Alarms blared and the vessel shook so hard, Dr. Drake experienced no fear of her impending death. When she regained consciousness it took her a few moments to remember she wasn't in her own bed. The severed hand of a Lacedain wrapped around her neck and the smell of smoldering electrical wires clued her back to the reality of the disaster around her. But she had survived. Sitting up, the pain registered and she groaned pulling herself out from beneath the toppled control panels of her ship.

Her crew of five Lacedains lay dead around her. The only other surviving life forms glowed purple in their case hung in suspension to protect them from any turbulence they might encounter during space travel. Some landing. The sixty-four Lacedain embryos, enough to repopulate the planet, had been modified by nanotechnology to survive an atmosphere so polluted by the previous inhabitants of the planet they had all but become extinct. The future of the race arrived home unharmed. Unfortunately, their five adult Lacedain nannies did not survive reentry. The Lacedains themselves were self-sufficient for food and water from birth, but it was the nanobots that ran in their blood that needed minding. Without adult supervision, there was no one to temper the self-replicating nanites until the infants were old enough to do it themselves. Without proper monitoring, these beings could quickly become more nanite than biohybrid. Dr. Drake shuddered at the thought and briefly considered staying herself, but she knew her human body wouldn't tolerate the toxic planet even if she tried to enhance it with nanotechnology. 

Dr. Drake had a choice to make. Abandon her life's work and let the Lacedains become extinct or move forward with a reckless uncontrolled experiment. 

"Which children should we grow first?" asked the stilted crackling voice of the computerized assistant that came with the shoddy ship, the only ship she had been able to afford on her meager professor's salary. 

She looked at the assistant with contempt, steeled herself and replied in a grim voice. "Plant them all. Then we fix this spacecraft and leave."

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photo credit: David Hardy