Of all the warriors and defenses that humanity accumulated around itself, none were so exalted, or so needful, as an Ideal.

  They were always few-- few were attempted, and fewer still achieved their greatness. They were made in batches, and of each batch, one or two at most would rise to their great potential, and attain the status and station of an Ideal.

  The rest died.

  In the distant future, they and their Marines were the only line that stood between humanity, and their fall to the vicious disease that hunted them across the stars.

  But not without cost.

  --The Starless Void, Chapter One

  Nicola read the words. The book wasn’t the best she’d ever read, and normally she preferred stories with happy endings… or at least a hope in hell of having some of the good guys left standing at the end of it. But sometimes, this sort of story-- this series in particular anyway-- scratched an itch.

  Probably it was just bad taste and manly men doing manly things but bigger, badder and scarier than everyone else. She was adult enough to admit she liked that.

  Impossible odds, high costs, great heroes… Something was missing, true. But not a lot.

  She’d read something comforting later, when she felt more able to appreciate it.

  She shut her eyes.

  The Renewed Covenant was a vast ship, even by the standards of the mighty Ideals, fully capable of supporting life in the void. Miles of walkways, of farmtech, of simulated outdoor gardens and rec centers, bays for supporting the smaller ships fleetships were famed for. And almost all of them were empty.

  Less empty were it’s barracks, it’s training centers, it’s medbays and it’s armory. Less empty and far more claustrophobic, was the audience chamber of the Ideal, which was the ship’s beating heart.

  Nicola opened her eyes. She knew the words well, but she had never before imagined it in such detail. The achingly white hall, the sterile air, the single, vast seat on the high dais, the superhuman warriors all around, to speak to their Ideal, the greatest of them all, who sat in that chair, framed by the darkness of the void and the light of the stars, visible through the windows behind him.

  A moment later, she realized that they saw her, and the details she saw were not such as she usually bothered imagining-- the scar curling the lower lip of one of three otherwise identical men, a man in a different color of armor standing to one side, faced toward the crowd instead of the… well, the throne.

  A moment later, they started turning to her, and she tried to open her eyes, and found them already open.

  That, of all times was when the panic set in, as the largest of the warriors-- the Aenocyon Ideal, shifted his weight, looking at her. She began to shake.

  This wasn’t possible. This wasn’t possible, and she was going to die here, in what was… apparently the first chapter of a shitty grimdark space marine book series, because she… what? What had she done to deserve this instead of a frozen wonderland filled with talking animals, or something like it?

  They were asking questions and she couldn’t answer them, they were talking all at once, shocked and angry and she couldn’t blame them, she had just appeared in their damned home, but she wasn’t… she wasn’t… What could she even say?

  The Ideal stood, and she shrank back, pace by pace, hoping that he could at least see she meant no harm-- hell, what harm could she do? She was a slim woman of middling height and less than middling physical conditioning and he was a ten foot tall demigod figure she knew very little about since he was only in the first book, surrounded by warriors whose shortest member was seven feet tall and jacked. She had never really considered how much more height became when the body remained proportional-- it wasn’t just that they were taller, their heads were bigger, their hands were bigger, big enough to make her feel a child and to pose about as much risk of getting away as she did of fighting back if they took exception to her idiot self showing up unannounced and without explanation on the ship that was their transport, their home and their capitol.

  She was going to die, and she couldn’t even blame them for it! She was so very obviously a problem but what could she even say--

  He raised a hand and his men, who had been clustering around her, fell quiet. That was its own relief, even if meeting his eyes alone was almost as impossible as meeting all of theirs at once had been. The Ideals always had vibrant eyes, the books had said that, and his were no exception-- black shading to blue to teal around the irises, and each band of color vibrant as the dawn.

  “How did you come to be here?” he asked. He asked it quietly, waving a hand that made some of the bigger frying pans she’d seen in life look cute.

  And what could she do? Lie? They had evidently all seen her land, confused, lost and almost as helpless as she was hopeless. “I… I don’t know sir. I was reading in my home and I… I know it sounds insane but I’m telling the truth I- I’m— I don’t know how I got here! One minute I was there and now I’m--”

  He lifted his hand, or rather, a few fingers of it again. She fell quiet.

  “What is your name?

  “…. Nicola. Niki?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You do not sound sure.”

  His men snorted and elbowed each other as she flinched away. “I… I… Nicola is my name. Niki is shorter and I also answer to it.”

  “A nickname.”

  “I-I… Yes sir.”

  He observed her a long moment. He had long hair-- she hadn’t expected that. Jet black and falling loose behind him. Did he pull it back for fights? Ideals all fought, right? She couldn’t remember much about this one-- his book had centered around one of his Marines, and they’d all died in the end. He was… not slim. But narrower than she’d expect for a man of his muscle and power. Proportioned like an acrobat, instead of a bodybuilder-- a powerful one, but an acrobat.

  His dress uniform was silver and black, he looked like part of the night sky behind him. The thought was not comforting-- space was not a gentle thing longing to be explored, in this book.

  “Do you know where you are, Nicola?”

  Sort of? Did it count as knowing if you also knew you had to be wrong, that it was impossible? “A flagship, sir? Your… flagship… Lord Ideal?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t seem mad. He… didn’t seem.. much of anything. “Did you have any intention of approaching myself, my ship or my men?”

  “No!”

  She should have softened it. She just…. What could she even say?

  He looked at her evenly. “Would you knowingly and willingly cause any harm to the ship or the people within?”

  “…. Not unless I was attacked?” She wasn’t dead yet so being honest seemed smart. And then it seemed very dumb, when he just… looked at her. “I… I don’t want to hurt anyone, and I don’t think I could, and—”

  “Peace.” The word was a command, however gentle. She fell quiet. “I believe you. I will allow you a room in which to travel and board, until such a time as we dock at a human harbor vessel.”

  She… wasn’t going to die? Why?

  “I will have you shown to your room. You will be issued a comm and a datalink for while you are on board. Cause no trouble, and no harm will come to you,” he said, and waved a hand to send one of his men to do his bidding.

  ***

  The Ideal watched.

  His men surrounded the shivering, confused, terrified woman-- more, he thought, in puzzlement than in real threat. She was, after all, human. The poor creature didn’t know that they did not, could not, mean her harm, clearly, and was shrinking in on herself in every direction, in defiance of all possible physics.

  “Sir, what the hell,” his chief medical officer, and closest confidant, murmured.

  “She was telling the truth,” He murmured back, far too quiet for the marines farther than the medic to hear. He’d folded his other senses away as soon as he could, but it had been obvious. “I will not have a woman of no harmful intent made into one.”

  “She appeared in the middle of your ship.”

  “There is lost tech that could do that,” he reminded his old friend, quietly. “And if someone had the will to revive it, they would likely not… first test it on someone they valued. If the goal was to transport living people, they may never have been in the room for her to spot let alone to let her understand what they had done to her.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “She knew where she was.”

  “She guessed she was in an Ideal’s ship, because she saw an Ideal, and there were stars behind him where he sat on a dias. Where else would she see such a thing? A farmship?” He leveled a look at his old friend, and Raphael, of the line of Keon, grumbled, but subsided. “It seems likely she’s never seen an Ideal before, given her reaction, but I expect that was easy enough to guess. Most humans do not naturally attain ten feet in height.”

  “And you have to be all reasonable about it.”

  “… Someone has to be. And she was far too afraid.” He turned his eyes to his old friend. “We do have private rooms available, yes? If we stick her in the barracks I expect she’d keep the whole host up, shivering in panic to shake the ship.”

  Raphael snorted. “I’m sorry, when were we last at capacity, my lord?”

  “… Some generations before your birth. And even that was only infantry capacity. And only briefly.”

  “The question was—”

  “Rhetorical, I am aware. Stick her in a suite, so she has privacy, and less need to venture out. I expect she won’t want to. It will be rudimentary, compared to what she’s used to, but…”

  “But you’d prefer she at least have some space to herself.” The Ideal flicked a few fingers, suggesting a shrug but not committing to it. His medic shrugged in the more common way. “I’ll see to it one of the junior marines guides her to a room.”

  She was panicking. She knew she was panicking but there was no compelling reason to not panic, so she had no particular reason to try let alone to succeed.

  Okay, there was no possible way this was real. There was no possible way she was here, and there was no possible way this was real.

  Where did that leave her?

  She had to jog to keep up with the marine they’d sent to guide her to the room they were leading her to. He wasn’t trying to rush, he was just huge, and tall, and she was small.

  Maybe that was a good thing. They could hear heartbeats, right? If they were the marines of the book, the prion mutant containment marines…

  No, they weren’t. This was a dream, or a hallucination, or--

  She tripped over her own feet in that empty, sterile hall, and went sprawling with a heavy thud, landing mostly on her forearms, partly on her knees, and slightly on her face.

  The walls felt… not like glass, but like enameled metal. Too cool, too uniform, too sterile. Too slick. And somehow, though they were secured down, also too light. She touched them trying to get up from the floor. The floor felt… rubberized. Like someone had tried to layer it with something to increase friction, and it clung to the hands when she rose. It looked just like the walls, was the distressing thing.Wrong.

  She started to scramble to her feet, but the marine had stopped and was waiting for her. That was unexpected enough that she blinked up at him for a moment, and he sank to one knee, offered her his hand, then hesitated and pulled it back. “I’m sorry. I know civilians don’t like it when we get too close.”

  He sounded so sincere, so… apologetic. “No, no, it’s not that,” she stammered. “I just… I was… I was home. I was home and now I’m here and I don’t… I… nothing makes sense!”

  “… That sounds terrifying,” he said, after a moments consideration. She bit her lip and stole a look up at his face. He was big, no surprises there, seven or eight feet tall. There was a strange uniformity to the marines beyond the actual uniforms that she hadn’t yet managed to place-- he was one of the ones with black hair, with eyes like a sky. Less intense than the Ideal’s. His were just the color of an open sky.

  He just seemed… young. Sincere, big, and young.

  “I’m… probably keeping you from more important tasks. I’m sorry—”

  “Take your time. I’d offer you a hand up, but… well. Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head automatically, choosing more than checking to see that it was true. The hallways were cold, probably most of any ache she felt came down to that. “I’m okay. Sorry.”

  “You’re fine,” he promised again. He seemed almost… anxious.

  How ridiculous of a mess could this get around to being?

  She took a deep breath. “What’s your name?”

  “Zachariah, miss.” He saw her blink, and misinterpreted it, thankfully. “We tend to be a bit behind any naming trends at any given time.”

  “It’s a good name,” she protested, and forced herself to her feet. He rose with her, utterly graceful, fucking huge, and still one of the smaller people on the ship.

  He laughed, or… huffed anyway. “Thanks! If you need anything, let me know? I… don’t get many chances to talk to civilians. And… the hallways probably all look the same. The few habitation zones I’ve seen are much more varied.”

  She blinked. “We… like to decorate. And if you’re smart, you can get decoration to be useful. As landmarks too, I guess.”

  They didn’t look like hospital halls, per se. Hospital hallways were cold and sterile, but they were the sterility of a place that needed sterilization, a place inherently messy, a place flooded with life and death. This place had curved doorways and ceilings, probably to strengthen the passages in case of additional… or not enough, pressure. The occasional gateway sealed the hallway itself, or implied they could, with the gates hanging over their heads like a guillotine in the open position. This place had never needed sterilization. It had no life in it in the first place. White halls that had never been any color pained the very eye, and how the hell her escort was navigating was beyond her. The place had never had life in it, didn’t want life in it, and was hostile to life in it. No. That was ridiculous. She was being hysterical. … She thought that was kind of reasonable, all told.

  “Really? Were you on a world? A stable world?”

  She thought of the worlds featured in the book and felt a hint of nausea. “Mine was stable, yeah. It was… I had… I have a garden.” And not too much else, besides more books than shelves.

  The marine, who had initially seemed quite imposing, was now walking backwards, talking to her as they went. His eyes lit up. “A garden? I’ve only seen… well. The gardens I saw weren’t doing well.”

  Because they were infected. She bit her lip, wondering what it looked like.

  “That’s not important. Here-- this is your set of rooms, according to the ping I got. Settle in, take a bit of time. I’ll come by in the dinner hours so you don’t get lost, and by then I should have your com and be able to give you a tour, okay? That way you can get around a little better, or at least start to get the layout?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Zachariah.” She had to jump to slap the door activation panel, but it did open.

  She waited for it to slide shut behind her to bring her hands to her face. None of this was real. She was not here. And Zachariah, the sweet space marine who had lead her here was not doomed.

  None of this was real.

  She made herself stumble forward, ended up finding the bed not with her shins but rather with her hip-- it was built up high.

  … No, the whole bed was bigger-- larger, wider, taller. She stared at it for a moment. She had seen whole bedrooms smaller than the bed.

  She flopped onto it, then winced. Prodded at elbows, and knees. They hurt. She’d landed pretty hard. Her left knee was already turning kinda green.

  It felt real.

  She should look around. She should get up and look around.

  She shut her eyes and tried to think.

  She was asleep in moments.

  Her dreams were confused, tangled things, and she came awake in a puddle of her own drool, stiff, and one hand numb from where she had rolled over it in sleep.

  She didn’t know where she was. Then she sat up in a panic.

  “Nicola?” Zach’s voice came through a tiny speaker next to the door. “You were sleeping too hard when I came by, I didn’t want to wake you, so I just grabbed your portion and brought it on my way back to give you more time. Is that okay? Do you want to look around?”

  She blinked stupidly at the door, then managed to croak out “sure?”

  “Great! Come on out!”

  He sounded so eager that she staggered upright to obey. Saying no would be like… refusing to pet a puppy.

  Hero of the book or not, he just seemed so… young.

  The door stymied her for a moment-- it was smooth, featureless, apart from what looked like a peephole up at least two feet too high for her to get any damn use from it at all. For once though, her tendency to touch everything served well-- when she slid her fingertips around the door frame, it slid open. Motion activated? That… bothered her. What if the power cut out? What if the wires did? What if it got hacked or… or whatever it took to confuse a door that was apparently only electronic?

  … Hell, how did it work? What was the range? Would she accidentally open her own door while changing?

  Zachariah beamed at her though and it kind of slapped the thoughts out of her head. It wasn’t desire… he had to be at least her age, but he seemed so young anyhow. Something about the simplicity of the delight. But… it was strange. She’d somehow expected him to look… older, marked with the scars she knew damned well he’d only get later.

  “Did you sleep well? I know Civilians sleep way more, did you have any good dreams? Most of us don’t dream much… or don’t remember it. How can you tell the difference?”

  Sure he was the size of a moose. But he was just… so eager. She smiled, and he lit up.

  “Um… usually we don’t bother to tell the difference, but most people dream, it’s just a lot of them are ones you don’t remember. There are tests they can run, monitor systems they can keep you under but most people don’t like that and it’s expensive equipment besides so…”

  “Oh. I suppose that makes sense.” He sounded… disappointed.

  He reminded her of her cousins, a long time ago when they were young. So she smiled. “I’ll tell you if I get any good ones while I’m on the ship.”

  He brightened immediately. “Promise?”

  Smiling back was compulsory. “I promise.”

  “Thank you!”

  It was such a silly little thing. She was glad it made him happy.

  He had little enough to be happy about.

  Just how little became obvious when he passed her… the food. The nutrients.

  Formless. And she only wished it was tasteless and inoffensive to the nose.

  … It was free food, provided freely. Her stomach lurched looking at it.

  She was going to pour it into a cup and take it like a shot, if there was any way to do that, because frankly the more of it she saw the less of it she wanted to see. In the future at least.

  But the cheerful, silly space marine who was the hero of a book she didn’t belong in was watching her, so she put the bowl to her lips and made herself drink it at a measured pace.

  It was a struggle. It was a hell of a struggle. Fortunately, she was stubborn and he was talking about dreams still. But she held it down and she managed.

  Feeling vaguely queasy, she tuned back into his talk.

  “—true you have to sleep every night?”

  “Um… don’t you? Wait, how long is a night on the ship?”`

  “Well… I mean. We don’t really have night. Since we don’t have a sun. But we keep track of the hours of an Earth Standard Day, and we are expected to seek at least six hours of rest every few days? But we don’t need to sleep every Earth Standard Day. It seems very luxurious.”

  She half laughed. “It sounds luxurious, until you’re a day and a half without, and about ready to fall asleep in your bowl of soup or so grouchy you’re willing to punt someone into a wall.” He recoiled, and she cocked her head. “What?”

  “You’d punch someone because you were grumpy and tired?” He sounded horrified. She half smiled.

  “Not just because of that, no. It’s just enough to make you want to. Why.. does that alarm you?”

  “… Humans fighting is wrong.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then smiled. He had been ridiculously gentle, given the universe he grew up in, in the book. “Humans developed fighting tooth and claw. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very sweet of you not to want to let us, and learning to control it is part of growing up, but… it’s okay.”

  He looked… distressed. Like the idea was the mental equivalent of seeing a horrific injury.

  “Still, we’re getting off track. You were going to show me around?”

  “Oh! Yeah!”

  It was… eerie, seeing someone you’d only ever met between the covers of a book in real life. If any of this was real. Real and… and yet…

  Zachariah was a hero. Compassionate, strong, willing to die to protect, and ultimately, doomed.

  “Show me everything,” she said, and forced a smile. What else was she supposed to do?

  If any of this was real, he’d never believe her.

  She was either mad, or trapped.