So much of the ship was unexplored, to Zachariah’s knowledge. Sometimes the line-elders could be coaxed to tell them more of their lives, more of the ship than they knew to look for… but more often than not, they did not do even that.

  “What’s the point, lad?” Margrave had asked, his eyes weary. “We find more rooms whose purpose we don’t understand, we look at them and realize how much we don’t understand, and we go back to our day to day lives. Nothing changes. I used to hear stories about some of the things the ships could do-- but beyond training us and keeping us alive and armed, what’s the point of the ship? We’re just wasting energy trying to understand what is well beyond us.”

  “I have a lot of energy to spare,” Zachariah had said, for once exasperated, and Margrave had laughed.

  “Oh, fine, cub. Fine. Go explore if it makes you happy. But… that’s all it is, cub. If you want to understand the ship, you’re born centuries too late.”

  Zachariah frowned, opened his mouth, but Margrave’s eyes were so distant that he shut his mouth and looked away, saying nothing.

  --The Starless Void, Chapter Three

  ***

  She was tired.

  This wasn’t a surprise. She was always tired when she didn’t feel well. But it was worrying Zachariah, and that was exhausting. It wasn’t even that he was present that much. It was just that the instant he was present, he contained the anxiety of ten men.

  “Calm down. People get sick,” she muttered, too tired to be as gentle as he seemed to need. He had given her a hurt look that would have made her guts twist if they hadn’t been preemptively doing that already. “Hey, just because you’re a superhuman, doesn’t mean I’m a failure for being merely human.”

  He had reared back as if she’d slapped him, and she’d winced. “I’m sorry. I’m in a terrible mood, and all I want in this world is sleep.”

  “I… sorry.” He ran off. She stared after him, then shut her eyes, trying to marshal her thoughts.

  Alright, so she was missing things. She still didn’t understand Zachariah’s behavior. Or Raphael’s.

  Which wasn’t really surprising, she knew. The author liked tragedy. It was something she’d never fully understood, for all that she read and reread her copies. Who made a world just to break it?

  Who made men like these just to destroy them?

  Well. June Damocles, evidently.

  She didn’t know how to get home. She’d read stories where a person was summoned, a system, a magic rite, a god with strange dictates… but she’d had no system to guide her, no rite to shape her role in this place, and she wasn’t really interested in converting to another religion. If going home was even possible, then she had no good way to even start a search for that without looking insane, then she hadn’t found it yet.

  She wondered what her brother had thought, when he couldn’t find her. She shut her eyes as they started to burn, and dragged her thoughts back to the proper track.

  She knew that the ship was in danger. She was the only one, so far as she could tell. She could not expect things to change simply to placate her. She could not expect them to save her while dying themselves, and even if she could… didn’t Zachariah deserve to live to whatever passed for old age on this ship? And… Didn’t the others?

  She knew the basics, the buildup of distrust between Ideal and men, justified or otherwise, and the breakdown of communication, of hope, of trust, of generosity between them. She needed to know more.

  She was groggy, she was achy, but as the pain meds kicked in again, the weariness was towing her under. Lost in her vast bed, and buried under the piles of blankets that she’d assembled. They were all more thin than she’d prefer, but they were plentiful enough.

  They were generous with her. Kind to her. There was nothing okay about letting them die. There wouldn’t be, even if they were cold, or cruel. But they weren’t, she found herself sure. She had thought Raphael of any of them would be.

  But Raphael was trying, at least, to be kind.

  She couldn’t just tell them. It wouldn’t work. They’d think her mad. They might be right. But… maybe she could nudge it? A mob could not be stopped, but they could be distracted, or diverted, and maybe that would be enough. She didn’t know.

  … So she’d have to find out. She’d have to take Raphael up on his offer.

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  If she wanted anything to change… then they’d have to learn to understand each other.

  She wrung the blanket in her hands, a rough, almost wool texture between her fingers, but it smelled wrong.

  Maybe, when she knew more, she’d know what to do. Maybe.

  It wasn’t good odds, but what could she do except try?

  ***

  A week later, she was trying with might and main not to snap as Zachariah hovered at her shoulder, watching her as they walked as he would an infant.

  Raphael was making good on his word to show them… something. He had looked at her a long, long time when she had come out that day, for all that he’d seemed to approve the outing a day earlier.

  It felt like being babysat, and she made a face at him. He was a big boy. He could take it.

  To her surprise, he’d laughed. “Very well. You need the exercise anyway.”

  Her mood grew bleaker. “Are you saying I’m fat?”

  The look he gave her was pure disbelief and now, actual worry. “What… madness would… no. Quite the opposite.”

  “I believe she jests,” a deeper voice said, and she nearly jumped out of her skin, whirling to face… the Ideal, looking down with amusement. “Human females often seem to overstate their weight.”

  “But they’re all so small!” Raphael said, apparently overcome with horror and medical instinct, rather than deferring to his boss. Which was interesting enough that she fell out of her shock and horror at the Ideal being there to look between them.

  Well. She wanted to learn, didn’t she?

  Zachariah, for contrast, had jerked bolt upright, and rocked a half step forward, guarding her… from the Ideal? If she saw it, sure he saw--

  But the Ideal only raised an eyebrow. Did she read his face rightly? Was that amusement lurking in his eyes? Approval? Why…

  No. No, she didn’t know enough to say why. She didn’t know enough to say what. Just look. Just see, she admonished herself.

  The Ideal caught her gaze with hers, and she froze. She was prey.

  She bit the inside of her mouth, and glared back, and he laughed, very very softly. Then he turned to look at Raphael. “Were you going to that observatory? I thought I’d walk along.”

  Raphael cocked his head, then shrugged. The gesture was so casual that she hesitated, recalculating. That… was not a man who served as only an obedient creature.

  No. Just look. Just see.

  “Ah, you have always liked watching people react to that,” Raphael said, and nodded. “Come on, then. Nicola… any nausea? Or… fear of heights?”

  She shook her head, more curious now than afraid.

  “Good,” Raphael said, and turned down a narrow side hallway. There were places where the panels didn’t… quite match, colorwise, between the floor and the walls…

  “Was this hallway originally more narrow? Too narrow for you guys to access?”

  “Yes,” the Ideal said, eyes flicking to her again. Measuring. She felt about an inch tall, but braced herself against it. A sudden memory came to her then-- her brother, home from deployment and bringing home a friend. Something about that friend had been terrifying. There were men, she had met from her brother’s line of work, for whom the military was only a job, one tour, just enough to pay for college and give them experience. There were others for whom it was a calling. And still others, it had changed. She had known the moment she’d met Mathew that he’d killed people. She’d known from that instant that he’d killed a lot of people. He looked at the world with a predator’s eyes.

  He wasn’t a danger, to her or anyone else. He’d just been sculpted to perfection by his time as a warrior. And when she’d screwed her courage up enough to give him crap… not her brightest decision, but one she had never regretted in hindsight, he’d… relaxed.

  “Thanks,” Alexander had told her when he left a few days later. “He needed to know people wouldn’t just cower from him.”

  How could she have forgotten that? How could she have forgotten that here?

  How could she not?

  “Just a little farther,” Raphael called back. He frowned and turned, to look at her. “I just got you to stop vomiting—”

  “The last time was days ago—”

  “-- so if you feel any dizziness, any at all, you are to close your eyes, and let one of us guide you out. It’s solid, and safe, but it’s strange.”

  “…. Okay?” she told him, and pretended not to hear the soft huff the Ideal let out. Zachariah was fidgeting, and looking to his leader nearly constantly. Spending time with him outside training, even as a group, was percived as… favor, approval, in the book, right? And part of the issue was that the Ideal had simply avoided him, even when his performance was exceptional?

  One step at a time. This door was a burnished copper color, and it felt… colder than it should. And heavier. It opened with a hiss, and it had another door just inside, that did the same. She frowned and started toward it, leaving the Ideal and marine to irritated each other or approve as they wished for now, and at first… saw nothing. This room was colder than most, though… it felt not horribly unpleasant, for now.

  Then she looked down, and gasped.

  There was the window. Her shoes were floating in the endless galaxies of the universe, in the purple and red detritus of a galaxy, in the powdered-sugar spill of stars in the black velvet of endless night. She sank to her hands and knees to stare down at it, raising her head to grin when Zack made a vague noise of alarm and Raphael started to walk to her.

  “It’s in the floor. It’s all in the floor,” she said softly, her glee growing with each word. She didn’t know what impulse seized her, but it was the Ideal she turned to, her smile growing, twitching, “The windows in the throne room, or reception hall, or whatever it is. It’s a video screen, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, once. “I was told that actual windows in a place we may end up meeting in masse in wartime was too great a danger. And… they were right.”

  She took a deep breath, swallowed, and spoke her guess aloud, feeling as she had in class when she’d guessed well ahead of the class what the teacher wanted them to understand. “The gravity. It’s powered by centrifugal force, not by generated gravity or extra dense matter. We’re walking on the hull of the ship.”

  “Not quite the hull. There are layers in between, usually. It has to be able to take minor impacts, and so forth. The copper colored doors have windows beyond them. There are more than you’d think, but less than the humans who created the place would have prefered.”

  She nodded. “Space is weird.”

  “Indeed.”

  “…. Do you guys get dizzy too? When you land on a world, and have to adapt? That’s a lot for the inner ear to adapt to.”

  “There are ways to prepare for a landing,” Raphael said, walking a little closer. “Medications that prepare for the change. But mostly, we… adapt faster than humans. I’d been reading up on the matter, since we haven't had a human on board in my lifetime.”

  She looked back to the brilliance of the stars. There were other ships, she knew. Other humans had seen these stars.

  But it felt special just the same.