Xia Phar had a good life for a human on Saer’kah. She didn’t wear a restriction band and the Saer’khi family that had raised her since the Migration treated her like one of their own. Others humans on Saer’kah though had no reason to love the Saer’khi . At least Xia had some semblance of freedom. So when the humans decide to rebel against the Saer’khi and she discovers the real reason for the presence of humans and other aliens on Saer’kah Xia decides to take action. Enlisting the help of her family and her friend Tarek she forms a plan to get everyone out of the alien barracks without arousing suspicion and get them off Saer’kah on one of the newly built colony ships. Sounds pretty easy right? Now Tarek’s crush on her is the least of her problems and leaving Saer’kah is just the beginning.     Twice Removed Chapter 19 Third Step By Amethyst

The baby had started to cry again so I began to rock and coo softly at her, unconsciously sending comforting thoughts her way. Much to my surprise I felt something being sent back to me, it was barely more than a vague mix of emotions and babbling, but it was definitely being projected from the child. She wasn’t just projecting though, her mind was clinging to my own like a life preserver. I was so distracted that I was only half paying attention to Pallu, who was examining the robot.

“I don’t sense any electricity running through this, but there’s something there in the chest, maybe it was turned off and that’s its power source. I wonder if there’s a way to turn it back on,” she muttered, probably thinking out loud more than actually speaking to me. Suddenly Pallu jumped back, bumping into me, and I had to tighten my hold on the baby so I didn’t drop her.

“Pallu, what are you…” I didn’t finish that sentence as I noticed the robot getting to its feet, its gaze locked on me and my Yazuik companion.

“I’m Sorry! I was just examining it, I didn’t mean to actually turn it on!” Pallu blurted out.

“Yazuik,” the mechanoid said with a cursory glance at Pallu before tilting its head to regard me. In a living creature I would have thought that the gesture indicated curiosity or confusion, but it wasn’t alive. “And you appear to be a #&%/human hybrid. Do you comprehend my speech patterns?”

I held the baby close as I watched the strange robot cautiously and nodded. I wasn’t quite sure what word he had used before ‘human’, but I had understood enough. “Yes, my name is Xia, I’m part human and part Saer’khi, and the Yazuik Is Pallu.”

“Saer’khi, understood. Thank you, I shall add that information to my database. You may call me Third. I did not think that your species would have advanced far enough for interstellar travel yet, much less evolved socially enough to cooperate and interbreed in the three hundred and sixteen solar rotations that I have been offline. Perhaps the Saer’khi would, it has been a millennium since Fifth stopped transmitting, but when I went offline Humans and Yazuik were still in their social and technological infancy.”

“Okay Third, I have some questions for you if you don’t mind,” I said, while still rocking the baby and trying to mentally soothe it.

“You may proceed,” Third replied in its steady electronic voice.

“Where is the crew of this ship?” I asked first, wanting to get that mystery out of the way.

“I am the only crew this ship has ever had and would have remained so until it was time to pass it on to the inheritors, had it not been damaged,” the robot responded.

“The inheritors?” Pallu and I both asked at the same time.

“The inhabitants of this planet,” Third clarified. “The Txela, and like your species they are one of the Nine.”

I shook my head sadly as I watched the robot. “I hate to break it to you, but there are no inhabitants of this planet except for some of the local wildlife. They all got wiped out around three hundred years ago.”

Third mimicked my motion, shaking its own head in return before making its way to the chambers to its left. “That assumption is incorrect Xia, the child you are holding is one of the Txela and eight more infants remain in the cryo-stasis chambers. Three hundred and sixteen solar cycles ago I foresaw the destruction of this planet’s third moon and attempted to safeguard the future of the Txela by warning them. They would not listen, they believed me to be one of their gods threatening destruction. So I made them believe that I required their newborn children to appease myself and the other gods, so that I could collect enough infants to reseed their people once the planet was livable once again. It took me too long to gather these newborns though and as I attempted to leave the planet the ship was struck by a fragment of the moon and we crashed here.”

I stared at the infant in my arms, feeling her hunger in my mind as she clung to me and knowing that she needed to eat something soon. This was especially important if she was a newborn as the robot had implied. I continued to soothe her both physically and mentally as I processed what Third had just revealed. These infants were the last of their kind and the rightful inhabitants of Unity. I was still burning with the need ask questions but it was starting to get late and I wasn’t sure we that we had much daylight left. “Pallu, could you hold her for a minute so I can focus enough to talk to Tarek?” I asked offering the baby to my companion.

“Sure, I’ll take her for a minute,” Pallu agreed, taking the infant from my arms, which caused her to immediately begin screaming again.

“I would not advise that,” Third cautioned. “Now that she has formed a mental bond, the child will not want to be without her mother for several days at least.”

“Whoa! Hold it! What do you mean by her mother?” I asked, taking the baby back to settle her down again. To my relief she did so, to a degree, she was still hungry and clinging tight to my mind, but at least she had stopped crying.

The mechanoid gave me a long look before speaking again. “The Txela imprint on the first mind they have contact with, usually their mothers. It was imperative that I took newborns for this very reason, even though it resulted in my search taking far too long. Had they been allowed to bond with their mothers before I put them in stasis I could not have separated them without negative psychological effects to the children and birth mothers.”

“I guess I had better start thinking of names then,” I muttered as I gazed down at the child and sent her warm and loving thoughts. “What do these infants eat? They’re humanoid with primarily mammalian characteristics, maybe with some cephalopod ancestry, could the milk of one our species sustain them?” I asked the last question as I thought of Pallu’s mother who was still nursing her infant daughter.

“With a diet containing the proper vitamins and nutrients, any mammalian milk would sustain the children,” Third agreed. He was also quick to caution me though. “However they may only wish to feed from their mothers while the bond continues to develop.”

I nodded curtly as I considered the child in my arms and the others in the cryo chambers. I also thought about the ship and what it and everything on it could mean to us if we could get it to the surface and somehow make it space worthy again. We didn’t plan on leaving Unity, but the thought of having an advanced alien ship in our possession if and when Earth came calling was too tempting to ignore. Then I was forced to attempt to split my attention between the child’s need for mental soothing and affection and sending a message to Tarek. *Tess’hir, how much sunlight do we have left?*

*We found the motherlode,* I quickly replied. *We absolutely need to salvage this ship, it is now our top priority, but first I’ll need to find a safe way off for me and the baby. Contact Tanna and Krie and tell them that we’ll need them here in the medical dropship to bring us back to the settlement as soon as possible. I need to tweak my nanites and Krie will want to know about this.*

*I will contact them immediately Tess’rha* he replied. There was a brief jump in his thoughts then as his mind suddenly processed all of what I had sent. *What baby?*

*It looks like we’re going to be parents Tess’hir,* I sent back a bit uncertainly. Sure I wanted a family some day, and I had kind of adopted Amy, but was I really ready to be a mother right now? I quickly stomped those feelings out of my mind, not wanting to negatively affect the baby, before sending another burst of thought to Tarek. *Congratulations, it’s a girl, now please contact Krie and Tanna, and gather as many applums as you can, we might as well bring them on the drop ship as well. I’ll see you when I figure out a way to get back to camp.*

I turned back to Third and sighed, “Is there any way off this ship safely for the baby? I don’t want to risk taking her out in water this deep, even if I had an extra environmental suit for her. We’ll try to salvage the ship and the other infants as soon as possible, but this little one needs to be fed and I can’t do that here. I don’t want nine hungry babies on my hands either at the moment, it’s better to wait to defrost them until we can find volunteers among our colonists to become mothers for them.”

“I concur,” the robot agreed. “I shall attempt to assist you in your plan to salvage the ship, if we use the ship’s antigravity field, then your people may have an easier time raising the ship. For now, we will use one of the escape pods. It will be buoyant enough to reach the surface and we can utilize the thrusters to navigate to the shore.”

Third led us to one of the outer hallways where it pressed against a barely noticeable indent in the wall, causing a seam to appear in the wall and open up into a large circle, behind which there was a spherical windowed hatch. The hatch opened up to reveal a small ovoid craft with a largely white interior that could fit six adults comfortably. I climbed inside, with Pallu close behind me as I tried to find a comfortable seat on the marshmallow-like benches along the walls and focussed my mind on sending the baby loving comforting thoughts and feelings. Then our mechanical guide followed us in and sealed the hatch behind us before passing us to get to the pod’s forward section and tapping a series of colored areas on the control panel.

We shot out of the ship going probably several hundred feet before we slowed and began to rise. Gradually we rose to the surface and once we were there I showed Third the rough location of our campsite on my datapad. “Extrapolating optimal course,” it said as its hands flew across the control panel once more. Then the pod turned roughly thirty degrees and headed straight for the shoreline.

When we arrived at the campsite the others had a large pile of applums gathered, resting on a carpet of the large leaves from the same tree. None of my team were at the site though, so I assumed that they were out getting another load. With as many as there were there, the whole colony may just be able to enjoy a nice treat with the evening’s meal, if we were back by then. Kit and the other slips were keeping the unity-corns from straying, though Kit quickly darted toward me to rub herself against my legs buzzing happily as I sat down and began to gently stroke her fur with my free hand.

Once she was satisfied with the attention my slip quickly hopped into my lap and inspected the baby sniffing curiously at her and then to my surprise she rubbed against the infant and began buzzing once again, projecting affection. Was it because she sensed me doing the same, or was it something more? I stopped to regard the baby in my arms. “You’re going to need a name,” I thought aloud. Then after a moment I smiled as it came to me. “Well we did find you deep under the water, so how about Shui?” I held her close, cooing softly at her as I wrapped her in the warmth of my mind, sent loving and comforting feelings to her and told her, *Your name is Shui.*

While we were waiting for the rest of my exploration team Pallu told Third how we had ended up here, making me sound a lot more heroic and competent than I actually thought I was. She was just finishing the story when I felt Tarek’s presence growing closer and managed to get to my feet without jostling Shui too much, though Kit let out a sleepy protest. Once my Tess’hir had arrived, and deposited his armful of fruit carefully on the pile, I smiled at him and walked over to greet him with a kiss, being careful of the baby between us.

Tarek returned the kiss eagerly, but was very careful not to hold me too tightly. Then he looked curiously down at Shui and then his eyes widened in surprise. *She’s like us.*

*She seems, at the very least, to have telepathy and empathy,* I agreed, *but she’s still a newborn so who knows what other abilities she may have. Her species were the original inhabitants of this planet and there are eight more babies just like her on that ship in cryo-stasis. This one thinks I’m her mother though, so I’ve decided to name her Shui.*

*That sounds like a nice…* He trailed off, eyes wide as he stared over my shoulder. *The Silent One.*

*That is the one who controlled that ship we found. It’s a robot, and it placed the children in cryo-stasis so that their species wouldn’t die out when the third moon was destroyed. We’ll discuss all of this at dinner tonight once we’re back home,* I promised. *I think that it may be able to answer a lot of questions.*

The rustling of trees nearby heralded the arrival of Matt and the others who added their fruit to the collection before staring in turn at Third and Shui. I was about to explain things when I got a ping from Krie. When I pinged back she sent me in a worried tone.*What is wrong with your nanites? And what is this about a baby?*

*Nothing is wrong with my nanites,* I carefully reassured my sister. *I’ll explain in detail later, but I have a baby here, from the original sentient inhabitants of Unity. She’s a hungry newborn and she thinks that I’m her mother; I’ll need to tweak my nanites to alter my hormone levels so that I can start producing milk for her or else she’ll starve.*

Krie’s mind was suddenly aglow with excitement. *You actually have a sentient creature that we’ve never encountered before?! We’re almost there I’ll see you in a few minutes!*

Both Tanna and Krie had a similar reaction to Third as Tarek had, but I took the time then to give everyone the short version of our exploration of the ship to ease their curiosity. Then, while Tanna helped the others load the fruit and our supplies on board and herd the ‘corns into the medical dropship’s small cargo hold I joined Krie in the med lab where she immediately started fussing over the baby. She wanted to do some scans as well, but once she saw how the Shui reacted to being separated from me she decided to wait until I could feed her and have her sleeping for a bit.

Shui’s reluctance to be away from me caused another issue though; I couldn’t make the changes to the nanites while holding her, so I had to carefully watch and instruct Krie on how to do it. It was annoying, but it was a relatively simple change to make, and once I was certain there were no errors I had Krie upload the new data to the programming node and update my nanites. Despite how quickly my nanites usually healed me or fought off viruses I knew it was going to take a little while for me to see much change since, although my hormone levels had been altered, it would take a bit of time for me to start actually producing milk. It wouldn’t be near as long as on a person without nanites, but I feared that I wouldn’t be able to feed Shui until well after we returned to the settlement.

By the time we were finished the others had finished getting everything on board with Third’s help. *Krie and I are ready to go whenever you are Tanna,* I sent to the other Ji’turi after a quick ping. *Have we heard anything on the comms from home yet?*

*Nothing yet, the search ships must have gotten out of range or gone off to drop search probes in another direction before we managed to increase the comms range. If that is the case, I estimate another three days before we get a response directly from Saer’kah.* I could feel the slight rumbling in the ship as we lifted off and then Tanna playfully jibed, *We’re on our way Commander, or should I call you Nharys’kal now? You’ve grown up so fast.*

I gave her a mental raspberry at the term ‘honoured mother’ since it was a highly respectful term, but one usually used for much older Ji’turi. *Don’t make me turn this ship around young lady.* I could still hear her mental giggling as I broke off contact.

We arrived shortly before dinner was ready and I asked Third to wait in the dropship so it wouldn’t spook any of the colonists before I was ready to reveal it’s presence. As the others guided the unity-corns back to their pen, Krie and I grabbed a few applums and went to go see Sarah by the cooking fires with Mischief and Kit right on our heels. “Hey Sarah, try this, it’s an excellent source of vitamins that I found while we were looking for that subspace pulse. I call them applums.”

Sarah looked up from the sunfish steaks she was cooking and reached for the offered fruit, but stopped to stare at the newborn in my arms. “I see you found something else of interest as well,” she commented.

“Ummm… yeah,” I was a little bit embarrassed about it since Sarah would probably tease me as bad as Tanna had earlier. “This is my… umm… daughter, Shui.”

Sarah nearly dropped the fruit that I had handed her and broke out in a grin, “Wasn’t it just yesterday that you were going to give me the talk about using protection?”

“Haha, very funny,” I retorted drolly, with roll of my eyes for good measure. “I’ll explain it after dinner, but I do want your opinion on that fruit.”

The chef took a bite out of the fruit and her eyes widened as she broke out in a grin. “Please tell me you have more of these. We could serve them fresh with meals, juice them or maybe even make a nice wine from them eventually, and this is a great find for the Nezans and you Saer’khi.”

“We have a bunch of them,” I replied with a nod. “If we keep the seeds I was thinking we could start an orchard just past the gardens. It will take a while to have that ready, but now we’ll know what to look for on explorations as well until then. The others should be bringing out the rest of the fruit for you shortly.”

It was then that Shui started screaming, displaying a perfectly healthy set of lungs. There was no soothing her now, she was too hungry, and now half the people in the settlement had stopped to turn and stare at us, making me blush a bit. I sighed, feeling all those eyes on me, as I sent a thought to the nanites in my uniform to open a seam over my left breast and let the hungry newborn go at it, hoping that I had at least started producing something for her to eat. Sarah raised an eyebrow as Shui started to eagerly suckle but said nothing. She was sucking a little hard at first for my comfort, but then I felt a sort of release as her mind started to calm and her suckling became less insistent and more rhythmic and relaxing.

Nursing was a strange sensation that made me feel warm inside, and it seemed from the happiness and satisfaction that Shui was projecting that I was producing at least a little milk. “Well duty calls, but at least I can do this sitting down,” I told Sarah and my sister. With that I gave them both a brief wave and left them to sit down at one of the fires beside Amy, Mandy, and the twins who were all watching me intently. “It’s a baby,” I told my ward as I sat down tiredly beside her. “Her name is Shui and she’s going to be your little sister from now on.”

“Geez Xia, I thought you went looking for a signal, you are like the magnetic north for strange discoveries and turns of events. How the hell did you end up with a baby?” Mandy asked with a look toward Shui. Amy and the twins were fascinated though, Hope and Talia reaching out hesitantly to touch the infant as she suckled as Amy did as well, though she cautioned the twins to be gentle.

“Well you see Mandy, when two people love each other very much…” she didn’t let me finish, blowing me a raspberry instead. I just grinned at her and promised, “I’ll explain it all after dinner, there’s a lot to tell and I’d rather tell everyone at once.”

As if on cue Sarah called out that dinner was ready and while the other colonists all went to get their evening meals I remained sitting and nursing Shui, since I figured that trying to get my own meal and eat while feeding her would be problematic at best. I was wondering if I should try to make some sort of carrying sling for her when others began joining me at the fire once again. Almost all the space around the fire had been claimed, and I had just switched Shui over to my other breast, when Tarek sat down beside me with two plates, smiling as he offered me one. “She seems happier now, but you need to eat as well Tess’rha.”

“That’s going to be awkward like this, I’ll eat once she’s finished,” I told him as I considered the plate held before me. There was a large sunfish steak with some roasted wingnuts, lemonberries, and a half applum, all of which made my mouth water.

“You have one hand free, and I think that I can spare one of my four to hold the plate while you feed yourself,” he pointed out.

“You’d better listen to the man, or one of us might decide to feed you ourselves,” Matt pointed out from my other side with that movie star smile of his. He had been watching me nursing since he sat down with an uncertain expression on his face, but it seemed that he had decided to just roll with it. “Cute squid… err kid,” he added with a brief nod toward Shui. “I take it you’re going to keep her then?”

I relented and used the fork to retrieve a bite of the sunfish steak that someone had apparently already cut into bite-sized portions for me. I savoured the taste for a moment, chewing slowly before swallowing and then I nodded. “She thinks I’m her mother, so I can’t very well foist her off on someone else.”

The rest of dinner passed with Mandy teasing me good-naturedly about just how much work I was in for now with Amy, Tarek, Krie and Matt offering to help where they could. The conversations at the other fires seemed hushed and I often noticed as I ate and nursed that there were a lot of quick and curious glances in my direction. Finally, once I had finished eating my dinner and people had settled into the lull of post-meal conversation I stood up, earning a sleepy protest from Shui, who was starting to doze off while suckling.

I called out for attention and once the conversations had all come to an end I addressed everyone. “I know there’s a bit of confusion and a lot of curiosity about this little bundle of joy I’m holding. When we set out this morning we were looking for an odd subspace signal further down the coast, and what we found was, quite frankly, amazing. We found an alien ship, more advanced than anything I’ve ever seen before on the ocean floor, it’s mostly intact and functioning, and now one of our top priorities will be salvaging it and making it space worthy again.”

I let what I had just told them sink in before I continued. “Pallu and I explored the ship and found this little girl that I’m holding right now in a cryo-stasis unit. She is one of the original inhabitants of this planet, and there are eight other newborns just like her who I would like to bring into our little community. Any women who would like to adopt one of these babies please come and see me so that I can prepare you before we retrieve them. Watching over these babies was a robot calling itself Third, he rescued them when their people faced annihilation and I suspect he might have a lot of important information for us.”

After that I sent Pallu to the medical ship to get Third and asked it to tell us its story. Several million years ago there was an advanced species called the Lhatahn, that Third had also called the Originators. These people explored life-supporting worlds all over the galaxy, but they found no other sentient life. Not wanting to be alone they began seeding various planets in our galaxy by attempting to induce evolution in adaptable and fairly intelligent species found on those planets through the use of genetic engineering using their own DNA as a basis. Over the ages they continued to monitor these species and further their evolution, but only nine were considered a success: Humans, Saer’khi, Nezans, Murqui, Yazuik, Haran, Txela, Kraahl, and Tiyranhi.

Humans had been considered the most promising, since their ape ancestors were very similar to those that the Lhatahn themselves had evolved from, but all nine species showed remarkable potential. Once the Originators had gotten them to an evolutionary stage where could truly be considered sentient they pulled back to allow their creations to develop in their own ways. They built nine ships and each ship had a robot like Third, who were tasked with watching over their assigned species, observing their development without interfering in it, and when the time came that they were socially and technologically advanced enough to explore the stars they were to turn the ship over to them and tell them how to find their creators.

Third though, had discovered a conflict in its programming early on. The Txela were surviving, but not thriving, and the many powerful predators on Unity, such as the crocosaurs, threatened to cause their extinction. If the Txela didn’t survive, then it could not fulfill most of its programming, but it was not prepared yet to interfere with their growing culture directly. That was when it had used the knowledge of the Lhatahn stored in its database to alter the genome of two other less survivable creatures to create the slips and unity-corns. It increased the slips’ intelligence, made them more adaptable, and gave them their danger sense, empathy, and a need to establish a symbiotic empathic link with sentient creatures. The ‘corns were altered to make them more easily domesticated, give them their keratin armor and horns, and increase their empathy.

Once it had finished creating a small population of both creatures, it placed them in an area where they would be sure to come across the Txela and continued its silent and invisible observation. Together the three species began to thrive until Third observed a massive asteroid on a collision course with Unity’s third moon. That was when it decided to warn them, or if that failed gather enough children to reintroduce the Txela to the planet when it had become livable again. When the ship had crashed it placed itself in a position to watch over the children and went offline to conserve its power, planning to wake again after four or five hundred years to begin it’s preparations for reintroducing the Txela.

“And then we showed up,” Dennis offered once the mechanoid had finished its tale. “So these Originators, are they still out there? And what about the others like you?”

Third answered nearly immediately. “I cannot say for certain, I have not received any new orders or updates from them since I first began my observation of the Txela. I still receive data from two of my counterparts, though they will not contact their respective species until certain social and technological criteria have been met. Many appear to have gone offline following their species making contact with the Saer’khi though, perhaps due to a programming conflict. We were given no explicit orders regarding what to do if any of our respective species should be contacted by another. My counterparts on Earth and the Saer’khi home world were destroyed and stopped transmitting long ago.”

“That would probably explain the Silent One and the crash near Roswell in 1947,” I interjected. “Do you have any ideas how we could salvage your ship Third?”

“The lower maneuvering thrusters were damaged in the crash, but we could use the anti-gravity field generator to make it easier to raise it to the surface by some other means,” the robot offered.

“If there’s no gravity affecting it, two of us wearing environmental suits should be able to get it to the surface using our telekinesis,” Karran suggested. “Then, once it’s there, we just tow it here with the tractor beam from one of the drop ships.”

I nodded thoughtfully for a moment before breaking into a grin. “That’s a good idea Karran, if you’re finished on the memory node I’d like to have you, Tanna, and Tarek to help with that tomorrow. I’ll come to coordinate, but I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do much else. I think that’s it for tonight everyone, enjoy the rest of your night and Krie and I will be in the medical ship if any of you want to talk to me about adopting a baby.”