Ignoring my pleas to follow the green aliens, Shiro shoved me back into my seat. “Buckle up, kid. It’s going to be a rough takeoff.”
One of the birdmen climbed into the seat in the front with the most controls, and Shiro sat next to him. The other two pulled off their cloaks and sat in the seats opposite me, peering at me and whistling softly. In addition to the iridescent green one I had seen, these other two were varying shades of brown, with soft, shiny eyes and golden beaks. As panicked as I was about finding my brother, I couldn’t help but wonder at the soft feathers that covered them from face to foot.
One held out a taloned hand, and I tentatively reached out. It didn’t make any threatening move and clearly wanted me to touch it. I pulled one of my fingers over the back of the wrinkled hand and tapped a nail against the long, black talon. The birdman chirped and did the same to me, running a talon gently down the back of my crusty green hand.
Birdpeople. I thought about the science I had learned aboard Horizon Delta, back in the days when we thought education would matter. If these birdpeople were anything like the birds of long-dead Earth, these brown-shaded ones were probably females, and the yellow-green one was a male. Time I stopped thinking of them as “it.” I had never made a distinction like that with the green aliens that held me captive.
The roar of the engines made conversation impossible, and the birdwomen settled back, pulling safety harnesses over their shoulders. I reached back and found a similar harness, and one of the birdwomen helped me fasten it. I was much smaller than they were, and it hung loose around me, so I gripped the armrest, so similar to the ones on the Delta shuttles.
The ship lifted off the ground with a lurch and hurtled into the sky. I peered out the window as the alien marketplace, dimly lit below me, grew more distant. Soon the sky around us was full of stars, and I relaxed a bit. I was used to a sky full of stars.
Soon we began to grow lighter in our seats as the ship escaped the nameless planet’s gravity.
With a clunk, gravity suddenly reasserted itself, and I bounced back down in the harness. One of the birdwomen looked over, a concerned look in her eyes. I tried to smile at her, dry lips cracking at the edges. Artificial gravity in a shuttle? Well, why not? The green creatures had used some kind of gravity in their huge black bean. Whatever the technology, it must work on this smaller scale as well.
I turned back to the window, searching in vain for a black hole in the stars that might indicate where the ship holding my brother was hiding. But the glitter all around was unbroken. If the black bean ship was out there, it wasn’t where I was looking.
The engine noise changed, and I leaned into the aisle to look out the front of the shuttle. Something huge and silver was out there, with a big, gaping black hatch. As I watched, we slowed and the engines cut off. Our shuttle glided through the hatch and into a huge open bay. Gravity pulled harder on me as soon as the shuttle nosed inside, and the front tipped downward, coming to rest on the floor of the hatch. Lights outside the window clicked brighter, and a creaking, grinding noise squealed around us. In a moment, the creaking stopped, and my ears popped with a change in pressure. A deep, rumbling hum thrummed through my feet. We were inside a much larger ship.
The birdwomen unhooked their harnesses and stood up. I followed them out the now-unlocked hatch behind us, and Shiro followed me. The iridescent green pilot stayed in his seat, clicking his talons on the shuttle’s controls.
I opened my mouth to start asking questions, but Shiro shook his head. “Come on, kid. Let’s get you cleaned up and fed. Then we’ll sit down and figure all this out together.” I was too tired to argue.
We trooped down the ramp into the hangar. Uncloaked birdpeople scuttled around us, securing our shuttle to the floor of the hangar. They stopped and stared when they saw me, but a few reassuring whistles from Shiro seemed to relax them.
“What are you saying?” I asked him.
He smiled. “Just told them you were a human, like me.”
“They know about humans?” I felt silly as soon as the words slipped out. Of course they did. They had Shiro, didn’t they?
My brain finally started making sense of things.
“Are you from the Alpha or the Beta?”
He snorted. “I’m Alpha. And you must be Delta?”
I nodded. “What’s left of us.”
His eyes lost their twinkle and grew somber. “Yeah, aren’t we all? What’s left of us, for sure.”
He led me through a doorway and down a long, clean hallway into an elevator. We passed birdpeople of every color—from sapphire blues to silvery whites. They all whistled questions to Shiro, who whistled back.
“You can understand them?” I asked once the elevator doors closed and it was just the two of us.
“I’ve been with this ship for almost twenty years now, kid.” He chuckled for a moment. “Kid. What’s your actual name?”
“Jonah Campbell.”
He removed the black gloves and held out a hand. I shook it, formally.
“Nice to meet you, Jonah,” he said, stuffing the gloves into his pants pocket. The clothes he wore were cut like a Horizon uniform but made from some kind of softer material in a dark brown color. His boots were the nicest I’d ever seen.
My eyes were heavy as the elevator stopped and we stepped out into a wide hall. Rows of tables filled the room, and birdpeople dotted them. A bright, clean smell made my stomach growl, though I’d never smelled anything like it.
Shiro guided me away from the large room and down another hallway. “First things first,” he said. “This can be your room.” He waved a hand at a panel outside a doorway, which slid open without a sound. Inside was a small room with a pile of blankets folded on a low cot. Shiro pushed me toward a smaller room off the main one. In there I found a round hatch on the floor that opened when Shiro waved at a panel over it.
“Toilet,” he said unnecessarily. There was a bowl under a tap, obviously a sink, and a large, empty tub. “This is a human room, made for human crew. Birdpeople all sleep in groups. Flocks, really. They aren’t much for showers,” he said with a smile, “but they do love a bath.” He showed me how to work the controls, sending steaming water into the tub. “Get yourself washed up. I’ll set some clean clothes out in your room. Then we can get some food and you can tell me how under all the stars a human from Horizon Delta ended up in a livestock pen on Reganus Five.”