"What do you mean we share a genetic ancestry?" I asked Yurnel.

"Somewhere, far back in your genetic lines, is a split," she explained, "that split is where both races began to be born. One part of the split was seeded on Earth and eventually resulted in Humanity; the other was seeded on YS-HP-003-CG-0321, the home planet of the Scourge."

"That means what exactly?" Carrie asked.

"Someone chose to deliberately alter the base genetic code that would evolve into the Scourge and Humanity and then seeded it on two planets several galaxies apart," Yurnel explained. "It's as if they wanted to study what would happen to either of the altered genetics and how they would evolve, but they didn't want them to be in close enough proximity to contact one another without outside aid."

"And both races got that aid in the form of the Wardens of Life," I muttered.

"Unfortunately," Yurnel agreed.

"So what do we do with this, Rickshaw?" Carrie asked.

"We keep it close to the chest," I told her. "No one below the rank of Demigod needs to hear about this and they're only to be told by the person they're replacing or after they've spent time as a Demigod and have seen how things are. If this got out, I can't imagine what would happen. The idea that we didn't evolve totally on Earth would destroy the small amount of stability that we've managed to recreate. There'd be people demanding that we find whoever started us on our path and they would just gain more and more traction and ability as time went on."

"All that without even mentioning the genetics we might share with the Scourge," I added. "Things would get even worse if that came to light."

"Alright, if that's the decision, then I'm all in," Carrie said.

"You haven't told anyone else about this, have you Yurnel?" I asked.

"No I haven't," she swore. "I felt this was an extremely grave situation and carried implications far beyond what was in my purview."

"Thank you for your efforts," I said, "and for your discretion."

"With that thanks in mind, I have another matter I wish to discuss with you Commander," Yurnel said.

"Go on," I urged her.

"I would like to retire back to Rallypoint and to live my remaining years out in a measure of comfort," she said.

"You're leaving us?" Carrie asked, seeming hurt by the idea.

"My carapace is becoming brittle," Yurnel told her. "My eyes grow dimmer. Feeling in my extremities is slowly disappearing. Furthermore, I am one of the last five within the Wardens who refers to Commander James as 'Commander.' If that doesn't speak to my age then nothing else will I'm afraid."

"I understand," I said. "I'll personally choose an escort to take you to Rallypoint and I'll have Julio set you up a suite with everything you could need."

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"Thank you Commander. Rickshaw," she said. "I'm glad that I have someone capable to leave everything to. Good luck in all your endeavours. I will miss the talks we had."

"And I'll miss you," I smiled to her one last time and turned to leave. There were things I needed to do for my friend.

"She's really gone?" Carrie asked as we looked out the hangar doors toward the stars and the Tadpole's Pool that was waiting to ferry Yurnel back to Rallypoint.

"Yeah," I said.

"That means that there's no one else from the Wardens of Life that helped us start this still here," Carrie said sadly. "I miss them."

"I do too," I agreed. "I wish I had more people that could help me and give me advice the way that Gul-fen and Hyell would. Now, with Yurnel retiring, I don't think there's anyone but you that has been with me for such a long time that I can trust them completely."

"We'll find others," Carrie said. "And besides, Kyouka, Julio, Vanessa, Chin, and Maria are all people I trust. You can trust them with all this stuff too."

"I can't," I told her. "You've been there whenever I was told something that I deemed critically need-to-know and you've kept it all safe. I haven't even let Julio know and he's the one I trust most after you."

"You should trust more people with some of this stuff, Rickshaw," she told me. "It might help when you feel lost."

"I'll manage when I get there," I said. "I know how heavy it all is for me and I don't want to force others to carry the burden when they're still learning everything else."

"If you think that Julio and Kyouka, at the least, are still learning anything about how to run Deva presence on other planets, then you need to reevaluate how you think of them." Carrie said. "She's been keeping Earth from collapsing into a political shootout and he's made Rallypoint into the fallback point for all Warden of Life member races and the staging point of the Nephilim Army. It's past time they were made Horsemen in my opinion."

"You're right about that," I allowed. "That doesn't mean that they're ready for everything we've held close to the chest for the last twenty-five years. It just means that they're ready to start being prepared for that. We'll take another couple planets and by then the fleets I've been building for them will be ready and I'll send word and orders. We've been pushing the Scourge back in the Milky Way; enough that we've almost cleared them from it entirely. Cai, the scouting, and the database says that we've got around five more planets to take back and then there's no more Scourge here. When that happens, it's going to be time to move on from here. To the next galaxy. I think I'll send Kyouka to SG-8391. Julio can go to CG-08623. We'll go to BSG-9786. After we've cleared five planets in each galaxy we'll look into ferrying people over to them."

"That's an ambitious and agressive expansion," Carrie noted.

"It has to be," I said. "The Scourge won't slow down and we got started late. This is going to let us protect and clear up to four galaxies at once. Four out of hundreds that the Wardens passed through on their way here. Four out of thousands that the Scourge have likely taken. We can't afford to go so slow that we don't catch up. I want each galaxy taken to produce at least two more Horsemen and from there expand out further."

"One to three, three to nine, and nine to twenty-seven?" Carrie said. "Seems really ambitious."

"It is," I agreed. "But that also means that we'll have at least Deva presence in twenty-seven galaxies by the time we reach eight hundred years. That means that we'll have so many of us, that we won't be able to count them. All that will translate to billions of Nephilim and thousands of habitable planets, all feeding into the Nephilim war machine. By then we can look into expanding even more aggresively."

"What if we find a galaxy that the Scourge haven't hit yet?" Carrie asked.

"We'll make sure that the Scourge don't get a foothold in it," I said. "We'll attempt diplomacy to the races that have easy space travel but we won't raise them beyond what we find them at. Otherwise, it's typical Warden protocol; no Scourge, no contact, no fighting."

"And if someone doesn't listen?" Carrie asked.

"Then I'll make sure they know how disappointed I am that they're under my command," I said.

"Then let's go," Carrie said. "We've got some more planets to clear Scourge from and they're not getting any weaker."

"Cai, send word to the fleet pilots," I ordered. "Set course for the next planet on the list. We're almost done in the Milky Way."