Earth Song: Twilight Serenade Read Free Page A

months together as the only occupants of the starship. Lilith was somewhat surprised to realize she would miss the Rasa.
    A score of the blue crystalline bots the Kaatan used scuttled around the shuttle, detaching power and consumable cables and verifying the crafts readiness. The ship was automated to such a degree that she only needed to order it made ready, and the ship did the rest.
    The Rasa crab bots worked side by side with the blue crystalline ones of the Kaatan to finish loading the shuttle only a minute after they'd arrived. She gestured and her transporter came to life, trundling gracefully on eight insectoid legs to board the shuttle. It found an empty space in the rear cabin, folded in upon itself, and went into stand-by mode as Lilith and Kal'at continued to the cockpit.
    Even before she'd left the hold, Lilith triggered the flight sequence to life. The cargo door irised closed, the gravitic drives spun up, and the craft lifted off the deck. As the cockpit door slid open at their approach, the exterior door of the Kaatan was already sliding open and the shuttle passing out into space.
    “Why do you bother using the cockpit?” Kal'at asked as he wedged his tail behind into the seat which was not quite designed for him. “You could pilot the craft from anywhere on board...”
    “Truth be told, I could fly it from anywhere in the galaxy.” Kal'at turned an eye turret toward her. In many other beings that would have been a boast. He knew a lot more of her capabilities now, after months together. There was no false bravado in her statement.
    “Then the question is even more relevant.”
    Lilith gave a rather typical human shrug and smiled slightly. “My father made me promise. Should something happen to the automated systems, the manual controls are located here.”
    “Is that a possibility?”
    “Not even a remote one.”
    “Then why give your word?”
    Outside they'd cleared the Kaatan and were angling away. The big green cloud covered face of Romulus swung into view and centered, then began to get larger before she answered. “Minu says it is human custom to obey your parent’s wishes.” Kal'at seemed unconvinced, but did not pursue the topic.
    With the powerful gravitic drive of the shuttle, they were burning down into the atmosphere of Romulus in only minutes. The ship cancelled out all sensations of motion as it rode out the upper atmosphere turbulence and dropped below the perpetual cloud deck. Endless deep green seas stretched out below them.
    “Your people have begun construction of a third platform?” Lilith asked as the shuttle dropped down to just above the waves.
    “That is correct,” he agreed, “new contracts for food have been very lucrative, and the platforms are constructed largely from scrap we buy through your Chosen and transported up here by contractors in Phoenix shuttles.”
    Lilith was aware of the arrangements. Though the conversation made little practical sense as it exchanged no unique information, it was from another lesson from her mom that she continued. Small talk.
    Lilith paid attention to the talk with a small part of her brain as the rest reveled in the simple joy of flying a perfectly designed craft in the atmosphere. The Lost might be gone for untold eons, but their engineering was gloriously eternal.
    Travelling at five times the speed of sound, the prime habitat platform went from the distant horizon to looming in only seconds. Lilith applied gravitic control to break, bank, and climb all with the kind of flawless precision only a pilot with her brain partly controlled by computers could manage. They dropped below supersonic barely a hundred meters before rocketing past the platform. She got a spectacular view of the facility with its hundreds of humans, Rasa, and some Traaga all busily working. Many looked up in shock at the sudden appearance of the shuttle, some waving when the recognized the sleek needle shape.
    The shuttle banked into a fantastic skew turn