Over the course of the next few days in jump space, Munto learned fifteen different games from Rix and his scroll.

They varied from strategic to purely chance based, from versus to independent to cooperative.

Rix said that he’d downloaded as much in the way of games as he could get when he’d volunteered for this colony mission.

“Not much chance to get back to the app store,” he’d said.

Munto managed to set up a few automated alerts as tests for themself and then tested going to sleep with them set.

It had been… enlightening, but Munto couldn’t place a logical reason as to why it had been that way.

Munto had taken some time to try and explain it to the Terran, but Rix had no answers. Merely listened and provided some prompting and context for Terran equivalents.

It still helped.

Munto also took the time to bring up basic runes with Rix. Rix had been resistant, but given that a majority of species used all basic runes to a certain degree and more advanced runes being more dependent on the species involved, he set about learning.

To assist, Munto had worked with the mobile printer to produce a basic light powered screen that was capable of displaying runes and communicating with the scroll. Building a basic GUI to allow the Terran to tap the relevant rune with an associated label hadn’t been difficult, but it was certainly much slower than Munto was used to operating, since they had to think about the Terran’s organic needs, needing to size the runes and labels without taking up the whole screen.

In the end, Rix could demonstrate knowing the basics, but tended to refer to the scroll significantly, demonstrating more recall of given runes compared with actual knowing of the runes intent reflexively. Munto understood that this was part of the organic learning process, but it was… frustrating that the Terran couldn’t…. use something other than that scroll.

Munto even asked why Rix didn’t possess any cybernetics or implants of his own.

Rix had replied that almost nobody who wasn’t a Flix had either, unless they were in certain professions. Plus, for TSC pilots of any class, anything other than a medical implant was strictly disallowed. TSC didn’t want pilots becoming reliant on technology over their own skills and instincts, leading to a much longer, more intensive training program than in other regions.

Munto asked if the TCC had implants. Rix indicated that while the plutes had considered it, it was too expensive to justify when a worker was lost, since most implants had to be produced unique to the person in question.

Between the two of them, they also set about devouring every bit of written information about the galaxy at their respective times.

Rix’s ‘Rab-Hound Veterinary Handbook’ ended up revealing the complete feeding, care, life cycle and more for Reggie, who was still in stasis at this point.

Munto was surprised to learn that the Rab-Hound was genomic hybrid created to combine a basset hound and a wallaby – both of which were heavily defined as part of the handbook. While heavily docile with Terrans, they were highly proficient at chasing prey towards Terrans for capture. This had made them especially useful in specimen collection on xeno worlds.

The handbook noted that because of their genomic modifications, this was not a fully comprehensive guide and while the Rab-Hounds were heavily resistant to various oils, acids/bases, and even outright chemical poisons, they were not impervious and so should be monitored closely following any specimen collection, particularly in less studied territories.

Munto ran a comparison of the Rab-Hounds from the guide with what they recalled of galactic society and as had been demonstrated by the Terran.

Comparatively speaking, Reggie (and those like him if they still existed) were on par with Terrans, despite their smaller mass, with chemical resistance. Reggie wasn’t a long distance pursuit predator like the Terran, something that Rix had mentioned in comparison, but Rab-Hounds hadn’t been created to be. They were intended to help in the colonization of new worlds.

Rab-Hounds matched the vast majority of galactic society in terms of size, but otherwise outperformed in a majority of metrics. Comparatively though, they did not possess the necessary degree of neural matter to support more complex thought processes. Munto felt that this type of ‘uplift’ was perhaps cruel and expressed this concern with Rix.

Rix’s face had gotten very dark and had flashed the much more advanced rune for ‘Volcanic Anger’. He had then indicated that he cared for Reggie as much as he might a child and that was anything but cruel.

Munto had let the subject drop and returned to reading. Rix had similarly let it drop after several hours.

Munto did recall that the TSC had had significant legal constraints with uplifts, particularly at the genomic level, so perhaps it made sense that Rix would be touchy about such statements.

Other topics of discussion were explored naturally, with Rix spending a good chunk of time recounting various stories from his experiences and childhood, Munto gleaning all of the likely factual data from these stories as well as assessing behavioral information on Terrans.

Until it was time to emerge…

__

Blyyn enjoyed this quiet posting. It was little more than an outer system station designed to be able to respond to any reasonable local void emergencies.

Being a Quinn, this was more than enough excitement for Blyyn. After all, watching the various debris of the various mining operations soar past, ships passing by, various other Quinn, the strange kinds, doing who knows what with the various mining operations and even those who had a mis-calibrated FTL and landed in Blyyn’s little territory of overwatch.

Blyyn didn’t have any real authority per say. In theory, they did, but that was only in the case of an emergency.

It still felt odd to Blyyn being this far from their homeworld, but this was a successful and above all quiet system relative to all the others in Quinn space.

If nothing else, it was good to be away from all those elders. Elders who insisted on holding massive debates on whom should be mated with whom, whose genomic structures bore the responsibility of carrying on certain traiditions, and even what professions one should take. It was as if the Quinn journey into the void had had no impact on the Quinn, as if it were of no more interest than the latest evening consumption.

‘No, that wasn’t true,’ thought Blyyn. ‘The latest evening consumption was of far more interest, especially given all the gossip which had undoubtedly been shared.’

The system beyond Blyyn’s little corner of it wasn’t anything of particular note that Blyyn was aware of, but they knew all of the basic statistics by heart all the same.

The star was a K2-type Red Supergiant by the name of Nyvit and had been charted in the skies of the Quinn homeworld for over 15 thousand years (at least in any sort of reliable stellar maps).

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

There were only 5 planets, but there were several major debris fields which had likely been planets or at least planetoids at one point or another. At least one debris field was believed to have triggered two others, the first of which was likely caused by random rogue space debris.

Two of the remainders were tolerable to Quinn, at least with the right equipment. Being high gravity worlds and having equivalently high pressure atmospheres, Quinn often required full support suits in order to be on the surfaces. Not that Quinn would want to be on such worlds without such full coverage suits.

The first was a hot desert of a world, giving rise to thermals which had inspiration to Quinn writers, who dreamed of finding worlds where Quinn could fly effortlessly. Alas, the high gravity had given lie to this and so while the counterweight station of the space elevator was always filled with technologists and dreamers, many left the system far more disillusioned than when they had entered.

The second was in fact a garden world, but one that had little in the way of usable land (and associated perches) and seemed overly plentiful in water based creatures who preyed on one another readily. So while Quinn could in theory float on the water, firstly, one would never do so without being in a full support suit, lest their feathers be flattened under the extreme gravity; secondly, they would almost certainly be eaten in a matter of minutes.

A small scientific station sat in orbit of the second tolerable world, content to provide observations of the species who rose and fell on the planet below it.

Two of the other planets were gas giants and harbored massive refineries and shipping stations in orbits. This was where the bulk of the traffic was and when Blyyn had first arrived in the system, they had arrived there and almost immediately felt themselves start to molt at the thought of having to care for the traffic demands of these stations.

No, that duty had been given to others, young Quinn who wanted that kind of excitement.

Blyyn had arrived at their station via special transport and met the outgoing Quinn, by the name of Rytn.

Rytn was returning to the homeworld for a bonding, their elders having insisted on it. Blyyn’s elders had no say on Blyyn’s life. At least not anymore.

Blyyn had been effectively cast out for their choice in profession, refusing to take up one of the traditional professions of their elders’. It had bothered Blyyn initially, but seemed to be so far away that Blyyn often forgot about such concerns.

The normal posting for a Quinn in this station was 4 months. Blyyn had managed a comfortable 18 months without so much as an errant pin feather.

Quinn leadership (elders themselves, but not Blyyn’s elders) had been understandably concerned that Blyyn not feel forgotten, nor exiled, and so had offered to take them into one of their houses, having demonstrated an adequate loyalty to duty and being remarkably adept at their profession.

Blyyn had politely refused, opting instead to take the occasional trip to the inner portion of the system, where more Quinn were, as a kind of reminder as to what they had left behind.

Even among the Quinn whose stations similarly segmented off the edge of the system in the event of emergencies, Blyyn was an oddity. An ‘old-timer’ as one had put it before leaving after an 8th month stint, the end of which was being forced upon them as a concern for their behavior.

No, Blyyn was quite happy to be left alone on the rim of the system along with the final planet, a frozen world that cracked and fractured constantly with various tidal forces brought by the four moons that encircled it.

This wasn’t to say that Blyyn did not want for company, but rather that very often, they were all the company they truly needed. Each bimestrial visit inward saw evidence of that. They would often purchase the latest in self-entertainment, even selecting new hobbies with which to occupy the time.

The latest fad within Quinn culture was to decorate one’s feathers with various beads. There was a trick to doing this and Blyyn was still working it out, but had decided to partake of it all the same. It was an interesting fad at least, compared with the fad of painting one’s beak with various, entirely unreal colorations.

Blyyn had criticized in the privacy of their own station at seeing it initially hit the market, finding it ridiculous and hardly worth the effort. But it had stuck around for long enough that Blyyn had decided to try it.

The first few attempts had been disasters which had made Blyyn want to tear out the feathers in question, but they had molted out soon enough.

In time, Blyyn had started getting better. Having no skies in which to fly, their wings had to be exercised in different ways and so aerodynamics did not dictate which feathers they used to practice.

Blyyn had also taken to reading about other species since taking over this posting. Galactic society was big, but at the same time, largely insular. Species tended to stick to their own.

It wasn’t that there weren’t stations with other species and it wasn’t even that various species didn’t turn up within this system, typically at the shipping docks.

It was more simply that species tended to stick to themselves, with the odd xeno-phile passing through, but rarely staying for more than even a year or two, themselves being driven onward to visit other species or to return to their own for various reasons, whether biochemical, medical, politics, or relations.

Although to Blyyn, the difference between relations and politics had always been blurred in past. It still chased her, unwilling to let them live their life away from that, but it was a day to day part of Quinn life.

It seemed strange to them that in the almost 400 years since the Quinn had joined the galactic community and taken over custodianship of 10 systems, Quinn culture had changed very little.

There had been some new professions added to the traditions, but they were exception not the rule. Only the more adventurous houses permitted such explorations. ‘Proper’ Quinns of ‘proper’ houses under the stewardship of wise elders took up the traditional professions, changing only when they must. It had taken the Quinn years to adjust to the influx of technologies brought by joining the galactic community to accept that some of the professions had to radically change themselves in the face of certain technologies.

Medicine had changed with the arrival of medical scanners, something many Quinn medical professionals had feared would make their profession vanish.

Those Quinn who took risks and gambled in taking on new technologies had seen their house wealth expand a thousand fold, bringing new entertainments and fads to every community.

It annoyed Blyyn how… stuck their house had been in looking at much of the new technologies as fads and not seeking to elevate themselves as they should have sought to. But that was the ‘wisdom of the elders’ and they had been naught but a ‘youngling’, despite being almost 37 at that point.

But Blyyn was here now.

The station was a Quinn adapted one, taken from designs passed to the Quinn from the galactic community. This meant that while it was adequately comfortable for Blyyn and other Quinn, it still bore the hallmarks of having been built for another species (or perhaps by another one).

Blyyn had never been too certain as to whether the station had been built by their people or if another species had specialized in that.

There was a constructor near the shipping station and the refining station, but it would have taken almost a year of constant output from the refining station to build a single shipping station and while it was possible to upgrade the refining station, the Quinn who ran it were slow to make those changes, preferring instead to ensure adequate resources for when emergencies did arise or to capitalize on a need for ready refined products in a nearby system.

Blyyn could see the logic in this, but thought it would be wiser for the station to focus on expansion at the same time, setting aside enough of the output to expand and improve.

Blyyn knew it was likely more complicated than that, there being all manner of trade agreements that likely needed fulfilled and similar, but those had never been of particular concern to Blyyn.

And today was just another average day for Blyyn.

They had awakened in their nest of dried rixba leaves, dined lightly upon standard hibernation-stored mealworms, and exercised their wings before moving to their station.

There was little traffic in this quadrant today. Odd miners who scanned for material rich space debris and then collected a load for a long haul in for processing. Typically house-less like Blyyn, but respectable in their own way.

Each of them knew of Blyyn. Knew of Blyyn’s responsibility to watch over this area of the void. Several had inquired about courting and perhaps a bonding, even if only temporary.

Blyyn had politely refused in each case. Some of the Quinn had taken it less well than others, but none had committed to anything formal over the refusal. In theory at least, nothing could be done formally from one house-less to another, but that also meant that the protection of the elders was that much less.

This too had bothered Blyyn initially, but given the peaceful nature of most Quinn, they did not feel it worth being worth molting over.

And it should have been a quiet day too.

Except for the flash.

There was no mistaking an FTL transition, but this was as bright as though Blyyn were anchored just off of the star, not in the outer system.

What happened next was almost disturbing. Every sensor aboard the station screamed, hitting minimum and maximum limits in matters of seconds. Every computing station flickered, and even the superstructure of the station seemed to shudder, despite no obvious connection between the disturbingly bright light and station.

Had Blyyn not been at their station, they’d have had no idea what was happening. Even standing at their station, they had no idea what manner of craft it might be.

They were only able to gauge by eye as to just how far away the flash was, the screens and sensors being utterly overwhelmed by… whatever it was.

And then… it was over.

The flash was gone and the systems all read as normal.

And in the space where the flash had been was a large seed shaped ship that was over half the size of Blyyn’s station.