"Demigod James," Kiv-mel greeted me when I entered his lab the next day. "I am happy to see that you are recovered from you injury. I saw you before Yurnel shuttled you back to the Phoenix, you looked quite terrible and I thought you deceased."

"Don't worry Kiv-mel, I'm good as new," I told him. "Carrie told me that you've finished going over the data from the Ythnw ship. What have you found out?"

"Nothing good I'm afraid," he said. "The Ythnw were indeed onboard the ship when the Queens were placed there. In fact, data I've uncovered leads me to believe that the Ythnw were willing to have the Queens onboard and that they were willing to act as their source of food. This means that another race has entered oblivion and they went willingly. A most troubling developement."

"That it is," I agreed with him. "Any idea where the Queens came from?"

"Unfortunately there is some small mention of shuttles from Iollan starships visiting before the Queens were loosed upon the Ythnw," Kiv-mel said. "Whether they were there to place the Queens aboard or there to convince them to accept the Queens, I do not know."

"Whichever one it is isn't good for the Wardens of Life," I said. "How did they come to Earth?"

"That is another troubling point," he sighed. "All data states that their starship was on an automatic course with this planet as the end point. The coordinates for Earth were not passed beyond the Galactic-Jumper known as Racing Starlight. It is the one that found your Milky Way Galaxy and scattered the various fleets that were ensconced within to search out sentient life before the Scourge appeared. The Ythnw were not among the many starships that were a part of the Racing Starlight's fleets. Neither were the Iollan."

"Which means that either someone's got a back door into the other race's starships or one of the races that was on the Racing Starlight is in bed with whoever wiped out the Ythnw and sent Queens to Earth," I said.

"Indeed. I apologize for my inability to determine the exact races involved in this. They are traitors to the Wardens of Life and our mandate," Kiv-mel said.

"Don't worry about that right now," I told him. "For now, try to focus on things that we can control. Carrie brought my mother to see you yesterday; what did you decide to use to help with what they told you?"

"I wasn't able to help them," Kiv-mel said. "Instead I sent them to speak with another of my team, he is dedicated to reworking older technology for use in modern applications. I felt that his efforts would serve Principality Applewood and Madam James better than my own."

"Thank you for helping them out with that regardless," I said. "I have high hopes for what they choose to change and how it will effect all Nephilim operations on Earth. Thank you for your time today, Kiv-mel."

"It is no issue, Commander," he waved my thanks away. "Simply helping to develop your Nephilim Army's technology is a dream I have yearned for my entire life."

"Yurnel, it's good to see you," I greeted the Gurtmic woman. "I never did thank you for healing me did I?"

"It was no trouble Commander," she said. "I was glad that I was able to save you from more disfiguring scars than what you have been stuck with."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Yeah, Cai told me that if I'd stayed another two or three days, he could have gotten rid of those," I admitted. "I just didn't want to spend even more time out of the action."

"I was worried about such a thing," Yurnel admitted. "I am unable to stop you when you have your full-range of motion and capabilities back, so I did not argue when you asked if you could leave the nutrient tank early."

"There's too much to do for me to sit on the sidelines all the time," I told her. "Did you go over the message that Cai sent your way for me?"

"Yes," Yurnel said. "I must admit, I found what you were asking me troubling. Another genetic change enacted over Humanity could exacerbate any consequences further in the future. Are you certain you wish to follow this path?"

"I'm not actually," I admitted. "But this was an idea that Principality Yamato suggested. I thought the idea had some merit but I wasn't sold on it entirely. Part of the reason for that was what you've just suggested, but mostly it was because I didn't want genetic manipulation to be the first thing we always go for when we need something new."

"Yes, reliance upon such a fragile and delicate science is something best avoided," Yurnel agreed. "It took a team of more than fifty of the best and brightest geneticists and genetic engineers to create the Nephilim genome without causing issue in those who would undergo the change. One of those very issues was the ability to reproduce, did you know?"

"I didn't," I answered. "I just remember that when you asked me about it I told you that if you could leave the ability with us that would be great, but if you couldn't then I'd deal with it later."

"Humans reproduce in a fashion that is quite novel compared to what most races practice," Yurnel told me. "The portion of it that females go through would have left female Nephilim with an inability to fight. The portion that males follow would have created a significant imbalance in your hormone levels and caused many of you to enter a state of volatility that would end with many of you losing your lives to each other."

"That's really bad," I said.

"Indeed," Yurnel agreed. "My team had to spend a lot of time balancing hormonal levels in both sexes and then we had to focus on how to change it so that you were not left without the ability to have children. That took us nearly two weeks."

That didn't sound like a lot of time, but if all of the team was focused on that, then it meant that all fifty of them had spent two weeks brainstorming and tweaking the hormone balance in men and women so that neither of them lost the ability to fight the Scourge. That would have been really difficult to do when they needed to balance it with all the other aspects of what our hormones controlled.

"When we were finished, we had lowered the projected window that the Nephilim females could become pregnant," Yurnel said. "The males had a higher level of your 'testosterone' hormone but a much reduced fertility level. We were unable to change this, which is why we adjusted your aging process."

"Do you see the difficulty we had?" she asked. "To preserve the Nephilim's ability to bear children, we had to lengthen your lifespans, and we nearly rendered our efforts at either one impossible. To do so again, even with our previous practice, would be something difficult to do."

"But it can be done?" I asked. "Even if you weren't the one in charge of it all?"

"It could be," Yurnel hedged uncertainly. "I simply do not know if it should be."

"Kyouka's idea of having a secondary race that would follow after the Nephilim to rebuild worlds and to gather our injured and heal them would allow me and the future Nephilim Demigods to focus on the Scourge," I said. "It would give us a civilian race that could be used to create our entire civilization beyond what humans are capable of. If you can do this in the next fifty years, then do so. I won't rush you and you will have any funding, aid, and protection you might need."

"Very well," Yurnel said after a moment. "But I will also be adjusting the Nephilim serum so that any issues that arise from what I've already done are removed sooner rather than leave them to fester."

"That's great," I told her. "Just promise me that you'll leave the new race with the chance to become Nephilim."

"I will be doing that regardless of what you wish," she told me. "Relying only on one race that is stuck on one world is a poor design flaw to your plan. Even if you will eventually seed them upon other worlds across the universe."

"Thank you for doing this again, doctor," I said. "It means more to me than you might realize."