“Captain Qovdite, this request is absurd,” Nizagi addressed the ship’s bridge. “As far as we can tell, there are less than a thousand of us and this station is the last one with a stable Soul Sphere designed to hold souls for more than a year. If you destroy this station, you commit genocide against our entire race. You can’t be that suicidally stupid as to think that this will go any other way.”


    The dark blue holographic face projected over the conference room table flashed with rage. “You jumped up, faded punk. How dare you address a captain of the Alliance military like that. You have no idea who…”


    Rising out of his chair to his full height, Nizagi cut the captain off before she could dig a bigger hole with her words.


    “Captain, watch your tongue. I am Nizagi of House Law. Third in line to the high court. My status as a researcher does not negate my rank, and my specialty is the prosecution of war criminals. Knowing what your ships did under your command, you are lucky that I haven’t forced your officers to take you into custody for crimes against the Axves people.


    “Firing nuclear weapons on civilian targets is treason. You performed the attack willingly when other members of our forces refused the order. If the courts still stood, you and your bridge officers would experience the fastest trial in our people’s history, ending in your execution. You will stand down and surrender to the forces you call rebels, or I will force my justice now.”


    Hearing a hiss of a pistol being armed, Nizagi zoomed the view out to survey the room. An armed force had entered the bridge.


    “Captain, don''t worry about ordering or fighting. Those men are fully under my control through their nanites, as are your weapons and navigation officers. Please surrender peacefully so that we don’t lose more of our people. Every soul is critical to the survival of the Axves.  I’m sure that a person of your status isn’t used to having the abilities of my house used against you, so please do not fight it or it will get much worse.”


    Slowly raising her hands in surrender, the loyalist captain hissed back at him, clearly wishing that she could fire on the compound and find a win despite the futility of the action.  Trying to ignore the cries of panic and chaos of her uncontrolled bridge crew behind her, the older captain replied.


    “Well, Man of Law, it looks like you have the advantage of me. You will live to regret your actions today, but for now, I will play along with your desires for power. Will you at least guarantee the safety of my crew if I issue a stand-down order?”


    Smiling icily at the older woman Nizagi’s eyes sparkled as he used his special abilities again. Pressing another button, the images of the two bridges in the small loyalist popped up in the conference room and the loyalist flagship’s bridge, showing that the situation was the same on the bridges of the other two ships. “Captain, I didn’t want to be in this position, but you and your cronies forced my hand. I would have rather spent the next five to ten years here in peace before I was forced to return to the capital to complete my duties to the high court. You don’t have to worry about giving the stand-down order to the other ships, they have been listening to this call and they also now have armed men on their bridges.”


    A press of a third button revealed the pale, blue-skinned captain of the rebel ships that had been sitting cloaked not far from the Yviv solar system, waiting for the fight that they had been alerted to. Sitting forward as Egyn saw the familiar face that she had obsessed over in her school days, she let out a relieved sigh as a smile crept across her face. Glancing away from the holo display with a slight blush, she caught the eye of Krituna who gave her a knowing wink as Nizagi continued his duties.


    “Welcome to the conversation cousin. I have guaranteed the safety of these ships and their crews, but if they don’t surrender immediately you have my permission to fire. Any resistance will be a refusal of my offered pardon for their crimes against our people and they will be subject to immediate execution. Be careful and don’t risk your people unless you feel that it is absolutely necessary.”


    Giving Nizagi a sharp salute, the rebel captain disappeared from the holo displays and began moving his ships to accept the surrender of the last three loyalist ships in existence. Not wanting to watch what would happen next, Egyn and Krituna stood and left Nizagi to deal with the major crisis while they discussed the original issue. Moving across the hall to the clinic, the two women made their way to Krituna’s office to continue our earlier discussion.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Taking a seat across the desk from Krituna, Egyn activated the holo screen and pulled up the reports from the scans that she had taken earlier. Making sure that the display was showing the two scans of Dridvick, she leaned forward to keep their conversation quiet.


    “So what I’m about to say would have been considered heresy yesterday, but today it might be our saving grace. While I was out scouting, I had an encounter with an Echi hunter. He was very kind and surprisingly intelligent. After a decent conversation, I slipped up and accidentally touched his arm resulting in my nanites jumping over to him.”


    Slumping back into her seat, Krituna studied the scans differently than she had before they had been interrupted.


    “You''re suggesting that the nanites that were bestowed on us at birth are able to be transferred to the Echi with uncontrolled contact? We have had contact with several other races and that has never happened before. How could it transfer to this race when other intelligent races have had much more contact with our people and never picked up nanites?”


    Taking a deep breath to keep calm as her friend reacted to the information, she pressed on. “I know that this is hard to wrap your mind around but keeping an open mind about this might be critical to our people’s survival. From a purely analytical point of view, how many souls do we need to keep this race stable without the risk of cancers and genetic diseases due to inbreeding due to the limit of the three genetic providers?”


    For a few moments, Krituna studied her friend wondering where she was going with this point. When she couldn’t put her finger on the point, Krituna sat forward and responded carefully, letting her knowledge from a long education pore out like the lectures she had sat through.


    “Well, because our people’s DNA is dictated by three separate sources, the soul, the mother and the father; this usually means that there is a lot of variety. Because we will be dealing with only about three hundred potential parents, maybe less depending on the age of the refugees, we will be relying heavily on the souls that are brought in to create variety. We would need at least another seven hundred souls to ensure that our people survived without genetic drift and the risk of genetic disorders. But what does that have to…”


    Realizing the truth of what her friend was subtly hinting at before her externalized calculations, Krituna slumped in her chair as she let out an exhausted breath. “The records from the ships that we have contact with state that we have sixty-seven souls that are still viable en route. We need at least another six hundred thirty-three souls to make our refugee village viable. You are suggesting that we should use the Echi to supplement our soul cache to make sure that we survive.”


    Nodding slowly to try and make it clear that she wasn’t happy about what she was suggesting, Egyn pressed a button so that the second screen showed the deeper scan that she had taken.


    “I know this isn’t the most pleasant thought, but at this point I’m searching for the survival of our people. If we are going to survive and not spend the next century searching the galaxy for other survivors, or just to die out because we couldn’t find any, we need to accept that our xenophobia will kill us if we don’t put it aside.”


    Groaning as she agreed, Krituna began studying the data in more detail, looking for any way that she could shut down this dangerous idea before she was forced to propose it and defend it to the leadership of the slowly growing refugee colony.


    “I can’t believe that we’re even considering this, but I don’t see any other alternatives that will keep our people alive. I’m going to recommend that we start with the souls we have and send out scout teams to try and find any others that may still exist in small Soul Spheres or on small planets. But I must admit this plan should be put in motion to ensure long-term survival. Hopefully we can find enough souls and we won’t need the Echi, but if not we must accept their necessity. Would you recommend that we start with this man’s tribe first?”


    Letting out a relieved sigh, Egyn sat forward and pulled up a broader map of the tribes that she had been monitoring. “Yes, I think that this tribe would be the ideal candidate to start with. We already have a point of contact in the tribe, and they are isolated from any of the other tribes. This gives us the ideal test environment to be sure the process will work unaltered in a different species.


    “We will still be short in terms of the number of souls, but we can start with the elderly to begin, adding to our soul count. We can also control the birth rate to buy us time. That should give us the time we need to confirm that this is viable. But first, we need to figure out a way to collect the souls without giving everyone a full dose of our nanites. Giving them nanites in their phase of development will be extremely dangerous for all of us.


    “All of this is still academic because we can’t operate without the green light from leadership. That is the reason I wanted to talk to you and get you on the same page as me. We will need to present this plan to whoever ends up in charge and pray that they can see reason above all else.”