Paul Townsend was born on Tammerson-VII, a planet that was a harsh world, with less than two hundred colonists, but extremely profitable. Orbiting a brown dwarf, the world was theorized to have been a gas giant before the life cycle of the system had burned it away and drawn it into closer orbit than it had started with.The ground was liberally laced with exotic metals and crystals, the ash that rained down from the sky was less raw lava and more metal. Going outside required a pressure suit and armor. There was life, but mostly fungi, virus, and bacterial.

He was part of the colony security forces. He did twenty years with Space Force as Confederate Army before returning home to be part of the minimal security force the colony bothered with. He spent most of his time running spare oxy-packs or nano-forge packs to wildcatters that inevitably forgot something they needed.

The Lanaktallan forces attacked the colony without warning. A single missile was enough to cause the entire colonist complex to implode when the structural integrity, built to handle storms, earthquakes, radiation flames, magnetic resonance, was compromised.

The Lanaktallan troops landed first, storming the remaining colony facility and killing the last twenty unarmed colonists with plasma rifles.

The Lanaktallan had been ordered to retrieve the bodies of the humans they could.

Paul Townsend was one of the bodies recovered.

He was in remarkably good shape. The blast had impaled him on a steel rod, his suit's lining had sealed the wound, but when the Lanaktallan found him he had no life signs.

His body was the most intact. He was put in a cryobank and sent back to the nearest Unified Science Council research facility that was set up to deal with dissecting a Terran Descent Human that, according to a cursory inspection, was loaded up with cybernetics and more.

He was moved to a secure location, then moved to the science facility in a huge crate marked "Tissue Samples" before examining him.

The Lanaktallan researchers were excited by what they could see on their scans.

Genetic tweaking. Thicker bones, thicker muscles, obviously genetic modification to allow the Terran to live in a 2.5G environment. Cybernetic eyes, some kind of cybernetics beyond the simple datalink connected to some kind of ultra-dense molecular circuitry at the back of the skull, cybernetic linkages down both arms including what looked like a holo-emitter in the left hand. Some of the organs had been vat-grown for specific purposes. There looked like thin wires through the muscles as well as several organs and something the size of a small ball in the middle of his torso.

There was still some residual activity in the brainstem, mostly around the cybernetics in the brain, but this was largely written off as having to do with the power system of the cybernetics themselves.

After three days the scientists decided that they would have to defrost the Terran and begin dissecting the creature.

There were two Lanaktallan scientists overseeing the Terran Descent Human being defrosted. The fact it didn't bleed was not a surprise, after all, he was dead. The power came on to the cybernetics, but the Lanaktallans had known that would happen. Without defrosting the body, they couldn't remove the cybernetics to examine them.

But first they wanted to do some baseline experiments.

A genetic sample was taken again, this time of the bone marrow. The Lanaktallan researchers set the genome to decrypting and examined. The Terran Descent Genome had been worked on but since the subject had been genetically altered and the Lanaktallan were interested not only in what had been altered but if they could determine what methods had been used.

They also planned on comparing it to the thousands of genetic profiles they had on historical races that had previously been gentled. Perhaps a method of slowly gentling them could be discovered, one that wouldn't be easily discovered until too late.

The body interested the Lanaktallan. They knew it would take a bit of time for the body to fully thaw out and that meant it was a good time to go ahead and have a meal with their peers.

The two Lanaktallan were enjoying discussing the information they could wring out of the Terran's corpse, discussing it with several peers interested in seeing what secrets they could pry from the cybernetics, when they were notified that the body had not only reached room temperature but was rising beyond that temperature.

Sure their instruments were wrong the two Lanaktallan were talking to one another when they entered the room where the corpse of the Terran was laying on an examination table.

They both paused when the human's back suddenly arched and his jaw clenched, his hands moving into fists and the human trembled for a moment before collapsing back on the table.

"Stray electrical charge from the cybernetics?" One asked.

"Perhaps. They use much higher amperage than cybernetics should use," the other said, moving up to the subject. The other moved over to the scanner and checked the results.

The body did it again and both looked down at him before looking at the instruments. The heavy piece of cybernetic mechanism in the human's chest had pushed electric current to his heart, to the molecular circuitry at the back of his skull, and to his diaphragm.

"The cybernetics must be shorting out or do not realize that the subject is dead," one of the researchers asked.

It was at that moment that human opened his eyes, groaned, and rolled over on his side.

"Oof, what hit me?" he asked.

Both of the Lanaktallans went absolutely still. Both of them used their datalink to download a lexicon of known human terms.

The human tapped the side of his head, tapping the external part of the datalink implant.

"Where's the linkages? Why isn't my linkage synching up?" the human asked.

"You were dead," one blurted.

The human looked up, saw the two Lanaktallans, and his hand went to his side. Finding nothing but bare skin he sat up and put his hands over his genitals.

"Um, not exactly. My medical nanite system kicked in, put me in a coma while it repaired the damage," the human put his hand on his datalink. "Oof, major arterial damage, yeah, I would have bled out."

"How are you alive?" the Lanaktallan asked.

"I told you. Medically induced coma," the human said. He tapped the side of his head. "You don't have guest wifi? Any chance you'll give me a password or do I have to crack it?" He looked around. "Where's my clothing?"

"Perhaps there is a way we can kill him?" One researcher asked.

The other held up all four hands in a combination of 'stop' and 'wait' and 'I have an idea' to the other.

"You realize, nobody has actually talked to a human?" that one said.

The other researcher frowned. "We haven't?"

"No. We've dissected a few, we've examined a few of their warborgs, but never actually talked to one," the one said. "Perhaps there are things he can tell us?"

"Hey, some clothing? Please?" Paul asked. He sighed as his datalink finally managed to hook into the station's infonet. He blinked a couple of times and stared at the two Lanaktallan. "Really? Fucking really? You were going to come back and dissect me?"

The two Lanaktallan looked at one another then at the human.

The human stood up, grabbing a cloth off of a machine and wrapping it around his waist before turning and staring at the two startled Lanaktallan.

Both of them noticed that the plain sky blue of the Terran's cybernetic eyes, which were designed to look like biological eyes, was suddenly a softly glowing amber.

"You've got about two seconds to tell me how you've changed your mind," Paul stated.

"Um, you aren't going to chase us or kill us, are you?" One of the researchers asked.

"That depends. Are you planning on killing and dissecting me?" the Terran answered.

The two Lanaktallan looked at one another and then at the Terran.

"Um, no?" one said.

"Good call," The Terran said.

"Can we ask you questions?" the other asked.

"About what?" The Terran asked, sitting back on the examination table.

Both Lanaktallan researchers noticed that the Terrans eyes had returned to blue. A glowing blue, but blue all the same.

Both of them looked at each other, then at the Terran. All the other times a Terran had 'woken up' it had immediately demanded to be returned to the Terran embassy.

This one wasn't.

It was an amazing opportunity.

"What is your name?" One asked.

"Paul Townsend," the Terran answered.

"Paultownsend?" The other repeated.

"No. Two words. Paul. Townsend," the Terran said.

"Um, why do you have two names?"

From there it went on to what they liked to eat, what did he do for fun, things like that.

Before a few days had passed, all twenty of the researchers were all clamoring to speak with the Terran. Asking him all kinds of questions regarding what had led him to be born on that colony, to join the military, have an option to leave, and then return to such a terrible place.

The answer?

A girl. He'd promised to come back to her, so he had.

But the most interesting thing to the Lanaktallans was that he asked them questions. About their research, about their families, about their lives.

And he understood their plights.

They'd all had research halted because the Unified Science Council had decided that the research being done was worthless, would be a dead end, could be dangerous, or was a waste of resources. Their social standing had fallen until they had been sent to a far flung research station in the middle of nowhere to just oversee genetic storage.

The only reason they had received Paul Townsend's 'corpse' was because they were the closest genetic research laboratory to the Fleet that had attacked the station.

The Lanaktallans worried that Terran Paul Townsend would be angry that the Unified Military Council had destroyed his colony and go on a rampage and kill them all.

Instead, he sat in the room they had given him and showed visible signs of distress when he was alone for a period of several days. Never in front of his hosts, although sometimes he did excuse himself, but he displayed distress.

The Lanaktallan had stayed away from him until he had sought them out and asked them why. When they told him they wanted to give him privacy and had not wanted to increase his distress by having their presence remind him that their government had carried out the attack, he accepted their concerns but told them that he felt the need for company.

More data on their pack behavior.

The give and take, back and forth, kept going for over a month. A resupply ship arrived, bringing notification that every being on the station was assigned to the station for another year. The two pilots all but sneered at the Lanaktallan, who didn't bother telling the pilots about the live human they had hidden in the station.

Oh, and their funding had been cut.

Again.

The datapack from the resupply ship notified that the station would be decommissioned in two months and all twenty of the station researchers would be reassigned somewhere else.

And because the research station was largely unneeded except for their work, they would be charged for the station expenses during the last months of operation.

But at least there were a handful of corporations willing to buy out their contracts.

The Lanaktallan all couldn't believe it. Their data would be discarded as useless, nothing they had managed to research would even be entered into the databank because it had all been discovered before and had not provided any new answers to any of the old questions.

Paul Townsend asked why the Lanaktallan were so despondent.

They explained it to him. Their meager salaries barely kept them ahead of expenses. Now with being charged for the entire station's costs they would all be in massive debt and have their contracts sold to corporations which would assign them to wherever the corporation wanted.

They had spent decades examining the genome of old species collected over centuries, categorizing them again.

Paul asked why they had to be categorized again.

The Lanaktallan explained to him that the station had been lost, forgotten about, for nearly a million years until it was found by a survey vessel. All of the samples had to be crosschecked against the master database.

Now it had been finished.

None of the billions of genetic samples that the station held samples of had been lost. There were backups in the Unified Science Council databases.

They had earned no bonuses and their work had been considered a waste of resources.

In sixty days a ship would arrive to take the samples, the computer data, and the twenty Lanaktallan.

They would be charged for that. As well as for relocation by whatever corporation had bought out their contracts.

Paul Townsend listened and then asked a simple question: "Why do you have to go back?"

The Lanaktallan shuffled and looked around.

"And go where? The only place there is to go is back," the Station Most High said, trembling in anxiety.

Paul Townsend shook his head. "Maybe ten years ago. But there is somewhere you can go. Somewhere you can take all of this data, all of these samples, and be paid highly."

THAT got their attention.

Every Lanaktallan liked the idea of being highly paid.

Would they be respected?

In their field? Absolutely.

A plan was developed.

The Lanaktallan were nervous. All of them were scientists, researchers.

Not pirates.

Paul Townsend laughed.

The Terran told the Lanaktallan that he would help pack everything up. That he would help them get it ready. Once the ship arrived, Paul would handle the rest.

All the Lanaktallan had to do was come along.

When the ship arrived it held two Unified Trade Council pilots. Both of them sneeringly told the researchers that the corporations had already purchased the researcher's contracts.

Then Paul came out and started to speak to the two pilots. As agreed, he would offer them the chance to either come along or stay on the station and wait for rescue.

Both of them went for their neural pistols.

The researchers were terrified that Paul Townsend had killed both pilots, but he had just quickly disabled them before the researchers had even realized that the two pilots were drawing weapons.

They all quietly agreed it was a good thing that nobody had attempted to return Paul Townsend to his deceased status after he woke up.

The Lanaktallan researchers loaded up the ship with all of the frozen samples. Even with the automation it took nearly a week.

The pilots stayed locked up in a room.

Eventually the ship was loaded, the Lanaktallan researchers boarded it, nervous and asking questions.

They knew their nation was at war with the Confederacy, but the idea that they'd be warmly received was foreign to them. They asked him repeatedly if he was sure.

He was positive.

He knew where to go.

The Lanaktallan were nervous, but they knew their choice was debt-workers for major corporations, working on nothing new with nobody caring about what they researched...

...or abandoning everything they knew for the chance to be recognized, to have their research respected and intrigue others.

They were anxious. It was weeks in jumpspace. Three of them to be exact.

But they arrived.

Paul Townsend had been right. Everyone wanted to talk to them. About their research, about Lanaktallan genetic research and manipulation techniques, about their samples. They found themselves the center of attention that surpassed anything they'd ever dreamed of.

Paul Townsend became famous.

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Oh. My. God.

DASS, CLONE WORLDS, are you guys paying attention?

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Yeah. Why?

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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM - HIGH SECURITY

I'm here. What?

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Get your best people over here, right now. I mean yesterday.

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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM - HIGH SECURITY

I'm kind of busy with the whole genecracker fleet and the stuff JED took.

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Trust me, guys. What just dropped in my lap is something you want to see.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS - HIGH SECURITY

What is it?

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Only over eighteen trillion genetic samples from the last hundred million years of every world that the Lanaktallans have destroyed and reseeded and destroyed. Everything. From algae and moss up to, I mean, I've got the previous incarnations of the Telkans in this stuff.

There's even ancient Lanaktallan tissue samples.

And I've just run a few keyword searches.

It's everything. Their entire genetic domination system.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS - HIGH SECURITY

The what?

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

The whole system. It isn't described, but you can easily infer it from the data, from the samples.

And... other stuff.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Define: Other stuff.

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

We're not even sure yet. Some Lanaktallan deserters, well, not really deserters, more like disaffected scientists, came in with a Terran and a shipload, and I mean a shitload shipload, of genetic samples, not just data, but millions of tons of samples.

Twenty researchers, their equipment, and one of the backup sample storage and research repositories for the Unified Genetics Council.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

I'm on my way.

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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM - HIGH SECURITY

You aren't fooling us? I'll be right there.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS - HIGH SECURITY

Oh dear. This opens up some possibilities.

Some very ethical quandary possibilities.

I think...

...we're going to need to call a full quorum about this.

Our newest members are going to deserve to know what this means for them.

We're going to have to decide how we're going to tell them.

Did you run a search for... for..

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

Terran Descent Human structure?

First thing I did.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS - HIGH SECURITY

And?

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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS - HIGH SECURITY

No. Nothing.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS - HIGH SECURITY

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Random chance has kicked in the teeth of everything the universe had thrown at them.

I don't know if I feel better or cheated.

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