Chapter 1
The day was sunny and warm. The air smelled of the salt of the seemingly endless Lantean ocean which surrounded the ancient, star shaped city floating upon its waters. Men, women and several children in light but modest clothing of various colors and styles could be seen milling about the metallic gray east pier. Some strolled, talking and laughing at some private or not so private joke, while others sat quietly in cross legged positions, either by themselves or in a group, meditating and centering themselves in the pursuit of their final ascension, when they would be able to shed their mortal flesh and ascend to a higher plane of existence as beings of pure energy.
With a war raging among the stars above them against a seemingly unstoppable enemy, it had been a long, difficult week for everyone in the elegantly designed but functional city. All needed the time to recover from the continuous stream of bad news that kept flowing in.
There were scientists and researchers, administrators, and technicians taking the time to de-stress and re-center themselves. There were off duty security officers, and soldiers on leave as well. Many of these latter wore haunted looks in their eyes and stood quietly at various railings watching the horizon.
Constructed more than a million years before as one of the great city-ships of their people, Atlantis served as capital city, research base, and home to the race of advanced humans who now called themselves Lanteans. Originating in a distant galaxy far across the universe millions of years before, and traveling from galaxy to galaxy learning and seeding habitable worlds with intelligent life, their own ancestors had founded their semi-nomadic civilization on the guiding principles of peaceful scientific research and non-interference with less advanced peoples.
The fifty or so square kilometers of advanced technology and architecture were laid out like a snowflake with six broad spokes projecting from a center platform. Those radiating platforms became piers which held high towers for research, manufacturing, and residences, as well as platforms for landed spacecraft. The main central tower rose high like a spire towards the heavens watching over the goings on of all those under its care. Its stained glass windows and elegant ornamentation caught the rays of the sun brilliantly. Other high rises and towers of the city stood compacted around it like protective subordinates, accentuating its dominating presence.
Their own mothers busy with preparations for relocation, two children, a boy and a girl, both ten years old or so (though the girl took pride in being five months older than the boy), sat on the lower part of the dock watching the water. They were looking for the great pods of cetaceans that migrated past the city's location at that time of year. Trying to find something to do while their parents packed, they had talked about trying to fish that day, or playing hide and seek in the building where their mothers had been sharing apartments next to each other, but neither could work up the energy to actually do it.
And it was such a nice day.
The girl had long, golden blond hair and royal blue eyes. Her skin was fair, but she didn't burn in the tropical sun like one might expect. She wore a long white, sleeveless summer dress with a golden belt that her mother had procured for her while doing research off world through the stargate, the great circular ring that opened gateways to other worlds. Her diminutive feet were shod with light golden sandals which complemented the belt.
The boy she sat next to had been her next door neighbor for as long as she could remember. He had reddish blond hair and an impish grin. His own eyes were forest green like his mother's. He had lost all the baby fat of his early childhood, and was beginning to sport broad shoulders and the promise of a slender but athletic build. He went shirtless and barefoot that day, wearing only a pair of gray trousers and a belt.
"So, what do you think, Hylia?" He asked.
"About what, Copulus?" She answered, looking at the waves beneath, hoping to catch a glimpse of the marine life.
Before her mother, Nayru, started her research on the link between belief and the power it gave ascended beings, she had been a marine biologist and oceanologist studying Lantea's vast marine ecosystem. That had been before Hylia had been born, but she had shared her love with and early fascination of the sea with her daughter. She could name all the species local to the region around the city.
"What do you think Terra is like?" He asked again.
"Mother says it's a lot like Lantea, except there are seven continents instead of just one." She answered. "That means there isn't as much ocean." She said disapprovingly. "There's only one moon like here, but we'll probably never see it."
"Yeah, I know. My mother said the same thing, but I mean, what do you think it's like? Do you think it'll be fun?" He asked again, trying to imagine it. "She says there are a lot of different kinds of animals and ecosystems there; lots of forests, deserts, grasslands. Do you think we'll see any of it?"
"My mother says that we're going to travel to the southern polar region first. That's where the stargate is there. She says it's a frozen desert. From there we're supposed to go to a base in an underground cave underneath a big desert volcano." Her voice became a little sadder as she talked matter of factly. "We won't be near the ocean at all. We'll just be stuck in a big cave for the rest of our lives."
"No, we won't. My mother said it was just until they could finish researching stuff. When they're ready, we'll all come back." Copulus tried to reassure her.
"That could take years. I might be old and wrinkly by the time that happens." Hylia responded, a bit of resentment in her voice.
"Well, I'm not going to wait until that happens. When I'm old enough, I'll become a security officer just like my father was, and I'll help keep the Wraith away from us." He told her.
Copulus's father, Silvus, had been a security officer on board the Lantean battlecruiser Vagantor which had been lost in combat with the alien predatory race two years before. There had been no survivors that Atlantis Command knew of.
The Wraith were a humanoid species that had evolved within their Galaxy largely though a gross mistake on the part of the Lantean scientists and researchers. They originated from an insectoid species called Iratus which fed on the life force of other creatures. What those scientists who initially studied them didn't realize is that they also assimilated small amounts of DNA from their victims. When the Atlanteans began populating the worlds of the new galaxy in which they found themselves a million years prior, the Iratus insectoids started feeding off of the newly formed human populations as well.
Over a million years of assimilation, the Iratus insectoids took on so much human DNA that they became mostly human in appearance, though pale, almost bluish white in coloring with razor sharp teeth and reptilian eyes. They were also telepathic in nature. These humanoids quickly developed their own technologies and form of hive based civilization and eventually became space faring, seeking out new feeding grounds with large populations of human beings.
The Atlanteans then moved to counter the new threats by destroying the great Wraith hive ships in space wherever they found them, but somehow there were always more. And it seemed more worlds were attacked and "culled" every day. Over the last several years, more and more hive ships were encountered and the Atlanteans found themselves facing more and more overwhelming odds with each encounter. More Atlantis warships were lost as the war against the alien race went on.
"But that means you'll have to come back here." Hylia responded after a minute's pause. "And then I'll be stuck in a big cave by myself."
"No you won't. I'll come back for you and we can both live and work here instead of Terra." Copulus told her. "And then you could watch the fish all you wanted."
"You really would?" She asked him, turning her head to look at him, her voice laced with a real hope.
"You're my best friend, Hylia. I'd never leave you alone forever." The boy reassured her, turning his own head to meet her eyes.
For whatever reason, the boy's words struck Hylia in a way they hadn't before. Copulus had always been her best friend, as far back as she could remember. The truth was, she couldn't imagine her life without him in it. Who would play with her if he wasn't there? Who would listen to her talk about the most recent sea animal she had discovered? And what would happen to him without her? Who would make him study his lessons for school? Who would get him out of bed on days like this when Farore was busy with her work?
"You'd better not." She said, and then punched him hard in the arm, then giggled.
"Ow! Hylia!" He yelped, rubbing the newly forming bruise on his bare arm. "What was that for?"
"Just because." She answered lightly, the twinge of a smile creeping on the corners of her mouth.
"Girls." Copulus muttered under his breath.
He would never understand them.
Nayru stood in her somewhat austere gray, red, and copper accentuated laboratory, going over a list for the second time, studying the screen of her thin tablet computer. There was so much equipment which had to be cataloged and then packed away for transport through the stargate that she kept feeling like she was missing something even though it looked right.
Her long blond hair, lightly highlighted with barely noticeable streaks of silver, was tied back into a functional, somewhat girlish ponytail. Her royal blue eyes, with only the barest hints of crow's feet at their corners, were fixed on the hand held computer's crystal display. They were reading the blocky text on the screen over and over again trying to make sure nothing went wrong with the extremely sensitive equipment during gate travel. Quantum teleportation and wormhole travel, while reliable and mostly safe, could play havoc with the quantum states of unstable matter particles, such as the ones which were key components of the equipment her team's research depended on.
She wore a light tan and white short sleeve shirt and gray trousers as she went through comparing packing numbers to the list in front of her. As she did, she hummed a few bars of an old tune, a lullaby she had been taught as a child. Why it should come to her mind now of all times, she didn't know but it wouldn't stop playing in her head.
That reminded her of her beloved "harp". It was really more of a hand lyre. It had been fashioned by a particularly musical people off world from a strong yet pliable golden material. It sported bird like decorations and engravings. Those same people had taught her to play it, and the first song she attempted had been that child's lullaby because it was the simplest tune she knew. When her daughter Hylia had turned five, she began to teach her to play it too. It still sat next to her bedside waiting to be packed along with the rest of their personal effects.
They had some time, at least a week, before they had to pack up their small apartment. The equipment was the priority at the moment. It would be sent on through the gate first to the antarctic base, and then on to Duo'oni by gateship. Fidela, a lithe young woman who was masterful with the computer systems and artificial intelligence programming would be going with the equipment to see that it was properly installed and ready for the arrival of the rest of their team.
The truth was, Nayru had mixed feelings about leaving the city she had called home since she herself was a little girl. She and her daughter, the only blood family she still had after Hylia's father left them for a settlement on the other side of the galaxy, would be leaving the comforts of real civilization and technology for the rustic, uncomfortable living of an off world researcher.
The new research base was in a huge natural cavern underground, far away from the nascent human populations that had surprised the initial surveyors and scouts who reopened Terra's stargate. Most of those scattered bands of hunter gatherers, in a way distant cousins to the Lanteans, were located in the continents on the eastern hemisphere of the world, though a few small groups of nomads roamed the forests in the north of the northwestern continent. It would be criminal for the Lanteans to introduce themselves and their technologies to such a primitive people. It would interfere in their natural development irreparably. They might be seen as powerful sorcerers or worse, deities, and that was unacceptable for any reason.
This was the main reason for the somewhat unusual location of this research base. Other Lantean settlements had been established as well in discreet locations around Terra's diverse landscape as more of their people chose to relocate to their ancient, ancestral planet for various reasons. Several had been established on high mountains where none of the more recent humans would dare to go.
But it also meant they wouldn't see the sun on a regular basis. Or the ocean. She had been told there was a large underground lake in the cavern, but that wouldn't be the same as feeling the salty air on her skin, or watching the waves with her daughter and the boy who was Hylia's constant companion.
As she thought about all the things she loved that would no longer be within her reach, for the third time that day, she wrestled with the reasons why the three project leaders—Din, Farore, and herself—had agreed to move their families and laboratory. One name came to mind which had all but decided it, Moros. The leader of the Atlantean High Council was constantly looking over their shoulders, criticizing and questioning the validity of their data. As a result, they could accomplish little. And their lack of results only provided fuel to his arguments. No, they had to go elsewhere.
It was Din who had first suggested the course of research to her. They had been friends and colleagues along with Farore since they had all been educated together. Din was a brilliant physicist and engineer, while Farore's field of study lay in genetics, biology, and ecosystems. Initially fascinated by marine life and especially intelligent cetacean life, Nayru herself was a student of the inner workings of the brain. They had come to rely on the balance of each other's specializations for the demands which their research had placed on them, as they all looked at the problem through the lens of their own field of study and then applied it to each other's insights.
It had long been known that the faith a mortal being placed in an ascended being could somehow provide a transfer of power to that ascended being. However, no one but those who had ascended really understood why, or what physical process was at work.
As more and more of her people learned to ascend on their own, Din had brought up the point of discussion about what might happen should one of their own ascended people masquerade as a deity and demand worship. This could potentially imbalance that ascended being's power against the others who would normally police them.
The goal of their research was to understand this link between one's belief in something and the reality that belief generated. They knew that the key to it lay in the simple physics of quantum states, that one's expectation of a result influenced, even if only slightly, the result given. They had spent the last decade building their team and designing the equipment meant to study the related phenomena.
But Morlis disapproved of their goal strongly, and vocally.
"Let the ascended police their own, and we will do the same. We have no more right to interfere with their existence than they do with ours." This had been Moros' constant argument.
This disapproval had been a mild annoyance up until the last year or so. And then Moros had been elected to preside over the High Council, and life became doubly difficult for any scientist whose experiments and research didn't adhere to Moros' personal philosophies. Almost overnight poor Janus, a brilliant scientist they had collaborated with at times, moved his own laboratory to a location within the city only he knew of or had access to just to get away from Moros' prying.
Nayru and her team had no such option anymore within the city. But still, she would miss her home enclosed, as it were, deep within the bowels of the new planet. At least they wouldn't be completely alone and without familiar faces.
Besides herself and her daughter, there would be Farore and her son, Copulus as well. Din and her father, Sargeras would be there. Sargeras was a retired general who had distinguished himself over his many years of service, earning the somewhat infamous nickname of "Demise" for the way he could turn the tide of a battle. He was now taking a quiet posting as head of security at the Duo'oni site to remain in close contact with his daughters. Then of course there would be Fidela, Din's younger sister. "Fi" was the junior member of their team at the tender age of nineteen, but she was absolutely brilliant in coming up with the computer models and the A.I. programming that their instruments relied on. She was also indispensable as a surrogate older sister for her ten year old Hylia.
She went through her checklist several more times, and then finally, as she surveyed the packed, obsidian black containers, she realized that there was nothing more she need do until the next day. Her laboratory seemed empty now. There were only a couple of computer consoles left on lonely, copper colored tables with black crystal monitors above them, now dark.
The empty laboratory would remain in Nayru's possession for private research space even though away. Either she or one of the others would invariably have to return to Atlantis at some point to upload their ongoing research into the city's database for future generations, and they would need a private place to do it.
With nothing left to do, she moved towards the door and, as she passed her hand over the sensor, the door slid open allowing her to leave. It was getting to be evening, and she had promised Hylia that they would eat their meal together with Farore and her son.
Sargeras stood at the railing of the deck to his apartment, hands closed around the metal of it, looking up at Lantea's moon as it began its ascent into the night sky, dominating the other smaller celestial lights around it with its pale, silvery illumination. It was a beautiful sight, and one he wanted to enjoy for as long as he could. As he understood it, his new home with his daughters would have few simple pleasures such as these.
He had spent a great deal of his life in that night sky among the stars which now twinkled in the darkness above him. Over forty years on warships putting down the ever increasing threat which the vampiric Wraith posed. In those forty years, he rarely had the time or inclination to really appreciate the beauty of the stars around him, or above him when he was planetside.
His once flame colored orangish red hair and mustache was now almost completely filled with silver. The worries and cares his previous position had brought him had taken its toll in the permanent bags under his eyes, and lines across his face. He had been responsible for the lives of hundreds on board the ships he commanded, and millions of lesser developed humans on the planets which the Wraith intended as feeding grounds. Most he had been able to preserve, but not all. Such were the realities of war.
He had stopped wearing the uniform of Atlantis's military months ago. It had been time to turn over the fight to the younger men and women. But once he had done so, the nightmares began to invade his sleep. As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months he felt an emptiness gnawing at his insides as he spent his retirement reading, writing his memoirs, and trying to occupy himself with anything he could.
It nearly drove him to insanity.
The Wraith were still out there, but there had been little he could do to stop their advance. He had won every engagement he had taken ships into, but they kept on coming. They were like demons from some mythological nether region that kept spawning more and more no matter how many hive ships he destroyed.
Every day, more human worlds were culled by them. This was bad enough. It was like watching your favorite pets get eaten by the local bully. Sargeras didn't feel as strongly about them as he felt he probably should have, but all of those human populations had essentially been created in a lab by his own people hundreds of thousands of years ago. They were human, but they weren't Lantean. None of them were advanced enough to ascend on their own like most of his own people could. It would take millennia more of evolution to achieve that.
But the Wraith devastated Lantea's own settled worlds and colonies as well, murdering hundreds of thousands of Lanteans. In his military career he had seen no less than thirteen Lantean colonies culled, their few handfuls of survivors taking refuge through the stargate back to Lantea where they hoped to find safety. And he had barely just slowed them down.
He wouldn't admit this to anyone, but this was the real reason he was standing on the deck of his apartment in the city looking up at the moon. He retired because one day he had woken up in his quarters aboard his flagship and realized that the fight was an exercise in futility. It wasn't a matter of "if" they expanded their territory enough to overrun the Lantean forces, but "when". It may be decades, but they would reach Lantea itself, and there would be nothing his people would be able to do to stop them.
This was the lesson he had taken away from the war against the Wraith.
He was powerless.
Sargeras closed his eyes and took a deep breath to clear the negative thoughts from his mind. He focused on his breathing for several minutes before he opened them again.
Release your burdens. He told himself internally. It can't be your responsibility forever.
This was really the whole point of his relocating to Terra with his daughters, he reminded himself. I'm not getting any younger, and no one lives in their mortal flesh forever.
He needed to let go of the war. He needed to let go and focus on his own path to ascension. He had allowed his own meditation exercises to lapse severely during his career, and now, who knew how much time he had left? He couldn't afford to allow himself to think of what might have been, or what might be. There was only the moment, right here and right now.
He looked up at the moon again. It had risen higher in the sky as it shone down on the Lantean ocean's waters. He allowed its silvery light to fill him with a moment's peace and forget, even if only briefly.
The great ring of the stargate stood quiet the next morning, its constellation symbols marking destination coordinates glowed faintly with a blue light signifying its "standby" status. Behind it, the golden orange light of morning shone gently through the artistically segmented window. In front of it lay the mostly empty, cathedral like chamber which oversaw all comings and goings to and from the city through the device.
The chamber sat just below the control room for the entire city. Elegant stairs inscribed with messages of welcome in the Lantean language stood opposing the gate. They climbed towards a large stained glass window, their path split off towards a conference room on the left and the command and control room on the right.
Containers of equipment sat on the red tiled floor nearby waiting to be transferred through the stargate. A young, lithe woman stood nearby them, checking their seals to ensure they would survive the brief exposure to the extreme cold of polar weather they would experience, and then the potentially longer exposure to intense desert heat. There was still the concern over the effect dematerialization would have on the quantum states of the experimental modules, but it couldn't be helped. With all of Atlantis's hyperdrive capable spacecraft occupied with the war, there was really no other efficient way to transport them into the next galaxy over.
The young woman had shoulder length, flame colored hair which fell in an attractive manner to either side of her face, and slightly bronzed skin, although it might have been darker had she not spent so much time locked away in a room at a computer console. She wore a white fabric dress with tan and gold highlights. The material it was made of was designed to insulate her from the extremes in temperature she knew she would face over the course of the rest of her day. Her tan colored, shin length boots were made of a similar material.
"Almost ready, Fi?" A friendly voice asked from behind her.
Fidela stood up from where she had been crouching and turned around to see another woman, fifteen years her senior. Like the computer specialist, the woman had flame colored, orange red hair, though hers flowed down her back in a long, but more practical ponytail. Unlike her sister, the older woman wore a white lab tunic over light tan colored pants.
"Din!" The younger woman responded. "I didn't expect to see you here this morning! I thought you were helping father pack today."
"I will." Din responded, putting her hands on Fidela's shoulders then drawing her into a warm embrace. "But later. I didn't want my little sister to go without at least seeing her off first."
Fi smiled broadly, returning the embrace. She held her sister tightly for just over a minute before she let go.
"Thanks." She replied. "It looks like everything's ready to go." Fi looked back towards the box like containers with small digital readouts of the condition of their contents.
"And are you?" Din asked, looking at her sister with some concern.
Fi looked back to Din, "What? Oh, yes… yes, I'll be fine. It's just a trip through the stargate. People do it all the time."
"True, but this is your first, isn't it?" Din asked.
"Well, yes. But I'm sure I'll be fine." Fi responded, somewhat unconvincingly. Then after an awkward silence she asked, "You've gone off world before, Din. What is it like?"
"The stargate? It's almost instantaneous, like walking through a doorway from one room to the next. The most trouble you'll have is a little nausea and disorientation, but that clears up almost immediately." Din replied.
Fi nodded and tried to smile, though her expression still seemed less than convinced.
"I wish you were coming with me." She told her sister, her smile fading.
"I am, Fi. We are all going to be right behind you. Just one more week." Din reassured her. "And Gaius will be waiting to receive you right on the other side of the gate. I've asked that he keep you company on the way to Duo'oni and help you settle in."
"You didn't! Din!" Fidela practically yelped at her sister, her eyes wide with horror at the prospect.
Gaius had been a classmate of Fidela's before he entered the security service, and one upon whom the younger daughter of Sargeras had a crush for some time though she never expressed it. Instead, she buried herself in her algorithms and coding trying to escape it.
Fi had always been more comfortable with computers than with organic, breathing people. As a child, she had always had a way with numbers and seeing them differently. Whereas others of her age might have seen zero through seven and the various operations with which one could make use of them tedious or even needless, she saw them as friends and comforting companions. She always knew where she stood with the logic of numbers, and later with the calculations demanded by programming. It was interacting with people, and the illogical emotions which those interactions brought with them that confused and even frightened her a little.
Din giggled girlishly at her sister's reaction. "He's going to be working with us on Terra anyway as one of father's men." She said in her defense, still smiling. "He went through a few days ago with the other security personnel. I asked him to look out for you before he went, and he said he'd stay back a few days and wait for you to arrive. I didn't want you to be alone there."
"But… but..." Fi responded, trying to process it. Failing, she just said, "Oh, how could you?"
"Because you're my little sister, and I care about what happens to you." Din replied.
As they were talking, the gate chamber slowly gained more people, most of whom carried satchels or stood with containers of some kind, waiting for transport. Thirty more people besides Fidela and her precious cargo would be making the journey to various bases in Terra today, though only Fi would be traveling on to the underground cavern base.
Soon, a voice announced through speakers with authority, "All travelers, please stand away from the stargate."
As they were already over to the side neither Fi nor Din moved, though they watched as several others cleared the area immediately in front of the gate.
When the path was clear, the same voice announced again, "Establishing wormhole. Destination, Terra."
The next thing the two women knew, the lights around the gate began to circulate until eight constellation symbols, and the seven sapphire chevrons placed equidistant around the circumference of the ring lit up.
Whoosh!
A great inverted vortex which resembled a whirlpool of rushing water flew out of the great ring and then immediately drew itself back in again settling into a kind of puddle of blue sparkling energy which covered the previously empty opening of the stargate.
"All travelers, please send all cargo containers through the active stargate." The disembodied voice instructed.
"I guess it's time." Fidela said as she turned and moved to touch each of the containers' control panels.
As she did, each container lifted itself off the floor, buoyed up by an invisible field, and proceeded to direct itself towards the stargate. Around them, other box like containers did the same and soon there was a line of such containers three wide passing through the event horizon of the active wormhole, dematerializing instantly as they crossed it.
"Now we see if all of our hard work remains intact." Din observed as their own containers passed through.
After about ten minutes, when the last container went through, the voice from the control room announced, "All travelers, please proceed through the stargate now."
"I'll see you in a week's time." Din told her sister again, giving her one more embrace. "There will be nothing to worry about, I promise you."
Fi smiled at her, returning the embrace. And then, without another word, she followed her fellow travelers into the field of blue energy, and then disappeared.
Farore sat at her private computer console in the apartment she shared with her ten year old son. It stood towards the top of a residential structure on the western arm of the city. She had lived there in the apartment next door to one of her own best friends growing up, Nayru, since she and her husband, Silvus, had been married some eleven years before. Much of those eleven years had been spent waiting for Silvus to come home on leave from his tours of duty out among the stars until one day, almost two years before, she received the news he wouldn't be coming home at all.
That was the day she had changed her hair color to a deep forest green.
It had been a private joke really, a silly threat she made against Silvus that if he should ever not come home, she would dye her hair green just to spite him. He had loved her long, dark blond hair that she kept tied in twin ponytails off to the sides of her head and she knew it. Farore was a geneticist, and knew the exact sequences of her own genes she would need to engineer to make the change permanent. She always said she wanted her hair to match her eyes and if he didn't come home in time, she might just make it happen permanently.
He didn't come home, and, in her grief, she kept her word.
Farore's own laboratory space had already been packed up and her equipment had been sent through the stargate earlier that morning with Fi. It now stood empty except for a couple of consoles molded into the walls and floor of the chamber. She might have considered working there except that those consoles were tied into the city's public database. They were also heavily watched by Moros and the Atlantean Council. The console in her apartment was far more compact. Fi herself had heavily encrypted it for her so that no one but Farore could hope to access it without destroying the precious data contained therein.
What Moros didn't know about wouldn't hurt him, or her for that matter, and he really didn't need to know about her little "side project". Given his strong objections to her team's main line of research and its goal, her little thought experiment would likely send him over the edge much like his reaction to her baby brother's experiments with time and causality. Poor Janus couldn't even share most of his research publicly anymore without fear of reprisal.
As she ran the simulations through its paces, everything looked very good. The DNA sequences and molecular combinations were working exactly as predicted. She advanced the simulation's development and evolution by millennia under various climactic conditions and saw that they adapted well and even thrived. The new species of intelligent humanoid life was incredibly promising, and she was certain it would solve the initial problem which had started the war to begin with.
When her forbears had relocated the Atlantis city-ship to this galaxy, they had found it devoid of any intelligent life. Feeling that unacceptable, as they had done in the galaxy where Terra was located, they seeded this one as well with human life. Not just content to establish colonies of their own people on worlds naturally capable of supporting their own form of life, they recreated a lesser evolved form of human life on hundreds of worlds throughout and allowed them to develop, for the most part, without interference.
While mostly well intentioned, they had not studied the ecosystems and lifeforms of those habitable planets well enough. By the time they realized their mistake, the Iratus insectoid had already evolved into the Wraith through the absorption of human and Lantean DNA.
It was a mistake she worked to ensure was never repeated.
But it required a manipulation of the base DNA of her own people into an almost entirely new species, one which would be completely resistant to living energy and genetic parasites like the Irati or their Wraith descendents. Furthermore it required that this new species keep the genetic markers and evolutionary changes to their brains which made it possible for them to ascend. It would enable the abilities like healing, foresight, projection and others which her people demonstrated and seemed like miracles and magic to those populations they created.
Moros would have a coronary if he knew what she had been up to, and he would not be the only one. Giving a newly engineered species those abilities right from the start was strictly forbidden. It was considered interference in one of the worst possible ways by the majority of her people. It would have been seen as unecessarily reckless.
But this was not her only "ethical" infraction. In order to achieve her goals, she had used sequences of DNA from the Wraith themselves. To be certain, there was nothing that would cause them to be a threat like the Wraith and she only sought to make use of some of the alien species' more beneficial properties. But still, it would be seen as an abomination.
And to make matters worse, after achieving her goal of total resistance to such parasites, she had pressed on, letting her imagination run wild. She worked to give them enhanced reflexes and physical senses. Their enhanced immune systems and regenerative properties would ensure that susceptibility to disease and cell damage would not threaten their exceptionally long lives. Their evolutionary rate of change would be enhanced as well making them incredibly adaptable to any environment within a very few generations instead of hundreds. She also insisted that they be attractive with high cheekbones and refined, flawless features. With something of an artistic flair she also gave them long, sharply tapered ears that ended in a point to make them obviously distinguishable from standard humans.
They would be the perfect candidates for re-population of those worlds devastated by the Wraith once the war had concluded. They would be her gift to a galaxy that had been decimated by her people's own lack of foresight. They would ensure that no one else would have to lose a loved one to such monsters. They only needed her courage to persevere and bring them to life.
And they would be going with her and her son to Terra. At least, the genetic coding for them would be, stored away in data crystals which she would carry through personally. The two things most precious to her in all of existence; she would keep them both close to her where she could protect them.
"Mother?" A boy's voice asked.
Farore looked up from her console, her eyes a little blurry from staring so long at the display.
"Oh, my dear sweet boy!" Farore responded in surprise, hastily passing her hand over the computer's screen darkening it from sight. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Not long, I just wanted to see how you were doing before I left with Hylia for schooling." Copulus responded.
He looked so much like his father, Silvus. Farore almost couldn't bear to keep looking at him without drawing him in close, but she restrained herself.
"I'm well, Copulus. I was just finishing up some details on a side project. Nothing too exciting." She told him.
"Did you eat breakfast?" Copulus asked, his voice tinged with concern.
Had she? She paused having to think.
"I will, sweet boy. I'll go and make myself something right now." She told him. "Did you eat?" She asked.
"I had some spiced pumpkin pastries with Hylia and Nayru after I woke up." He told her.
"Oh, good. I know you like those." Farore responded. "I love you, Copulus. I'll be here when you and Hylia are done. We need to start packing our personal things for Terra soon."
"Yeah, I know." He said, his eyes still watching her with concern. "Are you sure you're going to be okay today, mother?"
"Yes, of course. What a silly thing to ask! Of course I'm going to be..." She stopped and paused for a minute, taking in the serious, even protective expression on his young face. "I'm fine, sweet boy. I just have a lot on my mind right now, that's all."
"Do you want me to stay with you today?" He asked, unpersuaded.
"No. No, you go and learn your lessons. I know you don't think much of schooling, Copulus, but it's vitally important that you understand the world you live in. Your lessons will be important where we're going." She told him, allowing her more authoritative mother's tone to fill her voice.
He nodded without argument, his eyes still filled with a concern that was far too mature for his ten years. "I'll check on you after we're done, okay?" He said.
He'll check on me? Since when did he become the parent? She thought to herself.
Out loud, she told him, "Go." A half smile creeping across her lips.
As he turned his back towards her, heading for the door to the structure's hallway, Farore watched him go. She didn't understand why he seemed to think she was the one needing looking after at times, but it was sweet of him. She appreciated his concern.
My precious boy.
In the hallway, Hylia waited for her best friend. She was wearing a practical white tunic and tan pants with a gold trimmed belt. Her light blond hair had been put up into a bun more appropriate for study by her mother that morning.
Copulus had come over to hers and her mother's residence earlier when he knew they would be eating breakfast. Her mother didn't mind, and it wasn't the first time. She had taken to intentionally preparing enough food for Copulus as well as themselves in the mornings.
The door slid open, and the ten year old boy with the reddish blond hair stepped through the opening. He wore a forest green colored tunic over his light tan pants that morning. She knew why he had opted for it, it was his mother's favorite color.
"She didn't eat breakfast again." He told her after the door closed. "She was still staring at the computer display like she was when I got up this morning. She told me to go with you, but I'm worried about her."
"Maybe I should tell my mother. She could talk to her." Hylia offered.
"Maybe." Copulus responded. "I just don't know if I should leave her alone. What if she forgets to eat lunch too?"
"Your mother's a grown-up, Copulus. Grown-ups don't forget things like that." Hylia pointed out.
"She did this when she got the news father wasn't coming home, too." He told her as he started walking for the structure's transporter. "When she changed her hair to green. She wouldn't let me out of her sight, remember? I was scared for her then."
Hylia followed after him down the hallway.
The crimson transporter doors were at the end of the rusted copper colored hallway. It was essentially a lift which transported people within it, not only up and down the height of the structure, but also horizontally across tubes and tunnels which ran the length of the radiating arms of the city. This one would take the two children across the city to Atlantis' education structure.
They might be leaving the city of their birth in less than a week, but that proved to be no excuse for either of them missing their lesson times with the holographic instructor. Learning, it appeared, stopped for no one.