The Ideal was a god of war, an ideal to strive for, and each of his men felt the gulf between themselves and that ideal sharply. His command was absolute, not only on the battlefeild, but in their lives. How could it not be? He was their leader, and they, his army.

  And yet, they were still men. A man might choose to give everything for a cause, if he deems it worthy. A man might offer his life and soul.

  What man would not fight having them taken away?

  The Starless Void, Chapter Three

  ***

  Exploring was a welcome distraction from the overall predicament. She liked going out. She liked the feeling of seeing the world snap together into slightly better clarity. She liked Zack’s compay as she explored. But… there was a problem.

  More and more the food repulsed her, more and more she had to fight down, not nausea but actual gagging, then dry heaves. And she couldn’t be sick, not on this ship, not in this place, not at this time. She was less than nothing to any of these men, she was less than mission or goal or anything else, and she wasn’t sure just what sort of men they were anyway. How far did they take things, in the room that no one returned from? Did they just observe and record as men thrashed and begged for death? Or did they make it worse-- did they poison the select threats to their own power to gather data, trying out cures far worse than any disease as they did?

  She didn’t know, was the problem. Would her nausea be reason enough to feed her to the maw of that room even though it wasn’t-- couldn’t-- be the Corruption?

  She didn’t know. There was only one way to learn. It wasn’t worth it.

  So she hid it. She didn’t tell Zachhariah, taking shorter trips and pleading exhaustion. She didn’t tell the kitchens by refusing her portion, choking down what she could when she could, and disposing of the rest. She did not tell the Medic, and she would never have told the Ideal.

  Nicola was not sure if she was a bad person. But she was certain that no one else would yield to her, and she wanted to live, even here, even now, in this confusing place. And she could not be exposed, unless she was exposed on the ship. She was from Earth, from… from a nice, normal Earth, not here. Not these blighted, lost worlds. So it was… just a stomach bug or something.

  The nausea was bad. The dizziness was worse, because she couldn’t hide it.

  “What happened?” Zachariah asked, shooting to her side when the world’s sudden spin sat her on her ass. Growing in tandem with her nausea and her dizziness was a growing earache-- it felt like getting stabbed inside her head.

  “Nothing! Just don’t have my sea legs yet—” she joked, and felt little but dread and terror when he frowned at her.

  She managed to get him to buy that she was not in any danger the first two times. But she was living in terror of a third. Terrible things happened in this world, she knew that. Terrible things happened in her home universe. None of that was strange. Terrible things happened, and it was rarely an accident.

  She paced in her room, trying somehow to work through the dizziness, as if there was a set meter of it, and once she reached it’s end, it would be empty and harmless. She fell twice.

  Her ears hurt. If she was home, she could call in sick for the day, and endure whatever disgust her boss decided to throw her way after. It didn’t matter what he thought of her personally, it didn’t matter if he thought she was welshing on work, if the checks cleared. And they would. He was a dick, not stupid-- he was always understaffed, and she was reliable, even if he chose to hold any defect from perfection against her.

  It had never mattered if he liked her. She only needed to save up. Save up enough to get… a choice.Options. A house of her own? A pet? It didn’t matter, so long as she got to choose it. If she was home, she could stagger to her tiny little kitchen, and curl double on herself to sit in the window seat, and let the sun soak into her as she napped.

  She missed it, was the stupid thing. Missed the long hours of work, for a paltry but certain reward. Missed her tiny, shitty, shoebox of a so called house that she rented for half of what most people paid in her city, because it was tiny and shitty and sat on a highway that never stopped making noise. Missed buying shitty, used paperbacks at used book sales by the bag, because that was how you got the most books for the least money. Missed sending messages to her brother that he, half the time, didn’t answer, because he had a real life and she didn’t. And she missed books, and food that had taste, and her garden most.

  Finally, on the ground again, she curled up, forcing her legs under her, if only to lift herself to her knees. “No one is going to come to save you,” she told herself ferociously, and tried not to feel pathetic for wanting anyone to. Shut her eyes against the cold and lifeless room. “No one is going to save you. So what do you know, what do you think, and what will you do next?”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Sometimes saying it out loud helped. Usually it didn’t.

  “… I am here. That is impossible. It is still true.”

  Stupid. But still true.

  “I… know the plot. I’ve read it enough times to know the plot. If I can figure out when it is, I can change things. Or… get out faster. Or something.” She took a deep breath and ground her thumbs into her eyes until her eyes flashed impossible colors.

  “I am not infected. Not… with that. I have not been exposed.” The novel had been rife with ambiguity, the author being one of those that figured making the reader do most of the work was even better than doing it himself, and on the whole, Nicola sympathized. That had been part of the point. That people were so stupid, so very stupid, when they were afraid, and they so often had reason to be afraid. Maybe, she thought in her more cynical moments, that was why she liked it, even though she was frustrated with the way the story ended. Even though she hated the sense of rot and inevitability to it.

  “In order to have that, I would have to be exposed here. In order to be exposed here, one of the marines would have to be carrying it without falling to it. There are no animals and no actual produce to carry the prions, so I’d have to contract it like the cold or the flu. I also don’t have the right symptoms.” The food was, she was quite certain, not grown in a vat, but extruded. Food wasn’t supposed to be sterile, but she was pretty sure that it was, somehow.

  … Speaking of things she was almost grateful for. A reason not to eat that… ooze. Was almost welcome.

  She was pretty sure that wasn’t how real prions worked, too, but it didn’t matter. People didn’t just appear on starships either.

  “So. I need to find out when in the story it is. I need to get over whatever the hell this illness is, and I need to figure out a way to fix this, escape this, or at least find a way off this ship so it can have it’s problems without me.”

  The Renewed Covenant had finished the story a hollow shell of a vessel, devoid of living men that called it home. Zachariah had died in the Room. The Ideal and the Medic had died, brought down by their own men. The hollow shell had been visited by another Ideal, two more books in. She wished she had landed on that Ideal’s ship. The Auroch was known to be kind. Gentle.

  … She didn’t want to be a person who could ignore the man who had been kind to her marching to his doom. And Zachariah was marching to his doom.

  ‘So. Focus on what you can do,’ she remembered her grandmother telling her when she was small.

  She did not have a way off the ship, for now. She did not have information on when she could place the timeline.

  It would be easier if she wasn’t sick.

  So she needed to get better. She didn’t have pain meds, she didn’t have decent food, and she had no drinks except water. But… sleep always helped. She had heard, somewhere, that you did most of your healing while you slept.

  She dragged herself to her bed. She could explore more tomorrow, when she felt better.

  ***

  He had not seen her for two full days.

  He had used his Sight, to be sure, looking away from private rooms. But she had not stepped forth, and so he saw nothing.

  Zachariah looked morose.

  “Line of Tristan.”

  The Ideal saw the young marine snap to attention-- he had not expected to be addressed. The Ideal tried not to single marines out. The hero worship was exhausting. And… he did have to send these men to their dooms. He was their commander. That could not be gotten away from. He was responsible for them. It was an honor. And it was a leash.

  “Yes, Lord Ideal?”

  “The human civilian, who you spend much of your time with. Where is she?”

  That got a few people muttering and the Ideal strove not to respond to the noise. It was a simple question, but asking it brought the eyes of his men onto it. It was a large part of why he rarely spoke directly to most of them.

  He should have gotten Raphael to ask. The poor woman did not want eyes on her-- he had known the terror of being observed, not as a man, but a subject. He would not inflict that upon her.

  He knew his figure was imposing-- The Black and Silver was meant to make him more so, and he was a man both large and with something of a predator’s grace. The weight of centuries had not aged his face, but he had become a walking relic, a living myth in his own world.

  It was not mete, that these men should see him so. At least, with the first batch of them, he had proven himself. He had earned their obedience, and their trust. These men asked nothing of him, and all too often he could not give them even that.

  Zachariah looked to one side, and he felt his head cant to one side, eyes narrowing. Perhaps his error was not in speaking to him, but in doing so in the mess. “Walk with me.”

  Whispers stirred up like a trail of dust in his wake. He hated it. That did not matter.

  He led him into a side room-- one with an ancient table in it. He thought that once, such a room had been meant for dining with smaller companies-- it was somewhat small. The table was still a bit low for marines, let alone Ideals.

  Maybe, back in the day when they had a human staff as well as their own people, this had been their place to eat. That would explain why the furniture hadn’t been replaced. The automated systems kept well frequented rooms clean, but not free of ghosts.

  “The human woman, Nicola. She has not been about. Why?”

  The marine shifted about like a boy. “I… don’t know, sir.”

  He felt his eyebrows climb.

  “I don’t!” the youngster insisted. “She… she hasn’t wanted to go exploring. I take her her meal portions once a day-- she doesn’t demand it, but… I wanted to be sure she was eating. I thought maybe she was homesick.”

  He wouldn’t meet his eyes, and the Aenocyan frowned. Very few met his eyes. But he had noticed this man, from the first, had sought his eyes, eager and interested to see what he looked at, and why.

  “Zachariah.”

  He jumped in place. Had he not known that he knew his name?

  There were many marines. He knew most of them by name. He tried to remember their names.

  “Look at me.”

  He cringed, like… like a child. He… thought he was like a child. How often had he seen a child, to be sure? “I… don’t think she feels well, Lord Ideal.”

  First, the thrill of horror. Then, bafflement. She had not been exposed. She could not be exposed.

  Foolishness. She was not a marine. She would grow ill from lesser ailments. “Ah. And retreated to rest.” A dim memory, centuries old… had it been so long since last he had a mortal on his ship? “Balance, nausea, earache?”

  The boy’s eyes widened in Tristan’s face. Tristan would have understood. Tristan would have told him two days ago.

  He had a rule, from long ago now. He must not punish the men for not being their Line Fathers. None of this was their fault.

  And he had won Tristan’s trust. And loyalty.

  “Probably, it will clear up soon. I will send Raphael to her. Tell me sooner, if it happens again,” he ordered, and did not know if he would be obeyed.