Reiko drifted, suspended, weightless, in the endless sea between sleep and dreams.

The universe was strange.

Why had it decided to become as it had? Why was she where she was, witness to such beautiful and terrible things, instead of quietly tending house somewhere with two children as her mother had?

What conspiracy of fate leads one so far from home?

Reiko drifted, suspended, accompanied by the dull, hollow pain at the back of her mind, trying not to wonder when it would not be so dull anymore.



She awoke, eyes fluttering in the dim red light, and with a deep breath, she started her morning.

Toes. Feet. Legs lift. Knees bend.

Fingers. Hands bunch up. Wrists—

...Left is stiff today.

Elbows bend, still a little less on the left. Shoulders roll, and the difference goes away.

Head turns, raises and lowers, and then Reiko sits upright, rubbing her left wrist, wrapping it in the heat of her other hand as she works it around.

It doesn't get better.



A rushing hiss and the shock of heat as water hits her skin, and she dips her head under the rushing flow, drowning her anxiety.

It just is, she thinks to herself. It's happened before, it'll go away just the same.

...Probably.

She inhales deeply, taking the steam heat into herself, willing away the morning cold—

She's on the floor, the world around her screaming in straining steel, and her back presses hard against the shower wall with the force of a dead stop.

She sits there for a moment, water washing down over her legs, hair stuck to her face, and she takes deep breaths, and listens.

...No breach alarms, she thinks, as her breath releases. We didn't hit anything, at least.

She picks herself up, pulls back her hair, and reaches for the soap dispenser with a practiced haste.

Duty has now banished the wistful morning.

---

Reiko steps onto the bridge, one hand gently flexing as the other fusses with an uncooperative cuff.

"Alright. What did you do to break my ship?" She asks, as she strides to the command deck, and comes to stop over the shoulder of the pilot.

"I didn't do anything to break our ship, thank you," he replies, as he looks down on the engineering station, fingers tapping in quick commands. "Warp drive scrammed when we hit a gravity well."

"And just which gravity well was that?" she asks, peering at the displays. "Where are we, anyway?"

"About forty light years shy of Rigel. And good question, isn't it," he says, pointing at one read in particular. "So far as I can tell, we're in a...mass shadow? Something is projecting a graviton field that registers as a well to the warp safeties, but the actual force present measures about point zero zero two g."

"Seems awfully weak for any kind of star," Reiko notes, looking at some of the other displays.

"Uh huh. Not the only thing, either. Radiation output is almost zero, heat emissions are flat. It's also about the size of Saturn. The only really stellar thing about it is the luminosity."

"So...what is it, Jack?"

He taps a few buttons, and points to the forward viewer.

"It's...that."

She turns, and takes it in.

For something only the size of Saturn, it still manages to look pretty big.

Golden-white currents of liquid fire whirl and churn, swirling and spinning across the surface fast enough to see with the naked eye, a dizzying mass of motion tracing spiral lines up and down to twin poles marked by massive geyser-pillars of fire blasting out into the dark of space.

"It sure seems to be doing its best to try to be a star."

"It is at that," Jack says. "But there's also the small issue of it only being four hundred years old."

"So this is our 'mystery star', then," she says, staring out at the mass of fire and light.

"This is the thing that popped into Orion in 2061, yes."

Reiko turns back to look at him, tilting her head with a clever smile.

"So now you're going to tell me it's artificial, right?"

"Wha—but—I was saving that part," he says, grumbling childishly and sighing. "Yes, it's artificial, some kind of sustained plasma storm. You saw the rotational analysis display and didn't say anything, didn't you."

"Yep," she says, with a smug smile. "Convection is far too precisely maintained for a natural process. Though to be fair, the sum lack of radiation and heat output also point to a compositional purity and containment system infinitely too unlikely to be natural. If I were to guess...helium-3 fusion sheath?"

He leans against the console, throwing his hands up in defeat.

"Sometimes, Rei, you're just no fun. I try to bring a little mystery, a little wonder into your life, and this is what I get."

"I get plenty of mystery wondering how I ended up with you in the first place, thank you," she says, prodding him out of his mock-pout.

"Well," he says in a huff, "that's just unpleasant. And you used to be such a nice girl."

"No I didn't," she counters, brow perked curiously. "I've always been snide and cheeky. But tell you what: how about I pretend to be sorry, we go get breakfast, and you can tell me about this last thing you've been keeping secret the whole time?"

"I'm that transparent, am I," he says, sighing. "Alright. I could do for some coffee."

---

Jack and Reiko sit down with their coffee.

They sip at it silently for a moment, just enjoying the peace and quiet and low hum of the fusion reactors sixty feet below and aft of the crew's mess, their only other company.

Reiko reaches her hand out and picks up a crumbly butter biscuit, nibbling delicately.

"We didn't find this by accident," Jack finally says, snapping the tension.

"Background noise?" She asks between bites.

"...Yeah," he says heavily, cupping his coffee mug in his hands, grounding himself in the hot ceramic. "Last night, after you'd gone to sleep, we got close enough to pick up signal strength, separate it out. It was a radio beacon, coming from here."

"I wondered why you never came to bed," she says with a coy smile.

"Reiko," he says, staring hard at her. "We're a million kilometers away from an artificial star. We got here following a radio beacon. You're not just...blanking on this, are you?"

"We've found physical proof we aren't alone in the universe," she replies, shrugging. "...Or the galaxy—the local cluster, even. Yes, Jack, I understand that. It just doesn't surprise me. I've always expected it—I just wondered if I'd see it in my own lifetime."

"So you just...sit there eating a biscuit, as we confirm intelligent alien life only a few months warp away from mankind?"

"Pretty much," she says, finishing the last of her biscuit.

"And what about you, Jack?" She continues, after a silent moment. "I was your idea to come here looking for this mystery star in the first place. We've found it, and a revelation for the species besides. You're not...frightened, are you? That would be rather out of character for you."

He shakes his head, staring down at his coffee.

"I'm just...I don't know. I guess maybe I should have thought of this possibility? But...I expected to find something, but not proof of intelligent life. I'm a soldier, Rei, not an explorer. I'm a bit out of my depth."

"I'm a soldier too, Jack," she says softly. "But that doesn't mean we can't find the wonder in a moment like this, same as anyone else."

He sighs, and raises his eyes to her.

"I'm not very good at finding wonder anymore," he starts, and then he pauses, and his expression turns concerned. "...Does it hurt today?"

Reiko blinks a few times, confused, and pulls away the hand that's unconsciously been rubbing at the back of her neck.

"...No," she says, staring at the table. "Not any more than it always does."

The wheels are turning now, though, and Jack's gaze goes to her hand resting on the table, the one that's not been doing much this morning.

"It's just a little stiff, that's all. It happens," she says, before he can ask.

"Reiko—"

"Just...don't, okay?"

"Should've seen someone before we left," Jack says quietly.

"And for what?" She asks, eyes narrow. "So someone in a white coat could feign sympathy? 'So sorry, turns out your experimental neural interface wasn't designed so well, seems your spine is filling with plaque'?"

The sharpness of her voice fades as the low hum of the fusion plant fills the room.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Jack says quietly, "and I'm sorry. But I can't just not see it."

"...I know. You don't have to apologize for worrying about me, but..."

She reaches across the table, and takes his hands with hers.

"Jack, one day I'm going to wake up and not be able to walk. One day I'm going to wake up and not be able to move at all. Or even be able to speak. Or maybe all of those, if it decides to just skip to the end. It could be in ten, twenty years, or it could be next week. But it's going to happen eventually, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. There's a reason they chose young, patriotic fools for the program, you know."

He squeezes her hands, and looks up at her, weary.

"What do I do, Rei?"

She smiles, gentle and sincere.

"Well, we're out on the edge of the unknown, aren't we? On the very cusp of finding intelligent, advanced alien life. And it's inside that plasma storm, right?"

"...Yeah," he says weakly, then clearing the lump from his throat. "Yeah, there's something in there, alright."

"Well then, Jack? Let's go in and get it. You know, take me somewhere special."

"Take a ship out the furthest mankind's ever flown, and then dive into a Saturn-sized plasma storm chasing one of its most ancient questions?"

He laughed, and nodded to her.

"Yeah, I think we can make a date out of that."

---

"So what do you think? Does it bring out my figure?"

Jack chuckles, and shakes his head.

"I'm afraid it doesn't quite flatter you as much as you deserve."

"Hrm. Pity," Reiko says, looking down at her herself. "There really ought to be an envirosuit that's built for aesthetic appeal. Really, a pair set that combine at the hips wouldn't be a bad idea either..."

"Zero gravity tends to disagree with that sort of complex motion, honey."

"Oh, shush. Now which of us is no fun?" She says, taking her seat in the second helm chair, and straps in.

"SONA, online," Jack says, and a little ten-inch high holographic woman appears above his helm console.

"Starship Operation and Navigation Assistant online," it says in a flat, mildly digitized voice. "Please state command."

"Ship's readiness report, please," he says, and the hologram shifts weight on its feet, resting its head on its hand as it 'thinks'.

"SFV Wonders in Starlight, registry pennant four two zero zero seven, readiness status as follows: power systems, green; life support, green; sensor systems, green; sublight engines, green; warp drive, status yellow: system offline per executive order; hull integrity systems, green; shield systems, status yellow: system modified per executive order; primary weapon systems, status yellow: missile munitions level at thirty nine percent; secondary weapons, status yellow; system offline per executive order. Ship's readiness reports as: conditional green."

"...Warp drive offline?" Reiko asks. "Slaved the capacitors to the shields, I'm guessing?"

"It's only an extra six percent," he replies, nodding, "but the energy wasn't doing anything otherwise. Secondary weapons was mostly to avoid them blowing up while tied in."

"You're expecting this to be a rough ride, then," she says.

"...Well," he responds, checking over the engineering monitor brought up on his station, "sensors can't see beyond the top layer there, but those plasma currents are pulling nineteen thousand kilometers per hour. Surface temperature is only forty seven hundred kelvin, at least. As long as it isn't half the radius deep, we should be okay."

"And if it is half the radius deep?" She asks, eying him.

He looks over at her, and smiles.

"Then the shields buckle, and the ship probably rips apart. Can't say I never took you someplace exciting."

Reiko giggles, and reaches for her suit helmet.

"Edge of the explored universe, basically diving into a star, reasonable chance of death? Why, I'm positively enchanted."

"Great! Because at the speed we're going into this thing, there's no way to turn around once we hit it."

He punches in the approach vector, and his finger pauses over the button.

"...Rei," he says, a little hesitant. "This...we do want to do this, right?"

He feels a hand on his shoulder, and turns to see her looking over at him through a secured helmet visor.

"Sense of wonder, Jack," she says, a crackle of electronic static from the suit speaker.

"...Right. Just checking."

He taps the button, and the ship shudders as the engines flare up and build for maximum burn.

"SONA, confirm course plot," he says, reaching for his helmet.

"Course plot as follows: sublight engines maintain maximum power for two hundred and twelve seconds; port side engines shut down, starboard engines reduce to two-thirds power; warning – plot indicates intersection with celestial object at three hundred thirty two seconds."

"Working as intended, SONA. Continue plot, please."

"Intersection with celestial object at origin-relative azimuth seventeen degrees, altitude nine degrees; note projected velocity as superior to local angular momentum by five point three percent. Intersection plus five seconds, starboard engines increase to maximum power; plot continues two thousand, eight hundred, fifty seconds; absent object-internal data, plot concludes at one-half radius interior of celestial object. Warning: current plot estimates destruction of vessel at one hundred percent. Command authority required to enable course plot."

"Command code zebra, oscar, echo, zero zero two, authorize Jackson Aubrey Valentine, commander-in-chief, Sunwings Fleet company, password 'Gehenna'."

"Command authority recognized. Notice: exigent threat. Secondary confirmation required to enable course plot."

"Command code india, charlie, sierra, six eight eight, authorize Reiko Asanari, admiral, Sunwings Fleet company, password 'Izanami'."

"Secondary confirmation recognized. Safeties released; course plot enabled. Confirm plot?"

"Confirm plot," Jack says, sealing his helmet on, and the two are pressed back in their seats as the engines blast out two-million degree helium.



"Collision advisory: intersection with celestial object in twenty seconds."

"Nice that she's so prompt with those," Reiko notes, starting to feel a little tense only now that they're two minutes past abort.

"Isn't it though. Raising shields," Jack replies, and there's a tingling sensation across her skin as the ship is surrounded by a four terawatt protective shell.

Plus six percent, she reminds herself.

The ship shakes a little.

"Hitting the magnetic shell. Contact in—"

"Intersection in five...four...three...two...one."

There's a dull whump, like a hand slapping water, and the slightest feeling of being pulled to the left.

"And we're in. Starboard engines to full."

"Starboard engines to maximum power. Notice: external temperatures exceeding hull tolerance. Please take care to maintain shields."

"Oh that's really helpful advice just now," Reiko hears herself say, surprised at how much her voice cracks.

"...You okay over there?" Jack asks, glancing over to find her gripping her chair.

"Yes! Yes. I'm okay. I'm just...finding it a little tense diving into a star without the distraction of being the one flying."

"Strictly speaking, this was your idea—"

There's a fwoosh, and the turbulence drops to nothing.

"...The hell? That can't have been all of it," he says, poring over his display. "That was only five hundred kilometers."

"Well, if it's supposed to be a star..." Reiko ponders, "...then this would be the tachocline?"

"Huh. Fair idea, that," Jack notes, and then the world explodes.



"...yond tolerances. Warning: external temperatures one point two million degrees. Hull stress beyond tolerances. Warning: external tempe—"

"Thank you, SONA, I heard you!" Jack yells over the alarms, trying to get his bearings. "How long since we impacted this layer?"

"Turbulence increase of seven thousand eight hundred six percent noted twenty four seconds prior this instance," SONA calmly replies. "Warning: external tempera—"

"Yes, I know! Rei, you alright?"

He looks over, and sees her slumped over in her seat harness.

"Rei? REI!"

"...I'm here," she says quietly, head spinning, and she manages to weakly wave her hand. "Just...give me a minute."

"Warning: shield strength below fifty percent. Rate of decay exceeds recommended threshold by factor of six."

"I hate to break it to you, but you may not have a minute. Our plasma storm has a radiative zone."

"Warning: external temperatures one point five million degrees. Hull stress beyond tolerances."

"SONA, extrapolate temperature curve and shield drain."

"External temperature rising approximately forty thousand degrees per second. Given trend, estimate: you will die in twenty one seconds."

"Well shit, Reiko," Jack says, laughing grimly. "I could have given you twenty seconds of excitement in a lot less deadly ways than this."

"Warning: external temperatures one point eight million degrees. Hull stress—"

"Beyond tolerances, I KNOW dammit!"

A shrill siren wails across the bridge, as shields drop below twenty percent.

"Warning: shield failure imminent. All personnel ready to escape positions."

"Somehow, SONA, I don't think that's so helpful here," Jack says bitterly, watching a heavy cruiser's combat shield batteries drain in a matter of seconds.

"It's gonna get warm in here in a second, Rei," he says, punching a few buttons on his console. "Let's just hope this only goes on another few hundred."

He taps the final button, and there's a loud rushing as the atmosphere empties from the bridge.

"SONA, vent the ship's atmosphere via starboard outlets only." The radio crackles, and there's the slightest feeling of pushing left as the compressed atmosphere of a hundred-twenty thousand ton cruiser blows out the right side.

Jack taps a few more buttons, and a klaxon blares, locking down the ship's emergency bulkheads, which then pop-pop as the deadbolts fire to seal them.

For better or worse, they were now sealed into the bridge behind three feet of ceramic-composite armor plating on every side.

And then the shields gave out.

A deafening WHOOM beats against Reiko's environsuit as the entire outer layer of the ship is crushed in, fusion plasma rushing to fill the former shield bubble.

"Warning: catastrophic damage has been detected. Shields offline; sublight engines offline; primary weapons offline; secondary weapons offline. Warning: damage is proceeding. Hull temperatures exceeding melt threshold."

"Warning: hull breach, deck three, port fore."

"Warning: hull breach, decks four and five, starboard midships."

"Warning: hull breach, deck seven, ventral midships."

"Warning: fusion core breach. Repeat: fusion core br—"

And then it all went dark.

And it was quiet.

------------------------------------------------

Reiko drifted, suspended, weightless, in the endless sea between life and death.

The universe was frightening.

Why had it decided to become as it had? Why had she been where she was, witness to such beautiful and terrible things, instead of quietly tending house somewhere with two children as her mother had?

What conspiracy of fate leads one to die so far from home?

Reiko drifted, suspended, absent the dull, hollow pain at the back of her mind, trying not to wonder if she would wake up to feel it ever again.

------------------------------------------------

She awoke, eyes fluttering in the blackness, and with a deep breath, she started her morning.

Toes...constrained. Feet are stiff. Legs slow, languid. Knees bend...and make her head spin.

Fingers stiff. Hands can't bunch up. Wrists...barely move at all.

Elbows bend, slowly. Shoulders won't roll.

...But her head turns. Raises and—

Tunk, as her forehead taps the helmet shell.

She remembers, and her rising panic bleeds away as she realizes all that stiffness and lack of motion is just being in a bulky envirosuit, and her head was spinning because the motion literally made it spin.

Well, there's no gravity, she thinks to herself, so I guess I'm still alive to notice.

"...Jack?"

"...Reiko? You're okay?"

"Well, I've got a bit of a headache, but otherwise..." she says, trying for a bit of cheer.

"I'm so sorry."

"For what? It was my idea to dive the ship into a goddamn sun, remember?"

Jack laughs over the radio, but she can hear the pain in it.

"So many things. The way we met. How I treated you back then... That I could never give you the live you deserve. That I dragged you out here to the end of the damn universe because I wanted to run away instead of accept what happened. Christ, being on the edge of death makes me whine, doesn't it."

Reiko laughs lightly into the radio, trying to stay cheerful, silently cursing how she can't follow its sound to him.

"...Well we aren't dead yet," she says. "And if the ship hasn't melted by now, then that means we have to have made it through."

"For all the good that does us. I sealed us in, Rei," Jack says, resigned. "Didn't even think until after that we had no way out, and no rescue crew is coming to cut its way in. Who would've thought? We actually, somehow, dive through a solar plasma storm, only for me to lock us in a tomb with a rookie mistake. Not really the rousing conclusion to my epic life story that I'd hoped for."

Reiko doesn't quite know what to say to that.

Clang.

So she floats, and listens.

...Ka-thunk.

"Now this may just be the onset of space dementia," she says cautiously, "but that sounds like a tow clamp."

"...It can't be," Jack whispers. "It just...can't actually be."

"Oof," Reiko grunts, as she bumps into the side of the bridge.

Or, rather, as the side of the bridge bumps into her.

"...We're moving, Jack," she says, doing some sloppy math in her head. "And not all that slowly, given how hard I just bumped the wall."

He doesn't respond.

"Jack? You okay over...wherever?"

"...Not exactly," he eventually says, his voice shaky. "I mean, I'm just thinking out loud here, but...there's about zero way in hell that any human is towing us right now."

"That's right, Jack. Whoever built this...sun-sphere, sent the radio beacon you found last night—"

"Is now towing us in. Rescuing us—we hope."

"...Well," she starts, turning over a few words in her head for care, "that's the ideal, certainly, yes. Let's just see if they cut us out of here, and go from there, okay?"

"Right. We're just...engaging an unknown disposition," he replies, picking up a little confidence. "Yeah, I can do that."

The radio goes quiet, just the sound of them breathing in the dark.



Screeeech ker-WHUMP.

"...How long's it been?" Reiko asks.

"I have no idea, actually. Ten minutes, maybe? Or twenty? Hell, could've been an hour."

"Well...however long, I think we're he—"

------------------------------------------------

"Ow," Reiko says, picking herself up off the metal floor. "You might have warned us there was going to be a sudden drop."

"Lamentations, Imperator," chimes a distant, echoing voice. "Rather—indexing—apologies. Our translocation device was inoperant for a period of two hundred and six 'years', as you know them, and it appears to have fallen point three percent out of alignment. Correcting."

"I'm sorry," she says, curious. "Did you say 'Imperator'?"

"That is correct, Imperator," the chiming replies. "Is this appellation an incorrect translation? I have as yet not completed full indexing of your 'SONA' construct and attendant records. As well, an advisory: this area has completed conversion of atmosphere pursuant to recommended composition and pressure suggested in your records. For confirmation: twenty one percent 'oxygen', seventy eight percent 'nitrogen', one percent 'argon', to pressure of one hundred and one thousand 'pascals'. Such intriguing appellations."

"So we can remove our helmets, then," she asks. "Is this environment sterile in regard to viruses and bacteria? It'd be a shame to come all the way only to contract some new and unfortunate disease."

"This entire facility has been confirmed biologically inert for three hundred and seventy two years, eight months, six days, plus or minus ten hours. Infectious agents are non-present."

Reiko pops her helmet seal with a click-hisssss, pulling it off, and shaking her hair free.

"Lovely. Jack?" She says, stepping over to him sitting on the floor in his suit. "You alright in there?"

"...Fine. Ish. Just...processing all this. Just give me a minute."

"Alrighty. Now then."

She turns, looking off in the distance to the side of the...hangar? Salvage hold? Repair bay?

Now that I think about it, actually...

She turns back, and looks up from Jack sitting on the floor, and about twenty feet away sits the mangled, melted hulk of Wonders in Starlight.

It sure as hell wasn't under a hundred meters this morning.

She shivers a little, pointedly not mathing out the pressures involved in what she sees, and turns back the other way, toward the distant wall that looks like it has doors on it.

"...Now then, who exactly was I speaking with?"

A small blue light flits into view from the distant wall, winding its way over, quickly coming to rest in the air a few feet from her eyes.

"My apologies, Imperator. I have not entertained guests in...in point of fact, ever. This facility was never visited after formal activation. But I digress! I am designated Warden of the Lost, Imperator. I bid you welcome to the Solar Forge."

"Lovely. And why do you call me Imperator?"

"...Because you are Imperator. You are the heir."

Reiko blinked.

"Oh."