“Someone once asked me if I had learned anything from it all. So let me tell you what I learned. I learned everyone dies alone. But if you meant something to someone… If you helped someone… Or loved someone… If even a single person remembers you… Then maybe you never really die. And maybe… this isn't the end at all.”

  Words of the Machine

  —Excerpt from Rules of Interactions, A Guide for Digital Sentience in Interactions with Biologicals, 9 P.I.

  Looking through the evacuation plans for Burrow, Chiprit felt sadness rise within him. They didn't even ask us. Are we Trkik so powerless that humans didn’t even think to ask for our help?

  They tried to evacuate to the already overwhelmed colony on Taishon Tar and to distant Earth, when Trkuk, his home planet, was as close as Taishon Tar.

  True, their Ecco system was still fragile after the averted nuclear winter. But the human-built atmospheric cleaners did a great job. The planet was recovering, and all Trkik had learned to work together, never to allow such madness to occur again.

  The old religion was gone, the tribal thinking was dead, and they were truly united. Chiprit was sure every Trkik would gladly help another being in need.

  He contacted the minister at home. While he waited for the secretary to connect him, he marveled again at the wonder of paired particle communication, allowing him to speak to his home in real time, twenty-five thousand light-years away.

  “Chiprit, how are you? I assume you reached the human Station, how is it called?” The Minister's Face had appeared suddenly on the screen. Tired eyes, it was early evening in Magellan, the newly built Capital City of Trkuk.

  “Nirg Farar is the name. It means ‘Birthplace’ in Shraphen. And yes, Minister, I’m well. I’m calling with an urgent matter.”

  In the next minutes, Chiprit explained the whole situation on Burrow to the minister. The desperate fight to evacuate billions. The humans cannibalizing every ship to make space for sleeper chambers. Taishon Tar is slowly becoming overcrowded by the sheer number of refugees.

  As it was his way, the minister listened without interrupting. Then, when he was sure Chiprit had ended his report, he spoke in his rough, aged voice.

  “It is concerning that no one even informed us of this, but I do think this is a quirk of human psychology.”

  Chiprit was now focused on the elderly minister. His insights were always remarkable.

  “Think back. When the Magellan reached our planet, they were in dire need of help, but they didn’t ask for it. Instead, they rescued you, even though it cost them valuable time learning our culture and language. Only then did they offer us help by saving our whole species. And only in passing did they ask if they could buy the resources they needed.”

  Chiprit remembered those days vividly. It seemed so surreal. All seemed lost, and then came a ship out of nowhere, offering everything they needed to survive. But he didn’t understand what the minister was trying to say.

  “Ambassador Chiprit, humans are incapable of asking for help if they can’t give anything back. The universe gave them a sense of equality. They need balance. If they ask for help, they need to give something back.”

  Now Chiprit saw it clearly. It was true. Even though they had saved the planet, they wanted to trade for the resources they needed. But that left one question open.

  “Minister, I feel the truth behind your words, but why didn’t they ask for a trade of resources or space? Do they think we can’t spare anything?”

  “No, Chiprit. I think the truth is darker. I think humans are reaching their limit and can’t spare anything anymore. I fear they are close to the breaking point.”

  Chiprit thought about the current situation. Burrow was about to burn up. The Aligned Planets of Sol were pushing ships to Burrow to save the population. In the Burrow system, they built dozens of space habitats to house awake Shraphen or store sleeping ones.

  All this after fighting on the ground for months, while simultaneously building hydroponic stations and shipping food to avoid mass starvation.

  The minister might be right. The humans were stretched too thin. They continued building space infrastructure around Trkuk, even though their engineers were needed elsewhere.

  “If that’s true, we need to help them, fast.”

  “Yes, but we need to be careful. They must get the feeling that they give something back. Otherwise, they will always treat us as if they are in our debt. This would severely influence our relationship.”

  In the back of his head, Chiprit’s idea of a fleet dedicated to peace and helping others became prominent again.

  “Minister, I think I have an idea. But I need you and our people’s permission.”

  The minister leaned closer to the screen. “Explain.”

  —————

  Nirfir scanned the next buildings for heat signatures. The same task he had done for a month.

  Since the giant squid left Burrow, no further fights had taken place. The Scrin suddenly died en masse. Firebugs and Burrow Rats started to fight and kill each other, and Nazguls seemed to die out naturally.

  The fight was over. The enemy was dead, but they had still lost everything. Burrow was about to burn. The oxygen crisis was unstoppable. They had tried everything, from activating volcanoes to simply burning the lichen. Nothing worked.

  Starting from the caves on the northern continent, the lichen and spores grew in every direction. A beautiful green carpet that was about to kill everyone.

  Now every day was the same. Breakfast at 06:00, then pairing up with their pilots and flying patrols all day.

  Sometimes, like today, they searched the smaller, already evacuated cities on the southern continent for stragglers.

  Not that anyone could have missed the evacuation. But the Army didn’t want to risk anything.

  In the bigger cities, rumors of rising crime circulated. Nirfir wasn’t surprised. As he told his pilot just yesterday, “We Shraphen like to act as if we are this evolved species. As if we only care for beauty and art. For music and science. Take away safety and food for a week, and we’re back hunting in packs, eating everything that moves.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The pilot just nodded but didn’t say anything. Nirfir had noticed that the humans seemed more tired. If it were only the pilots, Nirfir would have understood it. They flew crazy amounts of hours, not only on patrols but also carrying people into orbit.

  But the ordinary soldiers had changed as well. This made Nirfir nervous. Did the humans know something he didn’t?

  Today’s pilot was fresh from Earth. He was more talkative.

  “So you fought those monsters, like really man-to-man?”

  “Yes, but we were in our IFV, Monkey King. And it sounds more heroic than it was. Most of the time, we barely survived the encounters.” Nirfir wasn’t really in the mood to talk about the last months.

  “Crazy, man. I saw the videos. You guys are heroes back home, you know? I volunteered for this mission. Straight out of college. Got my pilot’s license on the way here.”

  The information that his pilot was not only inexperienced but also crazy, volunteering to go to the front at such a young age, didn’t help Nirfir’s mood.

  “Why? Why volunteer when there’s only danger waiting for you?” Nirfir had to know. Humans were still a riddle to him.

  “Why? Because here, I can help you. Your people are in this shit without your fault. And only a few decades ago, my family was almost wiped out. A massive tsunami hit the coast of my country. Then a giant dam broke upstream. Almost a billion died.”

  Nirfir had never heard about this event. His ears were upright as he studied the young pilot.

  “Were it not for volunteers coming from all over the world, my grandparents would have died from hunger, sickness, or whatever. Now I can help. I can repay my karma debt.”

  This time, Nirfir just nodded.

  How many died on the northern continent? How many before the humans arrived and supplied food? Even though there are billions of us left, what will become of us? Most of the survivors are frozen in stasis.

  When will we be able to wake them again? Without a home planet. Will we end up as space nomads?

  Nirfir returned to the sensors; his daughter Sikkra was safe on Taishon Tar. That was all he wanted. The rest of the universe could wait.

  ——————

  The whole transit to Burrow went without problems. Drake almost never left his office, and life aboard the Guardian was quite relaxing.

  André had passed the time with a routine of running in the morning with Eleri to keep in shape. Afterwards, they had breakfast with Jane in the mess hall. The food aboard could put any five-star hotel to shame.

  They talked about Jane’s research into the new Hyphea strain, about the status of Burrow, and the evacuation.

  A week before they reached Burrow, they got confirmation. Burrow was fully evacuated. Even livestock and the full surviving Tai population were safely in stasis.

  In a surprise move, the Trkik Ambassador Chiprit announced that their government was willing to house five hundred million Shraphen, together with Tai and livestock, on Trkuk, in exchange for a hundred ships currently slated for decommissioning.

  Gerber had to read the report multiple times. Those Mongoose were wicked smart. They got a massive workforce with advanced knowledge and a quick start in fleet building, while appearing generous in the eyes of the universe. Truly a masterstroke in diplomacy.

  Three weeks behind them was the biggest relief fleet ever seen. Admiral Russo had confiscated, bought, and recommissioned every ship and crew he could get his hands on.

  More than twenty thousand ships. Their transitioning wave almost threw the Guardian out of FTL. Among them were super-heavy freighters, capable of safely storing millions of stasis capsules. Each one was ten times the size of the Rosalind Franklin, the unlucky hospital ship destroyed at the Battle of Taishon Tar.

  Everyone is trying to save the Shraphen, and what are we doing? We’re nothing more than a guard unit for some oligarch. The thought nagged André the whole week until they reached Burrow.

  He was on the bridge as they entered orbit. Drake stood in the background, discussing something with the communications officer. Eleri stood behind him, also deeply involved in the conversation.

  André felt excluded again. He still didn’t know what they were here for, but landing on the planet was out of the question. The communication between Admiral Sanders and the captain made that clear.

  “Guardian, I don’t care who you are or who sent you. You won’t send any shuttle or probe to the surface. The oxygen levels have reached critical levels over the last few days. Any spark could ignite the atmosphere.”

  The captain seemed not surprised by this. He looked to his side at Drake, who just nodded, then the captain answered. “Understood, Admiral. Is it possible to enter a low planetary orbit? We want to make some measurements.”

  The female admiral looked to her side, and André noticed that the visual and audio filters kicked in, masking her mouth movements so they could not be read.

  He felt proud that the fleet was now using these filters, since he was on the committee that had actually written the guidance for implementing them.

  You were once a capable intelligence officer, but what are you now? Nothing more than a rogue agent.

  André pushed the thought away, focusing on the admiral as she spoke again. “Don’t go closer than 200 km, and no probes!”

  “Understood. Guardian out.”

  While the ship moved into orbit, André tried to glance at the communications officer’s screen.

  “Captain Gerber, always the spy, I see.” Drake had spotted him and winked him over.

  “Don’t be shy, we’ve got almost nothing to hide here.”

  André was sure this wasn’t the truth, but in a way, Drake was now his boss. Patron? Whatever.

  Before André could reach the station, Drake turned around and walked toward him. “Come with me, let’s walk a bit. I want to talk to you.”

  André had to congratulate the old man. By telling him to come over, he indicated he had nothing to hide. But before André could reach the station, he invited him for a walk, steering him away from it. A textbook evasion tactic, colored with charisma and grandeur.

  They left the bridge and walked along the promenade, a hallway along the hull, where one side was covered in large panoramic windows. It allowed them to observe the busy space above and around Burrow.

  “Captain, by now you must have asked yourself what your part of the mission is.” Drake came directly to the point.

  “Pretty much. I’m not a follower of your cult, and my job as an intelligence agent is absolutely useless on this ship.”

  André was sick of playing around.

  “Cult, ha, I like you. I really do.” Drake didn’t act as if he were offended. “We’re no cult, but then again, that’s what every cult says.”

  “So why am I here, then? And why are we here for? You never actually answered the question.”

  “We are here to rescue something that is on Burrow. No one but me knows about it. You are here to act as a balancing force. As a non-official AIN agent. After we complete our mission, I want you to return and report everything to your superiors.”

  Drake did it again, packing too much information into a sentence, forcing the other one to decide which answers were more important. Another textbook evasion tactic. By doing so, Drake would learn more about the other side than he gave away.

  André decided to stay silent.

  “There’s something on Burrow. Something ancient. It shielded the southern continent from the Hyphea.”

  “How do you know about it, then?” How did Drake know these things?

  He wouldn’t get an answer. Not now, at least.

  A flash of light erupted in the southern hemisphere of Burrow. Maybe lightning, or maybe it was just a water droplet focusing the rising sun too much.

  It didn’t matter.

  Before André’s and Drake’s eyes, a firestorm erupted around the planet, burning in a dark orange, never-ending flame.

  Watching in horror as the whole planet erupted in flames, André felt a sickness rise from his stomach.

  Until the last moment, he had believed that somehow the planet would be saved. That the scientists, or Drake, or some cosmic power would intervene.

  Now all he could do was stare.

  In the background, alarms whined, crewmen ran to their positions. It was all useless, a million miles away.

  Burrow burned. They had failed utterly, and for the first time in forever, André was on the verge of tears.

  Then he saw Drake’s expression.

  Nothing had physically shifted in the man’s face. But André saw something no one else had ever seen.

  The ever stoic, almost all-knowing man didn’t know what to do.

  Drake reached out behind him with a shaky hand, searching for one of the benches along the wall, and sat down.

  For the first time, André could see Drake’s age in his movements.

  They sat there, watching Burrow burn. Each one full of his own sorrows, facing his own failures.

  Epilogue

  Admiral Cassidy Sanders entered her dark office. Like every day, she was greeted by the same view, the same reminder.

  Burrow.

  The planet had been burning for three weeks now, casting an orange light into the otherwise dark office. The large panoramic window behind her desk framed the planet; she could see that parts of the atmosphere had burned out.

  Winds carried the flames from one layer to another, drawing lines around the now-dead world.

  For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t crushed by the view. Russo had just finished transit. Help was here.

  She had just met with the Shraphen exile government.

  The decision was made. The Burrow system would not be abandoned. The Aligned Planets, the Trkik Republic, and the Shraphen Exile Government would build colonies and space habitats until every Shraphen could be housed.

  The scientists were sure terraforming Burrow would be possible.

  It might take generations, but we will take Burrow back.

  That much was certain.

  End of Book One: Canis Majoris