Photo by Edrick Krozendijk on Unsplash
“Oh, that is a beaute of a rock.” FishDiver shared with his scouting wingmate as SoaringHigh cleansed the gel from her feathers.
Febirds and wifbirds took longer than werebirds to crawl out of the deep cold; he had been functional for nearly six hours. Mesbirds, the fourth gender of their species, couldn’t handle cryogenics at all and were limited to their homeworld of Air and two of the nearby colony worlds the Tortoises had prepared for them in hopes of their Potential nearly a hundred thousand years ago. At least that had been the case when they left their colony four hundred years ago. Who knows what the tech was like now.
Of the twelve in cryogenics, it was their turn to wake upon reaching a system and they had struck a warm updraft. Flipping through the screens with claw and wing tips, FishDiver said, “Definitely a Tortoise Shell world. Running possibilities now to see where the Potentials are likely to be.”
“Don’t mess with me.” SoaringHigh slipped into the roosting bar next to FishDiver, their ninth shift together while the FarFlyer made its long search. “A real Tortoise Shell world?”
“It is still clearing out its orbit. Look at all the comet trails through the system directing material impacts on the planet, the only one completely in the liquid water zone. No way those flight paths are natural.”
“Don’t make assumptions. We don’t want to look like we jumped off a cliff.”
“Stop being a scientist for once and believe your eyes and the breeze.” He bobbed his head at the displays. “Tell me that doesn’t look just like the systems for Cloud and Wind.”
Tears slid down SoaringHigh’s beak as she watched the dance of rocks their computer faithfully recorded as they slept the three years traveling, slowing down from interstellar speed at the edges of the system’s Oorts cloud to a reasonable speed in the crowded the inner system. “Potential species fourteen,” she chirped. “The last of them. Only two of the seventeen Potentials failed.”
“Now who is making assumptions. We don’t know where the actual Potentials are yet. Yellow or orange star, maybe a very young red. Solitary.” FishDiver added the specific distance within the liquid water zone the modified rock tumbled through. A highly carbon-dioxide atmosphere and acidic water flowed over the rocky surface, not livable yet, and not livable at all for their species nested under a binary white star, but the potential was there for the right Potential. He set the navigation system searching the stellar roosting branch. “Look around and see if the Tortoises left a Note. I’ll get some grubs going.” He had been ignoring his crop for the last three hours waiting for Soaring to become functional enough for social eating, but it was time to fill it so he could really concentrate on what the computer was feeding them.
Twenty minutes later, because whoever had closed up after the last failed flight hadn’t cleaned up their mess in the mess hall, he returned with two small lidded bowls of artificially wiggling worm proteins. He had downed one by himself while putting everything back into place, cryo-processing vacated the system before cold storage leaving him empty from beak to tail.
“Thank you.” Soaring said, accepting her food and setting within the stowage space in case of loss of gravity. Somehow she never needed food immediately upon coming awake. You think as a febird nearly half again his weight, she would need food even more. “Found the Note. Primates are the Potentials; the navigation search you set up came back with the same data the translator did for the star location mentioned in the Note. About 10.5 lightyears away. Normally that is the furthest out the Tortoises go for their six gifts of Shells, but this escarpment has nothing nearby. The rest of the gifts, if they exist, are even further scattered.”
“And nearly twenty years to get up to speed, cross the distance, and check to see if the Potentials have survived.” Fish stabbed at his food in anger. “We are going to need to wake the others. How far is Air?”
“The homeworld is a hundred fifteen light-years toward galaxy center; the graviton will have a message there in fifteen days by relay. If technology hasn’t been upgraded or degraded, more ships can be here in about a hundred fifty years to start the next stage of preparing the Shell. All the instructions of what to do next after the cooldown are in the Note like normal.”
“A shame the first sentients to emerge after the Tortoises were the Competitors.”
“Those shelled creatures were not ready for those ravenous beasts.” Soaring shook her feathers down. “To wait over eighty thousand years, through nineteen different dynasties, for someone else to talk with and get the Competitors. To have to extinguish the only other intelligent species you met after working so long to help everyone to come after you.”
“To the Tortoises. Long may they fly.” Fish lifted his cup into the air.
Soaring removed her bowl from stowage and did likewise. “Or crawl if they prefer.”
(words 856; first published 3/15/2026)
Laying Easter Eggs Series