Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Calm Before

They had planned for this eventuality as remote as it might have seemed at the time, so as soon as that first crack appeared on the surface of that first eggshell, things had been set into motion. They didn't know a lot about the Kree, they had never officially joined the GA, and with their home planet now destroyed, there was little hope of learning more, so keeping what remained of the Kree Race alive would be a daunting task.

There were somewhere between three hundred and four hundred eggs, all which were genetically tested upon hatching. They had enough experience with genetic testing to know which Kree chicks were related biologically and which were not. From there, they were each tagged and chipped for future reference. Upon hatching, each Kree child was immediately inoculated against the void sickness, though the inoculation served more than just a protection against the void.

Injected with adapted DNA, they might potentially avoid the genetic drift or bottleneck event often seen when a population gets this low. They had enough Kree to make 50 mated pairs, if that eventuality were ever to happen, but five hundred would have been needed to avoid genetic drift. They barely had five hundred kree all together, so whatever genetic advantage they could be given was going to have to do.

Their geneticists considered reconstructing extra Kree through artificial means in order to spruce up the population and add extra diversity, but such a program was still a ways off, and would have to be discussed at a later time. Right now, there was still the matter of keeping these little ones alive.

Heading a team of scientists, Krill, directed the creation of a dietary supplement that should fulfill all of their needs, synthesized by examining the egg yolk from which the kree children had been sustained for nearly half a decade. The Kree hatchlings had all been born at the same time, which in itself was surprising, but led the the assumption that the kree had seen their demise coming, and had secreted cohorts of their eggs away in different caches, to create greater chance of survival.

Citizens of Arcadia hated to think that they had missed other caches of kree children on the Kree homeworld before it was destroyed, but those times were past.

This is what remained.

Now that they were fed, and accepting the food that was offered to them, it was up to the scientists to determine what else the chicks needed including the proper temperature, and handling. Assigned handlers used voice modulators to synthesize the kree language almost exclusively when they were working with the chicks. Some even wore hoods in the shape of adult cree heads, and feathered cloaks to simulate Kree parents.

All and all it was a very strange few weeks at the hospital as they took care of the Kree chicks.

Not all of them survived, of course, as was to be expected.

Whether it be from illness, or genetic defect, a predictable few slipped away, and though they were prepared for that outcome, that didn't mean it wasn't devastating. More than a few of the eggs never hatched, but that too was to be expected.

Other Laws went into effect following the birth of the Kree, including the purchase of an uninhabited rocky planet to be slowly terriformed over the life of the Kree until they were adult enough to take on the planet as their own. Teams of scientists were tasked with examining live footage taken From the kree homeworld, along with atmospheric readings and ecological information, in order to potentially synthesize a planet similar to their parental point of origin.

It would be a difficult task, but they had learned a lot from the creation of Arcadia,

One thing they had learned.

Sunlight.

Sunlight was a requirement.

Arcadia, and Noctopolis were the only two planets in GA airspace that existed without light of some sort and with every passing month that reality was becoming more and more difficult. Even with the artificial suns, it was becoming clear that maintaining a planet in darkness was not ideal.