Despite the utter chaos that normally accompanied such a boarding action, the human appeared unperturbed, slowly and dutifully continuing about their daily tasks as if they had barely even registered that their ship had been taken over at all.

The raiders who had commandeered the Earth ship were gleeful at how little resistance they had encountered. The ship appeared to be little more than a drone craft, the only living sentient aboard being the human, who offered no resistance and no fight to prevent them from taking over such spoils.

However, the raiders were also struggling to determine how best to enrich themselves off of their newly acquired prize, as the ship lacked weapons, technological secrets, and barely possessed little more than a functional but unostentatious reactor and hyperspeed array. The hyperspeed array had been carefully disabled, and from what their engineer could tell it was work done well before the ship had been boarded. Fortunately, it would prove to be a simple, if somewhat time-consuming, repair to make.

The only cargo appeared to be great vats of some kind of viscous fluids, one clear and one amber colored, but chemically they appeared almost identical apart from some impurities they could detect in the amber liquid. The ship was also curiously absent of recreational facilities or even a mess hall, instead having a wastefully large space that appeared to have been converted into some kind of greenhouse, with hundreds of brightly-colored plants that were apparently native to Earth but carried little value or use medically or commercially apart from minimal aesthetic value.

It appeared to the captain of these pirates that they had essentially stolen a worthless trash barge, especially as some of these strange liquid cargo appeared to be contaminated and impure. The captain was absolutely livid, and so their first mate and second in command of the raiders’ vessel was attempting with limited success to browbeat the unperturbed human.

“You must have something of value on this ship?” she said in frustration, gesturing with a loaded laser pistol beneath the wrinkled man's nose. “Some kind of new weapon or technology, something we can sell instead of all this clear and yellow crap?”

The human, aggravatingly, just chuckled quietly as he pruned at an errant rose stem. They had initially manacled him and contained him, until he insisted that he'd be allowed to continue his duties, else the ship’s integrity could suffer. Sure enough, after less than an hour of confinement some minor alarms began going off and the ship started listing heavily to one side. He was allowed to continue his duties, but to the pirates' bafflement it appeared to be just minor upkeeping, cleaning here and there. They never saw him touch a control panel or unscrew so much as a single circuitry manifold, and yet the ship's errors seem to correct themselves and the vessel righted itself.

“So you think this is funny, do you?” the first mate barked, both sets of jaws snarling and dripping with anticipation of being able to end the infuriating human’s existence as soon as they figured out how to make this capture worth the trouble.

“Oh, I think I just have a unique view of the situation,” he said with a smile. “Besides, I'm just a caretaker, I'm afraid. I wouldn't know much about the inner workings or anything valuable within.”

The first mate narrowed her eye, but was distracted by a call from one of her crewmates who had been messing with a panel on the side of the greenhouse. “That contaminated gunk is in here too!”

Loping over, the first mate could see that indeed more of the contaminated yellow fluid was almost dripping from the panel that had been removed. She thought she saw some signs of movements as well, small scuttling creatures, vermin of some kind that shrank away from the edges. She was stunned, but then began a rolling bark of laughter as the confused crewmate stared at her.

“Your ship is infested! You've got some manner of pest that is polluting your cargo and stuffing up your engineering; I'm surprised the ship is still able to fly with all the gunk I can see in there,” she said, reaching in and pulling out a piece of what appeared to be effluence or nesting material from the pests.

For the first time almost since they had boarded the vessel, they saw a flinch from the human, who winced as she tossed the pale geometric-patterned wedge of waste material off to one side. Chuckling at the human's newfound sensitivity, the first mate kicked the glossy chunk across the metal flooring to slide to the huma’s feet.

“You say you’re a caretaker: Why don't you make yourself useful, and clean out these panelways? We won't be able to do much to make repairs with all this junk in the way.”

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The human frowned. “I can't do that. The bees wouldn't like it.”

Not recognizing the word, the first mate strode forward, catching the human by the shoulder and thrusting up to pin him against the side of one of the racks of vibrant earth plants. Her lungs were already beginning to get irritated from the small puffs of spores that the plants appear to emit, causing her to cough and growl in frustration.

“Oh, so you care about the vermin contaminating your ship? I'm surprised humans ever made off your own world if you're so unwilling to inconvenience a mindless “pest.*”

As she spoke, a bee landed on her gesturing hand, and she laughed. Grinning cruelly to the human, she smashed it between two outstretched fingers, saying “How do you feel now, weakling? I'm squishing up one of your beloved pests. Won’t my captain be so proud of me for-”

She cut off with a screech of pain, shaking her hand ineffectually as she howled in anger and fury. The human was released, dropping to the floor with a groan, as the first mate examined her hand, still howling and roaring with agony.

“What is this? What did that thing do to me?”

The human smiled grimly. “I think you'll find that while I may not possess much in the way of defenses, my crewmates are not so ill equipped.”

”Indeed.”

For the first time since they had boarded the vessel, the raiders heard a voice come to life on the ship's intercoms, a humming and many-layered speech that spoke almost in perfect unison.

Looking up towards the vaulted ceiling of the room, he intoned “Queen and Kin, I think we've entertained these guests long enough. Wouldn’t you agree?”

”Agreed, caretaker. Are you prepared to be our harvestman?”

The old human smiled, a tinge of sadness at the corners of his mouth. “I am, but I ask that you act with precision, instead of anger.”

”As you wish, caretaker.” Then the voice cut out, and a deafening hum began to fill the corridors of the ship.

As the caretaker returned to pruning the flower garden, screams soon drowned out the omnipresent humming, until those too faded. Noticing the return to silence, the caretaker carefully pulled a tray with a white linen cloth across it on a small cart, and began slowly pushing it along the corridors.

He had a small dustpan and broom, and as he came across the handful of bodies of deceased pirates who had not managed to escape to their ship and flee back into space, surrounding them were dozens or even hundreds of bees as well, perished from their valiant effort to defend their home.

He carefully swept the bees up, diligently arranging them on the white linen and careful rose. Then, after completing his rounds, he carefully draped the edges of the linen across the ranks of the dead and placed it within a wooden box, a facsimile of the hives that were once built on distant Earth, before carefully placing it within the launch tube. He keyed in some commands to the keypad and the ship oriented slightly, before jettisoning the stylized coffin, the distant destination of this system's sun promising an inevitable cremation.

The voice of the hive returned, saying quietly ”This is well, harvestman. We are again grateful for your service.”

He smiled, eyeing where an errant laser shot had burned a hole through an electrical conduit and the wiring within, seeing bees carefully swarming and repairing the metal wiring before protecting it with a coating of wax. “I am simply a caretaker, Queen and Kin. And I thank you again for allowing me aboard your vessel as such.”

Then his eyes returned to the forms of the dead pirates, still slowly bleeding out onto the floors. He sighed, and began dragging their corpses into the airlock, throwing them in an unceremonious heap before venting them into the void of space.

The voice of the queen and hive spoke up once more. ”We are nearing completion of our conversion of the sugar vats into honey reserves for our voyage. Are you prepared for the journey?”

He nodded, stepping over to the stasis pod and running a hand affectionately along the top. “I am, Queen and Kin. Will you safeguard me as I sleep?”

There was an affirmative and reassuring buzz. The small size and exoskeleton meant that the bees could not travel safely in hyperspace, instead relying on powerful engines and slingshot maneuvers to slowly but steadily make their ways across the stars. Still, as many times before, the voice of the hive was concerned about him.

”Do you not miss your own kin? Your slumbers exceed their lifetimes, and it may be many more centuries before you walk amongst the grass of Earth once more.”

“We had a saying once that ‘Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.’ I was fortunate enough to both plant those proverbial trees through my actions and the family I helped raise, and now I shall be able to see what they have become and what good they have founded in the world in my absence.”

As he sat back on a small metal wicker chair in the garden, a tired bee came to rest on his finger. Dabbing some water from his glass, he offered the droplet to the weary insect, who began to drink it with a wiggle of excitement.

He nodded with gratitude and offered a word of thanks as a cluster of bees buzzed over, struggling with the weight of their cargo. They deposited a thumb-sized wad of bee pollen into his hand, a welcome and delicious treat he savored as he sat back and enjoyed hearing the humming of the honeybees filling the garden once again.

It was unusual to be a human kept by bees, but it was an arrangement he would make again without hesitation.