While she washed and changed, Atropos examined a schematic of the ship, which floated in the air on the holographic screens the ship used. As she emerged, drying her hair, he waved her over.

"The Gifting ceremony is tomorrow evening," he said. "Every person on the station will be matched with a human host and donate their genetics. The computer will combine that with the genetics of their mate, if they have one, and clone a zygote which is implanted in the human host, where it grows into an egg."

"We have to get them out of there before the implanting," Amber said firmly. "We can't send them back to Earth with an alien egg in them, and we can't wait for them to be removed. Actian's planning to bring a bunch of humans back with him anyway. He might just leave before the eggs are even done incubating."

She saw Atropos frown and knew he was thinking about the loss of an entire generation, a loss that might mean the end for his species.

"We'll find another way," she promised him, taking his hand. "There has to be a better way than this."

"I know you are right," Atropos said. "I just worry that a single generation might not be long enough to find that way. We have been searching for years."

"I still think that's strange," Amber said, frowning at the thought. "I mean, that you haven't found any other way after all these generations of searching. Even if we have to tell Earth about you and ask for volunteers, we'll find a way."

"Do you really think humans would do this willingly?" Atropos looked doubtful.

"Yeah, plenty of them," Amber agreed. "Just offer them some of those computer-made gemstones maybe. But I think there's a handful that would do it for free. Humans are weird."

"Indeed." Atropos nodded, then gestured back to the map. "Our best opportunity will be tomorrow during the Festival. The work to prepare for the Gifting will be finished tonight so that everyone can participate in the celebration. Everyone will be in the center gardens and the humans will be unguarded."

"Will there be locks or passwords or anything?" Amber asked.

"No," Atropos replied. "The chamber where the humans are kept is sacred. No one would go there and risk contaminating the hosts, especially not to release them. It is unheard of."

"I guess we're going to make history then," Amber said with a nervous laugh. "And returning everyone, can we do that? Will it be safe?"

"The return process is automated, as everything is. The hosts are usually returned slowly over the course of a week or two. Sending them back all at once won't cause them any danger, but it will be more noticeable."

"I think being noticed by Earth is the least of our problems," Amber replied. "We'll worry about that once everyone is safe."

They spent the rest of the evening planning, though truthfully, there wasn't much to plan. It really would be relatively simple. Crime of any kind was unusual among the flight, so there simply wasn't much in the way of security or defenses. What security there was were automatic safeguards put in place by the computer, which Atropos had the authority to override.

When they could think of nothing else to figure out, Amber had the computer replace the bed, and they lay together, Atropos on his stomach, his wings fanned out over them and moving with his breathing as he lingered in the strange pseudo-sleep of quiescence. Amber lay beside him, his arm over her stomach, looking up at the ceiling as her thoughts turned in circles through her head.

Wondering what this was with Atropos and whether she was doing the right thing by endangering his species to protect her own. And what would happen if they were caught. She'd looked into their justice system, such as it was, and though crime was rare, the consequences were nothing good.

And there was no precedent at all for something on this scale. Atropos might become the first victim of capital punishment in his species’s history. To say nothing of what they might do to her, an animal with no personhood or protections.

When she did eventually sleep, she slept restlessly and dreamed of the Immortal’s red hands tearing at wings and flesh, silent and remorseless.

* * *

She woke as the sound of music and cheering filtered into her dreams. She sat up slowly, blinking and confused, and saw the door to her little room standing open. Beyond it, Atropos stood at the balcony, the curtain partially open.

She gathered herself enough to go and join him, her eyes widening as she looked down into the ship. It had been colorful yesterday, but today, it was a riot of color she could hardly believe. Flowers and streamers and decorations in every color of the rainbow hung from every available surface or drifted unmoored through the air.

Music was everywhere, loud and bright and joyous. The air was full of Lepidopterix, moving in pairs and trios, smiling and laughing, their wings bright and shining. Amber hadn't seen much of the darker colored Lepidopterix before, but today, there were just as many as the brighter ones and as a result, the sphere was packed.

All the public balconies were full of events, games and food and artists’ displays. There was nowhere that something amazing wasn't going on. Amber was utterly dazzled and stared wide-eyed for a long moment.

"It's incredible," she said.

"I wish we had time to enjoy it," Atropos replied. "We will at least be able to fly through it on our way. We should be seen there anyway."

Amber nodded in understanding and went to get changed. She chose clothes of loose sable brown to match her hair and the winged cloak, the better to blend in. But Atropos stopped her.

"There is no reason to hide today," he said. "Everyone will know who you are because you will be with me. And once we're past the Festival, there will be no one to see us anyway. You might as well be dressed for a party."

He offered her instead a cape. The wings were a brilliant sapphire blue, coming to about to her hips in the back, just below her sternum in the front. The dress he gave her to accompany it was a beautiful golden yellow, tea-length and lacy, with a full, fluffy skirt. Amber felt so bright and vibrant it was almost embarrassing.

"You look wonderful," Atropos assured her when she looked down at herself uneasily, kissing the back of her hand. "You will be the envy of all who wish they could change the color and pattern of their wings so easily."

"Well, hopefully, I don't attract too much attention," Amber said with a small laugh. "We do want to be able to slip away at some point."

He took her hand and they descended into the cheerful maelstrom of the Festival.

There was a wonder everywhere Amber looked. People floated by in outrageously colorful traditional clothing. Professional dancers demonstrated intricate and complex routines. The smells of rich, delicious foods were everywhere, as omnipresent as the music, all bells and percussion and high chiming strings.

Amber could hardly resist the urge to stop at every balcony they passed to run her hands through the heaps of brilliant flowers, the spills of shimmering fabric, the decadent impasto of paintings where the paint seemed almost as though it had been piped like frosting.

It was a sensory overload of the most magnificent kind, and as she and Atropos descended, pointing out the wonders to one another as they passed, Amber could almost forget what they were here for. But then she would notice the people staring at her, patronizing and acquisitive.

Once, through the crush, she glimpsed the Hymenopteran, lingering near a sweets stand and watching her. She couldn't afford to forget what she needed to do. Too many people were counting on her.

They reached the bottom of the sphere and quickly lost themselves among the gardens, shaking off the gazes of the curious crowd.

"You ready for this?" Amber asked Atropos, smiling nervously.

"No," Atropos replied frankly. "But then I am not sure I ever will be. So we will just have to proceed and hope I find my confidence somewhere along the way."

"Sounds like a plan," Amber replied with a small, shaky laugh. "Computer, door."

Casting one last glance around them in case they were being watched, Amber and Atropos slipped into the inner shell of the ship and made their way toward the incubation hall.

It wasn't deep in, certainly not as remote as the room where Actian was keeping the humans for the auction, and the halls leading to it had recently been cleaned and decorated. Preparations for Gifting Day, Amber assumed. But the area was deserted, everyone in the central sphere enjoying the festival. Once the sound of music from behind them faded, these halls were silent.

Finally, they came to a set of vast ornate doors, closed with a giant, intricate seal the size of a manhole cover that seemed to be made of wax or something similar.

"It is symbolic," Atropos explained, seeing Amber staring. "The breaking of the seal before the ceremony is an important moment. But it serves no real purpose. Though we try to disturb the hosts as little as possible, they and the mechanisms in the room still need tending. Workers enter through a service entrance. Over here."

Down a smaller corridor Amber had almost not noticed, dwarfed as it was by the ceremonial doors and partially hidden behind a statue, Atropos led her to a plainer looking door. It opened at his touch, and the two of them stepped inside.

The vast room, even larger than the hall Amber had seen before, was full of more humans than Amber thought she'd ever seen in one place. The hall extended in both directions past the curve of the ship and extend up beyond what she could see. The humans floated in neat rows and columns, drifting in the strange gravity of their suspension.

Atropos hurried back toward the great doors, where a kind of podium like a book lectern stood. As they approached it, Amber saw the screen set into it and realized it was the first solid, non-holographic computer screen she'd seen on the ship.

"All of the functions of host gathering and maintenance are controlled from here," Atropos explained as he began tapping at the screen. "Isolated from the rest of the system so that they cannot be tampered with."

"So you can use it to send them all back?" Amber asked.

"Theoretically," Atropos replied. "There is no reason I should not be able to do that."

"You don't sound exactly confident there." Amber pursed her lips, looking around them at the silent, floating crowd.

"Well, it has never been done before," Atropos said, frowning down at the console. "No one has ever returned a host, at least not as far as I am aware. I am a little worried that, if the function exists, I will not be able to locate it."

"It's a little late to bring up a major concern like that," Amber mentioned, frowning. "But, I believe in you."

"Thank you," Atropos said, frowning harder at the console.

"How long do you think we have before the ceremony?" Amber asked, eyeing the doors warily. If the ceremony started, she and Atropos would be standing right in front of them with nowhere to hide.

"I am certain we have plenty of time," Atropos replied. "The festival lasts most of the day. Oh, I think I have found it!"

He pressed a button and immediately, a loud alarm began to blare throughout the ship. He immediately began hitting other buttons faster.

"What happened?" Amber asked, shouting to be heard over the klaxon. "What is that?"

"Apparently," Atropos said, his voice strained, "that is a perfectly normal part of the purging procedure, informing the residents to stand clear of the hosts to be returned. I did not expect it to be quite so . . . vigorous."

"But it's working?" Amber asked, pale with worry. "They're being sent back?"

"In just a moment," Atropos confirmed, his antennae twitching. "There!"

Amber looked up as a light grew around the captured humans. As she watched, they began to vanish, one at a time, winking out of existence and, presumably, reappearing on Earth.

"We did it!" Amber laughed, a little overwhelmed.

"Now is the difficult part," Atropos said, taking her by the arm and hurrying her back toward the door. "Actian, and probably everyone else on the ship, are about to realize what that alarm means and rush here as quickly as they can. It would be better if we were not here when that happened."

"Agreed," Amber said, turning a little pale.

They rushed back into the service corridor, Amber still lightheaded with the rush of success. She sobered up fast at the sound of panicked voices approaching from the other end of the hall.

"Computer, door!" she said in a quick whisper. "Hall to, uh, office level B."

She vaguely remembered that designation from her poking around in the abandoned sections the previous day. She dragged Atropos through the door and erased it behind them, rushing away with all speed. She didn't know what, if any, kind of security they had on this ship, but she didn't want to be anywhere near the incubation hall right now.

"We must get back to the central chamber," Atropos said. "My brother will expect my help."

Amber nodded and, doing her best to remember her explorations from the other day, routed them back to a secluded corner of the gardens at the base of the inner sphere.

The Festival was in chaos. The music was gone, replaced by a cacophony of distressed cries as everyone tried to determine what had happened. She and Atropos hurried through the crowd, letting themselves be seen as they searched for Actian. Unsurprisingly, they found him near the grand doors of the incubation hall, where he was standing before the seal, now broken, the empty hall behind him.

"Flight brothers!" he shouted to be heard over the panicked noise. "Calm yourselves and listen to me!"

Gradually, the crowd quieted down enough for Actian to be heard. Atropos and Amber pushed their way to the front of the mass. He nodded as he saw them, then addressed the flight.

"Remain calm," he ordered. "There is no cause for panic. The hosts have been returned—"

A cry rose from the crowd and Actian waited until it had settled to continue.

"But they are not lost," he said. "The Gifting will be delayed temporarily while new hosts are collected. Nothing but our schedule will be harmed. This is only an inconvenience, not a disaster."

Amber's victory turned sour in her mouth. Would it really be that easy for them to just kidnap more people?

"At this point," Actian went on, "we suspect computer failure is responsible for the mistake. However, if there was an individual responsible, rest assured they will be found and held accountable. Return to the festival and enjoy yourselves. A new date for the Gifting will be announced soon."

He stepped away, and the crowd slowly dispersed, murmuring anxiously to one another. Atropos and Amber stayed behind as Actian approached them.

"Have you heard anything?" Actian asked, his calm, collected facade slipping a bit to show the worry and anger beneath. "I know the dull speak more often to you than to me."

"Only the speech you just gave," Atropos said with a frown. "Amber and I were in the gardens when the alarm sounded."

"It is a nightmare." Actian grimaced, his wings shifting and settling uneasily on his back. "I do not know how this could have happened. Fortunately, the command was stopped before it reached the stock for the auction."

Amber gritted her teeth, sudden anger and despair twisting in her gut. Erin!

"But who knows how much this delay will affect the course for our return flight," he went on. "It may need to be completely re-charted! And the auction is still meant to go ahead tomorrow—"

"You must delay it," Atropos said at once, and Amber's heart leapt into her throat. Actian's eyes widened and Atropos rushed on. "Consider the flight, brother. There will be enough ill will that I still have access to a host when the rest are denied. If you begin giving hosts to outsiders before your flight, there will be mutiny. You must delay the auction until after the Gifting!"

Actian considered Atropos's words for a moment, his normally aloof features drawn tight with concern.

"You're right," he said. "Of course, you're right. But our guests will not be happy."

He bit his lip with teeth that surprised Amber in their sharpness, his thoughts far away. Around them, most of the crowd had moved on, but many still lingered. Some watched Actian with anxious eyes, clearly wanting to ask him questions but afraid to approach while he was talking with his brother. Others watched Atropos suspiciously or stared at Amber with jealous greed in their eyes. Actian glanced at them and frowned.

"I will want you there when I tell them," Actian went on, straightening up with a rustle of his wings. "In the meantime, I would suggest you take that back to your room and hide it."

He gestured to Amber with a dismissive flick of his wrist.

"We don't want to risk making the situation worse by flaunting your good fortune."

"Of course." Atropos bent his head in acknowledgement. "I will take her now."

"I will call for you shortly," Actian promised and turned away with an agitated rustle of his wings to greet the other Lepidopterix standing nearby.

Atropos hurried Amber away, and they said nothing to one another until they were back in Atropos's chambers, the curtains drawn and every corner checked for possible surveillance.

"We did it," Amber said, finally allowing herself to feel relieved. She grabbed him in a tight hug. "We really pulled it off!"

"Yes, if only temporarily," Atropos confirmed, squeezing her close for a moment. "But our work is not done."

"I didn't think there would be a delay between the main vault and the auction stock," Amber said a little sourly. "But we'll get them sent back before the auction. We just have to try again."

"We'll have to do more than that," Atropos said quietly. "We will have to destroy the terminal and all the tools for collecting hosts."

Amber stepped back from him, her eyes wide.

"But that would mean—"

"Destroying any hope of my flight ever reproducing in this way," he replied, bowing his head. "At the very least, we would have no choice but to return to the home world for repairs. If we don't find a solution by then, it may spell the end for my species."

"You would risk that?" Amber asked, touching his hand. It was one thing to disrupt this generation, but to potentially destroy his species’s entire ability to reproduce . . . was it fair for her to ask that of him?

"You were right," Atropos said, taking her hand gently. "I cannot allow Actian to commit this genocide against your species. Not even to save my own."

He touched her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. She placed her hand over his, heart heavy with shared grief for his species.

"We have been a people in decline for a long time. We have been fighting the inevitable for longer than your species has even existed. Perhaps it is time we stopped fighting."

She kissed him, sad and sweet, and thanked whatever strange turn of fate had brought them to each other.

A chime rang from the air and a small screen appeared next to Atropos.

"I must go to my brother," he said, scanning the words on the screen before dragging his fingers through it to dismiss it. "Stay here. I will return soon."

"Wait! Let me go with you," Amber insisted, taking his hand. "I want to see what happens."

"It is not safe for you there," Atropos said, shaking his head and pulling his hand away.

"It's not safe for me here!" Amber pointed out. "If one of your flight decides that they want me, what's to stop them from coming in here and taking me? I'm safer with you."

"No one would dare," Atropos insisted calmly, his hands on her shoulders as he pushed her gently away. "Just keep the curtains closed and stay quiet. I will be back soon."

He kissed her forehead gently, then vanished with a rush of wings. Amber watched him leave, her stomach churning with worry.

Restless, she paced the room, trying to make herself believe it really was wiser to stay.

Outside the balcony, the sound of the place had changed. She could no longer hear the cheerful laughter and music of the festival, or even the peaceful talk and rustle of wings from normal activity. There was a tension to the air that hummed like a plucked string. There were hardly any fliers going from balcony to balcony. Those who did moved quickly and did not linger or stop to talk.

Some passed close to Atropos's rooms, eyeing the closed curtain thoughtfully. Amber watched them through a gap in the fabric, feeling as though her heart were being squeezed in the grip of a giant first. She shook her head and stepped away. No, there was no way she was staying here. She couldn't be seen publicly with Atropos, but she'd learned how to sneak around by now.

Pulling her dull brown outfit on again, she summoned a door and began working her way down to where the computer said Actian kept his audience chambers.