“Yes,” Kirk said. “ ‘Maltuvis’s Folly.’ The retaliation he provoked when he tried to invade your world proved critical to his undoing.”

“More specifically, it was our Warborn who proved critical to Arcturus’s defense against the Saurian invaders, as they have in other times of crisis over the past several thousand years.”

Kirk hesitated. “I admit my knowledge of the Warborn is limited. Some sort of… clone soldiers, weren’t they?”

Rakatheema’s already wrinkled brow shifted downward into a frown. “Not clones, Admiral. A common misconception.”

“My apologies.”

“The Warborn are… a legacy of our ancient beginnings. As you say, our ancestors migrated from the innermost planet. They reengineered their genes to breed and mature rapidly to facilitate the settlement of our new homeworld. I, for instance, enrolled in Starfleet at the age of eight standard years.

“However, our genome was also modified with the ability to accelerate our breeding even further in times of exceptional need, as a safeguard against colony collapse. Using certain pharmaceuticals and hormone boosters, we can induce the parthenogenetic breeding of large numbers of offspring that are born within weeks and mature within as little as sixteen months.

“At times over our history on Arcturus IV, once our population grew and fragmented into nation-states, we would use this capability to breed vast armies, developing rapid learning techniques to educate them in the ways of war. We also invented religious traditions to teach them warfare as their sacred duty, and to instill that same sense of duty in their mothers so that they would willingly bear the strain and disruption of such accelerated multiple childbirth—and so they would be philosophical about mothering a whole race to die in our wars.” He looked down, his tone abashed.

Kirk stared. “No wonder Maltuvis wanted your world.”

“Yes. He dreamed of turning our Warborn into his shock troops to sweep across the galaxy. But he did not understand us. Nor was he the first in our history to invade us with similar intentions. Once we grew sick of our wars millennia ago and united as a people, the Warborn became our defense. Our religion evolved along with our culture: The Warborn, and we, came to see it as their sacred duty to fight only in defense of Arcturus against that which threatens it, for no other cause was sufficient to justify such a sacrifice. We would never have submitted to being used by another in that way. Once Maltuvis had fallen, we retired the Warborn who had survived. Nor did we consider joining the Federation until your diplomats convinced us that you had no interest in exploiting the Warborn in your own defense.”

“We never would have asked for that,” Kirk said. “Even aside from the ethical quandary, our laws about genetic engineering are firm.”