March 17, 2363 AIA

The Colibri

Everyone was gathered in the main cabin. Vas and Ciro were playing a game of chess. Reyer was reading. Jane and Tennama were off to the side, talking. They all stopped when they heard the soft beep that came from the com by Vas’s elbow.

“Captain,” Lynx said over the connection.

Adan felt everyone watching him. He pressed the button and held it to his mouth. “We’re there?”

“No, Captain,” Lynx said, “but we’re coming out of velox in range of the xeno home world.”

Everyone stood up at once.

Jane shouted over the commotion of chairs and bodies, “I thought you were going to teach him the meaning of ‘close enough!’”

Ciro threw his hands up in an exaggerated shrug. Since everyone was moving toward the ladder, no one commented on his lame excuse.

Vas went up first. Jane was close on his heels. Ciro followed her, while Reyer lagged behind because of her injury. Tennama was last of all.

Before Alix started up the stairs, she glanced back at the xeno. It was hard to tell what he was feeling, possibly because he was feeling everything. When she reached the top of the ladder, she stood back so Tennama could get around her. He walked over to stand next to the pilot’s chair.

Lynx, sitting in the copilot’s seat, said, “We’re coming out of velox now.”

The empty viewport was immediately filled with the planet. It stretched across the whole window. Only the far corners were still black.

“Lynx,” Vas said from the pilot’s seat, “get a reading on the major land mass and orient our maps.”

“Captain—”

“I’ll bring us in, bot. You get those maps ready. Ciro?”

Ciro was in front of the computer. “Sir?”

“I want you to gather the relevant readings and be ready to report.”

“Already on it.”

Tennama took a tentative step forward.

Vas smiled when he realized who was beside him. “Does it look as good as you remember?”

“Better,” Tennama said.

“Captain,” Lynx said. “I have the maps oriented. I assume you want me to adjust our course to bring us down to our typical landing area?”

“Yes, Lynx, but don’t assume it’s still stable. I want a scan to make sure I’m not drowning my ship in a swamp. Unless you know of a better place to land, Mr. Tennama?”

“How many times have you been here?” Anthony asked.

Vas glanced up when he heard the misgiving in the xeno’s voice. “Three times. We only landed twice.”

“Only twice?”

“I know ‘the typical landing area’ makes it sound like we vacation here every week, but don’t mind Lynx. He loves patterns.”

The robot said, “Two items of information can’t be construed as a pattern, Captain. However, I have noticed that humans don’t like to change their behavior. Both times we landed, it was in the same spot.”

“They galaxy’s a dangerous place,” Alix said. “Something that was safe once is a lot less threatening than trying something new.”

Lynx stopped moving.

When Ciro noticed, he shouted, “Lynx!”

The robot turned his head.

“Priorities, Lynx. Get the maps, then you can think about what she said.”

“Yes, Master Ciro.”

Vas said to Tennama, “But we are willing to trust your experience, so if you have any input…”

”I’d have to see what information you have, Captain.”

Adan nodded to the monitor beside the copilot’s controls. Tennama moved so he was between Lynx and Ciro. A few seconds later, he pointed to the monitor.

“What’s that?” Tennama asked.

“That’s the general readings and position of our satellite,” Lynx said.

“What satellite?”

The bridge went quiet.

Lynx continued, unaware of the sudden change in mood. “It’s a general monitoring satellite provided by the Uprising to keep us informed of any activities taking place on or around the planet. Captain, we’ll need to ping them, to let them know it’s us.”

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Tennama turned to Vas. “This wasn’t here last time.”

Ciro said, “You must have arrived in the two-week window before we were able to get it here. That’s why we didn’t know your ship had come and gone.”

“Why is it here?”

Reyer said, “We needed to know if the Supremacy ever found your planet again. It was a risk to us.”

“A risk to you?”

Silence.

“How many people know about this?” Tennama demanded.

“Why do you want to know?” Vas asked in a soft voice.

“Does everyone in the Rising know about my home? Or only most of them?”

“Almost none,” Reyer said. “This is confidential information, even among us.”

“But if something happened to you?”

Vas said, “The person who was given my assignments would be handed a copy of the file.”

Tennama backed away until his legs hit the bench behind him. He dropped onto it, braced his elbows on his knees, and put his face in his hands. His shoulders started to shake with laughter no one could hear. A few seconds passed, then he used the rail to pull himself up.

As he swung around the ladder, he said, “I’m sure your usual landing area will be fine. If you want to check the area around the pool for something closer, I wouldn’t blame you. After all, we aren’t in a hurry, are we?”

He disappeared below.

When Vas looked at Reyer, she nodded and followed the xeno at a more sedate pace.

The sound of her footsteps was gone by the time Ciro said, “Should…should I go—”

“You’ll stay right there,” Vas said.

“But—”

“That’s an order.”

“He didn’t think we’d ignore the planet, did he?” Jane muttered.

“Optimism bias,” Lynx said.

“What?”

“It’s the seemingly universal difficulty humans have in believing that unfortunate or negative events can happen to them.”

“It’s a satellite,” Jane said. “It’s not some horrible event!”

“Emotions are a completely subjective matter, therefore what constitutes a horrible event will vary from person to person. For whatever reason, Mr. Tennama did not want there to be a satellite.”

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Reyer found Tennama in his cabin, sitting on his bed. His eyes had turned to her when she entered, but then he went back to staring out the small porthole. She shut the door behind her.

Tennama said, “It’s customary for people to knock before entering another person’s room, Miss Reyer.”

“I couldn’t do that. You might have ignored me.” She sat down in the small chair in front of his desk.

“I think you’re here to interrogate me again.”

Alix took a breath. “Well, I’ve been told it’s a bad habit of mine.”

Tennama rushed to say, “I never said it was a bad—” Then he saw her smile. With flushed cheeks, he looked back out at the rim of the planet below.

Minutes passed.

“It really is a beautiful place, isn’t it?” Tennama said. “Do you think any of us are sentient enough to realize how lucky we are?”

It took Alix a moment to realize the ‘us’ he’d mentioned didn’t include her—or any other human.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You can sense proteins that mean nothing to me. It’s possible that you have cones and rods in your eyes that I don’t. You might be seeing the universe in a luxury of colors I’ve never seen.”

“Unlikely.”

“But maybe some of those animals down on the planet do.”

“Do you think that makes up for it?” There was no challenge in Tennama’s question, only a feeble curiosity. “Would you trade in your sentience for a few extra colors?”

“That’s a question that gets you more than you bargained for.”

Anthony smirked.

Alix looked out the porthole. “There were times I would’ve traded in my sentience for one day of not having to listen to myself think.”

“Being human is hard,” Tennama agreed. “I don’t know why Harlan ever assumed it was the greatest of all species. There must be so much bliss in living the simple life of an animal. But I also think that only works when you don’t know what you’re missing. It was over the moment we became human.”

“You wouldn’t give up your sentience?”

“Not for anything in the galaxy. Not even to get away from my own thinking.” He pointed at her. “And you wouldn’t either, Miss Reyer. You can only say that you would because there’s no real possibility of it. But it’s possible for me. Oblivion would be better than losing what I have.”

“Tennama, are you sure you would lose it? You’re a memory-keeper.”

He put his fingertips to his forehead. “That’s worse. That’s a nightmare I hadn’t even thought of. Trying to hold the memories of being a human in a brain that isn’t equipped to handle it? I can’t imagine that type of madness.”

“But you don’t know,” Reyer said.

“No one knows.” He glared at her without malice. “Thank you, Miss Reyer, for adding a new dimension of terror to my existence.”

“I’m always happy to help.” In the silence that followed, Reyer let her eyes drift to the floor. Ionu sand was still caught between the edges of the plates. “You were planning on killing us, weren’t you?”

“I was thinking about it. Debating.” Tennama rubbed his face. “I had no plans, and if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit, I don’t know if I could’ve done it, but I promised myself I would look for the chance.” When he opened his eyes, he looked at her. “Are you angry?”

“No,” she said. “It was the only logical thing to do. If you’d been able to kill the last humans who knew where your home world was, the xenos would’ve been that much safer.”

“But you aren’t the only ones who know, so there’d be no point in killing you. I’m glad.” Tennama swung his legs off the bed and sat forward. “What am I going to do?”

“You have to trust us.”

“I could trust you, Miss Reyer, and even Vas and the others, but you aren’t the only ones who know. Why should I trust those other humans?”

“Because you have to. You’re only one being, Tennama. You can’t do everything, and you’ve done enough. Let us take it from here.”

She meant to meet his gaze for as long as the staring contest called for, but the pain in her back made her wince.

Tennama’s stern face melted into a weak smile.

“Not a very good chair, is it?” He stood up and offered her his hand. “The captain’s bringing us down now. I think I’d like to watch the descent from the observation window.”

Reyer took his hand and pulled herself up. They went into the hall, and over to the front of the ship.

It was Alix’s favorite part of the Colibri. The view stretched all the way down to their feet, and whenever she leaned against the angled allum-glass, she felt engulfed by the vastness of the galaxy, in the company of a billion stars.

The bridge was right above them, and they both knew how easy it was to hear someone below, so when Tennama spoke, he muttered in a low voice, so only Alix would hear.

“Do you still want to die?”

“What?” Her whisper was sharp.

“Sometimes I think you forget how long ago we met, Miss Reyer. It was back on Huegeh. Ever since I’ve known you, there’s been this reckless desperation about you. Captain Vas does dangerous things because he doesn’t think he’ll die, but I always thought you did it because you didn’t care.”

“I never wanted to die.”

Even as she said it, Alix shivered. Was that what it was? Had she wanted to die?

She rushed to explain it to herself—to him: “I just…back then, I had no reason not to die.”

“And now?”

Above them, they heard the sound of Adan’s laugh. He was always laughing or smiling.

“The people around me give me a reason to want to live,” Reyer said. “Humans are like that.”

“I know. I’m human.”

“I thought you were a xeno, Mr. Tennama. One of these days, you’re going to have to decide which it is.”

“I’m a human-xeno, Miss Reyer. And I’m the last of my kind.”