Angalesh vs. Majaag (OMG)

[Darth Grievi]

"They'd be going in first. I expect that over the course of the project, they'd naturally improve... Or rather I hope, since I'm rather unsure how gene-based psionics work, at least as far as improving them."

[Snake]

Raminaa kept his attention back to the sensors, " Well, alright. Keep in mind, that there will be many many Koans. Many very hungry Koans. As in you need them in seperate cages to keep them from eating each other. Heh. "

[Darth Grievi]

"Come to the medical bay when you're... ready..."

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"I'm going to go check the holding cell replicators, make sure they can handle the demand."

[Snake]

" I've been practically bloated for months now, making an almost endless amount of eggs. Probably a thousand by now. You'll definitely have a job on your hands. " Raminaa went towards the medical bay, trying not to get lost in the massive ship. " I think we'll need more ships like this one too though. "

[Darth Grievi]

Another pause.

"Then let's go."

He led Raminaa down to one of the several med bays, where a single Angalesh was sorting and cleaning medical instruments. She looked up as the pair entered.

"Nal, how good would you say you are at manual genetic manipulation?"

"Probably the best on the ship. Why Wanderer?"

"Raminaa has a plan to beat the Neo-Majaag at their own evolutionary game. We're planning to splice the Neo-Majaag genes for psionics into Raminaa's... children."

"How many children are we talking about?"

"Probably nearing the thousands by now..."

A pause.

"And you can't program the computer to do it?"

"I wouldn't trust the ship's AI to keep a plant watered, even if I knew how to program it."

Nal sighed. "Well, we've got two options; splice the genes in directly while they're still developing, or wait untill they've grown strong enough to give them a retrovirus."

[Snake]

" They're all hard-shelled by now. Probably the retrovirus. Not to mention the eggs are quite small, and there will be many. Not that there's any need to be careful with them, they're like miniature armored tanks. "

[Darth Grievi]

"In that case, I'll go prep the holding cells. What kind of environment do they need?"

[Snake]

" You might just want to simulate the extremely radioactive Polia. Koans don't actually breath. So we eat a lot. You'll need a lot of food to feed them. "

[Darth Grievi]

"Right. They'll be ready in a few hours. Blasted holding bays can't communicate with each other..."

[Snake]

" Alright, I'll go ahead and go lay the eggs somewhere in a closet or something... " Raminaa figured a bedroom for sicker patients would do, going into it.

[Darth Grievi]

Wanderer left to go begin adjusting the environments of the individual holding cells. While an entire roomfull (about eighty) could be set at once, there was no way to transfer the settings directly to any other room, which was rather frustrating.

Apparently, the Quroche had never thought that someone might need to transport a small town's worth of a species, and even if they had, they probably figured you could just put five or ten in each cell. This made sense, since the areas were certainly large enough, but of course didn't work with viciously territorial creatures.

After about two hours of his fingers occasionally slipping through the touch screen and futile attempts to influence the electronics directly, he just recruited a few off-duty Angalesh and had them do the dirty work. Things sped up after that, and Wanderer returned to the medbay after four hours of work to check on Raminaa.

[Snake]

Raminaa came out of the patient's room. " Maybe 1002. I stopped counting after the first 500. Most Koans make upwards of 3,000, but I guess I'm not super-fertile like them. " Raminaa showed Wanderer a small pearl-like object, and dropped it onto the floor, not damaging it. " Feel free to be as rough with them as you want. They won't break. " He threw it back into the room, who's floor was now like a bunch of marbles had been scattered across it. " I need to hibernate, that's exhausting. " He wandered off to find a small compartment.

[Darth Grievi]

Wanderer, with help, began placing the eggs individually into the holding cells. The initially semi-delicate operation eventually devolved into having one Angalesh toss an egg in and another operating the forcefields to seal the cell.

After that was all said and done, an attempt was made to program a sentry drone to check the eggs every now and again. They finally gave up on using Quroche computers, which were good for nothing more than number crunching and as an inteface with the ship, and simply ripped the "brain" out of a defunct matinence bot and replaced it with a TAOQY, setting it to transmit when movement was detected while still, and to patrol along a set path with scanning stops placed at about five minute intervals.

[Snake]

Within a few hours, the eggs began to hatch, and immediately search for food, even if it meant eating their siblings, with fighting occuring if this began to happen. For the Koans, it was survival of the fittest, and this was a principle the untrained offspring exhibited feircely.

[Darth Grievi]

The drone transmitted, the signal was recieved, and the replicators flicked on, dispensing meat and various edible plants at regular intervals.

The young Koans were safe from each other, protected by solid walls on three sides and a forcefield plus about ten feet of open corridor on the fourth.

Nal and Wanderer soon arrived to check on the young Koans, and Nal estimated it would be about a day untill they could attempt the retrovirus, which was still being manufactured to meet the necissary demand.