Colony Wars 5: Tales of the Galaxy

Scales of Silver and Bronze

1st Rotation of En'trag

El'en phase – 1st Galactic step

Age of Honour

Infirmary

G'Mas Colony

Chemach

Epsilon Point

His eyes flickered and opened, liquid filled his vision, so all he could see was a blurry mass of shadows and swirling shapes. His body felt confined, closed in tightly by something hard. Panic set in, he squirmed and pushed against his cage, and while it moved and bulged as he pushed, it would not break. He butted the wall with his head, and stretched his body, desperate to escape the round prison that encompassed him completely. It was so confining, and it was getting tighter every moment, like his body was expanding quickly against the shell. His body became like a ball inside the oval chamber, and he smashed his head faster and harder against the barrier, but it would not budge. Then suddenly... CRACK...

Light, bright blinding light shone in through the tiny hole that had been created in the wall. It burned his eyes, but still he wiggled and forced his head against the hole, pushing with all his might. Again, the walls cracked, and the hole got bigger, maybe this little round ball would not be his tomb after all. The fluid within the prison was dribbling out of the hole and it made it easier to move within the sphere, he had more freedom, so he pushed and straightened his body. Pushing outwards with his arms, legs, head, and tail. CRACK...

The hole was bigger now and the air that filled the prison tasted sweet on his long tongue. He pushed harder with all his strength against the opening, managing to get one of his clawed hands up into the opening, he pushed at the fractured shell. He so desperately wanted to be free of his detention, but his strength was failing, his head hurt, and his limbs were tired and weary from all his efforts. His eyelids got heavy, and he ran out of desire to be free, his exhaustion was too great, and he could do nothing more, than wait in his half-broken jail.

Then it happened, a larger clawed reptilian hand swooped down on the shell, peeling little sections of the casing away, between its large fingernails. The last few bits of the eggshell come away and the hatching is free. His little body slumps into the hands of his mother, whose eyes have become wide with shock, love, and wonder...

* * *

T'pai looked down at the male hatchling in her hands. Her son, but he was so small, and his skin was white and silvery and looked nothing like his brown scaled mother or father. Yet the gathered Chemachies in the birthing cave, gathered round and stared in awe. There comments echoed round the cavern, bouncing off the walls, as fast as they reverberated around T'pai's head.

"He's beautiful..." A brown-scaled mother said.

"Look at those scales, so white and pure," said another.

"How... I thought we only had red skins, blue skins, and brown skins... He's unnatural," muttered the blue-skinned security officer who had come forward as the crowd had gathered.

"It's a sign... He should be the new Sovereign... A brighter light at the head of our colony...," uttered an old wizened brown skinned Chemachie.

"Don't you be saying such things brown...," said the blue guard. "That's treason..."

"I don't care..." retorted the old lizardman. "I'm fed up with being at the bottom of this society, being the underappreciated worker who does everything and gets little..."