Xia Phar had a good life for a human on Saer’kah. She didn’t wear a restriction band and the Saer’khi family that had raised her since the Migration treated her like one of their own. Others humans on Saer’kah though had no reason to love the Saer’khi . At least Xia had some semblance of freedom. So when the humans decide to rebel against the Saer’khi and she discovers the real reason for the presence of humans and other aliens on Saer’kah Xia decides to take action. Enlisting the help of her family and her friend Tarek she forms a plan to get everyone out of the alien barracks without arousing suspicion and get them off Saer’kah on one of the newly built colony ships. Sounds pretty easy right? Now Tarek’s crush on her is the least of her problems and leaving Saer’kah is just the beginning.     Twice Removed Chapter 13 Stormfront By Amethyst

Nearly an hour later I was sitting on the top of the medical ship watching the approaching clouds and worrying about Krie’s team. The wind was getting strong enough to be potentially dangerous and I almost thought that I could hear thunder in the distance. Krie’s ping was a huge relief to me, and I was even more relieved when her mind voice said, *We’re approaching from the southeast, I can see the camp now.*

I flew higher into the air and used the zoom feature on my goggles as I turned southeast and scanned the skyline. I saw Tanna and Krie approaching and let out a sigh. *I was worried you wouldn’t make it back before the storm hit, are the others somewhere safe?*

*They’re right beneath us, they should be emerging from the forest any time now,* my sister replied, *but I’m not sure I would call what they’re doing safe. They are managing to keep up with Zheer at a full run though. We’ve been flying as fast as we can without risking leaving them behind or we’d have been back sooner.*

*How the hell are the others managing to keep up with Zheer?!* I asked in shock. I wanted a Haran on each scout team for two big reasons: They adapt to just about any environment well, except for extreme cold, and they are damn fast runners with a lot of stamina. On a good stretch of flat land they can get to speeds of up to forty kilometers per hour and hold that speed for long periods of time. I turned my attention toward the ground and the dust cloud that was being generated at the edge of the forest where we’d been clearing the land.

Sure enough I quickly caught sight of Zheer’s bright red and yellow plumage at the head of the cloud. Behind him though were close to two dozen black and white horse-like creatures, three of them bearing the three other members of Krie’s team. *What in the world…* Then as I zoomed in further I caught sight of a flash of lavender. *Holy shit, that’s a lot of slips. Are they…*

Tanna gave me a big mental grin. *Yes, they are herding the larger creatures, and they are using their empathy to do it. When Nu-Arr and I found them, our new slips decided to start issuing empathic orders and the larger creatures just followed us back to the ruins. They seem to be very docile, and like the slips I think they’re empathic. Krie and I can send them orders just fine and so can the slips, but non-telepaths need to be touching them to do it. When your call about the storm came in, Luiza got the crazy idea to ride them back to camp.*

*Okay, I’ll admit that’s pretty cool, but have either of you given any thought to how the camp is going to handle the horde of slips that are right on your tails?* I responded with a groan.

*We don’t have tails,* Krie shot back. *I think the slips will either lose interest in us or they will partner up with colonists. If they do the latter maybe we can find uses for them, and a lot the colonists have wanted one of their own since Kit showed up anyway. We’ll have a discussion on the potential uses for both species later, when we’re all safe under the EM shield.*

As soon as Krie’s team and their menagerie were safe within the shield’s radius I sent the signal for Karran to activate it and called Matt and Amy to join me as I made my way over to the team. I wasn’t even going to bother trying to keep track of the slips. Not only were there a lot, but the damn critters started spreading out searching for people as soon as the shield was down. They immediately converged on Sarah, the rest of the kitchen staff, and Matt who were the only unclaimed people out in the open. I sent a thought to Tarek who was with those taking shelter in the personnel ship. *Tarek, the shield is up and people can come out now. Could you do me a favor though and have everyone else wait inside for five minutes while you and Rebecca bring out all the children first? I think the kids should get first crack at these little terrors.*

*Little terrors?* he asked in confusion. I sent him a mental image of the slips and nearly giggled at the surprise in his mind. *Oh that is terrifying, just think of all the noise they will make if they think the camp is in danger. Kit was loud enough on her own. Well at least they will keep the children from getting bored, we’ll be right out. Should I tell the children what’s out there? Or keep quiet?*

*Let’s let it be a surprise,* I answered with a chuckle. Knowing that he couldn’t deceive well enough to pull off a surprise on his own I instructed him, *Tell Rebecca quietly, and warn her that these slips might be a bit eager to form bonds with people. Oh, and if you and Rebecca come out with them you might just want to have names in mind.*

With that done I turned my attention back to Krie’s team and their interesting find. What I thought were horse-like creatures from a distance were as large as horses, but physiologically closer to gazelles if gazelles had long ears and armor plating. They all had white fur, were long legged with cloven hooves, and built for speed and stamina rather than strength, though their size seemed to give them some of that as well. Their hind legs were especially powerful, making me believe that they were decent jumpers as well. Their heads were smallish and cervine looking with large brown eyes and long furry ears almost like those on a lopped eared bunny, but longer. I figured the largest adult male was about eighteen hands high and the ears were just over half that length. Luiza and the others had been using those ears as makeshift reins and it didn’t seem to bother the animals.

The strangest thing about the creatures were the keratin deposits though. Keratin is the key structural material making up the outer layer of human skin, but it’s also the key structural component of hair, fingernails, hooves and such. In addition to that present in their light fur and hooves these creatures had a series of thick black plates of keratin along their noses, the top of their heads, and all along their spines and the sides of their long flexible necks and backs. Even the upper parts of their short flap-like tails were covered in a plate of it, though their lower sides, legs and underbelly seemed to be free of them. In addition to the plates the adult males each had a single, deadly looking, black horn composed of keratin over bone emerging from their foreheads, with the largest having a horn nearly two feet in length.

“Interesting creatures,” I said as I examined the largest male, “these horns and plates are probably meant to protect them from predators. They are definitely herbivores… I wonder how they survived the disaster?”

“We found them after following a trail down to the river from some caves,” Nu-Arr offered. “I think they take shelter on the high ground at night to be safe from the crocosaurs and during the day they go down to the river to graze. A few may have hidden in those caves during the disaster and emerged afterwards to graze when the worst was over. We only found this herd, but I think there were more. They are durable and there were mosses in and around the caves so I think it was probably through that and luck that they survived.”

I nodded in agreement and turned to Krie to ask, “Any idea why evolution prompted ears like this?”

“Tanna said that when she saw them drinking from the river they lay their ears flat against the water,” Krie replied. “I think they may have some sort of sonar that helps them read movement under the water. Most of their evolutionary traits seem to be for defense against the crocosaurs or some other large predators.”

“Were they difficult to ride?” I asked, turning my attention to Luiza, Lirra, and Nu-Arr.

“Not really,” Luiza said after some thought. “They were really docile and seemed to respond well to our thoughts once we were on them. They don’t seem to be quite as smart as the slips though, and the ones we rode haven’t seemed to want to stake a claim on us.”

“I would suggest only riding the males though Commander,” Nu-Arr suggested. “We startled them a bit when we first came down the trail and they have an interesting response to danger. The females and the young ones knelt on the ground with their heads tucked in, curled up in a ball while the males pointed their horns at us and stamped their feet until they were sure we weren’t a threat. I am almost certain that if they thought we were a threat they would have attacked, but then the slips started doing their empathic thing.”

“Well I can think of a few good uses for these creatures besides riding, though having a few mounts could be a good thing as well. I guess we really should come up with a name for this species though, I can’t keep calling them ‘these creatures’,” I said as I thought about what they could bring to the colony.

“How about Unity-corns?” Matt suggested with a grin as he approached with a large slip following dutifully behind him.

“That’s terrible Matt,” Luiza said with a smile and a shake of her head, “I like it.”

I rolled my eyes at the pair of them. “We are not naming them that, we’ll take suggestions and the colony will vote on it at dinner.” Then I gave Matt a smile of my own. “I see you made a new friend, how cute.”

The cyborg shrugged. “Sure, if you count someone latching onto your leg and yelling ‘Mine!’ in your head without even buying you dinner first ‘making a friend’, then yeah I made a friend.” Then he gave me that movie star smile of his, damn he was good looking even with the scars. “Oh and just so you know, when we take suggestions for the name, I’m suggesting Unity-corn.”

By the time dinner was ready the storm was really raging outside of the shield. The wind was howling, thunder was booming and lightning was continually striking the shield and making it flare as it absorbed and compensated for the energy. The shield flares were bright flashes of blue and white light at the strike points and with the loud humming sound as the shield was struck it was almost like watching a laser light show. Our new herd of indigenous hooved quadrupeds had taken up shelter under the forward section of the personnel ship where the seven males were stamping nervously around the balled-up females and young. I had arranged for one of the large water containers to be placed nearby and had some of the colonists gather grass from around the camp for them to eat as well.

Over half the colonists, and all the colony children, now had slips of their own including Tarek, Rebecca, Captain White, Mandy, and Karran. The children were particularly excited about this turn of events while other’s accepted it as inevitable, much like Matt had. Not one of our four mutineers had been claimed though, but I couldn’t be sure if they were just hiding at the time or whether the slips had picked up on the colonists’ general animosity toward them. The slips who had claimed colonists seemed to avoid those four or even hiss at them if they got too close to their ‘pets’. I couldn’t really blame the slips. The mutineers might be working as they agreed, but of the four only Jared seemed to have any amount of regret for what they did and a desire to make amends.

There had been four name suggestions for our new species in the colony: Knightmare, Trojan, Antelorse, and much to my chagrin, Matt’s suggestion of Unity-corn. While everyone settled in and began eating, Captain White, followed by his new slip Dart, walked around the campfires with a data pad and recorded everyone’s vote. Dennis had announced the results, and I was shaking my head at the fact that Unity-corn actually won, when Mandy approached me with on two year blonde old girl crying in her arms and an identical one following close behind along with three slips. “What’s up Mandy? I was wondering if you were coming to compare this storm to those on Earth, but I can see one of the little ones is upset?”

“Nah, we can do that after if you like though,” she said, returning my smile. “Talia and Hope were playing with Jittu and their slips and Talia skinned her knee.”

I took the small sniffling girl from the geologist. “Let’s get you into the ship and have a look at you Talia. Amy, do you think you can come with us and keep Hope entertained?”

My ward stood up, and grinned at Hope. “Sure Xia, I don’t mind playing with the twins. We had fun at the beach today, didn’t we?” The little girl at Mandy’s side nodded and giggled, though she quickly glanced at her sister in my arms. The girls were usually inseparable and when they weren’t with their mom or Rebecca they were usually playing with some of the slightly older girls like Jittu. Except for Pallu’s infant sister and one of the Haran infants, they were the youngest people in the colony.

“Don’t worry about your sister; I’ll have her feeling better in no time and she can join you,” I assured the concerned twin. I led the way to the medical ship and took Talia to the examination room while Amy took Hope and their slips to her room to play. Mandy watched the pair head off to Amy’s room before following me and Talia to the examination room. The scrape on Talia’s knee wasn’t serious so I gingerly cleaned it and took a nano-spray bottle, which I set for an antiseptic spray that would heal the skin as well. “Okay sweetie this may sting just a little, but once I spray this on your knee you’ll be all better, really soon. Are you ready?”

Talia sniffled and rubbed at her eyes as she nodded. “O-okay.” Mandy moved into position behind her and held her hand while brushing her tears with the other hand and trying not to get in my way,

She winced a little as the spray hit and closed her eyes tight. I let the spray settle and breathe for a moment and then covered it with a bandage. “You can open your eyes now sweetie, we’re all done.” She opened one eye and then the other to look down at her knee and the bandage. “I want you to keep that bandage on until bedtime sweetie, would you like to go play with Amy and your sister now?”

“Uh-huh,” she replied, wiping away her tears and nearly falling off the table in her attempt to hug me.

I ruffled her blonde hair and carried her over to Amy’s room with her slip and Kit following us. Once the motion sensor opened the door I placed the girl on the floor, “You have fun, but be careful not to hurt yourself again.” She dashed off into the room with her new pet right behind her and I had to laugh at her sudden exuberance as I walked back to join Mandy in the main room.

“She’s practically forgotten she was hurt and she’s playing with Amy and Hope now,” I told Mandy with a chuckle as I took a seat. “Those two almost make me want one of my own.”

“Well you have sort of adopted Amy,” the geologist replied. “I’m curious though, could you even have children?” A blush rose to her cheeks and she quickly apologized. “Sorry, that was probably an inappropriate question.”

“We’re pretty sure I can,” I answered with a shrug. “I have all the proper reproductive organs common to humanoid females and the extra one the Saer’khi have, they all seem to work properly, and the fact that they were able to create a hybrid body for me at all indicates that we’re genetically compatible. So cross species breeding is possible, at least between humans and Saer’khi. I can’t really blame you for inappropriate questions since I’ve had one I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“We’re friends, we can be inappropriate with one another,” she replied without a hint of concern, “and I feel like I kind of owe you one after asking what I did, so ask away.”

“Why are you here?” I asked. Then seeing the confusion on her face I quickly added, “Sorry, that did not come out right. I am really glad you’re here, you’ve been a great help to the colony, there’s some things about you that just don’t add up to me. I was looking over all the names of passengers on board the Bounty, but you and the twins were the only Williams’ listed; you seem to distrust Earth almost as much as I do, and that’s saying something; my med scans said you don’t have any cybernetic implants or surgical scars from organ transplants; and from what I heard Earth governments have been very reluctant to let anyone with a scientific background leave the planet. I was just wondering what your story is.”

Mandy seemed to consider her response for several minutes before finally saying, “After the first few Migration ships left most of the major governments on Earth started to get a lot more restrictive. They were getting rid of a lot of the non-contributing citizens and putting the rest to work on the space program, and they figured that the way to avoid any more ‘waste’, was to tightly control those of us who were left. One of the first steps was requiring married couples to have a license to have children. Only married male and female couples could get a license and only if they met certain requirements.”

I could feel the frown forming on my face, “Let me guess, one of those requirements was monetary.”

She nodded, her face grim. “There were several requirements, mostly in place to favor the rich or influential. Laws varied by country and state, but in Louisiana punishments for women not having a license, if you weren’t willing to abort the pregnancy, ranged from fines to prison time, depending on how much you ‘contribute to society’. Punishment for the men fathering these children wasn’t even a consideration. I had just gotten my Doctorate when they passed that ridiculous law and not long after I discovered that I was pregnant. The father didn’t want to be involved.”

“Did they try to make you…” the thought made me so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Her eyes were moist as she looked away. “I tried to hide it for as long as I could, but one evening I got a visit from some men with badges and nice suits. They couldn’t charge me with anything since I conceived before the law was passed, and I refused to do what they wanted me to. Next thing I knew I lost my job and my medical coverage.”

“Those fucking monsters. How did you get them to let you off planet?”

“I didn’t. I went to the Saer’khi Embassy in Washington and requested asylum. When I told them that I thought that my life and that of my unborn child was in danger on Earth, they had someone examine me. They discovered I was carrying twins and since I loosely met the condition of poverty with medical requirements they offered to bring me to Saer’kah to live until they could find me a home and a purpose. They didn’t have to do that, they could have refused me, but they didn’t. I never once believed Jared’s talk, the Saer’khi have always done right by me.”

I nodded. “Unlike some species, the Saer’khi value life. My mom cited a presidential decree when the university hospital I was in didn’t want to give up their guinea pig. How did you manage with twin babies in the alien barracks? That must have been rough.”

“Like I said, your people have always done right by me,” she reiterated. “They usually had me and the other mothers with small children working on sewing or something else inside the barracks so we could have the children close by and keep an eye on them while we worked. Some of the humans who had been there a while, like Sarah and Rebecca, and some of the aliens helped me out too.”

“And you said I was resistant to sharing my secrets,” I prodded her with a wink, trying to bring a little cheer to the conversation. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

“What can I say? We can smell our own kind,” she retorted with a smile.

Kit hopped up into my lap and started buzzing and Mandy’s seemed to take that as its cue to do the same. I chuckled at her confused look, probably due to an empathic request for attention. “It’ll take a little while before you start sorting out which emotions are from the slip and which ones are really yours. Have you and the girls named yours yet?”

She began to pet the slip absently. “The girls haven’t decided yet, but I’m naming mine Amethyst.”

“Trust a geologist to name a slip after a purple rock,” I said with a chuckle. “Still you might want to reinforce the name by telling it to her, both orally and with your thoughts.”

“Trust a sawbones to not know the difference between a rock and a semi-precious stone,” she shot back before saying to the slip, “Umm…. Your name is Amethyst.” After a moment of concentration her expression switched to one of surprise. “Damn that is so weird, if just picking up on emotions feels this weird it’s a wonder you ever adjusted to hearing other people’s thoughts.”

I gave Kit a good scratching under her chin and received a feeling of happiness and approval as the buzzing intensified. “To be fair, my brain was built for it, even if the rest of me wasn’t at first. I’ll admit it was an adjustment though. My family tried to make it easier on me by using both spoken language and telepathy together as much as possible when I was first learning. The hard part is keeping stuff you don’t want to share deeper in your mind, only making surface thoughts available, and resisting the urge to look deeper than the surface in another person’s mind.”

“It must be really hard to resist that temptation; I would be burning with curiosity. Did you ever look deeper than the surface thoughts?” she asked looking at me intently as she gave some attention to her own slip.

I shook my head. “If I had when I had first moved in with my family it probably would have been tolerated as a learning experience, but I wouldn’t have understood anything since I couldn’t think in their language. By the time I could think in Saer’khi I had spent enough time with them to learn just how rude they considered it. Looking deep into another’s mind is a very personal thing, reserved for mates; I’m not really sure what to compare it to. I’ve only ever looked with Tarek, because he offered and I didn’t realize what he was offering. Now we’re engaged by Saer’khi standards and our minds are always connected.” I almost laughed at the timing as I felt Tarek coming closer.

“How do you know which thoughts are yours and which are his if you’re always in one another’s heads?” Mandy asked as she continued to stroke Amethyst’s fur.

“Her thoughts are the human ones,” Tarek said with smile as he crossed the room with a plate in his hands.

Mandy stared at him as she rapidly blinked her eyes. “Whoa, was that a joke? I don’t think I’ve ever heard any Saer’khi joke before, except for Krie. She seems to have the concept of humor down pretty good though.”

“The others haven’t been around Xia as long as Krie and I have. We’ve both been close to her since she came to Saer’kah. Xia often says she is a bad influence on us,” my Tess’hir offered as he handed me the plate. “You haven’t eaten yet Tess’rha; you need to take better care of yourself.”

“But I have you for that,” I answered sweetly. “I was taking inventory and it slipped my mind. I wanted to make sure we had enough food and supplies in case this storm lasts longer than just tonight.” I could feel his deep worry that I was pushing myself too hard again and sighed. He was probably right so I took the plate. “I’ll eat, but you have to answer Mandy’s question and tell her what Dhur-tal is like.”

As I began to eat my meal I could feel Tarek trying to figure out a way to explain it so that she would understand. Finally he said, “Telepathy for us is like being involved a physical conversation for you non-telepaths. You know when it’s you speaking, and when a voice speaking sounds different than yours. Different mental voices have a different ‘sound’ to them. The bond Xia and I share is more of a feeling of closeness and awareness of one another’s presence and feelings than really hearing one another’s thoughts all the time. When two humans become close you learn to know what each other are feeling and needing without speaking through subtle physical cues; like touch, facial expressions, and body language. For us, when we’ve bonded, it’s like all those cues, and empathy with one another as well, are all present in the back of our minds whenever we’re within telepathic range.”

“So, you’re not always reading each other’s thoughts then?” the geologist asked.

“We’re aware of one another’s surface thoughts, but we filter out the unimportant things and we only go deeper than the surface if we really feel the need to, or if we want to feel the closeness of our bond. Usually when we want to be intimate and feel closer to one another we go deeper, and she can enter my mind whenever she likes, but even with our bond it would be a violation for me to do it without her consenting and wanting it at the time,” he explained.

“You make it sound like sex,” Mandy pointed out.

Tarek sat in the gel chair beside mine and smiled over at me as I ate and tried not to laugh at the comparison. Then he turned that smile on her, “It is something like that, but it’s far more intensely personal than physical coupling could ever be. During sexual acts you become intimate only with a person’s body. Delving deep into their mind you become intimate with their mind and soul, everything that they are is laid bare before you: hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities, everything. When I offered my mind to Xia, I offered all of me, forever, it is how we show our love, obedience, and devotion to the woman we love. Had she refused and not taken my mind I would have accepted that, but she didn’t and so I will give everything and do anything I can to make her happy.”

“You gotta love the Saer’khi, you all took girl power and ran with it,” she joked. “Seriously though, that’s really romantic, I wish that more human men took love and relationships that seriously. You got lucky with this one Xia. If people on Earth respected one another and cared about others’ feelings more than themselves, maybe the planet wouldn’t be so screwed up.”

I nodded in agreement as I finished eating my fill and allowed Kit to finish what was on my plate. As my slip eagerly went about the task I sent a ping to Krie. *How is everything out there?*

*The storm is still making the unity-corns skittish, but they’re starting to settle down,* she sent back calmly. *Everyone who has gotten tired of watching the lightning striking the shield have gone to their shelters to sleep or find other ways to entertain themselves. I was about to come join you in the ship, I wanted to show you the things we found in the ruins and get your input on them. I’d also like for us to look at some medical scans I took of the unity-corns.*

*Okay, that sounds good. I wanted to see what you found and talk about possible uses for the slips and unity-corns anyway. I still can’t believe that ridiculous name won.* I smiled at Mandy and Tarek as I said aloud, “Krie is going to come join us, she has the artifacts they found in the ruins and some medical scans to look at.”

Several moments later Krie had arrived and placed several artifacts on one of the examining tables for us to look at. There was some sort of simple knife, a large mallet, a broken clay bowl and pitcher, and two curved semi-circular pieces of metal. The latter looked to be some sort of weapons or cutting tools, as the outer curved edge was dulled by time but looked to have been sharpened at one point. There was a hole big enough to put the fingers of a hand through near the straight edge, and a microscopic scan showed traces of cloth fibers which we assumed had been there to make the gripping area more comfortable and secure in the hand.

Mandy had used her goggles to study them as well and once she was finished she looked up at us with a shrug. “The knife is bronze and the curved blades are iron and there are impurities in the metal of both. If these finds are anything to go by, these people were definitely pre-industrial. They were likely aware of mandium, but at their tech level they were nowhere near being able to process it. What were the buildings like?”

“They were ravaged by the disaster and time, but from what we saw they all seemed to be simple one or two floor structures made of stone and wood,” Krie replied as she transferred the data from her medical scanner to the ship’s computer. “Our assessment was also that they were pre-industrial, but there is something that has been bothering me.”

Mandy and Tarek looked just as confused as I was. We were talking about the tech level of the former inhabitants of this planet, so why were Krie’s surface thoughts focused on the unity-corns and the slips? I think Tarek was confused by this too since it was Mandy, who couldn’t pick up those thoughts, who first asked, “What?”

“I wanted to explore new planets and such so where Xia’s specialty is focused more heavily on medicine and nanotech, my main area of expertise is xenobiology,” she pointed out before getting to the topic at hand. “Psychic abilities only occur in nature extremely rarely, usually in more evolved species with higher brain functions, creatures like the Saer bees who share a hive mind, and sometimes rarely in apex predators. Since we’ve gotten here we’ve discovered two completely different species with very developed empathic abilities. The slips are clever, I’ll give them that, but their brain functions aren’t quite high enough that I would expect them to develop psychic abilities naturally. And of all the possible psychic abilities for these two species to develop, why empathy, and why both of them? The slips seem to have some sort of danger sense as well, but the level of empathy and the bonds they form with us seems out of place.”

“Maybe it’s just one more weird thing about this planet. We’ve found plenty so far, so maybe psychic abilities are more common here,” Mandy suggested.

My sister shook her head. “That had occurred to me, but then why don’t the crocosaurs have some sort of psychic ability? From what Xia has said they haven’t shown any evidence of it, and they are the one species on this planet I would have expected to have them.”

“I’m not going to complain about those things lacking psychic abilities,” I muttered. “They’re scary enough as they are.”

“So we got lucky?” Mandy asked hopefully. “I mean their empathy does make them extremely useful as domesticated animals.”

I groaned, really not liking where Krie’s surface thoughts seemed to be headed. “Mandy, I think Krie believes that they were made to be more useful as domesticated animals. She thinks they were either genetically engineered or altered somehow.”

The geologist stared at us wide-eyed. “But that’s not possible! The people who lived here were barely able to make weapons and tools by modern standards, there’s no way they had the level of technology that would be required to do what she’s suggesting.”

“That’s exactly why I dismissed the idea at first,” Krie agreed before adding, “but since we got back I’ve been comparing the scan I did of the unity-corn to one I took of Mischief. The two species share very few genetic similarities. The DNA strands looked as dissimilar as any two mammalian species from the same planet can be, but then I got to the end of the strands.” She displayed the two DNA strands side by side on the view screen and after letting me have a good look at them she zoomed in on the ends.

There were multiple branches at the end of each strand, as if new coding had been added. The branches looked different enough, which was sensible since they likely contained different genetic information for each species, but Krie highlighted one branch on each scan. “What in hell have we gotten ourselves into?” I said with a sigh as I stared at the two branches in question, the two identical branches.