I have often been asked whether I have ever felt tempted to return to Ghiza VI. The answer was twice. The first time was when I wished to investigate the fate of the Aurora, the colony transport I was on which crashed on the planet. I once asked Amon why he didn’t stay to look for it or search for other survivors. He replied that since I was under the care of the insects, there were no other survivors. And after ten years, there would’ve been nothing of the colony ship.

What Amon said was true, but I have long suspected he had another reason for departing so quickly. You could’ve spent a thousand years turning over every stone on Ghiza VI and still never have been sure if there was another human out there. Amon has had much experience chasing hope for centuries and still never finding it. I do not think he could have borne that heartbreak again.

The second time I wanted to return was at the head of an armada. I wanted to seize the planet and turn it into paradise.

But as I have come to believe, it would be unwise to force the insect to live as men just as much as I could never live as a Mantza. We are of a different kind, and so long as they are content to stay to their worlds, I have no quarrel with them.

Ingrish took me to a port window to watch as we departed the planet. The ship creaked and hummed as it took off. For a long time, all I could see was a smoggy haze. But the yellow clouds began to lighten, and as the minutes passed, I could see a rolling horizon of clouds and the tops of the gargantuan megabuildings off in the distance. Then the world began to darken and fall further and further away until Ghiza VI was a putrid sphere in a vast emptiness.

I watched it grow smaller and smaller until I could finally see it no longer. And once it was out of sight, I realized that it didn’t ache to breathe anymore, and I was already used to the clean air of the Aphelion.

…

Ingrish had already shown me my living quarters, but they didn’t start to become comfortable until a few weeks had passed. And it was only long after that I came to realize that this was my new home. I was given a cramped cabin with little more than a bunk, a few meters of space, and a small window out into the stars. But compared to my habitation pod, this meagre space was almost too big for me to know what to do with.

I never got used to sleeping in a bed. It was too soft and the linens were always too warm. I would often have dreams of falling down a bottomless abyss, and then I would wake in a pool of my own sweat. And no matter how many times Ingrish pushed and prodded, she would always find me sleeping on the floor next morning. Since those days, I have compromised on a Rhodeshi sleeping hammock.

Ingrish wouldn’t budge on eating, though. I was to eat my rations with a fork and knife or not at all. When I complained that the Mantza never used utensils, she replied that we weren’t Mantza. I asked why it was required for us and not for them, and she said the Mantza only have three-fingered claws. And as such, they can’t experience the privilege of eating ritual.

“Food is a delight that many in the galaxy can’t understand. Take the Dolfaen, for example, they lack the appendages to manipulate their food.” Ingrish sank her fork into a cut of dry meat. “They can eat, but they can never savor. It’s only nourishment to them. They have invented elaborate dances and gestures to try to come close to what we take for granted, but it’s never the same.”

She took a bite and continued. “It would be a waste for me to not enjoy the hands that were given to my kind. And it would be a tragedy for you who were born for them.”

Of course, that lesson came much later, when I had expanded my grasp of galactic basic. At the start, Ingrish was more concerned that I learned the “how’s” and not the “why’s”.

She sat me down every day at the ship’s mess and instructed me how to speak with her psionic gift, along with plenty of data-slates. I do not know how long it would’ve taken me to learn language had it not been for her abilities—years at least. I have often wondered what would’ve happened if I had possessed no language at all. Ingrish has told me there comes a point in the mind’s maturation where if language is not grasped, it can never be learned, even for humans. It becomes a problem of the brain structure, and I have always been fascinated with that—the idea that language is as physical as anything else.

Ingrish also gave me lessons, simple at first. I recall one of my first difficulties was associating age with growing old and natural death. You see, the Mantza do not grow old. They reach their allotted number of years and then are promptly euthanized. As such, I understood that I had a number of years, and that at the end, I would be taken like the rest. When Ingrish was teaching me about lifespan, I was confused because I didn’t know how the Mantza would find me again.

“You. One thousand,” Ingrish corrected. A series of images flashed in my head of me getting bigger, taller. And then I stopped growing, stopped changing for a while. But as the years passed, slowly, wrinkles and grey hair appeared. They were barely noticeable at first, but they multiplied. I lived, and I continued living, but I was getting weaker. However, it wasn’t until the end that old age seemed to hit me all at once. What took centuries now took decades. Dark spots appeared on my face. My white hair all but fell out. My back grew stooped. I lost weight and withered away. And finally, I was bed-ridden, and then I was dead.

“Amon, six hundred forty-three,” she explained.

“How long, you?” I asked, startling her with the unexpected question.

Ingrish hesitated for a moment. “Fifty,” she spoke in my head, but there were no images this time.

“How old, now?” I asked immediately after.

She laughed at my abruptness, evidently I broke some decorum, but there was a saddened pensiveness in her voice when she spoke. “Twenty-seven.”

I didn’t know how to spot it then, but she was bearing the tell-tale marks of middle age for her species. She had no children of her own, and she had already come to the end of those years. It was difficult for me to learn that she had lived more than half her life, and I had already lived more than half even that.

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I knew Ingrish in less time than I have fought wars and razed whole star systems. Her life was shorter than an hour’s watch, hardly a blink of my eye, and yet she will forever be a mother to me. Ingrish, wherever you are now, I want you to know this:

When I stood on the magma dunes of Kazerit and saw the setting of its three suns, when I watched it rain sapphires in the core of Qasar IX, when I looked out and I saw time and space collapse in the event horizon of the Eye of Nihilus, I did not for one moment forget you. And I wished you had been there with me.

…

How shall I describe the ship? The Aphelion was an end of an era. The Fifth Aberration, the war that brought half the galaxy to its knees, demanded mankind take one last stand for its numerous progeny. And so in the haste of war, humanity fashioned this small cargo ship into a weapon that flew on glass wings.

Its shields were strong enough to dive into the corona of a blue giant, but its hull was as flimsy as sheet paper. It could to bring to bear half a dozen missile batteries and even a rail cannon, but it had nothing in the way of point-defense systems or even a laser grid. It could outfly and outfight a Cabara fleet, but just one antimatter strike would send the old ship to her grave.

And this ship was tragically old. Just like Amon Russ, it had outlived the war it was meant to die in. It was a zero-sword kept sheathed in a time of peace, a weapon no longer needed and left to rust. Even though back then I had no appreciation of its history, I could see the love lavished on it by its crew, but it was sadly nowhere near enough.

Its impressive armaments were little more than memories of better times. The rail cannon was a rusted tube of steel, without the chromium shells to fire. The shields were a patchwork that provided less than fifty percent coverage on a good day. And all the other equipment was either passed its expiration date or salvaged from somewhere else.

There were whole decks that were dark, whole maintenance and access shafts that hadn’t been opened in decades. Several centuries worth of patch-jobs, bypassed circuitry, and spare parts made it seem as if the innards of the ship were spilling out of its walls. There was an ever-present layer of dust that seemed to burden the ship more than any cargo, and with every thrum of its engine, the ship ached in protest.

It belonged in a museum, and its historical value was such that Amon Russ could’ve made a fortune selling it. He could’ve purchased the nicest pleasure yacht in the galaxy and sailed off to spend his twilight years in comfort. Instead, he worked to the bone to keep his ship flying. He knew the days of the Aphelion were drawing to an end, and once it finally found its resting place—I often imagined a barren desert world somewhere—there would never be another like it to wander the stars.

Not long after we departed the planet, Ingrish went to the medical bay to check up on him. She had wanted me to return to my quarters, but I asked to come along, not wishing to be locked in my room. I was quite used to the freedom of the Mantza’s neglect. And I was finding the sudden attention of these new aliens quite frustrating. I wondered when—if ever—I would enjoy the same freedom again.

Despite my limited vocabulary and strange methods of thought, I was not stupid. I knew better than to accidentally vent myself out of an airlock or to ingest engine lubricant. It was just that I had a peculiar way of thinking, a Mantza way of thinking, and I was struggling to cross that gulf between the insect and other species of the galaxy.

I was deprived, yes, but I was never incapable.

The medical bay was a rectangular room lined with beds and a hermetically sealed surgery suite at the end. To the left was a conference room which doubled as a computer lab. Amon Russ was standing in front of the glass window overlooking the surgery suite.

Inside, the scaly alien laid on a bed that was just large enough to accommodate it. There was another alien inside—the doctor presumably—who was operating a large machine that hung from the ceiling. All manner of clamps, syringes, scalpels, and even a buzz saw were suspended above by metallic extender arms. Right now, most of it was powered down. The doctor was finishing up stitching the scaly ones’ stump.

If it wasn’t the machine that made my skin crawl, it was the surgeon. I had seen more new aliens that day than I usually saw in a year. But this was the one that unsettled me. Its head was distended into a bulbous, ridged orb that looked way too big for its otherwise spindly body. Its sagging grey eyes and bony cheekbones were the only things you could see behind its ovoid respirator mask. It wore white surgical robes that concealed the rest of its thin frame. But the thing I fixated on were its long fingers twice the length of my own.

Very few are not repulsed by “true” aliens, or rather, those rare species that did not originate from Terra. Standing in the same room put me on edge, whenever I encounter such a species, I was always struck with the feeling that we came from two worlds that should never have met.

I have read that since the days of human antiquity, we had looked up into the stars and wondered whether there was life out there.

I only wish we spent more time considering whether it was worth meeting them—and whether they wanted to meet us.

“Stitches are complete.” Tut wheezed through his respirator. “Our guest should require minimal maintenance until we reach the Aquarius Sector.” The Belazzar began to speak too quickly with Amon for me to follow.

As they were conversing, Ingrish and I approached. I did not want to catch this alien’s interest, so I walked behind her. But the alien’s dilated eyes fell on me anyway. I could not read its expression, but there was a cold judgement in that gaze. I wondered if that was the creature’s personality, or if it was something that was endemic to the race.

Tut turned back to Amon. “A new one? Shall I have him undergo implantation?”

“Don’t touch him,” the old warrior replied. “Don’t even go near him.”

The Belazzar nodded indifferently, packing up its equipment inside the chamber.

Glancing towards us, Amon asked Ingrish. “So, how is our new friend?”

The word was still unusual to me at this point, and I would’ve much preferred the colder but more familiar Urtaph. Ingrish nodded, and with her telepathy, she shared her conversation with Amon.

“It’s going to take us three years to get back to Aquarius,” Amon told her. “Relays are too expensive out here, and they attract the wrong kind of attention. We’re going to keep to dark space as much as possible, but I don’t want us going to stasis beds until we leave Mantza territory.”

Ingrish nodded, and the two began discussing specifics. It was annoying as they immediately leapt to the least interesting part of the conversation—ration meals, flight plans, and life support efficiency. Meanwhile, I was stunned of the prospect of going to a new world.

Ingrish noticed my hesitancy and a rush of images flooded my mind to help me keep up, but I quickly gave up and focused solely on the destination. The image that stuck in my head was an ocean world with cities raised on mighty platforms above the crashing waves. Its name was Naiad, and for a moment, I stood awe-struck as I had never seen so much water before. But even more overwhelming was the city.

I saw thousands of different aliens of all shapes and sizes. I saw great streets and marketplaces and apartment mega-complexes. I saw sweeping vistas from the hover cars of the floating skyways to the hab-lounges of the deepest underwater gardens. I saw a world of commerce and prosperity, and although Ingrish assured me that this was still far from most of galactic civilization, I had great difficulty believing anything could be more majestic.

But there was something in this image that deeply disturbed me. Before Amon, I thought I was the only one of my kind, but I was proven wrong. And so it stood to reason that there were others out there, and from this great multitude, there should’ve been many others somewhere.

However, in this picture Ingrish had shown me, this great hub of civilization, I didn’t see any of my kind out there. Not a single one.

I wondered where they all were.