Christen and the others watched the images transmitted from hundreds of tiny drones inside the Morgale ship. The transformation had been completed successfully, and their nanobots had completely locked the Morgale out of all their ship systems. They had life support, water, food, and little else.

Dana and Michael wanted to send in soldiers, but Kendra, Christen, and Marius opposed the idea. Instead, they allowed communications from ship to ship. It didn't take long before a female officer accessed the link, appearing on the holographic viewscreens.

Christen recognized Valera instantly, not hard to do when the nanobots transformed her back into the shape she occupied for so long, but permanently this time.

The woman who pretended to be her best friend for a hundred years. The one who betrayed them in the worst possible way. How could something hurt so much that didn't even happen to her?

"King Marius, I thought you'd be good and dead by now," Valera nearly hissed.

"You will not speak to my father in such a fashion," Christen corrected her with a wave of anger that didn't belong to her.

It didn't take Valera more than an instant to realize what happened.

"Christen, I can speak for myself," Marius reminded her courteously, but his anger wasn't directed at her.

Christen didn't know it until that moment, but Valera was why Madeleine died. She caused the malfunction in the life support pod that claimed Madeleine's life when the ship entered their atmosphere.

"You forgot to tamper with the life support system on my pod. I held my daughter in my arms as she died. She told me everything."

His fury was much more pungent because of his control over himself.

"I didn't tamper with Madeleine's pod. I tampered with yours. She probably switched the data tabs just in case someone meant you harm," Valera countered.

Christen could see it in her eyes, the truth of her words and the hidden pain, but all Marius was was his own pain.

Valera might have played a role to serve her people, but her friendship with Madeleine had gotten under her skin. The part of Christen that was Madeleine didn't buy that for a second, but she had the perspective of a stranger. The memories in her brain were not as pungent and overpowering to her as they must have been to Madeleine.

"You will not speak my daughter's name!"

Marius' momentary loss of control spoke volumes.

"You are not my king. You will not command me!" Valera challenged him, her eyes blazing with anger, pain, and hatred.

"That is where you are wrong. I command you, Valera, and your crew to gather your belongings and go down to the cargo bay. You will remain there until we reach our destination. You will do nothing but obey my orders," Christen ordered in a tone of voice that made the part of her that was Madeleine smirk.

The shock on Valera's face said it all. She understood why she could not disobey the command. She could not even speak or answer.

"One moment, please, I will answer the question that must have been killing you. Wondering what we did to you? We turned you into the human version of what we once were, the Argale. The species that gave birth to both the Astor and Morgale. We are two sides of the same coin. Except you became what they feared in themselves while we went too far in the opposite direction. When your people come, and they will come, we will right the balance of the universe. If there is only one species to rule all, it will not be the Morgale.

"The Argale feared the possibility of violence in their souls. You embraced it while we denied it. None of those things are sustainable. The regret in your eyes tells me that already, you have changed on a much baser level than you realize. You are dismissed, Captain," Christen spoke with the authority of someone born to it.

Valera obeyed despite her resistance.

When Christen turned to Marius, he looked at her with a parent's pride, despite the sorrow in his eyes. As much as she was Madeleine, she wasn't. He saw her as his daughter but knew the difference, yet loved her deeply. But Madeleine had been the center of his universe. She knew that and accepted her role in his life.

Christen didn't send Dana alone onto the other ship as Marius all but commanded her. She would not send her sister into danger, and although Dana was as much Marius' daughter as her, she wasn't part of Madeleine. She didn't have the command over their people that Christen had.

They found the Morgale gathered in the cargo bay as she required. Three thousand stood at attention with their belongings stowed on carrier pods. Only Valera and her six commanding officers stood to one side. They approached Christen, and behind her, Dana and the hundred soldiers her father insisted on sending with her raised their weapons. Valera hesitated for only a moment before saluting Christen.

"Calm down, Dana," Christen suggested, and with a slight gesture, Dana had her men lower their weapons, but they didn't lower their guard.

Valera noted this.

The Morgale weapons were stowed and locked away on the munitions carts in their containers. The former Morgale couldn't access these containers with their altered DNA. Just because they were unarmed didn't mean they were not dangerous. These creatures had lived for combat, but the modified DNA in their systems made them subservient to Christen. They could not harm her or anyone under her protection. Just as the humans could not.

"Valera Artran reporting for duty, Princess Christen of Astor," Valera's subservience didn't alter her thoughts or attitude.

The slight disdain in her voice carried the bite of sarcasm.

Christen could see the resistance in the eyes of the men and women before her, so far removed from the alien monsters they were two days ago.

As hideous as the Morgale had chosen to look on the outside, their thoughts and feeling had remained Argale, essentially humanoid as much as they thought themselves beyond such things.

In fact, from what she could tell, it had made their base emotions just so much more profound, but for their lack of pity, their instinct to conquer the universe and trampled it underfoot, but that was just the lizard brain in every creature. The instinct to be the alpha being. All of which were now being altered on a molecular level.

"Thank you, Valera. I am not of Astor, I am of the earth, and I am Argale, just like every other humanoid creature on this planet. Next time you address me, dial down on the sarcasm. You came here to destroy and conquer us, expecting no resistance, and you failed.

"If you stayed at home and left the survivors of Astor in peace, you would still be Morgale and would not have to obey me. You destroyed worlds, conquered solar systems, and fell to a tiny blue planet that hasn't even gotten around to exploring space in ships like these. I know you all think that when the other ships come, we will fall, and they will rescue you. That you will return to your old Morgale selves in no time."

They didn't buy the friendly tone of her voice.

"Every ship we infested with the Nanotech we used on you will be permanently tainted with self-replicating Nanobots. Every Morgale that spends more than an hour on this ship will be Argale come morning. We contaminated your blood with something that acts like a virus. Instead of killing you, it turns any humanoid with the same base genetic markers as you into an Argale.

"I command that everything I tell you now is classified. So, you can't warn your former masters. We will use you as bait, you will be rescued, and it would take only one of you to contaminate an entire Morgale warship or colony ship in twenty-four hours.

"You are still using our codes and technologies. They won't detect what we did, and once you have been touched, or come into contact with anything on a ship, stopping the infestation will be impossible. We can suspend it with a simple transmission, but you can't. You'd need a hundred years to crack our codes, but you don't have a hundred years. Your ships will send distress signals, and more ships will come. We will send them home and win this war without wasting lives or resources."

Her conviction communicated the truth of her words.

"That is not possible. You cannot possibly have conceived of such a thing!" Valera managed.

"That blue planet you saw from your ship? Three days ago, it had almost eight billion humans thriving on it. Today they are all Argale and every single one has the virus in their system. This is their planet. You will not do to it what you did to Astor. When we're done, they will have free will. They can decide what they want, but you will remain as you are. There are many innocents among the humans, but the Morgale mentality does not allow for such niceties."

Christen sensed how they fought the knowledge, but not all were as strong as Valera.

"And if they want you gone?" Valera demanded.

"Then we will leave, with you no longer a threat—they will be safe. We have repaired our ship. We are not stranded, and with the technology we created while you planned your revenge, we can take a dead planet like Mars and turn it into a home, and by the time we're done settling in, there will be hundreds of millions of Argale.

"The universe will shrink for the uninfected Morgale until you have all been reverted. This ship of yours is all we need to protect the earth. And unlike you, we and the humans can shift into Argale form. We are more than a match for any of your kind."

Christen nodded at one of the human soldiers behind her, and he shifted with no difficulty. The silvery humanoid was larger and stronger than most Morgale but remained intrinsically human in its behavior—able to reason and react instinctively, the best of both worlds.

"We were never such creatures," Valera yelled.

But something in her eyes said she recognized the creature instinctively. The human returned to his former state, his uniform shifting with him.