My fists slammed into the table, and everyone whirled around to stare at me.
“No! There has to be a way!” I felt heat in my face and water in my eyes. It can’t be true. I promised Shane I’d come back for him. He was counting on me. They all were. If any of them were still alive.
“I’m sorry, Jonah,” Shiro said. “I really—”
I cut him off. “Sorry? You’re sorry? Look, I appreciate the rescue. I really do. But my brother is on that ship. And maybe twenty other people. We can’t just leave them out there to die.”
Tishi’s whistles were translated into my ear. “It’s not that we don’t want to save them. But their ship is invisible. No one has ever found a way to track it.” She waved a wing-like arm toward the outside wall. “It’s out there somewhere, but we have no way of finding out where it is.”
I jumped back from the table and stumbled over to the tanks. Corey and Priya backed away, leaving me alone to stare into the murky water. Everyone else made it. The other two ships. They were living happily on different worlds, and my people were dying, fed to a plant in the middle of a living, invisible spaceship. That was the end of the Horizon Delta. The hope of millions of people from long-dead Earth, sending out a ship full of lucky humans to find a safe place to live. That’s what hope turned into. An acid pit in the belly of a fat, green plant.
Shiro’s face reflected in the aquarium’s side as he walked up behind me. He had a very slight limp I hadn’t noticed when he was wearing the cloak and mask.
“I know how you feel,” he said.
“You couldn’t possibly know.”
“But I do.” He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to pull away. “I was seventeen when we landed on Tau Ceti e. More than half of our people didn’t survive the landing, and of those, more than half were eaten by dinosaurs before we finally found a safer place to live.” His eyes were misty, reliving a troubled past. “I almost died more than once. I watched my friends die.” His eyes grew darker. “I watched my father die to save my life. By the time the Siitsi arrived, I had no family alive on that wretched planet.”
I shrugged. “But you had friends.”
Yes,” he agreed. “I still do. Some of them have kids on this ship. My own son is still there, and my daughter is an engineer on another Siitsi ship. I’ve been very lucky, and I know it’s not the same. But I lost almost everyone. I know what it’s like to want to save them and not be able to. I know how your heart breaks when you remember the people who died while somehow you lived.”
Heat rose in my face again, and I pulled away from his fatherly arm. “But they’re not dead yet. Not all of them. And we’re just sitting here doing nothing.” I had no idea what I wanted him to do. If the Siitsi in their fancy ship couldn’t track the Botanist ship, why was I still insisting that something could be done? But I couldn’t help picturing my little brother shivering in that cold, white hold. Waiting for the Botanists to bring in a vat of slime for him to eat. Huddled on the floor, trying to sleep. Waiting to see who they would take away next.
And when it was his turn? What would he think as they dragged him away? Would he be next to go, or last? Would he end up alone in that hold after everyone else was taken? They would come for him sooner or later. He might go willingly if he was last. Maybe he’d think they were taking him to be with the others that had disappeared and not returned. In a way, they were. They’d lead him down those blue-lit hallways. Into the huge room with the vines all around, blinking their lights as the nerve center of the ship that was alive anticipated its next meal. Maybe some of the little Botanists would look like people he’d known, as they used the DNA they stole from humans to make new buds, new Botanists. They might look more human, but they would never feel like a human. Never know sorrow, or shame, or regret for the life they destroyed. Up that ramp they would take him, whether pushing him or dragging him, or just opening the way. He’d look down into the giant pitcher, into the dark pool below him. Would they shove him off, or would he jump? Would the last human aboard the Botanist ship leap willingly into the darkness, just glad for the ordeal to finally be over? When next the horrible little green plants arrived on a trade moon, would some of them have his eyes? His nose? Would their faces squinch up in a lopsided grimace like he did when he was thinking hard?
“They took everything,” I muttered. “Everything I ever knew.” I pictured them puttering around the Horizon Delta shuttle that had been our final refuge when the giant, spaceborne ark became a dead hulk in the blackness between stars. “They’ll use it all. Even our shuttle.”
Shiro nodded, face reflected in the aquarium. “They will. But you’re safe, Jonah. And that’s a huge gift. You’ll remember them, and they’ll never be truly—”
He stopped speaking so suddenly that I tore my eyes from the bugs in the water. He had a funny look on his face, jaw pulled to the side in thought, just the way my little brother did.
“Their ship ate your shuttle.”
I nodded.
“But it wasn’t destroyed. They’ll probably modify it and use it.”
I nodded. “They had another one in the same hangar. The one that I hid on to get to the planet.”
He spun me around by the shoulders until we were almost nose to nose. He had a crazy look on his face, eyes blazing with light.
“They have your shuttle. Every ship on the Horizon fleet has a beacon.” He grinned, and I took a step back, alarmed by the intensity on his face.
“A beacon?”
He laughed. “A beacon.” He glanced over at the Siitsi, who whistled in understanding. “A beacon the Siitsi can track. Jonah, I think we have a way to find that ship. There might be a way to find your people.”