The Lines were the only kith or kin the Marines ever knew, and they cherished them, jested of them, and judged by them. The men of the Line of Tristan were said to be gentle to their fellows, to be kind. The men of the Line of Roan had keen eyes and keener senses. The men of the line of Keon, the outsiders said, were more ruthless and violent than nearly any of their fellows. Each name was the name of a hero, one who had stood beside the Ideal when the companies of marines were not yet properly forged, and the Ideal remembered each Linefather by name, it was said. Long had he watched the sons-- for there were no daughters-- of a line born, generation after generation, each boy born with his Linefather’s face, his stature, and his eyes.

  Sometimes, it was said, that if the Ideal was wounded severely, he would call out to them with their Linefather’s name, not as if he addressed the sons, but as if he addressed the father. But if this was so, it was impossible to find someone capable of proving it. It had been long centuries since the Ideal was wounded so severely and no living marine had been close enough to witness the incident properly.

  Zachariah, of the line of Tristan, was the son of his line in spirit as well as name, and he embraced the virtues of it as heartily as he embraced the more general, martial virtues of being a marine.

  --The Starless Void, Chapter Two

  ***

  The Lord Ideal observed the civilian pelting through his ship, trying with might and main to keep pace with a Marine, and not one given to patience or, indeed, walking, at that.

  Zachariah was young. Young, and promising, but far from experienced enough to know how to direct the energy of a Marine, or the power, or the force. Liable to get himself and others hurt, for now.

  … Perhaps this scenario would be good for him. Promise required nurturing, but the Ideal taking an interest would be as pouring fuel upon fire to his young mind, when what he needed was to learn to slow, to be patient. Mastery would come for him, if he learned control as well as enthusiasm. Taking a mortal under his wing would teach him, if he could be taught, to slow enough for her to keep up.

  They didn’t know he was observing. He looked away… so to speak, when they went anywhere that was not strictly and wholly public. It had been a long time, and Marines had largely forgotten the true powers of an Ideal.

  He was sitting in his chambers, cross legged on the floor, and watching as they toured the natural spots-- the spots natural for a marine to point out, at least. The recreation halls, the simulacrum chambers, the landing zones, the shuttle transports they used to deploy to worlds and rarely, to space stations. There were walls between he and they. That did not matter. He was an Ideal, and Ideals could do such things.

  He could have traced them across the ship’s internal monitors, but he did not have an interest in doing so. Absurdly, that felt more intrusive.

  He lifted his head when the Chief Medic invited himself to his rooms. It was permitted, he permitted it. His medic was of the line of Keon, and he valued the aggression and power as well as the mind of him.

  It had been a long time since Keon founded his line. The Ideal remembered the man, as he remembered so many of his first iteration of this army. Keon had been ferocious, had even attacked the Ideal once in the heat of an argument. The memory made him smile, though the scar no longer tugged under his chin at the gesture as it had once. He’d mastered himself soon enough. Better that Keon had attacked him than another.

  Raphael was not Keon’s equal in aggression. How could he be, after the line had been so altered? But there was that in him that could break the bone of an ally, if only to set it rightly.

  This was the smallest part of why the Ideal kept him close in his confidence.

  “The young pup has her under his wings,” he said, without preamble. “But. You knew that.”

  Most did not know what an Ideal could do. Of the currently living, only Raphael knew well enough to guess how some abilities might be used, and he did not know them all to guess all.

  “I have my ways,” the Ideal said, and tried to look lofty and inscrutable. Raphael snorted, and having learned by now that all was safe, dumped himself quite without form or ceremony into a chair. “I’m still not sure he should have been the one assigned to the task. He’s… very young. Likable, but… young.”

  The Ideal inclined his head. “I am… optimistic.”

  “We still don’t know how she got here.”

  “Unless it’s part of a larger plot against us, we may never know. She doesn’t know either, and that is enough… for now.”

  “Is it?”

  “… Unless you have some ability to crush answers from the Void, it must be. I at least have no power to force such. I doubt you have.”

  “I don’t,” Raphael said through gritted teeth, glaring at the ceiling as if he wished to set it alight. The Ideal smiled, and shut his eyes. Even the medic seemed young. He was among his most seasoned marines at this point.

  He felt old.

  “… Can I ask something?”

  The Ideal raised his eyebrows. “Ask.”

  “How are you so sure she was telling the truth? I know your senses are keener than mine-- than any of ours. I know that you can hear a heartbeat, smell sweat from the first drop of it. But…”

  “But such things can be faked, or mangled. A person in terror smells and sounds a great deal like a person excited, and a person excited or terrified may not be for the reason you anticipated.” The Ideal considered his chief medic. “You know that power, strength and senses are mine in excess, or in opposition to, my frame. This is a sense that… you simply do not have. I do not utilize it often. I do not find it always useful, or, always pertinent. But. If I wish to know, it is easy enough to tell if someone is… overtly lying. She is not. It is not… dependent on tells.”

  Raphael looked at him. He looked back.

  “Alright, be ambiguous then,” Raphael said, and ran a hand through his hair. It left the usually neat mane sticking up in all directions. “I trust you. I do not trust her.”

  The Ideal shrugged. “She is a human, an ordinary human, and a frightened one. Do not frighten her more. I do not… find that… easy to cope with.” He saw, in his minds eye, the woman break and run from him, and saw, heard, felt, what it would be to give chase to thinking prey again.

  No. He would not.

  In spite of the temptation.

  ***

  “And this room?”

  “I… actually don’t know what that room is for either,” Zachariah admitted, sounding sheepish. It had long clear tubes with holes in them lining the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Something about it nibbled at the back of Nicola’s mind, but she couldn’t get the thought to hold still so she could catch it, so it remained out of her reach. “We have a lot of these though. Some have big tanks in them too.”

  “Tanks?” she asked, thinking of the vehicle.

  “Yeah, you know the big clear vats of water? I think sometimes you keep fish as pets, they look like that, only bigger.”

  Sometimes he used ‘you’ to mean ‘humans who are not spare marines or Ideals’. She tried to bear with it. It was strange… but it was his world. “Oh. Oh! I wonder what they were keeping in there?”

  “I certainly don’t know.”

  She cocked her head and trailed a hand over one tube, letting her fingertips catch in the holes. The edges had been smoothed down, and most of them she could fit her hand into, if she folded it up right. “Who can we ask?” In the absence of anything else that worked, usually someone knew--

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  “No one knows what it was used for. I did ask, when I was new and started exploring the ship. I mean. Most of us explore the ship a little when we’re new, how could we not, but… well, it was designed for civilian use. Some of the passageways are a little too small to be comfortable, and even if they aren’t, there are going to be rooms whose use we just won’t have made any point of learning about, since we won’t use it.”

  She supposed that made sense. But… “Why not get some civilians to maintain industry, or… I mean, if this is a functional area—”

  He cocked his head. “Because they’re scared of us?”

  She blinked at him. “Sure, but… people do things they’re scared of all the time?”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Well… some people thrill chase, and fear is a good starting point for that. But, usually it’s because they have something they want more than they’re scared of it, or something they’re more scared of that will happen if they don’t?” It was… such a strange conversation to have with what appeared to be a more than fully grown man that she blinked at him a few times before going back to looking at the bizarre equipment as they spoke. Something was… wrong here, socially, but… she didn’t think she was in danger. Not from Zachariah. Had he been hit on the head too many times?

  … Maybe he just wasn’t good at the social aspects of being human. Plenty of people were like that.

  “Maybe we don’t have anything they want enough to deal with being afraid of us,” he said after a little bit. She looked at him again, but he was trailing a massive hand over a pipe, as she was, frowning slightly.

  … That frown made her unhappy in a way that confused her. He didn’t look like the hero of the novel she’d been reading. She thought he looked like a puppy that had been kicked and did not know why.

  “Are there a lot of rooms you guys don’t know the purpose of? Maybe I’ll recognize something, since I’m here?” She asked more to distract him, in that moment, than from curiosity, but having asked, she wondered. What possible purpose could be served on a starship so long without being in use, and still be designed for a specific task without catastrophe? What possible use could she be in any of it?

  But he brightened, very much like a puppy that had been called by name after a scolding. She could have sworn she saw ears perk. “That’s true. Do you want to see them?”

  “Of course!” It wasn’t strictly true, she was tired, and wanted to curl up and be confused and miserable in peace. But she wanted that less than she wanted to not see that frown on his face again today. She could keep up a little longer.

  But in spite of knowing she’d have to work hard to catch up, she hesitated for a second in the doorway, looking back into the cold room. Something about it nagged at her thoughts… just out of her memory…

  “Are you coming?” he called back, and she turned to run after him.

  ***

  The Ideal rumbled, sounding vaguely displeased. Raphael raised his eyebrows.

  “He hasn’t noticed that she’s flagging, yet, and it seems she is not of a personality to demand her discomfort be recognized and yielded to.”

  “And if you say something, he’ll be crushed,” Raphael said, sighing. He stood. “I’ll handle it. I’m known to be a scolding and unpleasant creature anyway.”

  “Do so,” the Ideal said, his eyes closed and his face furrowed with displeasure.

  ***

  He did show her the more useful areas as they passed through of course. The endless training chambers, filled with the smells of human sweat and hints of blood, training mats and absurd weights to lift and work with, were better measured in acres than in yards or feet, and the barracks seemed like a jungle of dun green bedding in many tiered bunk beds. She wondered if people got lost looking for their own beds sometimes. She would have.

  There was a drained swimming pool in the next room, though… apparently it had never been used as such. He didn’t know what it was either.

  “Wait, people willingly go above their heads in water? Why?”

  “Because swimming is fun and really, really good exercise?” she said, baffled. “Don’t you guys swim?”

  “They don’t, no.” A cool voice rang out, filled with authority like the crack of a whip. She blinked. Zachariah flinched again.

  She felt her hands curl into fists.

  “The Space Marines of the Extinction Program are generally too muscle dense to maintain a position at the top of the water,” the cool eyed marine told them, flicking a long braid over his shoulders. Zachariah had eyes like a sky. He had eyes like a glacier, so pale a blue it was almost a species of white. “When a mission requires they enter water, they enter with sealed helms and walk along the bottom. They can generally run along the bottom and jump or climb upwards.”

  “...Like hippos?”

  He cocked his head.

  “Hippopotamuses. They’re these massive, mostly aquatic mammals from Earth, but they can’t really swim. They hold their breath, and they run and jump but they can’t… float.” She wanted to writhe under that flat stare, but… he was making Zachariah uncomfortable. And that made her unaccountably angry.

  “… I am unfamiliar,” the stranger said, and after a moment, she recognized him, sort of. This man was the one who’d stood beside the Ideal.

  High ranking then. She… she should probably keep her mouth shut. No one liked it when an outsider intervened in their house.

  … She was so tired.

  “Your companion is tired. And you have lost track of the time,” the stranger said, to the marine who had been her guide. “You have a rest shift now, but you have not slept in some time. She will still be on the ship when you wake. Go.”

  Zachariah hung his head, and left.

  The stranger observed her, openly, for a moment. It wasn’t sexual… just… measuring.

  “Zachariah is a promising young marine,” he said finally, and tilted his head to one side. “Like most young things, he is not apt at remembering the needs of others. When you are tired, if you insist on entertaining his company, you will have to learn to say, in naked words, that you are tired and require rest, or he will run you ragged without ever intending that it be so.”

  “There are worse fates,” she said, out of irritation, but when he simply stared her down, she nodded, cowed. “I won’t let him push me too much.”

  “Good. He would be crushed if he realized that he had done so. On a similar note…” his eyes were not as intense in color or in force as the Ideal’s, but he was trying. “Your arm is bruising.”

  She looked down, grimaced, and wrapped a hand around it. Right. Now that he brought it up, it and her elbow and her knee all ached. “Oh. I fell down. Nothing to do with him.”

  He snorted. “Of course it wasn’t. Do you require medical assistance?”

  “What? It’s bruising not gunshot wounds, I’m fine.”

  “Bruising can be—”

  “I said it’s fine!” she snapped. The idea of being squirreled away into some medical anything was bad enough, but here, in this alien sterile place, around all these strange men, who did not know what a human was half the time from the way they acted… no. Damn him for even trying to press the issue.

  He blinked and took half a step back. Like she’d stunned him with the force of her anger.

  She blinked at him. “I… sorry. Look, that’s just added stress for, apparently, everyone over something that is not a big deal.”

  His lips pressed into a thin line. “If you insist. Do you require aid to find your way back to your chambers?”

  “I… probably do, sorry.”

  “Follow me,” he said, and turned on a heel. But he walked slower than Zachariah.

  “Um… Excuse me?” she said, a few minutes into their walk.

  “What?”

  “What’s your name? I know you heard mine, but—”

  He looked at her over one shoulder. “I am Raphael, of the Line of Keon. I am the Chief Medical Officer on this ship.”

  “Oh… S-sorry sir,” she managed to force out around the feeling of her throat collapsing.

  ***

  Raphael returned to his Ideal, irritated, and disgruntled.

  The Ideal was laughing.

  “You are an ass,” he told his Lord Ideal, and collapsed into a chair again. He knew not all of the prior Chief Medical Officers had been permitted similar familiarity-- the Ideal was reticent and often alarming. Sometimes he wondered about that... Wondered how many Medical Officers, in their heart of hearts, had been afraid of their Ideal.

  He had never been cruel enough to ask that.

  “You forget what she is,” the Ideal said, warm as well as amused. “Small. Female. And afraid, but not conditioned into any particular response to fear. Fear can be anger, Line of Keon.”

  That made him wonder about a few things. Keon was renowned, even now, thousands of years past anyone but the Ideals who knew him still being alive, for his aggression. The Lord Ideal sometimes told the Lines stories of their Linefathers, if he was feeling indulgent. The Lord Ideal was fond of them, after his own fashion, but he was a creature of aggression and violence, and Raphael was well certain it was not out of fear. Not for him.

  Not that you often saw it on the ship. Not that he seemed it, sitting cross legged on his own floor, smiling, a laugh still trying to worm it’s way past his lips.

  Raphael was not stupid enough to think either was an act.

  “Well at least we don’t need to worry about her getting mistreated by accident.”

  The Ideal frowned again. “Perhaps. One permits in gentleness and ignorance what one would kill for in malice.”

  “Oh, Soil Beneath, really? Ughh. What does being female have to do with it? None of the men would know why civilians come in female, it’s not as if they have an equivalent!”

  “She knows. She has not been trained out of knowing. And until she knows what manner of men we are, that knowledge will sit in her hindbrain. But. There was no malice that I saw in it. She apologized when she thought she offended you. All is well.” He shrugged. “Besides. It is… good to know she will sometimes stop acting like…”

  “Like prey?” he asked his Ideal, perhaps a little cruelly. But the Ideal was not so easily wounded as his marines.

  The Ideal half opened his eyes, and gave him a long, slow look, that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Yes, Line of Keon. It is good that she sometimes does not act like prey.”

  ***

  As soon as she was sure he was gone. Niki buried her face in her pillow and screamed, once.

  It was an incredibly large, incredibly soft bed and pillows, now that she had a moment to appreciate it. Built to their scale, not hers, like all the furnishings. The thought hit her and was gone, lost under the wave of understanding.

  The Chief Medical Officer.

  They hadn’t used his name, in the book, though they had mentioned that he was of the line of Keon.

  Line of Keon, they said of him, parting ways for him. Line of Keon. In kinship with the monster. Keon was a legend, even in their company-- one who had kept company with the Ideal in the days of his youth, and had attacked the Lord Ideal in a fit of rage. One who had lived to tell of it.

  Line of Keon, they said, when he was gone into the room off the medical bay, where marines entered and never ever left alive. Line of Keon. Bloodthirsty.

  He set bones. He mended wounds. He saved lives. But sometimes, a marine vanished into that room. Only the Chief Medical Officer and the Ideal ever entered that room, and left alive. Neither breathed a word of the marines who vanished into that chamber’s hungry maw.

  Neither ever would.

  She wondered if Zachariah was simply unhappy to disappoint, or if he was afraid.

  He should be, if he wasn’t.

  Zachariah was lost to that room too.