There is nothing quite like the shame of a child who has made a mistake which he can’t put right again. I recall the clicking disappointment of my P’taph as I accidentally spilled a cannister of agri-fluid out in the maggot farms. Even at such a young age, I did my utmost to appease the Mantza. That next morning, I approached my supervisor as he was assigning tasks for the day. I skipped the long lines of Urtaph and ran directly to the creature who had been my caretaker. It pretended not to notice me as it continued its duties, and trying to get its attention, I had tugged on its claw, hoping to hand over my rations for the day.

  More than anything, I had wanted to repair a relationship that I realized later never existed. No longer able to ignore me, my P’taph violently seized my head and slammed me against the ground until I was unable to get back up again.

  I still do not know whether it had intended to kill me that day. I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have wanted to waste a worker, even one as inefficient as me. It was more a matter of not understanding how delicate a human child was compared to a fully grown Mantza. Regardless, I did not make either mistake again.

  And yet this instinct which I had thoroughly learned was evil—as close as I could understand such a concept—reared its head once more as I dazedly stumbled after Amon Russ into the medical bay.

  Tut was already there waiting by a medical bed, a strange pattern that the Belazzar would often repeat over the years. I can scarcely recall a time when someone alerted him over the comm of an emergency, and yet there he always stood, almost eager to practice his bloody profession.

  Amon placed Ingrish on a medical bed, and I saw to my horror that she was no longer breathing. She had passed in the few minutes it took for Amon to sprint here. If Tut was concerned by the early death of his patient, he didn’t show it. Instead, I saw his drooping eyes quickly pass over her. His bulbous head nodded once over to Amon, and the old man’s shoulders fell with an expression I could not read. Tut got to work immediately, taking a syringe and pressing it forcefully into her neck.

  The Belazzar inserted two sharp tubes into Ingrish’s wrist. A machine hummed as it began pumping viscous vita-fluid into her veins. Tut’s elongated fingers moved with a perturbed frenzy as he began using all manner of small devices, some pronged, others spun and whirred, still others gleamed like glass and crackled like ice. His fingers were all equally tipped with steel thimbles which ended in sharp points. Their purpose I could not guess at either. However, the way he speedily sliced and jabbed and prodded, I could scarcely believe he was not butchering Ingrish’s insides.

  But the thing I looked for, the rise and fall of her chest, did not come. Each second was an eternity and each one felt like the grim ticking down of an invisible clock. I did not know when was the threshold of no return, or when Tut would give up his grisly task. I could only watch the methodically and frustratingly inscrutable work.

  And while working with a focus, no—obsession—only possible by select aliens born under stranger skies, Tut conversed cordially with Amon. I can only assume that he was giving updates with Ingrish’s condition. But as my translator was dead, I could only catch a few words.

  “Has multiple… possible ruptures… failures in—not…” Tut’s casual cadence broke as he pulled out a single phial containing a silver fluid.

  Amon caught the alien’s arm as Tut was about to plunge a syringe into one of the phials. “…only way?” the man asked sharply.

  Tut nodded again. Amon hesitantly let go.

  I could understand a boundary was being crossed, but without the context, I knew nothing of what it meant. Ingrish had hardly sat me down to teach me language, and yet I frantically tried to recall everything, searching for that one clue which would reveal everything. And when it did not come to me, all I was left with was a despair that threatened to choke the breath from my throat.

  Ingrish should’ve meant nothing to me. I had told myself this many times, but now, seeing her mangled body, seeing as she had so quickly thrown her life aside for my own—now those words felt like sin, one strangely more awful than the one which cost her life. I had learned to hold back tears as the Mantza had no use nor need of them. But I could not bear to keep my grief silent any longer, even though I did not understand why.

  I sobbed, and gasping for breath, looking through wet and blurry eyes, I saw to my utmost horror that Amon had noticed. It was too much. All of it was too much. The guilt alone should’ve stopped my heart and killed me where I stood. I did not understand why it didn’t. And like any human child who had just lost his mother, I did the only thing a child could do when his world came crashing down around him.

  I ran back to my room.

  …

  When I think of that child, huddled in the dark corner of his sleeping quarters, and as I stand now, peering in the dark light over holo-maps and drawing invasion plans, I am struck by how inescapably human humans are. Try as some might, we cannot get away from our own natures. I don’t think any species really can. As humans we grieve, we play, we laugh and frown, we hope and dream, we fall in love. and yes—we make war. Nothing about us has changed since we stepped off Terra all those long lost millennia ago. A child raised by insects still had tears to shed, and when he became a man, he then went to war.

  I cannot recall how long I waited there, but I knew until hunger or thirst overtook me, I would not leave. The thing I feared most was Amon’s face. I still did not fully understand rage, rather I most feared the indifference. That had always been the mask of those who had been my masters, and I could not bear the thought of seeing it on him. I could not bear that face directed at me.

  All sorts of the worst scenarios played out in my head. For some reason, I believed in my delirium that Amon possessed the same power as Ingrish, sensing my selfish intention when I had tried to run away from her. I tormented myself with that phantom for quite a while until I simply laid down and closed my eyes, too exhausted to continue any longer.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  There were three loud clangs on my door, and not knowing what they meant, I did not get up or move. There was silence for a moment before the hatch squeaked open, and Amon took two heavy steps into my room. He was no longer wearing his enviro-suit which had been coated with Ingrish’s blood. Instead, he had on a brown shirt and cargo trousers. I did not dare look at his face.

  There was another long pause. I could hear my heart beating in my ears.

  “You all right?” Amon finally asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  Amon sighed. He started to speak once or twice, I think trying to say something intelligibly to me. But after seeing my lack of recognition, he gave up and began talking anyway, though I did not know why. He knew I could not understand, and as broken and exhausted as I was, I could not muster the energy to try to follow what he was saying. I remained in the corner as Amon lingered near the door. Eventually, he went over to the bed. Carefully, his wrinkled hands smoothed the sheets before he sat down. His face was cast in shadow, sometimes glancing over my way, while he spoke a language that was both somehow all too familiar and yet impossible for me to decipher.

  It seemed to me that he didn’t expect me to understand, that his words were somehow more meant for him than I. Catching only the tumult in his voice, I wondered at the cadence and the long, agonizing pauses between sentences. Whatever he said that day, I still do not know what it was. It was the kind of confession you made to a deaf man, or a man on his deathbed. Either way, those words would not be spoken again. Amon’s eyes were wet when he finished, and I was none the wiser.

  He glanced over to me again, and I finally summoned the courage to ask the one question that mattered to me anymore.

  “Ingrish?”

  Amon exhaled and lowered his head. He tried several combinations of words, each as inscrutable as the last. Finally, he landed on words I did know.

  “Sleep. A long sleep.”

  There was only one thing which I understood to be a long sleep on Ghiza VI, and it crushed my soul.

  …

  The next few days I spent in a long melancholy. As I had come to learn, I was not to be disposed of for my mistake. Strangely, there was nothing in the way of the punishment I expected. And that somehow made it all the worse.

  I stayed in my quarters. Kybit was sent down to take care of me. Half her porcelain face was still melted off, though she was quickly reconstructing it. Nevertheless, the grisly sight didn’t do anything to ease my mind. She offered me food which I only accepted after carefully inspecting it. I did not know what these strange aliens did with their dead, though I knew very well what the Mantza practice was.

  Kybit tried to strike up conversation with me, and while her neural matrices could quickly discern and adapt to my limited vocabulary, I largely refused to talk. And to my surprise, I was neither punished nor reprimanded for it. Instead, Kybit quietly withdrew, only coming around to check up on me every once in a while.

  I had balked under the constant attention of Ingrish, but I found her absence to be all the worse. Eventually, I could not stand to be in my quarters any longer, and creaking up my hatch, I found it to be unlocked and unguarded. Slipping out in my bare feet, I discovered the dimmed lights of nighttime, or what passed for nighttime on the Aphelion.

  I had thought to sneak down to the medical bay to see what became of Ingrish, but the thought of running into Tut—and running into him alone—terrified me. I decided instead to wander, to finally explore this new world of mine. I knew where the mess hall was, as well as the bridge and several other ship compartments. But so much of the Aphelion remained a mystery to me.

  Setting down a corridor I had never explored before, I recall even as a child, I was always more cautious than I ought to be. It is this trait which I credit having saved my life on multiple occasions, being paranoid where others would walk heedlessly. I went down the white, framed hallway slowly, constantly doubling-back to make sure I never lost the way to my quarters. And with some spare machine parts that had been in a dust-covered box, I made a trail as I went along.

  The Aphelion was never a maze, though it was easy to get turned around in the similar looking corridors. However, if you’ve been on the ship long enough, you start to navigate by the little oddities that come across your path.

  In one corridor, there was a busted wall panel set on its side next to where an energy conduit had blown out. Take a right and go down about twenty or so meters before you arrive at a T-juncture with an access tube. Climb down two decks, and you’ll come across a loose grate affixed to an airduct. It had been riddled with bullets at some point, and a dried yellow rust coats the steel halfway down. Crawl through and take two lefts. You’ll find yourself in a perch above a locked storage room where Rykard stashes his zakon darts. Smoke them in the airlock or cargo bay five where the atmospheric sensor blew out.

  I could tell a hundred more stories like that, but for this particular night, I found myself in a hexagonal chamber. There was a pillar in the center with six bulky pods ringed horizontally around. Cold, wispy air hissed out from the capsules. Hydraulics kept the lids fastened close, but there was a pane of glass which let you see inside. Stooping over them, I saw they were all empty save one.

  I had finally found out what they had done with the orange alien. It laid there with its scaly eyes closed. Its frills made no movement, and I saw no breath pass from its lips. Much like Ingrish, it was now terribly pale. Its arms were at its sides and a thin layer of frost covered its skin. The Grugk neutralizer was still lodged thoroughly in its neck, though I didn’t see the point. The creature was clearly dead, kept in a preservation chamber of some kind.

  Having been in a somber mood already, this finally broke me. I had no connection nor care for this creature. But it in a sense was not dissimilar to me, a captive held against his will. What’s more, this creature was one of the few reminders that Ghiza VI was real, that the place where things made sense was still out there and not some half-forgotten dream. However, what really broke me was that fact that I could not understand why Amon or his crew had gone to such effort to simply kill the creature.

  There was so much that I couldn’t understand, and so much more than I would never would without Ingrish’s help. I was lost in a world where nothing made sense anymore, and I was tired of piecing it together. I stared numbly at the creature for a while, then dragging my feet, I went back to my room and fell asleep.

  …

  It was then I was not altogether surprised, a few final days later, when Amon presented me in front of a pod not unlike the one I saw holding the blue alien. Kybit had uselessly tried to explain, but I had heard enough when she mentioned, long sleep. I was going to die presently, for what reason I could not guess at. Was it for how I had gotten Ingrish killed? Or was it for some other purpose, one I could not possibly fathom?

  In either case, I no longer cared. I was tired of caring. The only thing I could do, in some bizarre logic that only made sense from a child’s point of view, was to accept this fate. And hope, in whatever way, that this could make up for what I did to Ingrish.

  I clambered down into the pod, Kybit trying to say something I could not make out over the hiss of cold air and the hydraulics raising the lid. As the metal pod closed shut, I saw Amon’s face through the glass. There it was, the indifference with which I was so accustomed with my Mantza masters. I closed my eyes and waited for what would come next.

  There was a breeze of cold air, and I was gone.