When the Genome War ended, the leaders of Nova Terra and the other human-populated planets took a long, hard look at how the war was conducted. In order to forge a lasting peace, new laws regulating genetic engineering and the new AGE technologies were passed. The beneficial, curative manipulations which were born from the war were made available to the population at large, while the other less savory manipulations were banned and the scientific discoveries either archived under tight controls or destroyed.
The darker side of the peace process dealt with the living implementations of the latter group of mutations. Each weaponized mutation created during the conflict was categorized and a judgment made as to containment. For the mild or benign cases, like Pheromone Signature, the mutation was allowed to propagate. In the extreme violent cases, like Berserker Rage, an immediate, terminal solution was agreed upon. Those cases could neither be contained nor controlled to anyone’s satisfaction. And so, in those cases, all in utero manipulations were aborted and all mature and/or AGE-enabled subjects terminated, immediately, without any additional due process.
After all, when a human being is weaponized, where does the weapon end and the human begin? What rights does a weapon have? These were questions which should have been raised and answered before the opening shots of a war and were certainly beyond the operating parameters of a peace process.
When the discussion regarding Chameleon Skin began, the committee initially deemed it too harmful to society to be allowed to propagate. However, three points were presented during the deliberations that kept the Gray Women from outright extermination. The first was that this particular mutation was not inheritable. The Gray Women were its first and last bearers. The second point was that, while the visual effects can be unsettling to look at, it took hard training and discipline to effect the virtual invisibility the assassins relied on. With the training programs disbanded in the aftermath of the war, it was felt that the mutation would no longer pose the threat it had been. The final point involved the sheer numbers of women who had been given these manipulations. By the end of the war, approximately 12,000 women had received Chameleon Skin. Terminating that many women with the stroke of a pen was deemed too harsh a measure, especially considering the overall toll of the war in addition to all of the other sanctioned terminations which were taking place. With these points in mind, rehabilitation and reintegration into society were favored over termination.
In hindsight, it was a regrettable decision.
The first sign of trouble came approximately two years after the peace process had been completed. In New Berne, a baby girl, the child of a Gray Woman, was born with Chameleon Skin. Two months later in White Cap, another baby girl was born with it. Over the following eighteen months, some 200 baby girls were born to Gray Women and all had the mutation. An investigation into the scientific studies associated with the report to the peace commission regarding the inheritability of this mutation discovered that the development notes in the computer archives and those referenced during the peace process did not match the originals. There had been a data transcription error, whether accidental or deliberate was never determined.
The real trouble began soon after. A Gray Woman was arrested on New Home for involvement in a murder-for-hire scheme. Subsequent investigations revealed that the Gray Women had formed an assassins guild in the aftermath of the war as a means for financial independence. A closer look at the rehabilitation and reintegration programs for them revealed a complete failure based on fear and prejudice by the society at large. Shunned by the general population and faced with no employment or other social prospects, the Gray Women had turned to each other and fell back on what they knew best. They had become hired guns and, worse yet, had re-established the training programs. Even without governmental sponsorship, the Gray Women were still in business.
The reaction was swift and forceful. Veterans with Pheromone Signature were recalled to service and organized into a paramilitary force with special jurisdiction and executive powers. The directive was clear: a reversal of the tribunal’s decision toward rehabilitation. The Hunt was on. The result was a five year pogrom involving inner city street fights, kidnappings, assassinations and bounty hunts on four different human-populated planets. In the end, over 10,000 of the Gray Women and their female offspring had been hunted down and killed; capture was never a consideration. While the numbers told an obvious story of a problem unresolved, five years was a long time to keep a carte-blanche paramilitary force in the field. With the remaining Gray Women driven off-world, underground or scattered throughout the known galaxy, the Hunt was over. Officially, anyway.
For some, it would never be over.