Kavan had reached the Incubation room, pressing a signal by the door. He waited patiently until the door slid open for a midsize Irken female with green eyes to greet him. She looked at him and sighed, shaking her head slightly, but stood aside to allow him to enter the dark room.

Lights above them were dimmed, and the room was lit by the hundreds of glowing cylinders that were lined in rows and columns on the walls with the end as a tiny black square on the horizon. In addition to the shimmering radiance from the various instruments and the hum of the central computer, it was as if the two Irkens were standing in open space observing the stars around them. "So, what do we have in store for today?" Kavan asked, trying to make conversation after several minutes of silence.

"Only a couple of smeets are scheduled to be born today." Intali replied, not bothering to look up from her palm data screen as she walked along the aisles. She knew why he was here, but was willing to delay. "Strange compared to that there was such an influx of them as of late."

"Our empire is growing." Kavan said, stopping to examine a couple of the cylinders.

"I realize that." Intali replied coolly, and was about to usher him further along when she noticed Kavan staring at a particular cylinder right above him. He reached up and touched an orange-gold cylinder, his eyes clouded but with a small flicker of hope.

"I wonder which—"

"You probably would not know." Intali interrupted, indicating that they were to continue on.

He looked at her, almost pleading. "But you could check—"

"No, I could not. You are already too…attached." She said the word carefully. "We should be glad that you were not when you volunteered to combine your DNA with Len's. And Gold Eyes are not rare; the brain's seems to choose red and purple eyes to have military ranking and political duties, and the others have the day to day 'clerical' work."

Kavan hesitated, returning his gaze to the cylinder. "Len was an Invader."

"Which shows that she was an exception. Now come along." She said with authority. He was looking more miserable as he stared at the cylinder, which he did not need to be for his next assigning. Recognizing that she would not tolerate his sentiments here, he resigned to take his eyes of the cylinder. But, as he followed his old friend out of the ward, he took one last look back at the lone orange cylinder as the door slid shut.

Within several hours, Intali returned alone to find the smeets had been born and were already interacting with each other on the floor; six smeets snuggled up next to each other, all of them keeping warm, while a lone smeet with Orange-Gold eyes sat away from them, his face briefly revealing a hidden maturity and intelligence when they made eye contact.

Well, it does not seem like we have to worry about Kavan's emotions spilling out into his descendants. Intali thought as she woke the other six smeets up, all of them yawning and two of them wanting to be held. She picked the two up and told the rest to follow her, the four rubbing their eyes and moving sluggishly, while the Orange eyed one followed them silently out.

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I have been wanting to write this for a while. And no, he's not going to be a Mary Sue--technically Gary Stu--(just found out what that meant; no laughing). Ok, I'm going to be quiet now.