"That wasn't a request."
His tone left no room for argument. I followed him out of the medical bay, through the corridors to a small observation lounge near the shuttle's stern. The viewport showed the interior wall of our hollow asteroid sanctuary, but Zor'go adjusted the display to show external sensors.
Stars. Thousands of them, scattered across the black.
"When I was young," Zor'go said, "my father took me to a spatial disaster site. A colony station that had suffered catastrophic structural failure. Seventeen hundred beings dead. The disaster happened because the head architect had missed a critical stress calculation in the station's support framework."
I stayed quiet, sensing he needed to tell this story.
"The architect survived the collapse. Spent the rest of his life trying to make up for his mistake. Dedicated himself to disaster prevention, taught structural integrity at the academy, refused to ever design anything else. He was consumed by guilt."
"Did it help? The guilt?"
"He died alone, ten years later, having pushed away everyone who cared about him. His guilt became his identity. It prevented him from building anything new, from contributing anything positive beyond warnings about what went wrong." Zor'go turned to face me fully. "The beings who died didn't want his guilt. They wanted better designs. Safer stations. A future where the same mistake wouldn't happen again."
I understood what he was trying to say. Still didn't help the feeling crushing my chest.
"Maya and the others survived because you found them," Zor'go continued. "Not because you'd been searching every moment of every day, but because when their signal appeared, you insisted on investigating despite the danger. You didn't let a comfortable routine override your commitment to other Liberty survivors."
"That's not?—"
"You designed a navigation route through an asteroid field that should have been impassable. Saved all our lives including theirs. And you did it because you'd spent three months learning to see spaces differently, learning to find patterns in chaos, learning to trust your instincts." His ice-blue eyes held mine."Being happy on Mothership didn't betray Maya. It gave you the skills to save her."
The logic was sound. Intellectually, I knew he was right.
Emotionally, I still felt like I'd failed.
"She asked about Earth," I said quietly. "Back in the escape pod, before the raiders showed up. She asked if there was hope of going home."
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing. She lost consciousness before I could answer." I stared at the stars on the display. "I don't know what to tell her. I don't know if I'll ever see Earth again. I don't know if any of us will."
Zor'go moved closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from his much larger body. "My species believed that home was a place. A planet. A specific set of coordinates in space. We thought if we could just protect Garmuth'e, preserve its cities and territories, we'd preserve our identity."
"And?"
"And we scattered across the galaxy anyway. Fled when the resources ran low, when the population pressures became unbearable, when staying would have meant slow death." His markings shifted to a contemplative silver-blue. "We learned that home isn't a place. It's the beings who matter to you. The work that gives you purpose. The future you build instead of the past you lost."
I wanted to believe that. Wanted to feel it as truth instead of philosophy.
But Maya's haunted face kept appearing in my mind. The desperate hope in her eyes when she'd recognized me.Knew you'd come.
"I need time," I said. "To process this. To figure out what it means."
"Take the time you need." Zor'go didn't move away, didn't try to force comfort I wasn't ready to accept. Just stood there, solid and present. "But Jalina? You didn't fail her. You saved her. Remember that."
He left me alone in the observation lounge.
I stayed there for another hour, watching the stars and trying to reconcile the guilt with the reality. Trying to figure out how to face Maya when she woke up. Trying to understand how I could be happy on Mothership while other Liberty survivors were still suffering.
Eventually, a priority alert pulled me back to the bridge. The engineering team had completed temporary repairs on the shield generators. The raider patrol had moved, creating an opening in their coverage pattern.
We had a chance to run.
Zor'go was already at the central console when I arrived, surrounded by holographic navigation displays. He looked up as I entered, his expression questioning.
I nodded. Whatever emotional crisis I was having, it could wait. Right now, we needed to get Maya, Jacob, and Tess back to Mothership.
