Shiro hadn’t told anyone what he was doing when he left with me on the shuttle. Sometime during our rescue mission, his crew must have realized we’d taken it and where we had gone. The Horizon Delta shuttle we used to escape from the Botanist ship had no way to dock with the Siitsi ship, and there wasn’t room on our small, borrowed Siitsi shuttle for our people and all the terrified alien animals we had rescued on our way out. So we parked our Delta ship on the ice and waited for the Siitsi to come.
“They’ll be here any minute,” Shiro said. “No way they can possibly resist a chance like this.”
Shane was glued to my leg, and we all crowded together in the cockpit, away from the animals crashing around in the passenger area. We barely had time to tell my story to our baffled, shell-shocked people before the Siitsi arrived. They landed right next to us, and we herded the animals into the cargo hold of the first shuttle. The Siitsi pilot squawked her indignation as her hold was filled with screeching, baying creatures, but she flew them on up to the mother ship and sent another shuttle for us. We dashed across the small patch of ice, hurling ourselves into warmth and safety.
We stayed in orbit around the ice moon for over a week as the Siitsi scientists salvaged all they could from the wrecked Botanist ship. The Siitsi buzzed with each new piece brought on board. The frozen samples they retrieved might help them figure out the secrets of the plants that could make anything from nothing, and the vines that could kill a whole world. One day the science discovered here might protect other worlds when living Botanist ships came to colonize a primitive planet.
When they had everything they wanted, we left the system and headed for the Delta, drifting in space.
The trip only took a couple of hours. Our people were still wary of the Siitsi after only a week on the ship, but Mrs. Lucien had already started poking around the kitchens, and Mr. Conrad was learning Siitsi numbers, working with their mathematicians. The feathered females doted on Shane, who was already speaking a few words of their language.
They’ll be all right. Humans are a hardy lot.
When we reached our destination, all of us filed into the observation room, looking out the huge glass wall. Everyone gasped as I had at the magnificent, star-filled view. The dead, drifting hulk of our once-great ark hung just outside in the blackness of space.
It must have looked magnificent in its early days. When the cylinders spun and the nuclear reactor engines glowed blue all around it. When the Horizon fleet was the pride of a briefly united Earth, the hope of a doomed planet, ready to carry the lucky few chosen to begin the generations-long voyages to distant planets.
Now it was dead. The giant hole punched by the glancing blow of a stray meteor gaped in its side. That hole was the death knell of the ship, and of nearly everyone left on board.
Fourteen of us were left.
I hugged Shane close, pulling him in front of me, arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Our parents had died on that ship, sucked away into unforgiving space. Nearly everyone we knew, the few that remained even then, had been lost.
We never had time to mourn them. The weight of their deaths pressed on me now, feeling like the cold vacuum of space that took them away. My throat closed around a sob, and I choked it down. Be strong for Shane. His shoulders were hitching in my embrace, as he finally felt safe enough to weep for our parents and friends.
A voice murmured from the cuff in my ear.
“It’s time.”
It wasn’t safe to leave the Delta just drifting out there. Even though no one was left alive on it, there were other species that might one day find it. The trajectory of its drift could lead them back to Earth, and it would be centuries before the remnants of human life on Earth were ready to defend themselves from an unfriendly alien visit. The Siitsi would patrol Earth’s solar system, but no one in the galaxy knew humans existed. Safer for everyone if it could stay that way a while longer.
A Siitsi male I didn’t know stood in the back of the room. The rest of the human crew on the ship were in another viewing area, but this one was just for the Horizon people in this moment.
Six Siitsi shuttles burst from under our window. They circled the dead Horizon in intricate patterns. Shiro had told me it was an honor guard, tracing an ancient pattern in the sky, a remnant of the Siitsi’s distant ancestors that once flew on feathered wings in the clear skies of their home world. The ships spiraled around and disappeared back under our feet.
Silent moments passed.
A low, humming growl vibrated through my feet as the grav drive cycled up. Our view changed as the pilots angled us so that the Delta was between us and a blinding white star in the distance. The viewing window darkened until the white sun was a fiery glow, Horizon’s silhouette just a small black scar in the middle.
From behind me, the Siitsi began to sing.
His voice was deep and resonant, and in my ear the cuff translated the words he whistled.
Fly you now on silent wings,
As your feathers we enshroud.
Soar away from worldly things,
To a place of silver clouds.
The melody of the Siitsi lament was haunting, and I pulled the cuff from my ear, not wanting to mar the beauty of the song with the robotic, translated voice.
I tipped forward as the grav drive kicked in, pushing us away from the Horizon. It bucked in the sky as the force of the gravity wave hit it, and we watched it grow smaller and smaller in our vision. When the dead ship dove into the white sun, a small, bright plume escaped its surface.
“Goodbye, Mom,” I whispered. “Goodbye, Dad.”
All around the room, the handful of survivors wept, murmuring their goodbyes to all the loved ones we had lost.
The Siitsi’s song ended, and the door hissed as he left the room. We crowded together, a small group of crying humans, all that remained of the proud Horizon Delta.
There were so few of us left. So many lost.
But against a million odds, we were here. On this alien ship where others of our kind worked in harmony with a species we never dreamed could exist, we were finally safe.
We broke apart and stood gazing out the window as the ship surged forward.
We had a long way to go.