To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

When Kira realizes this, she tries to escape, but at first the ship’s mind, Bishop, will not let her out. Finally, Bishop opens the doors, and out in the hallway she sees bodies and immediately begins heading toward one of the shuttles. Bishop announces that the ship will self-destruct in seven minutes. She sees soldiers fighting some dark mass but continues to the shuttle. In the equipment room, she finds Dr. Carr, who is injured. There is a hole in the hull with a small craft mounted to it and an alien within. When the creature comes into the room, Kira assesses it, noticing that it looks nothing like her xeno. At the same time, she feels the xeno’s hate and fear, and it begins to lash out as it did on Adra. The alien, which the xeno calls grasper, is speaking, and because of the xeno, Kira can understand it. The alien is also able to shoot and hurt her despite the xeno’s protection. She returns fire, and in the confusion, there is an explosion that damages the xeno, tearing away a small piece. It also injures Dr. Carr and all but destroys the alien. Kira is sucked out of the hole in the hull and floats into space.

Kira knows that in space she will only live for about 15 seconds. By reflex, she screams and hears the scream. She is shocked, but then she is able to take a deep breath. The xeno has completely enclosed her, covering her face and providing oxygen for her. From the outside, she can see that the Extenuating Circumstances is split in two, and she begins to work her way to where the shuttles are docked. She still feels the pull from the alien ship but ignores it. Through experimentation, Kira discovers that she can use the xeno to steer her progress. She captures the remaining shuttle and takes off. She also sees two escape pods eject from the ship, heading toward Adra. Bishop communicates with the shuttle, sending Kira the UMC’s report about the xeno before the Extenuating Circumstances self-destructs. Kira begins to relax, and the xeno retreats from her face. She remembers that UMC could not put her in cryo, thanks to the xeno, and as a result she is not sure she will have enough food to last to her destination.

Kira’s shuttle Valkyrie has a Markov Drive, so it is capable of light speed travel, or FTL. Even so, it will take over 78 days to reach Sixty-One Cigni, the nearest UMC base, and she does not have enough ration packs to get there without going into cryo. While she contemplates this, she reviews the files Bishop sent her. He included all his data, and the ship’s records tasks her with delivering them to the relevant authorities and asks her to pass a personal message to a friend. Kira asks Ando, the shuttle’s pseudo-intelligence, to describe the alien attack. The aliens have technology that humans do not have, which means humans have finally made contact with aliens, but they are hostile and technologically superior—a worst-case scenario.

Kira feels a connection between the xeno and the aliens’ sudden appearance. She is afraid that if she sends a message to Sixty-One Cigni it will lead the aliens to them. Instead, she broadcasts on emergency channels and receives responses from six people, including Major Tschetter, who escaped to Adra. Kira tells Tschetter that the shuttle she and Neghar had taken to the alien ruin is still on Adra. They decide that four of them will fly to Valkyrie and then return the shuttle to Adra. Because there are only four cryo tubes in Kira’s shuttle, Tschetter and another soldier will stay on Adra.

Kira sees a reflection of herself for the first time on a screen and is upset by the way she looks with the xeno. There is a fractal pattern where it meets her skin, and she feels that deep pull of déjà vu again. She covers herself while she records messages for her family, Alan’s brother, and her Adra team members. The four UMC soldiers arrive from Adra and send the shuttle back to Tschetter on the surface. They set a course for Sixty-One Cigni and then prepare for cryosleep. One of the soldiers tells her that if she needs food, she is to open his cryotube and start cutting meat off him—his limbs can be regrown as long as he remains in cryo. 

Kira is alone for the journey. She tries to access Bishop’s files about the xeno, but they are classified. She is surprised how sensitive her skin is through the xeno and experiments with trying to get it to respond on demand again, but it only does so according to her emotional response. She makes herself a nest with blankets, rations, and the gun, so she will expend as little energy as possible during the trip. She and Tschetter communicate while they are still in range. Tschetter tells her that they think the xeno is a collection of units, but other than that they could not discover anything. After the Markov Drive charges, the ship goes into FTL, losing communications with Tschetter, and Kira is truly alone.

Kira decides that the xeno deserves a name and calls it Obsidian in honor of its appearance. However, when she communicates this, the xeno tells her that its name is The Soft Blade. She falls asleep and has another dream from the xeno. In it, she and her companions arrive at a black gate. She goes through alone and waits to be summoned, but the summons doesn’t come. When she awakes fully, Kira attempts to analyze the dream. Xenos and graspers had been joined, but their relationship is unclear, and she wonders if the graspers made the xeno.

Kira is covered in a layer of powder, as she had been earlier, and realizes that the xeno is excreting for both of them. As a xenobiologist, she knows that this means the xeno has bonded with her on a very high level. Time passes and she eats little, but even so one day she is out of ration packs. She is hungry but then stops being hungry, falls asleep, and does not wake.