

Once the weapons were safely stowed and everyone was back on the Valkyrie, the drop shuttle disconnected and fell away toward the moon below.

“I’m guessing you didn’t find any extra food at the base, ” Kira said to Orso.

He shook his head. “Afraid not. Our escape pods carry a few rations, but we left them for the major and the corporal. They’ll need it more than we will. ”

“You mean more than I will. ”

He eyed her, wary. “Yeah, suppose so. ”

Kira shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. ” He was right, in any case. “Okay, let’s do this. ”

“Places, people! ” Orso shouted. As the three others scrambled to strap themselves in, Orso joined her at the front and settled into the copilot’s seat.

Then Kira said, “Ando, lay in a course for the nearest port at Sixty-One Cygni. Fastest possible burn. ”

An image of their destination appeared in the console display. A labeled dot blinked: the Hydrotek refueling station in orbit around the gas giant Tsiolkovsky. The same station the Fidanza had stopped at on its way out to their current system, Sigma Draconis.

Kira paused a moment and then said: “Engage. ”

The shuttle’s engines roared to life, and a solid 2 g’s of thrust pressed them backwards, gently at first and then with swiftly increasing pressure.

“Here we go, ” Kira murmured.

Ando kept up the 2-g burn for three hours, at which point the pseudo-intelligence throttled back the thrust to a more manageable 1. 5 g’s, which allowed them to move around the cabin without too much discomfort.

The four UMC personnel spent the next hour going over every part of the shuttle. They double-checked Kira’s repairs—“Not bad for a civvy, ” Samson grudgingly admitted—counted and recounted the meal packs; cataloged every weapon, battery, and cartridge; ran diagnostics on the skinsuits and the cryo tubes; and generally made sure the ship was in working order.

“If something goes wrong while we’re under, ” said Orso, “you probably won’t have time to wake us up. ”

Then he and the others stripped down to their underwear, and Yarrek, Samson, and Reisner got into their cryo tubes and started the round of injections that would induce hibernation. They couldn’t stay awake any longer or they’d need to eat, and they had to save the food for Kira.

Reisner laughed nervously and gave them a little wave. “See you at Sixty-One Cygni, ” she said as the top of her cryo tube lowered and closed.

Kira waved back, but she didn’t think the private saw.

Orso waited until the others had lapsed into unconsciousness, and then he went to the lockers, removed a rifle, and brought it over to Kira. “Here. It’s against regs, but you might need this, and if you do … well, beats having to fight hand-to-hand. ” He looked at Kira with a somewhat sardonic expression. “We’re all going to be helpless around you anyway, so what the hell. Might as well give you a chance. ”

“Thanks, ” she said, taking the rifle. It was heavier than it looked. “I think. ”

“No problemo. ” He winked at her. “Check with Ando; he can show you how to operate it. There’s one other thing, orders from Tschetter. ”

“What? ” said Kira, suddenly on guard.

Orso pointed at his right forearm. The skin there was slightly lighter than his upper arm, and a sharp line separated the two. “See that? ”

“Yeah. ”

He pointed at a similar difference in shade on the middle of his left thigh. “And that? ”

“Yeah. ”

“Got hit by shrapnel a few years back. Lost both limbs and had to get them regrown. ”

“Ouch. ”

Orso shrugged. “Eh. It didn’t hurt as bad as you might expect. The point is … once you run out of food, if you think you’re not going to make it, pop open my cryo pod and start cutting. ”

“What?! No! I couldn’t do that. ”

The corporal gave her a look. “It’s no different than any lab-grown meat. As long as I’m in cryo, I’ll be perfectly fine. ”

Kira grimaced. “Do you really expect me to turn into a cannibal? Jesus Christ, I know things are different back at Sol, but—”

“No, ” said Orso, grabbing her by the shoulder. “I expect you to survive. We aren’t playing games here, Navá rez. The entire human race could be in danger. If you need to cut off one of my arms and eat it in order to stay alive, then you damn well should. Both arms if you have to, and my legs too. Do you understand? ”

He was nearly shouting by the time he finished. Kira squeezed her eyes together and nodded, unable to look him in the face.

After a second, Orso released her. “Okay. Good … Just, uh, don’t get chop-happy unless you need to. ”

Kira shook her head. “I won’t. Promise. ”

He snapped his fingers and gave her finger guns. “Excellent. ” He climbed into the last cryo pod and settled into the cradle. “Are you going to be alright on your own? ”

Kira leaned the rifle against the wall next to her. “Yeah. I’ve got Ando to keep me company. ”

Orso grinned. “That’s the spirit. Don’t want you going stir-crazy on us, eh? ” Then he pulled the lid of the cryo tube shut, and a layer of cold condensation soon covered the inside of the window, hiding him from view.

Kira let out her breath and carefully sat next to the rifle, feeling every added kilo from the 1. 5 g’s in her bones.

It was going to be a long trip.

The Valkyrie maintained the 1. 5-g burn for sixteen hours. Kira took the opportunity to record a detailed account of the visions she’d been receiving from the xeno, which she had Ando send to both Tschetter and the League.

She also attempted to access the records Bishop had transferred from the Extenuating Circumstances, specifically those pertaining to Carr’s examination of the xeno. To her great annoyance, the files were password protected and labeled For Authorized Personnel Only.

When that failed, Kira napped, and when she could no longer nap, she lay looking at the xeno shrink-wrapped around her skin.

She traced a wandering line across her forearm, noting the feel of the fibers beneath her finger. Then she slid a hand under the thermal blanket she had tucked around herself—under the blanket and under the jumpsuit—and she touched herself where she hadn’t dared before. Breasts, stomach, thighs, and then between her thighs.

There was no pleasure to the act; it was a clinical examination, nothing more. Her interest in sex was somewhere south of zero at the moment. And yet, it surprised Kira how sensitive her skin was even through the covering fibers. Between her legs was as smooth as a doll, and yet she could still feel every familiar fold of skin.

Her breath hissed out between her clenched teeth, and she pulled her hand back. Enough. She’d more than satisfied her curiosity in that regard for the time being.

Instead, she experimented with the xeno. First she tried to coax the suit into forming a row of spikes along the inside of her forearm. Tried and failed. The fibers stirred in response to her mental command, but they otherwise refused to obey.

She knew the xeno could. It just didn’t want to. Or it didn’t feel sufficiently threatened. Even imagining a grasper in front of her wasn’t enough to convince the organism to produce a spike.

Frustrated, Kira shifted her attention instead to the suit’s mask, curious if she could summon it forth on demand.

The answer was yes, but not without difficulty. Only by forcing herself into a state of near panic, where her heart was pounding and pinpricks of cold sweat sprang up across her forehead, was Kira able to successfully communicate her intent, and only then did she feel the same creeping tingle along her scalp and neck as the suit flowed across her face. For a moment, Kira felt as if she were choking, and for that moment her fear was real. Then she mastered herself, and her pulse slowed.

With subsequent attempts, the xeno grew more receptive, and she was able to get the same result with a sense of focused concern—easy to produce given the circumstances.

While the mask was in place, Kira lay for a while, staring at the EM fields around her: the giant, hazy loops emanating from the Valkyrie’s fusion drive and the generator it fed. The smaller, brighter loops clustered around the interior of the shuttle and stitched one segment of paneling to another with tiny threads of energy. She found the fields strangely beautiful: the diaphanous lines reminded her of the aurora she’d once seen on Weyland, only more regular.

In the end, the strain from her self-induced panic was too great to maintain, and she allowed the mask to retract from her face, and the fields vanished from view.

At least she wouldn’t be entirely alone. She had Ando, and she had the suit: her silent companion, her parasitic hitchhiker, her deadly piece of living apparel. Not an alliance of friendship but of skinship.

Before the burn cut out, Kira allowed herself to eat one of the ration packs. It would be her last chance to have a meal with any sensation of weight for a very long time, and she was determined not to waste it.

She ate sitting next to the small galley area. When finished, she treated herself to another pouch of chell, which she nursed over the better part of an hour.

The only sounds in the shuttle were her breathing and the dull roar of the rockets, and even that would soon disappear. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cryo tubes at the back of the Valkyrie, cold and motionless, with no indication of the frozen bodies within. It was strange to think she wasn’t the only person on the shuttle, even though Orso and the rest were barely more than blocks of ice at the moment.

It wasn’t a comforting thought. Kira shivered and let her head thump back against the floor/wall.

Pain shot through her skull, and she winced, eyes watering. “Dammit, ” she muttered. She kept moving too quickly for the increase in g-forces and hurting herself as a result. Her joints ached, and her arms and legs throbbed from a dozen bumps and bruises. The xeno protected her from worse, but it seemed to ignore small, chronic discomforts.

Kira didn’t know how the people on Shin-Zar or other high-g planets bore it. They were gene-hacked to help them survive and even thrive within a deep gravity well, but still, she had a hard time imagining how they could ever really be comfortable.

“Warning, ” said Ando. “Zero-g in T-minus five minutes. ”

Kira disposed of the drink pouch and then gathered a half-dozen thermal blankets from the shuttle’s lockers and brought them with her back to the cockpit. There, she wrapped the blankets around the pilot’s chair, creating a golden cocoon for herself. Next to the chair, she taped the rifle, a week’s worth of ration packs, wet wipes, and a few other essentials she thought she might need.

Then a faint jolt ran through the bulkhead, and the rockets cut out, leaving her in blessed silence.

Kira’s stomach rose within her, and the jumpsuit floated away from her skin, as if inflated. Trying to keep her lunch (such as it was) from making an encore appearance, she nestled into the foil-wrapped chair.

“Shutting down nonessential systems, ” said Ando, and across the crew compartment, the lights winked out, save for faint red strips above the control panels.

“Ando, ” she said, “lower the cabin pressure to the equivalent of twenty-four hundred meters above sea level, Earth standard. ”

“Ms. Navá rez, at that level—”

“I’m aware of the side effects, Ando. I’m counting on them. Now do as I say. ”

Behind her, Kira heard the whir of the ventilation fans increase, and she felt a slight breeze as the air started to flow toward the vents by the ceiling.

She tabbed the comms. “Tschetter. The burn just ended. We’ll be transitioning to FTL in three hours. Over. ” The time was needed to allow the fusion reactor to cool as much as possible and for the Valkyrie’s radiators to chill the rest of the shuttle to near-freezing temperatures. Even then, it was likely the shuttle would overheat two or three times while in FTL, depending on how active she was. When that happened, the Valkyrie would have to return to normal space long enough to shed its excess thermal energy before continuing onward. Otherwise, she and everything in the Valkyrie would cook in their own heat.

The light-speed gap between the Valkyrie and Adra meant it was over three minutes before Tschetter’s reply arrived: “Roger that, Navá rez. Any problems with the shuttle? Over. ”

“Negative. Green lights across the board. What about you? ” The major, Kira knew, was still waiting in the escape pod for Iska to retrieve her.

… “Situation normal. I managed to splint my leg. Should allow me to walk on it. Over. ”

Kira felt a pang of sympathetic pain. That must have hurt like hell. “How long until Iska reaches the base? Over. ”

… “Tomorrow evening, barring any problems. Over. ”

“That’s good. ” Then Kira said, “Tschetter, what happened to Alan’s body? ” It was a question that had been bothering her the past day.

… “His remains were transported to the Extenuating Circumstances, along with the rest of the deceased. Over. ”

Kira closed her eyes for a moment. At least Alan had had a funeral pyre fit for a king: a flaming ship to send him off into eternity. “Understood. Over. ”

They continued to exchange messages intermittently over the next few hours—the major suggesting things Kira could do to make the trip easier, Kira giving advice about surviving on Adra. Even the major, Kira thought, was feeling the weight of circumstances.

Then, Kira said, “Tschetter, tell me: What did Carr actually find out about the xeno? And don’t give me that classified bullshit. Over. ”

… A sigh sounded on the other end of the line. “The xeno is composed of a semi-organic material unlike anything we’ve seen before. Our working theory was that the suit is actually a collection of highly sophisticated nanoassemblers, although we weren’t able to isolate any individual units. The few samples we collected were almost impossible to study. They actively resisted examination. Put a couple of molecules on a chip-lab, and they break the lab or eat their way through the machine or short out the circuit. You get the idea. ”

“Anything else? ” said Kira.

… “No. We made very little progress. Carr was particularly obsessed with trying to identify the xeno’s source of power. It doesn’t seem to be drawing sustenance from you. Quite the opposite, in fact, which means it has to have another way of generating energy. ”

Then Ando said, “FTL transition in five minutes. ”

“Tschetter, we’re just about to hit the Markov Limit. Looks like this is it. Good luck to you and Iska. Hope you make it. ” After a brief pause, Kira said, “Ando, give me aft cameras. ”

The display screen in front of her sprang to life, showing the view behind the shuttle. Zeus and its moons, including Adrasteia, were a cluster of bright dots off to the right, alone in the darkness.

Alan’s face appeared in her mind, and her throat tightened.

“Goodbye, ” she whispered.

Then she panned the camera over until the system’s star appeared on the display. She stared at it, knowing that she would likely never see it again. Sigma Draconis, the eighteenth star in the Draco constellation. When she had first spotted it listed on the company reports, she’d liked the name; it had seemed to promise adventure and excitement and perhaps a bit of danger. … Now it seemed more ominous than anything, as if it were the dragon come to eat all of humanity.

“Give me the nose cameras. ”

The screen switched to a view of the stars ahead of the shuttle. Without her overlays, it took her a minute to find her destination: a small, reddish-orange dot near the center of the display. At that distance, the system’s two stars merged into a single point, but she knew it was the nearest star that she was heading for.

It struck Kira then, with visceral strength, just how far away 61 Cygni was. Light-years were long beyond imagining, and even with all the benefits of modern technology it was an enormous, terrifying distance, and the shuttle no more than a mote of dust hurtling through the void.

… “Roger that, Navá rez. Safe travels. Tschetter out. ”

A faint whine sounded at the back of the shuttle as the Markov Drive began to power up.

Kira glanced toward it. Though she couldn’t see the drive, she could picture it: a great black orb, huge and heavy, resting on the other side of the shadow shield, a malignant toad squatting in the spaces between the walls. As always, the thought of the machine gave her the creeps. Perhaps it was the radioactive death contained in its precious grams of antimatter and the fact that they could destroy her in an instant if the magnetic bottles failed. Perhaps it was what the machine did, the twisting of matter and energy to allow for entry into superluminal space. Whatever it was, the drive unsettled her and made her wonder what strange things might happen to people while they slept in FTL.

This time, she’d get to find out.

The whine intensified, and Ando said, “FTL transition in five … four … three … two … one. ”

The whine peaked, and the stars vanished.

EXEUNT I

In place of the Milky Way, a distorted reflection of the shuttle appeared—a dark, dim bulk lit solely by the faint glow from within the cockpit. Kira saw herself through the windshield: a smear of pale skin floating above the control panel, like a flayed and disembodied face.

She’d never observed a Markov Bubble in person; she’d always been in cryo when a jump took place. She waved her hand, and her misshapen doppelgä nger moved in unison.

The perfection of the mirrored surface fascinated her. It was more than atomically smooth; it was Planck-level smooth. Nothing smoother could exist, as the bubble was made out of the warped surface of space itself. And on the other side of the bubble, on the other side of that infinitesimally thin membrane, was the strangeness of the superluminal universe, so close and yet so far away. That she would never see. No human ever could. But she knew it was there—a vast alternate realm, joined with familiar reality by only the forces of gravity and the fabric of spacetime itself.

“Through the looking glass, ” Kira muttered. It was an old expression among spacers, one whose appropriateness she hadn’t really appreciated until then.

Unlike a normal area of spacetime, the bubble wasn’t completely impermeable. Some energy leakage occurred from inside to outside (the pressure differential was enormous). Not much, but some, and it was a good thing too, as it helped reduce the thermal buildup while in FTL. Without it, the Valkyrie, and ships in general, wouldn’t be able to stay in superluminal space for more than a few hours.

Kira remembered a description her fourth-year physics teacher had once used: “Going faster than light is like traveling in a straight line along a right angle. ” The phrase had stuck with her, and the more she’d learned of the math, the more she’d realized how accurate it was.

She continued to watch her reflection for several more minutes. Then, with a sigh, she darkened the windshield until it was opaque. “Ando: play the complete works of J. S. Bach on a loop, starting with the Brandenburg Concertos. Volume level three. ”

As the opening chords sounded, soft and precise, Kira felt herself begin to relax. The structure of Bach had always appealed to her: the cold, clean mathematical beauty of one theme slotting into another, building, exploring, transforming. And when each piece resolved, the resolution was so immensely satisfying. No other composer gave her that feeling.

The music was the one luxury she was allowing herself. It wouldn’t produce much heat, and since she couldn’t read or play games on her implants, she needed something else to keep her from going crazy in the days to come. If she’d still had her concertina, she could have practiced on it, but since she didn’t …

In any case, the soothing nature of the Bach would work with the cabin’s low pressure to help her sleep, which was important. The more she could sleep, the faster the time would go by and the less food she would need.

She lifted her right arm and held it before her face. The suit was even darker than the surrounding darkness: a shadow within shadows, visible more as an absence than an actuality.

It should have a name. She’d been damn lucky to escape the Extenuating Circumstances. By all rights the grasper should have killed her. And if not, then the explosive decompression. The xeno had saved her life multiple times. Of course, without the xeno, she never would have been in danger in the first place. … Still, Kira felt a certain amount of gratitude toward it. Gratitude and confidence, for with it, she was safer than any Marine in their power armor.

After everything they’d gone through, the xeno deserved a name. But what? The organism was a bundle of contradictions; it was armor, but it was also a weapon. It could be hard, or it could be soft. It could flow like water, or it could be as rigid as a metal beam. It was a machine but also somehow alive.

There were too many variables to consider. No one word could encompass them all. Instead, Kira focused on the suit’s most obvious quality: its appearance. The surface of the material had always reminded her of obsidian, although not quite as glassy.

“Obsidian, ” she murmured. With her mind, she pressed the word toward the xeno’s presence, as if to make it understand. Obsidian.

The xeno responded.

A wave of disjointed images and sensations swept through her. At first she was confused—individually they seemed to mean nothing—but as the sequence repeated, and again, she began to see the relationships between the different fragments. Together they formed a language born not of words but associations. And she understood:

The xeno already had a name.

It was a complex name, composed of and embodied by a web of interrelated concepts that she realized would probably take her years to fully parse, if ever. However, as the concepts filtered through her mind, she couldn’t help but assign words to them. She was only human, after all; language was as much a part of her as consciousness itself. The words failed to capture the subtleties of the name—because she herself didn’t understand them—but they captured the broadest and most obvious aspects.

The Soft Blade.

A faint smile touched her lips. She liked it. “The Soft Blade. ” She said it out loud, letting the words linger on her tongue. And from the xeno she felt a sense, if not of satisfaction, then of acceptance.

Knowing the organism had a name (and not one she had given it) changed Kira’s view of it. Instead of thinking of the xeno just as an interloper and a potentially deadly parasite, now she saw it more as a … companion.

It was a profound shift. And not one she had intended or anticipated. Though as she belatedly realized, names changed—and defined—all things, including relationships. The situation reminded her of naming a pet; once you did, that was that, you had to keep the animal, whether you’d planned to or not.

The Soft Blade …

“And just what were you made for? ” she asked, but no answer was forthcoming.

Whatever the case, Kira knew one thing: whoever had selected the name—whether it was the xeno’s creators or the xeno itself—they possessed a sense of elegance and poetry, and they appreciated the contradiction inherent in the concepts she’d summarized as the Soft Blade.

It was a strange universe. The more she learned, the stranger it seemed, and she doubted she would ever find the answers to all her questions.

The Soft Blade. She closed her eyes, feeling oddly comforted. With the faint strains of Bach playing in the background, she allowed herself to drift off to sleep, knowing that—at least for the time being—she was safe.

The sky was a field of diamonds, and her body had limbs and senses unknown to her. She glided through the quiet dusk, and she was not alone; others moved with her. Others she knew. Others she cared for.

They arrived at a black gate, and her companions stopped, and she mourned, for they would not meet again. Alone she continued through the gate, and through it came to a secret place.

She made her motions, and the lights of old shone down upon her in both blessing and promise. Then flesh parted from flesh, and she went to her cradle and folded in on herself, there to wait with ready anticipation.

But the expected summons never came. One by one the lights flickered and faded, leaving the ancient reliquary cold, dark, and dead. Dust gathered. Stone shifted. And overhead, the patterns of stars slowly changed, assuming unfamiliar shapes.

A fracture then …

Falling. Softly falling within the blue-black reaches of the swelling sea. Past lamp and sway, through wafts of heat and chill, softly fell and softly swam. And from the folds of swirling darkness emerged a massive form, there upon the Plaintive Verge: a mound of pitted rock, and rooted atop that rock … rooted atop that rock …

Kira woke, confused.

It was still dark, and for a moment, she knew neither where she was nor how she had gotten there, only that she was falling from a terrible height—

She yelped and flailed, and her elbow hit the control panel next to the pilot’s seat. The impact jolted her back to full awareness, and she realized she was still on the Valkyrie and that the Bach was still playing.

“Ando, ” she whispered. “How long was I asleep? ” In the dark, it was impossible to tell the time.

“Fourteen hours and eleven minutes. ”

The strange dream still lingered in her mind, eerie and bittersweet. Why did the xeno keep sending her visions? What was it trying to tell her? Dreams or memories—sometimes the difference between the two seemed so small as to be nonexistent.

… then flesh parted from flesh. Another question occurred to her. Would separating from the xeno kill her? That seemed like one possible interpretation of what the suit had shown her. The thought left a sour taste in her mouth. Surely there had to be a way to rid herself of the creature.

Kira wondered how much the Soft Blade really understood of what had been happening since she found it.

Did it realize it had killed her friends? Alan?

She thought back to the first set of images the xeno had forced upon her: the dying sun with the ruined planets and the belt of debris. Was that where the parasite came from? But something had gone wrong: a cataclysm of some sort. That much made sense, but beyond that, things grew indistinct. The xeno had been joined with a grasper, but whether the graspers had made the xeno (or the Great Beacon) wasn’t clear.

She shivered. So much had happened in the galaxy that humans were unaware of. Disasters. Battles. Far-flung civilizations. It was daunting to consider.

A tickle formed in her nose, and she sneezed hard enough to bang her chin against her chest. She sneezed again, and in the dim, red light of the cabin, she saw curls of grey dust drifting away from her, toward the shuttle vents.

Cautious, she touched her sternum. A thin layer of powder covered her, same as when she’d woken on the Extenuating Circumstances during the grasper attack. She felt underneath herself; no depression had formed. The xeno hadn’t dissolved any part of the chair.

Kira frowned. On the Extenuating Circumstances, the xeno must have absorbed the decking because it needed part or all of what it contained. Metals, plastics, trace elements, something. Which meant it had—in a sense—been hungry. But now? No depression, but still the dust. Why?

Ah. That was it. She’d eaten. The dust appeared each time she or the xeno ate. Which meant, the creature was … excreting?

If so, the unpleasant conclusion was that the parasite had assumed control over her digestive functions and was processing and recycling her waste, disposing of whatever elements it didn’t need. The dust was the alien equivalent of DERPs, the polymer-coated refuse pellets that skinsuits formed out of a user’s feces.

Kira made a face. She might be wrong—she hoped she was—but she didn’t think so.

That raised the question of how the suit, how an alien device, could understand her biology well enough to mesh with it. Interfacing with a nervous system was one thing. Interfacing with digestion and other basic biological processes was several orders of magnitude more difficult.

Certain elements formed the building blocks of most life in the galaxy, but even so, every alien biome had evolved its own language of acids, proteins, and other chemicals. The suit shouldn’t be able to bond with her. That it could indicated the xeno’s makers/originators had a much higher level of tech than she’d initially thought, and if they were the graspers. …

Of course, it was also possible the suit was just mindlessly carrying out its imperatives, and that it was going to end up poisoning and possibly killing her through some hideous mismatch of chemistry.

Nothing she could do about it either way.

Kira still didn’t feel hungry, not yet. And she didn’t have to relieve herself. So she closed her eyes again and allowed her mind to wander back through the dream, picking out details that seemed important, searching for any hints that might help answer her questions.

“Ando, start audio recording, ” she said.

“Recording. ”

Speaking slowly, carefully, Kira made a full record of the dream, trying to include every piece of information.

The cradle … The Plaintive Verge … The memories resounded in her like the tone of a far-off gong. But Kira felt the Soft Blade still had more to share with her—that there was a point it was trying to make, a point that had yet to become clear. Maybe if she fell asleep again, it would send her another vision. …

After that, time grew indistinct. It seemed to move both faster and slower. Faster because great swathes of it passed without Kira noticing while she was asleep or in the hazy twilight between slumber and wakefulness. Slower because the hours she was awake were all the same. She listened to the endless cycle of Bach, she contemplated the data she’d gathered on Adra—trying to determine if or how it related to the xeno—and she dwelled in the happier recesses of her memories. And nothing changed, nothing but her breathing and the flow of blood in her veins and the dulled movement of her mind.

She ate little, and the less she ate, the less she felt like doing. A vast calmness settled over her, and her body felt increasingly distant and insubstantial, as if it were a holo projection. The few times she left the pilot’s seat, she found she had neither the will nor the energy to exert herself.

Her stretches of wakefulness grew shorter and shorter, until she spent most of her time drifting in and out of awareness, never quite sure if she had slept or not. Sometimes she received snatches of images from the Soft Blade—impressionistic bursts of color and sound—but the xeno didn’t share with her another memory like the one of the Plaintive Verge.

Once, Kira noticed that the hum of the Markov Drive had ceased. She lifted her head out of the thermal blankets wrapped around her and saw a smattering of stars outside the cockpit windows, and she realized that the shuttle had dropped out of FTL in order to cool down.

When she looked again, some time later, the stars had vanished.

If the shuttle returned to normal space at any other time, she missed it.

As little as she ate, the store of ration packs still continued to dwindle. The dust the suit expelled gathered in a soft bed around her body—molding to her form and cupping it like dense foam—or else drifted away from her in delicate threads toward the intake vents along the ceiling.

And then one day, there were no more ration packs.

She stared at the empty drawer, barely able to process the sight. Then she returned to the pilot’s seat and strapped herself down and took a long, slow breath, the air cold in her throat and lungs. She didn’t know how many days she’d been in the shuttle, and she didn’t know how many days were left. Ando could have told her, but she didn’t want to know.

Either she was going to make it or she wasn’t. Numbers wouldn’t change that. Besides, she was afraid she would lose the strength to continue if he told her. The only way out was through; worrying about the duration of the trip would just make the journey more miserable.

Now came the hard part: no more food. For a moment, she thought of the cryo tubes at the back of the shuttle—and of Orso’s offer—but as before, her mind rebelled against the idea. She would rather starve than resort to eating another person. Maybe her stance would change as she wasted away, but Kira felt certain it wouldn’t.

From a bottle she’d stashed by her head, she took a pill of melatonin, chewed it up, and swallowed. Sleep, more than ever, was her friend. As long as she could sleep, she wouldn’t need to eat. She just hoped she would wake up again. …

Then her mind grew increasingly fuzzy, and she fell into oblivion.

Hunger came, as she knew it would, sharp and grinding, like a clawed monster tearing at her gut. The pain rose and fell, as regular as the tide, and each tide was higher than the last. Her mouth watered, and she bit her lip, thoughts of food tormenting her.

She had expected as much, and she was prepared for worse.

Instead, the hunger stopped.

It stopped and it didn’t return. Her body grew cold, and she felt hollowed out, as if her navel were wedded to her spine.

Thule, she thought, offering up one last prayer to the god of spacers.

And then she slept and woke no more, and she dreamed slow dreams of strange planets with strange skies and of spiral fractals that flowered in forgotten spaces.

And all was silent, and all was dark.

PART TWO

SUBLIMARE

I stood over her on the ladder, a faint snow touching my cheeks, and surveyed her universe. … a world where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun on to a star. … Here was something that ought to be passed on to those who will fight our final freezing battle with the void. I thought of setting it down carefully as a message to the future: In the days of the frost seek a minor sun.

—LOREN EISELEY

CHAPTER I

AWAKENING

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