The Melian people owned the planet, but humans had hidden a hermetically sealed dome in the uninhabited hills of the most populous continent. Its round brown shape blended perfectly into the background vegetation of brownish-green and purple.

Inside the sterile white corridors, the ever-present howling of the wind was silent. The chemical reek of disinfectant was pervasive in the tightly sealed space. The gleaming, pristine walls, white rubber floors, and ceiling-to-floor arrays of scientific apparatus defined the life of the sole occupant of this research facility. Doomed by her abilities, young Lady Kirbyson was immured until she completed the task set before her by her professors.

The fourteen-year-old genetic research prodigy sat hunched over her electron microscope. She flipped a switch. The overhead screen displaying the genetic material she was studying displayed swarms of multicolored double helix strands that were unzipping themselves. She smiled a tiny smile of triumph.

Carefully taking a white rat, she passed it through the mini airlock and exposed it to the viral material enclosed behind the partition. Within minutes, the rat started sneezing. In an hour, it was dead.

“Thats the first half,” she muttered to herself. “And I have a window of an hour.”

She disposed of it in a hermetically sealed biohazard container. Sent to the trash heap for removal from the planet, she expected it to be hurled into the sun, thereby preventing any chance of infection.

The young girl labored on and short weeks later had a second compound. Displaying this on a split screen, she watched the left DNA unzipping itself, and on the right, it was zipping up again.

Again, she exposed a white rat to the first compound. She introduced a small change on a viral vector. Quickly, using waldos, she injected the rodent with the second compound. Three days later, the live rat had turned chocolate brown, without a single white hair in memory of its former self.

Far away, the ever-watching university aristocrats were impressed. Secure in her victory, the young girl slept on a cot in the corner of the lab, as agents of the university snuck into the compound, and rummaged through the trash. They stole the dead, infected rat sealed in its protective container. Removing it, they dropped the hazardous rat in the middle of the largest city on the continent. The slender, fierce, bird-like people who inhabited that continent started sneezing within hours. Within days, the infection spread planet-wide. In a week, all animal life on that world was gone, leaving only tall trees and purple grass waving in the breeze.

The proctors hauled the girl from her sealed research habitat and showed her the desolation. A grieving silence descended on her. Council sentenced her to another project. These strange, furry little people lived in tall trees. They were barely sentient, not even noticing the odd metal mushroom that bloomed on their forest floor overnight. Inside the identical lab on this new planet, young Radhya Kirbyson worked in lonely isolation, mapping the genome of the planetary population. When she could alter the genes at will, the proctors again retrieved her from the science station and showed her a dead world. She spoke not a word.

On the third world, the Chandran home, Radhya refused to work without the presence of her longtime bodyguard, Geo. As her excuse, she used the fact that the Chandrans of the mountains and plains were vicious and warlike, eating their own children with no compunction. The university balked at first, but agreed, for they had no one else to do the work they wanted. These were the last nonhuman species in explored space. She did not plan on being fooled again. Radhya and Geo endured their imprisonment without ever seeing the surface of the world. Pre-programmed remote mechanicals brought her samples. It was the same sterile, bleak white world for Radhya, the same place and routine that she had lived with for the last three years. Not alone this time and with her experience, the work went faster. At the usual conclusion, she was ready. She retrieved certain records and materials, sealing them securely in a pack. The professors never came to bring her out. They firebombed it.

The brown metal and plastic collapsed in seconds. A plume of fire lofted three hundred meters into the sky. She survived the initial blast, but the reek of chemicals and solvents choked and blinded her. The glass partition exploded, and a section of the lab wall pinned her to the melting rubber flooring. The pack of materials blew from her outstretched hand. The hot breath of the flames seared the soles of her feet. Geo crashed through the burning rubble. Using his back, he lifted the beam that was crushing Radhya. She squirmed free. Geo grabbed her arm, pulling her towards the open air. She slipped free, retrieving the pack. They dashed for cooler air.

Panting and gasping, they reached the shores of an ocean. The turquoise waves lapped in quiet cadence against the pebbly golden beach. With the onshore wind blowing the chemical stink away, sparing them from choking on the fumes, Geo fell gasping to one knee. He hadn’t been a young man in a very long time. Toppling to the sand, Radhya gazed at the peaceful sea. It was a shocking contrast to the blazing inferno two hundred meters behind them.

“Geo,” she stated firmly, “You must get away with this.” She handed him the singed pack.

“Milady,” he whispered, “I cant leave you. They will kill you.”

“You must. If you don’t get away and carry out our plan, they’ll kill me for sure or maybe even worse!”

“Milady?”

“Enough! Geo, if you love me or care for me, leave now, and as fast as you can!”

Taking a last look at her, he ran swiftly down the sand. Radhya listened to the hollow beat of his footsteps fading into the distance. Tossing pebbles into the water, she listened, waiting, every splash a time mark. Her ears caught a faint, mechanical whisper on the breeze. The electric whine of a hover intensified, growing to an annoying din. Gradually it drowned out the roar of the flames behind her.

Golden sunlight glinted from the silver oval approaching from the opposite direction from which Geo had fled. Radhya smiled her tiny smile, rose and dusted the particles from her hands. The hover swirled to a stop in a cloud of beach sand. It settled to its skirt, the whine of the generators falling in pitch and power.

As the door opened, seven white clad proctors leapt down. Pointing tazers at her, they advanced over the sand. Reaching her, they wrenched her arms behind her back and frog-marched her to the hover. Radhya made no protest.

A week later, in front of the council, she was not so compliant. Standing belligerently before the judges, she drew a breath to speak. The dark wooden walls and high dark rail around the tribunal seemed to suck the oxygen from the windowless room.

“SILENCE!” Boomed the center man.

He was an evil looking oriental, with tiny slanted rat eyes. His narrow face was pinched and pocked, his lips nonexistent. Yet he had a politicians smile. His gaze focused behind where she was standing, on a box, in chains. The small gallery was jammed with people, eager to listen to this sensational case, to see Lady Death. The judge was speaking to the crowd.

“Your crimes have become such as we can no longer pardon them. Your age no longer excuses you from culpability. As is our custom, any freedman or aristocrat caught committing crime is punishable by removal of status, to the point of sentencing you to slavery. I would definitely think that destroying all animal life on three planets should merit the later sentence. However, because you are an aristocrat, or used to be one, should I say, you are entitled to defend yourself, for the record. You may begin.”

The judge once again assessed the reaction of the audience. Lifting her oval chin, Radhya looked the middle judge straight in the eye.

“My Lord Judges, if I had indeed destroyed the sentient life of three worlds, I would judge myself worthy of death, not just slavery. However, I can prove beyond any doubt, that certain university aristocrats, who as of this moment I refuse to name, sent men to steal my research. They then used my work to commit these heinous crimes. No one can be held accountable for a use to which his, or her, stolen work is put.”

“Oh, poppycock!” Snorted the left-hand judge, a withered desiccated man of considerable years. “Pass sentence and get this farce of a trial over. Some of us have important things to do.”

“Excuse me, Judge,” Radhya held forth a metal disk. “Here is my proof. If you think to ignore it; I would like you to know that over one hundred copies were sent to high-status aristocrats, including the King and all his plutocracy. Now, you can ignore this, sentence me to slavery, and the king and many others can start inquiries you may not care for, or you can dismiss the charges and give me due compensation for the indignities I have been forced to suffer. Oh, and I want my degree from this esteemed establishment.”

The gallery behind her moaned and shifted at her comments. The corpulent right hand judge sat bolt upright, suddenly paying attention to the proceedings. After a whispered consultation between judges, a small boy with blond curls shyly approached her and took the disk from her hand. Bringing it to the judges, he then scampered away. The tribunal kept glancing at Radhya as the message played for their eyes alone. The gallery was absolutely still and silent. The odd person stretched his neck in an attempt to see what was on the personal screen that occupied the judges’ attention, but it was impossible.

“Very well,” the middle judge croaked, “What do you consider fair compensation?”

His complexion reddened as if he too found the air suddenly lacking in oxygen. The fat judge was gasping like a stranded fish, while the withered judge sunk further into himself, his eyes burning like coals into Radhya’s. “As I said, I want my degree, with honors. I have earned that. I also want sole possession of the three dead planets I was accused of killing. If my research destroyed them, it is only fitting that I am responsible for them.”

The middle judge opened and closed his mouth several times.

“Of course, this proves the charges are all false. But what of the other copies you have distributed so widely?” Radhya smiled broadly, “Your honors, I have but to give the word and an electronically activated biomaterial will eat, or should I say invalidate any information on them.”

“Very well. It is the judgment of this council that Lady Radhya Kirbyson is not guilty of any charges leveled against her. They are dismissed. And in due and fair compensation for any mental or physical suffering, and work stoppage resulting in lost income, and for all her help for the human race in this sector of the galaxy, Lady Kirbyson is granted sole custody of the Chandran planet, the Kartoos planet, and the Melian planet. She is free to rename any she chooses, and any income generated by these planets belongs solely to her.” The gavel banged fiercely on the wooden railing. Radhya resolved her determination for the fight ahead.