Isa Lain
Isa Lain is the chief engineer of the ark ship Gilgamesh and a member of its Key Crew. She is woken when the ship needs her skills. She first appears after the ship has travelled 1,837 years from Earth. She has been awake for nine days when she wakes Holsten Mason and tells him she has checked the ship and its human cargo.
Appearance
When Holsten first sees her, Lain has hair cropped close and a hard, lined face with a bony chin and cheekbones. Years later, her hair has grown long and grey, and she ties it in a severe bun. The years she spends awake while Holsten sleeps leave her face marked by hardship. In old age she is frail and hunched, with an almost bald scalp mottled by liver spots. She uses a metal stick to walk. Her shipsuit is worn and patched, and the remains of another suit hang over her shoulders.
Work aboard the Gilgamesh
Lain oversees the ship’s engineering and maintains its systems during the long voyage. As the Gilgamesh approaches a star, she monitors its systems and helps Holsten investigate the satellite signals. She discovers that the satellite is sending a second signal to the planet. When the satellite attacks the ship’s drones, she investigates the signal and confirms that it destroyed one of them. During the orbit around Kern’s World, she reports that the Gilgamesh cannot change course enough to avoid the planet.
When Vrie Guyen orders a colony built on a cold moon, Lain prepares a base module and explains that its automated systems will take decades to make the settlement usable. Later, she and her engineers investigate an abandoned terraforming station and restore parts of it. She helps adapt technology from the station for the Gilgamesh. She is wary of Guyen’s secret work on an upload project and believes it could damage the ship’s systems.
The mutiny and Guyen’s plan
Lain and Holsten are captured during a mutiny by colonists who refuse to settle on the moon. The rebels hold Lain because they need her engineering knowledge. She tells Holsten that she warned the colonists that a dangerous satellite protected the green planet, but that her information helped them consider taking a shuttle there. When Scoles’s followers decide to kill her, Holsten argues that they need her to operate the shuttle. Lain later helps isolate its systems from the satellite. The shuttle crashes on the planet, where giant ants attack the survivors. Lain escapes with Holsten and returns to the Gilgamesh with Karst’s security team.
Later, Lain learns that Guyen has raised a cult among descendants born aboard the ship and has been testing an attempt to upload his mind into the Gilgamesh’s computer. She believes the process will endanger the ship and its people. She joins Holsten, security chief Lem Karst and scientist Renas Vitas in opposing Guyen. During his attempted upload, Lain shoots him and works to contain the damaged computer system.
The return to Kern’s World
Lain continues to maintain the ship as its systems fail with age. Generations of engineers born aboard the ship work under her guidance and learn from her records and lessons. She sets instructions for the crew to wake her in an emergency. When the Gilgamesh returns to Kern’s World, she is extremely old and frail, but resumes command and helps prepare the crew to land. She chooses to attack the satellite because she believes the crew has no other option.
When the spiders board the ship, Lain coordinates its defence and tries to preserve life support. The spiders reach her and Holsten in the final battle. The scene ends as they leap toward the two humans, and their immediate fate is not stated.
Lain and Holsten’s child is Helena Holsten Lain. By the time Helena travels aboard the ship Voyager, humans and spiders have formed an alliance. Lain is remembered as Helena’s great great grandmother.