He looked over the Clan Leaders at the table, and at the ever-present agent of the Hand who sat opposite of him observing the meeting. “All of you are aware that we expect an all-out state of war with a hostile race we recently came into contact with called the Shara Daim. What most of you have not been aware of is that they are like us, human and Nel. They are the third race that is our genetic sibling. You know the human and Nel history, and are aware of the knowledge we received from our ancestor, which should tell you how dangerous Shara Daim are. They too had access to that knowledge, and for longer than us,” Tomas said evenly. “But we have intel that indicates that they lost their sphere some time ago, so the amount of knowledge from it that they currently possess is unknown.”
“Can we match them?” Clan Leader Brown asked.
“We believe so, at least technologically. They have a much larger territory and population than us. Nevertheless, we have plans for a prolonged war. I’m telling you this so that you can prepare your own colonies for invasions. I don’t think that it will come to that, but I want you all to be aware of the possibility,” Tomas answered, and then turned to the Trivaxian Clan Leader. “Tofor, Trivax is the first major world that would be hit if our border systems fall. But I have spoken with Fleets Master Laura, and we will see to moving some assets into your territory to bolster your own.”
“Of course, thank you, sir,” Clan Leader Tofor of Trivaxian Clan said.
“And the second thing is to warn you that the Erasi have stealth ships in our territory, which is not altogether surprising, since we have our stealth ships in their territory. We believe their purpose is espionage, and we have a response ready to implement against them. I just wanted to warn you that you might be seeing some strange fleet movements and ghost signatures in your systems. If you notice anything strange, please have your people forward it to Fleet on Thanatos.”
A chorus of affirmative responses followed his words, and Tomas nodded. “Good. If there is nothing else,” he said, and moved to stand. The rest followed.
Seo-yun moved anxiously behind a group of solders as they carefully loaded their priceless cargo onto a military transport. After they slowly lowered the box on the floor of the shuttle and secured it, the leader turned to look at Seo-yun.
“Don’t worry, Minister. We’ll make sure that it reaches its destination in perfect condition,” Commander Talluah said as she put out a hand for Seo-yun.
She grasped and shook it while looking the commander in the eyes. “You better. If not, you will answer to me,” she said seriously.
The commander nodded and entered the shuttle. Seo-yun stepped back as the shuttle took off for the ship waiting in orbit. She shook her head as she walked back into the Sanctuary’s science and research center; she still could not believe that Tomas had actually managed to convince her to send the sphere to Adrian. It was what the Shara Daim wanted, and if they got their hands on it, there would be no stopping them. Thankfully, she and her team had transferred all of the data to several other devices that they had built according to the specifications from Axull Darr, but only the original device contained his consciousness.
She knew that Adrian had a plan that required it, but she still worried that it could fall into Shara Daim hands even with all the precautions that Adrian had in place.
She walked through the large building and made her way to one of the main research rooms. Inside, a squad of scientists worked on their stations. Holographic images of Ra’a’zani in all of their stages of development were scattered amongst the working stations. Seo-yun approached a Nel woman sitting at a desk in the center of the room.
“Sevani, any progress?” she asked the woman.
“Yes, actually, I was just about to call you. I think that we got it,” she said with a human smile. Sevani was young and brilliant, and as she had been born out of the progeny centers and then raised in a mixed home, with both Human and Nel caregivers, she was perfectly fine with expressing her emotions through facial expressions, unlike Nel who were born out of purely Nel families.
“Really? Show me,” Seo-yun said.
“Here is what their reconstructed DNA will look like,” Sevani said as a holo of a helix appeared above her table. “We have added defenses against the cold, rewritten a portion of their original code substantially. They will look similar but will be slightly smaller in order to better retain heat and survive on their new world. We had to remove their scales and add fur.” She sighed. “I know that you didn’t want that many physical changes, but there was no getting around it; we are still not as good at this as the People. Unless you want to reconsider and put them on a warmer world?” Sevani asked.
Seo-yun shook her head. “No, this is as much a test for us as it is their new chance. In addition, Tomas wants them to grow in a completely different environment from the originals. What else?”
“Well, we made sure that the females will be able to lay only six eggs during their lifetime, in three periods about ten years apart, with a much better egg fertilization success rate. That should ensure something like family units to be established, or at least give the females more freedom in their society to find a purpose other than egg laying. Moreover, there will now be a fifty-fifty chance of an embryo in the egg being male or female; it should level their society out a bit. We put in markers that would allow the team on site to adjust this if something unforeseen happens,” Savani said.
“And what about the Sha package?”
“We put in the limited package, yes: telepathy, telekinesis, and vitakinesis, buried in their genetic code with the same triggers that Axull Durr put into us. We found instructions on how to make genetic memories for alien races not descended from the People, but we will not know if we nailed it until we try. And we needed to design a slightly different energy organ more suited for their physiology.”
“Good. The eggs we recovered from Lu’tal should arrive in a couple of days, and we’ll get more once Johanna takes their other worlds,” Seo-yun said.
“So did the Emperor decide on a name?” Savani asked.
Seo-yun sighed tiredly. She had tried to have him choose some other name, but he had been persistent. “He renamed the world Jötunheimr, and plans on naming them Jötunn.”
Savani looked at her quizzically. “Does that have some meaning?”
“Its human mythology. In one of old human religions, Jötunn were frost giants banished to the world of Jötunheimr.”
Savani shrugged. “Well, they will be banished in a way, and they will need a new name. That one is better than nothing.”
“New name for a new species. Hopefully they become something better than what they are now,” Seo-yun said.
Later that day, Seo-yun was walking through the palace on her way to her and Tomas’s quarters, the Ra’a’zani still on her mind. There had been a time when she would not have even considered doing what they planned to do to the Ra’a’zani and their offspring, when she would have opposed it vehemently.
However, that was before she had studied the historical data from the sphere. Before she’d realized that the People had aided most of the life in the galaxy. That their fingerprints were on most of the intelligent races in the galaxy. They were the first, and for the longest time, the only race, and they had used their knowledge to help life along, to guide it into becoming intelligent. Now their descendants were going to attempt something similar.
The People had never modified a race without its consent, not once a lifeform achieved intelligence, but then they had never involved themselves in the matters of other races. They had stood above, both in technology and age. They had never had to fight a war against another intelligent race that they could lose, had never known what it felt like to be inferior and at the mercy of another. The Empire, on the other hand, lived amongst the other races, fought and suffered at their hands. They understood that sometimes they needed to do the hard thing, that the universe was not a nice place. It had taken Seo-yun a bit of time to come to peace with that, with the power and responsibility her people wielded.