Ad Noctum: Brigade! (Part 2 - Ginn)

To Ginn, who had expected an ensouled vessel, the heart-torn, vacant ship was, itself, a grief.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Violence. Injuries. Torture. Abduction. Anxiety. Panic. Purposefully insensitive discussion of mental health issues. Loss of agency. Thought control. Boundary problems. Manipulation. Gaslighting. References to suicide. Drug use. Death wishes. Indirect references to sexual assault. Blood. Grief. Self harm.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: I’ve been thinking about this story so much that the ending of this chapter came to me in a dream. Love it when that happens.

Brigade! (Part 2 - Ginn)

To Ginn, who had expected an ensouled vessel, the heart-torn, vacant ship was, itself, a grief.

She huddled in the dark, missing the light of Brigadoon, its living smells, and the way the Lost House had felt, for a handful of shining days, like a family of three. But now Dale was gone and the captain was haunted and they were locked in a glass cell for the diseased.

“Ginn,” the captain said.

Ginn spoke a word of acknowledgement, but her stone throat made no sound. She wiped her face and tried again. “I’m sorry, captain.”

The captain, corpse-pale and exhausted in the dim light, said, “Let’s have a look at that door, shall we?”

Ginn leapt to her feet and offered her hand. The captain clasped her forearm and she drew him to stand, then steadied him as he shied from nothingness. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.” The captain leaned into her, eyes shut. “Terribly sorry, but I’ll need to direct my attention elsewhere for a moment; can’t be helped.”

“I understand,” Ginn said.

The captain turned to the empty air. “Back. Up.” The words trembled with suppressed rage and the same tempestuous upset he’d displayed in the gate room. And then, “I mean physically step back.” The words flaked apart, frostbitten with the sarcasm Ginn was still learning to hear. “Again. Again. Once more. Yes, well done. Now, stay the fuck over there.” The captain pressed two fingers to the space between his eyebrows, composing himself. “I know what you are.” He spoke from and to the dark. “I can detect your neuromodulatory field, its origin, the points of interface with my own EM signature, and the override you’ve put in place to keep yourself running as the entire ship goes dark. What I do not understand—” Here the captain paused, draining his anger like blood. “—Is why you would choose to appear in this particular way.”

For Ginn’s whole life she’d heard the Fire Stories of the Ak’sha. Ascended beings offering power had occupied her nighttime thoughts since girlhood.

This was different.

Her captain was uniquely susceptible to the EM signature of a computational intelligence embedded in the ship.

And it was a liar.

The captain listened, his head angled away from the glass pane that separated their cell from the central hall of the brig, as though he couldn’t bear to see what spoke to him.

Ginn tried to discern any hint of what he could be interacting with, but could sense nothing, no flicker of light, no whisper of sound. Just the dark, feeding on the captain’s underworld vitality.

At the end of the speech, he sighed, shook his head, and said, “Yes well.” He stepped toward the door, but instantly his hand snapped up, palm open. “Ah!” He said, as though to stop someone from coming closer. “Wait outside.” He pointed to the hall.

“Captain?” Ginn asked.

“Apologies, Ginn.” The captain stepped to the door of their cell and studied its lock.

Ginn stood next to him, ready to offer assistance.

“Don’t know why I expected anything special.” There was a pleased undertone to the captain’s words. When he touched the lock, the door opened.

Ginn stepped into the hall and scouted down the central corridor between glass cells. No one was in sight. All the other cells were empty. At the far end of the dim hall, a monitoring station was limned with faint light. The door to the brig was at a right angle to the monitoring station, distorted by the first glass cell. Difficult to see.

Easy to hear.

The hallway door clanked.

The captain dragged Ginn back into their open cell. Mendelssohn, also planning to explore the hall, scampered back inside ahead of their hasty retreat.

As the door to the hall opened, the door to their cell shut.

The captain brushed his hair out of his eyes and offered her the hint of a roguish smile. Then he flinched at nothing, glared furiously into the dark, and extended his hand, as though asking a ghost to back away.

Hard shoes tapped the metal deck and Ginn couldn’t help but think of Kiva. She moved between the captain and the door to the cell. She widened her stance, braced her feet, and tried to relax in the dark. Tension is the enemy of speed, Kiva had told her many times. Kill without inconveniencing yourself.

The captain stepped to her shoulder and his sideways gaze slid into Ginn like an unlooked-for knife.

The footsteps turned nearer. Slower. Beyond the glass of the door, Ginn saw a small woman with dark eyes and long black hair. She wore a Tau’ri business uniform and carried a tray with bowls and cups. The underside of the tray was alight. Ginn thought maybe she held a small flashlight, but it was hard to tell.

“Hello.” The woman’s hands shook. Her face broke from grace to fear in tiny flickers. She stopped far from the door of their cell. She swallowed. “I’m—” her voice was hard to hear. “I’m Camile Wray.”

A pulse of indignation forced words from Ginn. “Where is your protection?” she demanded. Because even Kiva would not send the lowest of servers to feed prisoners alone. It was a slight to server, to prisoner, to culture alike.

Ginn’s question seemed to make Camile Wray more unhappy. She looked down the long hall of the biocontainment unit as though the spirit of her protection might be there. But there was nothing. Instead of answering Ginn’s question, Camile said, “I brought you food.”

“Kind of you,” the captain said, smoothing over Ginn’s misstep.

“I am Ginn.” Ginn spoke softly. “This is my captain and the rightful head of the Lucian Alliance.”

“Oh.” Camile smiled bravely. “I was the head of HR on Theseus Base. I’m a member of the IOA.”

“The IOA?” Ginn looked at the captain. “She’s important.”

“Is she?” The captain didn’t sound impressed.

“Yes,” Ginn confirmed. “The IOA oversees and funds the operations of Stargate Command.”

“How do you know all that?” Camile asked. “I thought you were Lucian Alliance.”

“We are,” Ginn confirmed. “The Lucian Alliance familiarizes itself with enemy hierarchies to understand points of leverage. I don’t understand why Colonel Young would send you to us without protection.”

Camile gave Ginn a small, unhappy smile.

Mendelssohn scampered from the shadows, batting a piece of loose crystal. 

Camile gasped and lurched back. Bowls and water slid across the tray as she braced against the glass of the opposite cell.

“This is our cat.” Ginn wasn’t sure how common cats were amongst the Tau’ri. “He is a predator,” she allowed, “but he doesn’t attack humans.”

Camile’s chest rose and fell as she recovered her breath. Her expression turned from fear to charm and she breathed a sweet laugh, happy and relieved. “A cat?” She ventured closer to the glass to get a better look at Mendelssohn.

“Mraow,” said Mendelssohn, who disapproved of closed doors.

“Oh,” Camile breathed. The small smile on her face fell away. “But what will he eat?”

“Not to worry,” the captain said. “We’ve some cat food.”

Camile looked up. “Really? I heard you came through the gate with crates full of rocks and not much else.”

The captain lifted the bag of cat food so it was illuminated by the faint tracklights at the base of the glass.

Camile studied it, brow furrowed. “The Lucian Alliance uses Earth cat food?”

“Sometimes,” the captain replied.

“Does he need water?” Camile asked.

“We have running water,” Ginn pointed into the darkness at the back of the cell.

Camile nodded, turning anxious again. “I—want to give this tray to you,” she confessed. “But I don’t know how, without opening the door.”

“We won’t leave,” Ginn promised. “We won’t hurt you.”

The captain sighed, like he found the situation beneath him, which it was. “This is bloody tragic.”

“Is it?” Camile asked, not understanding.

“Everett Young is an utter disappointment,” the captain sighed and looked at Camile. “I mean, would y’not agree?”

“Well,” Camile’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think this was supposed to be his command. He was pulled from a deep cover assignment and seems—unprepared.”

“He didn’t even assign you a bloody escort,” the captain sighed.

“Disrespectful,” Ginn agreed.

“It’s more complicated than that. For now, I could trust you not to attack me?” Camile offered.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” the captain said, “it’s insulting.”

“What would you rather have?” Camile asked. “Pride or food?”

“Pride,” the captain said.

“Food,” Ginn answered at the same time. “The captain will pick up our cat, and we will stand at the back wall while you open the door.”

With a scowl, the captain scooped Mendelssohn off the floor and paced into the shadows at the back of the room. Waspishly, he asked, “Do y’really have such fuckin’ difficulty with the concept of personal space?”

Camile froze, uncertain.

“Our apologies, Camile. The captain is sensitive to a carrier wave that hosts the disembodied intelligence of this vessel,” Ginn explained. “It does not understand personal space, has poor manners, and lies.”

“Oh,” Camile said. “Okay.”

“Go ahead,” Ginn encouraged her.

With swiftness that revealed her unease, Camile tapped the door controls, crouched, slid the tray into the cell, and tapped them again.

“Don’t tell anyone we didn’t attack you.” The captain muttered as he returned Mendelssohn to the floor.

“A reputation for cooperation will help you get released sooner,” Camile advised.

Ginn came to inspect the food on the tray. It was an unappetizing gray paste. She picked up the bowl and sniffed. It smelled like dust. She held the bowl to her lips and tipped it. The paste stayed congealed and didn’t run into her mouth. She frowned, swiped a finger through the gel and licked it. It tasted like the dusty ghost of nuts. The salt-metal tang of her unwashed finger tasted better.

“It’s protein powder,” Camile explained. “Doesn’t taste like much, but it has calories in it.”

Ginn made a spoon of three fingers and scooped paste from the bowl.

“Y’can have mine,” the captain told her.

“I would eat, if I were you,” Camile said. “I’m not—I’m not sure I’ll be coming back.”

Ginn froze, her paste-covered fingers halfway to her mouth.

“The ship is headed into a star,” Camile said softly. “Not sure if you’ve heard, but—we can’t steer it. We’re all going to burn to death. Except for seventeen people, who are getting on a shuttle. There’s a lottery to pick them. I hope to be chosen.”

The captain dropped into a cross-legged seat next to Ginn, tipped his head back, and sighed, radiating irritation.

Ginn sucked paste off her fingers.

“Your name, again?” The captain asked.

“Camile,” Camile said.

“Camile,” the captain began, “y’seem a sensible sort. Might I advise not abandoning a millennia-old, semi-sentient starship to scratch out a miserable existence on a barely habitable rock?”

Camile hesitated, fear and hope and misery warring on her face. “I’m married. I have someone I care about very much. I—I don’t want to die.”

“Then don’t get on the shuttle,” the captain said.

“The captain says the ship says that it uses stars to recharge,” Ginn offered. “But,” she hesitated, honor bound to add, “the ship lies.”

Camile’s voice turned soft with pity. “Even if I’m gone, I’ll find someone to bring you dinner after the evening meal shift has ended.”

The captain projected offhand innocence. “And when will that be, exactly?”

“Six hours from now.”

“So after we’re dead, then?” The captain asked.

Camile looked into his face and Ginn thought she was digging for truth, for order, for something to believe in that wasn’t a false god or a man driven mad by the weak hold of a psychotropic drug.

“The captain is special.” Ginn opened a sistering circle of fact-based faith. “It’s why our House is Lost. You can believe him when he says we will survive the star.”

A beautiful kindness, like the turning of seasons, glowed in Camile’s face. “I can tell you’re both special.”

“Wonderful,” the captain muttered. “Find Dale Volker, then? Get him to explain things to you in a sensible way? Then tell him that if he drains more than ten percent of my naquadah generator he’ll have me to answer to.”

“Dale Volker?” Camile frowned. “That sounds like a Tau’ri name.”

“Because it bloody is,” the captain replied. “Can’t miss him. Blond hair, dressed like a Space Pirate. Will undoubtedly be trailing your miserable excuse for a colonel, making observations about thrust-to-weight ratios?”

Camile frowned. “And you—you sound British.”

“Well-spotted,” the captain replied.

“So—hang on. You’re not Lucian Alliance. You’re—”

“We are,” Ginn said firmly.

“We absolutely are.” The captain had a Faith-mad gleam in his eye. “We represent the Lost House of the Lucian Alliance, rightful heir to its storied history of meeting false gods with underground and overt resistance wherever they demand worship. You may join us, if you wish. We’re accepting applications.”

Camile paused. Then, “I’ll think about it,” she said with the painful kindness Ginn often saw in Dale when he was talking to the captain.

She didn’t believe them.

The Tau’ri had strong ideas in their heads, they thought they knew how the world should unfold, they discounted the unseen, they attacked, dismissed, and pitied what they didn’t understand.

Kiva, for all her ruthless need for control—domination of bodies, minds, thoughts at vast scales—would have listened to a man carrying Ancestral genes when he said their ship would fly through a star.

Ginn’s heart cracked with how much she didn’t want Camile to die. Camile who had come into the dark to bring them paste. “Please,” she said, “don’t get on the shuttle.”

“I’ll think about it,” Camile said. “Be safe, Ginn.” She turned to go.

As a final gambit, Ginn pressed a hand to the glass of the wall as Camile left. “I’m a lot like you.” She sang the Earth song she loved most, high and clear as Dale had taught her. “So please, hello, I’m here, I’m waiting.” The glass-filled space pooled with the melody in her voice, it resonated and built on itself, more beautiful than she’d ever sounded, even in a sandstone temple of the dawn.

Camile’s steps faltered, but didn’t stop.

The door to the brig opened and closed.

Ginn found the captain was watching her with the same brokenhearted expression other people turned on him. “I’m aware,” he said, in response to the lying ghost she couldn’t see.

They waited to ensure Camile was well-clear of the brig before leaving their cell again. The captain inventoried his pockets, collected the scattered crystal and cat food that Colonel Young had left on the floor, then opened the door.

They stepped outside the cell. This time, they sealed Mendelssohn inside.

“Mriao!” Mendelssohn’s tail ticked with disagreement.

“The captain doesn’t know if the ship is safe for cats yet,” Ginn explained.

“We’ll be back in six hours,” the captain told the cat, then turned and made for the door of the brig.

“Miao!” Mendelssohn objected.

“When it’s safe,” Ginn promised, then fell in behind her captain and matched her stride to his. She wished for her zat, for her energy weapon, for Dale’s reassuring presence. “What’s our objective?” Ginn asked, as they passed into the abandoned hall.

The captain looked into the darkness. “A window would be a start.”

~~~

The hall they traveled had a subtle arc to it. Cross-corridors intersected the long passageway. It was hard to tell whether they were moving fore or aft, starboard or port. Cutting through a cross corridor in the direction of the hall’s subtle convexity would likely take them nearer the hull.

Ginn wasn’t sure if the captain would know this or not. He hadn’t lived on ships his whole life, the way she had.

The ship was very quiet.

“Captain,” she offered, “traveling a path perpendicular to the curve of this hall may take us to the nearest section of hull.”

“What?” The captain asked, like it was difficult to pick out her voice in a sea of other sounds.

Ginn repeated herself.

“I’m sure.”

Had he understood she was directing him to a window?

No, she decided.

She was following a madman into the dead husk of a derelict ship.

Dale had tried to tell her. Colonel Young. Even Camile. 

Ginn’s eyes filled with the warm-water glaze of tears. She had expected something different. The stolen Tau’ri intelligence on Atlantis had described a silver city that could travel from water to air to vacuum. It shone and glowed, full of power, full of windows, full of metallic architectures that chimed in temperate winds. She’d read the snippets Kiva had given her hundreds of times, hoping to see it one day.

The dark blur of the tears in her eyes turned the shine of the lights at the base of the walls to a line of smear. Vision reduced to almost nothing, Ginn’s feet detected a slight slope to the hallway. Not vectored along the length they walked, but orthogonal to it.

Maybe the ship had a keel.

She wiped her eyes.

Maybe the grade of the keel was slight, and she was near the bottom. Maybe it was deep and she was high above it.

She imagined herself walking a structural rib at the base of the ship. The convex arc of the hall was fading into a long, linear stretch. It could be that a wing was behind them. Or a fin. She detected a profound care in the slope of the vessel’s well-designed arc and its barely perceptible grades.

Lost is where you wished to be, Ginn reminded herself and wiped her eyes again.

On the hull-side of the hall, a grand sweep of a cross corridor split the tracklights into a yawning maw. 

The captain stopped at its center, head angled, considering the pitch black. No emergency lights lit the room beyond.

“Let’s not,” Ginn whispered.

In the dim light, the captain’s System Lord coat thieved light from a hall in short supply. “You’ve struck me as brave to the point of idiocy from moment one.” Tau’ri sarcasm and Sixth House regard warred in his tone. “Surely you’ll not let something as prosaic as darkness stop you?”

Ginn’s fingers were tear-wet, but when the captain opened his hand to her she took it.

Together, they entered the lightless void.

Their steps turned to echo, as though they’d passed into a large room. The floor lost its slight cant. The captain tugged Ginn forward, navigating like he could see in the dark.

Maybe he could, after all Kiva had done to him.

They stopped in perfect darkness. It seeped into her ears, into her mouth, down her throat.

Ginn understood they were waiting for something to happen.

A mechanical clank vibrated through the deck. A colossal motor whirred.

Ginn clutched at the captain as the dark split to a line of blue and orange fire. He threw up an arm like he could shield her from the widening sear-line. He couldn’t. It ribboned around them on three sides, carving out two hundred and seventy degrees of an arc.

Ginn panted for air that tasted like dust and time. She was moving relative to the bright line, or vice versa. She was sinking, it was rising. The line turned to a painted streamer of flowing blue and steady orange.

It was so bright, it was so loud—

“Captain!” she shouted.

The deck sank under her leather boots. She clutched the captain’s elbow as the light-ribbon widened around them. They balanced one another as the floor shook. The captain’s feet were braced, his eyes were closed, his head angled away from the light.

Through open/closed glimpses of photobleached vision, Ginn saw the darkness retract in an arc below them, turning the blue orange to a vertiginous sea. She stood on a floating square of darkness. The ship seemed to be dissolving below her. She didn’t understand anything, except—

“The ship is opening,” she shouted over the echoing mechanical roar-whir retracting plates of metal.

Ginn felt the captain’s nod through the cling of their mutual grips, his head was turned away from the light, which was difficult because they were descending into it and it was everywhere.

The platform stopped sinking.

Ginn forced her eyes open for a pair of heartbeats. She stood on a floating dark square in a sea of streaming blue. An orange disc of light shone from one direction.

She was still breathing air. She wasn’t in vacuum. She wasn’t burning to death. Artificial gravity still held her to the platform.

Against her will, her eyes shut themselves. Her eyelids burned orange with the distant circle. There was a gray spot in her vision where its disc had been.

She turned her head away from the orange and toward the blue, then opened her eyes again. The blue was less intense. It was streaming around and away from them, bright and translucent, like smoke. Through different densities of swirling light she caught hints of depth. Of darkness. She looked down. The platform she stood on was dark metal. There was another to her left. Another to her right. Between them—clear space. Below—blue.

Her eyes shut.

The captain freed himself from her grip, and turned her a quarter turn. Behind her now, he lifted his bad arm and braced it over her shoulder.

When Ginn opened her eyes she followed the line of the captain’s arm, past his pointing fingers. Above their heads was a curve of time-tarnished silver.

Orientation arrived with a physical snap.

She stood beneath the body of the ship, looking aft. The ship fanned at its back end. She glimpsed a ribbon of brighter blue running on the other side of the fan, lining an aft crescent.

She blinked long and slow to rest her eyes. The captain took the weight of his arm off her shoulder.

When she was ready to see again she looked up, where the fan of the crescent swooped back toward her, then straightened. She squinted over her own shoulder and saw an endless prow that vanished into an orange glare.

A star.

A star ahead, and the blue glow was an active shield that protected them from stellar radiation.

Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she understood the glass around them was differentially tinted. The portions of the observation bowl facing the star let in less light than the portions that faced aft.

“Beautiful,” she breathed.

“Yes.” The shining line in the captain’s coat held the fire of the star. “Bit dramatic,” he eyed the empty air with an expression that merged disapproval and appreciation. In the warm-toned light, he didn’t look so dead.

Ginn dropped into a crouch and crept to the edge of their dark platform. It vibrated beneath her. She dragged a fingertip from the metal edge of the platform and onto a clear surface with no discernible fusion joint.

If she walked out on it, moving aft or toward the bow, she might get a view of what was below the platform she stood on.

But she didn’t want to walk onto the clear surface just yet. “What is this place?”

The captain shot the empty air an annoyed look and extended his hand, as though forcing someone back who was standing too close. He looked at Ginn, and a hint of a smile came into his expression. “A window.”

Ginn studied the graceful arc of the hull above. The ship was grand and old, in need of repair, but a wonderful Lost House. Their descent into this sea of colored emissions had been frightening, but there was welcome in it, too.

Ginn, still crouched at the edge of the platform, tucked her hair behind her ear and looked up at the captain. “Could the AI tell me things too?”

The captain looked at nothing, like he was listening. “I don’t particularly enjoy hearing that,” he muttered, clipped and annoyed. There was a long silence, then he looked down at Ginn. “You lack the genetics that would make it easy. She’ll lever herself in for an interval. Not sure how it will go, quite honestly.” The captain grimaced. “Brace yourself.”

“Lever?” Ginn asked.

A black clad feminine form appeared inches from Ginn, facing her, mirroring her position, crouched on the nothingness of the transparent floor beyond the platform. The thing was so close that Ginn’s eyes couldn’t focus on it, it was near enough to kiss. Or to bite.

Ginn shrank back.

The woman before her was a malformed, profane blend of two different people. It had her mother’s eyes. Kiva’s mouth. Her mother’s rounded shoulders hunched in Kiva’s black leather, her mother’s shining auburn hair and Kiva’s jaw, underlit with the blue flickering of the shield.

“Running motor,” the monstrosity said with her mother’s Goa’uld-accented words but Kiva’s world-devouring tone.

Ginn shrieked and hurled herself backward, crawling away.

It came after her.

Hand over hand over hand, it heaved itself onto the platform, a kind-eyed, hard-mouthed, unholy fusion of the two women who’d raised her. Ginn kicked at it, but connected with nothing.

She screamed and it echoed in the glowing, cavernous space.

The captain stepped between Ginn and the chimera.

It stopped at his feet, morphing again as a streak of blonde sprouted into its hair. A third woman grew beneath the other two, replacing them from the inside out. An eye turned blue. Bone morphed beneath skin.

Ginn trembled, hands pressed to the floor, peering at the warping face from behind the captain’s shell-stamped boot.

The captain’s voice was calm and kind when he spoke to the grotesque thing at his feet. “This is human fear.” He gestured to Ginn with an open hand.

The tripled woman looked up at him, its hair lengthening. The dark leather it wore turned to a woven fabric. She didn’t speak. She looked frightened. A tear escaped from the blue eye and ran down her cheek.

“Don’t chase,” the captain advised gently, as though speaking to a child. “And, don’t get so bloody close.”

The chimeric woman shifted back a few inches.

The captain motioned it back further. “Is that Kiva in the mix?”

“She has two mothers.” When the monster spoke, three voices came from its throat.

“I don’t!” Ginn shook, sick at the idea the thing had mistaken Kiva for a mother, sick at the idea of the captain thinking she held any regard for Kiva, who had wronged him so much. She shut her eyes and tried not to see or say anything more.

“Stop projecting to Ginn,” the captain said.

Ginn shut her eyes and trembled on the floor. 

It wasn’t really a monster; it wasn’t a curse laid by a dead god. It was a hungry, confused intelligence haunting her new home, inhabiting an EM band that only the captain could see.

It was still here. It was always here.

The captain grasped her upper arm and tugged.

Ginn opened her eyes to an empty platform floating on an orange-blue sea of light. Slowly, she stood and lifted her gaze to the captain’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she breathed.

“My working model,” the captain said, “is that the AI, like the ship itself, has taken damage. Some of that may be reparable.”

“I don’t have two mothers,” Ginn told him.

The captain searched her face, backed by a corona of starlight. “Of course not.” He turned to the starboard side of their platform where a narrow ladder led to a walkway above and started to climb.

Ginn followed, trying to shake the primal fear the blended woman had triggered.

They ascended onto a catwalk that was a perfect match for the space beneath the platforms. The dark cavern they’d walked into blind was now illuminated from below, its floor broken into a three-part cut-out. A dead monitoring station gleamed with the orange underglow of the star.

The captain grazed his fingertips over the rims of dead screens that quickened to life as he touched them. “You speak Ancient?”

“Yes, captain.” Ginn waited until he had chosen a station, then positioned herself at the nearest screen and studied it. She saw the schematics of a three-part device.

A trio of ramscoops.

She recognized the design—the scoop field, the funnel, the feed—but she was instantly confused. Collected particles weren’t funneled into a fusion engine. They were mined for energy that distributed into a much larger power system. Traditional ramscoops had large surface areas and operated at high velocity—designed to catch sparse hydrogen atoms at speed. These scoops were small and overbuilt. Their triangular openings were reinforced with naquadah spars and lined with heat dispersal systems that would be robust at stellar temperatures.

“Captain,” Ginn said crisply, hoping to make up for her failure with the AI, “I believe ramscoop-inspired solar collectors have lowered for our stellar approach. Based on the design, I think we’ll penetrate the photosphere.”

“Yes well, that’ll be a thing t’fuckin’ see, I’m sure.” The captain climbed from local menus into the ship’s deeper systems.

Ginn crawled the data from the ramscoops they’d ridden into the observation bowl that glowed below. “They’re called ‘solar collectors’,” she murmured. “They don’t usually descend so early. Did the—” She paused. “Did our presence cause premature descent?”

“I expect so.” The captain hooked a hand over his shoulder and pressed crypt-tipped fingers into his gunshot wound. “Given I sincerely doubt the capacities of Colonel Young’s personnel, I’d love t’lock down the shuttle’s docking clamps before they can launch the bloody thing—” The captain flinched, steadied himself, and extended a hand, reminding the damaged AI not to stand so close to him.

Ginn felt a flash of respect at how little he reacted to inches-away interjections. She wondered who the blonde woman was, and whether she, also, was more than one person. The captain didn’t like seeing her.

He pressed two fingers to the space between his eyebrows. “That’s extremely irritating,” he breathed.

“What is?” Ginn asked.

“We’re locked out of most systems,” he said. “We’ve got read-only access to a fraction of the database.”

“Because of the damage to the ship and its systems?” Ginn asked.

The captain looked into nothingness, his eyes narrowed. “Maybe,” he decided.

Ginn returned to studying the screen under her fingertips, trying to climb out of the monitoring menus to find the rest of the systems. Their limits. She found a schematic of the ship, its long bow, its aft fan with a CQL drive sculpted into a convex arc that would result in misaligned thrust vectors, a thin rim of labs positioned above and behind the drive, a central tower mounted on the back of the fan with unlabeled levels, the long thrust toward the bow, cross-corridors lined with unlabeled rooms, and—

“I found its name,” Ginn said. “The ship is called Sortes.”

The captain quirked a brow at her. “And how would you translate that?”

“Thrown stone.” Ginn frowned. “Cast lot. But the root word contains the idea of ‘binding’ or even ‘jointed’. The Goa’uld have been known to throw finger bones to see the future. So: a divination bone, already thrown.”

“Ginn.” The captain reseated his glasses. “High informational content, abysmal aesthetics. Try again.”

“Omen?”

“Better.” The captain returned his attention to the monitors. “But it’s Destiny.”

~~~

For two hunching hours they pored over electronic systems that were locked down and cyphered shut, stitched with a code so complicated that the captain wasn’t even certain of its basis. Given all she knew of the captain’s code-breaking prowess from conversations at Kiva’s dinner table, this struck Ginn as unlikely and mystical and worrying.

Her mind swung from hope to despair, confidence to fear in wild arcs. It was a challenge to sit sedately beside the captain, trying to find the ship’s shuttle in layers of systems that were mostly blind. The captain flinched so frequently that after the first hour he spent stretches navigating the screen one-handed while holding the other at arm’s length.

She tried to forget the face of the AI but it came into her mind over and over again.

She was terrified that she would never remember her mother alone, Kiva alone, only the fused form they made, grotesque and lovely.

Ginn found the shuttle, just in time to see it launch.

“Oh no.” Ginn thought of Camile, hoped she wasn’t aboard.

The captain’s screen changed, plotting the arc of the shuttle, heading toward a rocky world. He sighed and shook his head. “Don’t suppose you can do anything about this?” he asked the AI. After a few seconds he rolled his eyes. “Yes well.”

“It said no?” Ginn asked, her voice small.

“It said no,” the captain confirmed. “I admit I am curious as to whether Dr. Volker will be capable of saving the fuckin’ day,” he said. “Orbital mechanics should be a strength of his.”

“But he won’t be able to alter Destiny’s course.” Ginn shifted her attention to the navigation subsystems.

“No,” the captain agreed. “Nor do I think Dr. Volker is capable of interfacing a naquadah generator with this ship, given the lockout protocols we’ve run up against.”

Ginn was privately concerned that Dale and Colonel Young might think donating a naquadah generator to a shuttle full of people trying to survive on an alien world would be a good idea. “If we could get a message to Dale,” she suggested, “we could tell him about the solar collectors. Maybe then, they’d have enough evidence to recall the shuttle before stellar entry. It’s still near enough that it could chase us down the gravity well.”

“A good thought, bit tough to sell as a rescue, though,” the captain said dryly.

“Do you know where Dale is?” Ginn asked.

He tipped his head up and angled his face toward the aft of the ship. “He’s that way. In the central tower. Above the gate.” The captain blinked slowly, and his voice took on a dreamy quality. “Proximate to a moderate quantity of unpowered crystal. Difficult to pinpoint; the walls are packed with it.”

“Could we message him? Just him? Could you power a console remotely?”

The captain suppressed a flinch and pushed the empty air away. He paused, shot the space at the end of his hand an incredulous, betrayed look, and turned back to his console, angled toward Ginn, as though he were still getting an earful from something he didn’t want to look at. “Y’can fuck right off with that idea,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” Ginn whispered.

“Not you,” the captain said. “If you can find an open comms protocol I’d be willing to try.”

Ginn paged through communications submenus, but none took her input. “What if I go to find Dale?” she suggested. “The ship is dark. I can move quietly. Even if they catch me, maybe they’ll listen.”

“Is it not clear to you that they’re categorically incapable of that?” The captain stood, paced away from the monitor bank, and looked through the tinted windows at the approaching star. Orange light gleamed in the metallic thread running through his dark coat. Already, Ginn thought, he looked to be an extension of the dark and tarnished vessel. “We don’t share reference frames.”

“Why did you let Dale go with Colonel Young, then?” Ginn demanded. “He should be here. With us. In our frame. You should show him the AI. And everything you can do. You should show everyone. If you did, they’d follow you.”

The captain smiled, small and charmed, his pallor gone to the light of the coming star.

The monitors died under Ginn’s hands.

Ginn got to her feet and joined the captain near the ribbon of window at the top of their catwalk. Through the glass, the three-dimensional curve of the star took on structure. Flaming wisps of corona fanned from the photosphere.

“If the shuttle is retrievable,” the captain said, “I believe Dr. Volker will do his best to retrieve it.”

Ginn nodded reluctantly.

“In the meantime,” the captain continued, “we’ve a few hours before we’ll need to be seen again in the brig, which means we can make our start.”

“What start?” Ginn asked.

The captain pulled a chip of pale crystal from his sleeve. It was impossible to say its true color in the bronze light of the star. “Repair and reclamation. That, and I wouldn’t mind finding the showers. The captain’s quarters. A 3D printer. Cat food. Repair drones. The shield generators. The drive.”

Hope swelled in Ginn’s chest. “Best to start here,” she said. “The solar collectors are about to handle massive amounts of charge.”

“Practical. I approve.” The captain handed her the flake of pale crystal, then crossed to the console where they’d been working and dropped into a crouch. He pried a fingernail beneath a waiting catch, and the panel fell into his hands, revealing small crystals in a sea of dark circuitry.

Ginn knelt beside him, cupping the tiny shard in her hands like a spark that needed protection from shifting air.

The captain touched the dark wires and scores of tiny crystals lit up. All but one. The same size and color as the chip in her open palm.

“I’ve isolated it,” the captain said, eyes closed, fingertips in naked contact with running electronics. A patch of crystal around the point of damage went dark. “Swap it out.”

Ginn plucked the spent crystal from the dark patch in the grid and eased the new one into its place. The grid lit up, whole and glowing. She ran a gentle fingertip over the first crystal to find its way home.

The captain opened lambent harvest eyes and lifted his hands away from the console. He studied the repaired array, his expression distant, as though lost in dreams. Kneeling with him in the copper light, Ginn let the reverential silence stretch.

The moment broke as the captain winced away from nothing and unbalanced into Ginn, who in turn fell out of her crouch. “For fuck’s sake,” he gasped at the nothingness beside the panel. “Stop that.”

They righted themselves.

“None of your bloody business,” the captain told the AI.

They worked that way for hours, until the photosphere of the star licked the tinted windows in showery slipstreams. When they had repaired and upgraded the console, Ginn helped the captain to his feet. He leaned into her, fatigued after all he’d done and powered. Ginn led him back to the ladder they’d climbed, and they descended again onto the top of the central solar collector, sitting in the fishbowl observation deck as the wisping streamers from the star turned brighter and thicker.

Ginn surveyed the view again from the top of the collector. The blue of the shield emissions was barely visible now, washed out by the overwhelming tangerine of the star’s photosphere. The captain sat on the deck, looked up at the curve of the ship, then lay flat on his back, looking up at the tarnished arc of the ship through heavy-lidded eyes.

Ginn stood beside him, guarding his repose, alert for the hum of any imbalance in the ramscoop below her feet.

The plasma turned to a seething sea of orange shine, sliding around and into the solar collectors. Below the ship and to port, Ginn saw the boiling tops of colossal currents that defined the star’s convection zone. She wished Dale were here to tell them more about it—what its temperature was, and the elements inside it, whether they were ionized.

At her feet, the captain looked up at the photosphere, like grand rivers of fire were the most reassuring thing he could imagine.

When he fell asleep, Ginn stood watch as the lost ship of the Lost House sailed a red-orange sea, collecting the crests of waves. Off the port bow, a titanic plasma arch rose from the stellar surface, building along invisible architectures of magnetic flux.

The only sound in the glass observation bowl was the soft hum of the solar collectors, more vibration than noise.

She considered the captain, who looked more asleep than dead in the copper light. “This is a good ship for you,” she told him. “It sails through fire.”

Something flickered in her peripheral vision.

Ginn shied down into a defensive crouch, one hand up, one hand hovering over the captain’s chest.

The air thinned. She had to breathe fast and hard to get what she needed.

She held out her hand in the direction she’d seen the flicker. “Stay back,” she told it.

Ginn crouched over her captain as Destiny sailed the churning heart of a stellar engine, but the AI did not appear again.