by Aer-ki Jyr
Ariel told him that story and many others in the days to follow, sharing openly about her people, their physiology and technology…she even taught him to swim with his legs locked as if they were a tail, then expanding on his already limited swimming abilities by helping him craft his own prosthetic leg extensions that translated his ankle movements into other, more useful swimming dynamics.
As much as Paul didn’t like killing every lizard they came across, necessary as it was, he felt better knowing that some lives had been saved from their assault on the Bounty, with his regard for the lizards falling even further knowing that they’d taken Ariel as a living decoration. They’d also discovered compartments full of small, fury rabbit-like animals that they bred on ship for food. Those thousands that had survived the lack of feeding when the lizards abandoned that section of the ship were rescued and relocated to a small portion of the planet’s surface where Star Force created them a preserve of sorts, where they could eat as much of Corneria’s vegetation as they liked.
They were kept pinned into a 26 square mile area, surrounded by high concrete walls that kept them from jumping over or digging out of the region as Star Force techs studied them and their capabilities. Over the following years they learned to establish a very basic language with them, limited in intelligence as they were, and began to instruct them to do various tasks in exchange for rewards. While they did well enough on leaves and roots, they especially had a taste for cookies, which Paul and most of the Archons could emphasize with.
Thus began cookie-incentive training exercises designed to strengthen both their bodies and minds in an experiment to see if Star Force could help their ‘primitive’ race advance. It would be the first of many such endeavors in the centuries to come, for as skilled as Star Force and the Archons were at war, it was the preservation and advancement of life that was their highest priority.
Paul and Jason had discussed another such project concerning the lizards if they could ever be successfully captured and contained, working not so much in advancement in a physical sense, but in saving them from themselves. They hadn’t had that luxury with the crew of the Bounty, but Paul was glad to have saved another race off that ship, marking it also as a victory for freedom rather than just the slaughter of an intractable enemy.
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