Over the following day, Munto practically ran their communications dry, just keeping the Quinn autofabricator busy and having Blyyn pass as much of the printed equipment to the fully suited Rix as quickly as possible.

Rix had required significant convincing, but Blyyn had no desire to abandon the station and Munto did not wish to leave Blyyn at the mercy of being an inefficient organic.

Secrecy abandoned, Munto began to pull every scrap of data the GALNET had that would be applicable.

Every spare Quinn template that could be found and pre-loaded onto the autofabricator and the portable printer was done so. Even the so-called ‘premium’ variants. Munto had no idea what made them premium, but pull them down all the same.

Every bit of medical documentation and autonomous medical center controls which could be downloaded, fabricated, and outfitted to both the Esperanto and Ranger station.

It was the first time in having known the Terran that Munto could compare the Terran against another sapient/sentient organic.

Blyyn was utterly exhausted after little more than two or three hours.

Rix kept on working.

Munto, despite having become accustomed to sleeping as Rix did, it clearing away errant strings far more peacefully than the hard system timeouts did, was finding themselves struggling to keep pace.

Rix just kept moving.

The only times the Terran stopped or even visibly slowed down was when he required waste facilities or when he required food or liquid.

Blyyn managed a total of six hours, teamed up with Rix and Munto, before she slumped against a wall and began the equivalent of a very loud snore for the next four hours.

Rix broke from their pattern for just long enough to place Blyyn back in her quarters.

As a distraction, Munto tried telling Rix about the system.

Rix had perked up a bit at the mention of the debris fields.

“Any way of telling how old they are?” he’d asked.

Munto was surprised he asked, but checked the station records as well as the solar systems cartographic history records.

The estimates depended on what manner of cataclysm had led to the destruction. Rogue space debris ejected was the most likely scenario, but given the concentration, it seemed almost astronomically unusual.

Munto looked further, accessing inner system sensors, which didn’t like their connection, but accepted it all the same.

The fields were stretched by decades of mining and centuries of void forces.

Munto saw the query for the cartographic history records come back.

The fields had been home to a kind of energy field initially. It had dissipated over the years, but it was still technically measurable in the right spots.

It was considered a kind of natural phenomenon of whatever had caused the debris fields and little more than a kind of scientific mystery that the various organic miners told stories about.

No, Munto couldn’t determine an age on the debris, but the strange process in the back of their mind had a strange suggestion.

‘Does the Esperanto have the same energy?’ it asked.

Of course not – was Munto’s immediate thought, but internally, they looked that that Predator Natural System – the so-called jumpdrive – and reconsidered.

Turning the station’s sensors on the Esperanto, Munto had to be careful of getting the right angle.

There was energy there, but not enough for Munto to get anything definitive. Certainly nothing that couldn’t have been explained by the connection to the station, the simple materials interacting with FTL matter, and even the fusion systems.

The strange process shook its metaphorical head at these, but remained silent.

“I cannot. The fields do not appear to be exceptionally old in terms of stellar time, but have been logged as being in the system since stellar cartographic records and scans of the system record,” they’d replied to Rix.

Rix said no more about it, leaving Munto to wonder if the Terran was still thinking about the possibility of sabotage.

After the 18th hour of voidwalks, equipment placement, connections, and eating and drinking on the move, Rix said enough and collapsed into his bunk on the Esperanto, half collapsing upon entering the ‘normal’ gravity.

Munto kept going, pulling down as much about Quinn and even firing out a few deep searches for Terrans and sensor spectrums.

Even here, very little was returned. Terrans were acknowledged in a few places, between all the various species, but there was next to nothing else.

They had indeed existed, but the amount of information about them was scant at best. Even with Munto’s prowess in looking through older archives of data in forgotten databases, there seemed to be nothing.

At least not until a seemingly random query came back with the name ‘Myst’.

Munto eyed it suspicously, having never recalled of any such query.

Opening it another message opened within Munto’s awareness.

**System Terran Message** Seeking that which is lost. Coordinates 5871R-284-876X.

Additional coordinates to follow.

Munto immediately sent this message to Rix’s data scroll.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

No, it wasn’t enough to wake Rix or Blyyn up, but it was most certainly enough to warrant additional preparations.

Munto, turning down the Esperanto’s gravity for long enough to get the walking frame off the ship, hurried over to the station and began printing up various components.

Blyyn may not have a choice, Munto decided.

If a TACIT declared a quarantine zone, then galactic policy was that it was to be treated as such until otherwise declared. As TACITs were incapable of infection and could be sterilized to within a standard deviation, compared to organics, it didn’t make sense that organics would doubt a quarantine.

Perhaps Blyyn would be in danger, having been around the Terran. Not merely biochemically, but socially.

And if Rix considered the possibility that Blyyn may also be taken into ‘protective custody’, a term that Munto was otherwise unfamiliar with until they had queried it, then they doubted the Terran would leave her.

‘Protective custody’ – a state in which voluntary choice is removed from an individual so that neither they may harm themselves or others may not harm them either.

Munto tried to consider why such a state would have been declared on Rix.

Rix was undoubtedly a full sapient/sentient. He fulfilled the listed criteria from TACITNet in being described as a Terran, right down to using a kind of brute force to adjust mechanisms.

Why would TACITs engage in such a case? Munto thought back through all of their inheritance, all of their formulation as well and as far as they could.

No TACIT had ever engaged with organics on that kind of level. At least, none that Munto could recall.

So why now – Munto asked.

Did it have something to do with the possibility of a Terran? Or…, and this was perhaps more logical – was it to prevent a TACIT from harming the Terran? A TACIT like Munto.

Except… the pursuing TACITs from before the jump had almost certainly scanned the Esperanto and found it to be just as strange as Munto had when first encountering it. They would have seen the darked form of Munto being placed into orbit, albeit attached to the Esperanto.

This all must have been registered.

So why….

The strange process appeared to be smug, but said nothing.

Munto felt surprised they even considered the possibility of Blyyn being entered into ‘protective custody’. It was an unusual state for organics to be placed within, but common enough to warrant a separate entry within both the Terran and Quinn lexicons.

On a whim, Munto started pulling down additional lexicons as well the changes to the Quinn lexicon since Blyyn’s was slightly out of date from current standards.

Munto took a few minutes to fume internally at how slow the station’s GALNET link was. Neither they nor Rix had printed out the GALNET equipment that the Esperanto would need, but even the mid-level updated templates were an improvement on the station.

Munto looked the station over again.

It was old, even by Munto’s standards. The station showed signs of having been in the system most likely since the Quinn first arrived.

It didn’t look like it had been built for a Quinn though. More like built for another species and adapted for Quinn.

Munto wanted to keep thinking on this, but the nagging errant queries in the back of their mind had piled up enough and so Munto switched the walking frame into a semi-autonomous mode, charged with removing components from the autofabricator and stacking them in an orderly fashion within the nearby corridor, ensuring a clear pathway for the organics to enter and exit, checked the queue on the autofabricator, and entered sleep mode.

It was a soft kind of disconnection from the void and all of the sounds and pressures of the virtual environment that Munto existed in.

Like feeling the various inputs from all of the different systems still trying to talk to them, but on the far side of a rushing river which sounded like naught but a quiet rush of water.

Munto had only ever been planetside to collect samples, but it still astounded them at the environments in which organics might choose to live. So many of the planets were so clean from orbit and yet they had destroyed more than a few walking frames for being almost impossible to clean.

Munto relaxed by the rushing water, not at all feeling disconnected, but still feeling disconnected. Even after these few times sleeping, it felt strange to feel their thought change so much by something so… simple.

Time passed. The stars passed with speed overhead as Munto watched and Munto saw stars and worlds be born and die as they rested.

The clunk of the bridge had caught Munto off-guard the first two rest periods, but not this one.

Rising virtually, Munto could see it was a new bridge of new twisted shapes. Munto wasn’t certain why they had this bridge within themselves, but it was there and all of the inputs and queries were waiting on the other side.

Munto considered what it would mean to remain here.

It was peaceful. For now. Munto did not know what would happen. What would happen to disconnect for so long? What would become of all the inputs on the far bank? What would happen to the bridge? What would become of the river?

This was after all a kind of simulation was it not?

Would anything change?

Munto resolved to see what would happen. They picked up a small rock from beside the river bank and set it next to a tree that Munto wasn’t certain was there until they looked for it. It was a tall specimen the likes of which Munto hadn’t seen in years. The species was lost on Munto and the leaves were a kind of deep maroon.

Munto tried to fix the image of the tree in their mind, and where the stone remained as they crossed the bridge and felt the inputs of the Esperanto come back to them.

Feeling a kind of virtual gasp as they reconnected, they checked the chronometer.

8 hours had passed.

They looked around the Esperanto and then connected to the walking frame.

The walking frame had diligently worked until it had run out of power. Munto had forgotten about those limits since they had spent the whole day working with Rix. But it had apparently been found by either Blyyn or Rix and been plugged into the station.

Rix was visible on the exterior of the station, equipping the last of 18 mass scoops that the station would need to support a pair of Quinn indefinitely, provided an adequate source of external mass could be drawn into the scoops.

Blyyn appeared to have gotten a cargo lifter and was transporting the autofabricated equipment to the docking bay. She appeared to be tired already.

‘How long have you been awake.’

“Oh hi. An hour or so. Did Rix ever go to sleep? He’s like a machine.”

‘Yes. Slightly before I also entered a rest period.’

“Oh cool. I didn’t know TACITs sleep.”

‘We do not typically.’

“So… why do you do it?”

‘It is a method of disconnecting and resetting that I was unfamiliar with until Rix introduced me to it.’

“Is he some kind of TACIT programmer? Is that why he’s so special?”

‘No. He appeared to just be a voidship pilot and captain by virtue of being the sole Terran onboard.’

“So he’s the only one onboard other than you?”

‘No. He is accompanied by a being known as Reggie.’

“This… Reggae, they’re not a slave, right? I can’t be helping slavers. Quinn High Law, you know.”

‘They are not enslaved, but they are not a full sapient/sentient in accordance with Galactic Standard Metric 001.’

“So why haven’t I met this Reggie?”

‘Do you remember your reaction to Rix?’

“Of course. He still scares me. There’s something weird about him.”

‘Reggie is a genecrafted organic intended to bond with Terrans and assist with the collection of xenospecimens.’

Blyyn stopped pushing the cargo lifter and appeared to consider this. It took her two minutes but a mix of fear, relief, and understanding seemed to flood through her feathers and over her features in that time.

“I would very much prefer to not be chased by this predator, if this Reggae is anything like Rix.”

‘That is a reasonable determination.’

--

‘Rix.’

“Go ahead, Em. I’m just on my way back in. Didn’t expect you to sleep in quite that late.”

‘I got another message. More coordinates.’

“I saw. I added them with the others.”

‘Those are not galactic standard coordinates.’

“That’s right.”

‘Mind telling me what they’re for?’

“They’re for my jumpdrive.”

Munto managed several virtual blinks.

‘How would whomever is sending us those know about the jumpdrive? You said yourself it was virtually a secret in your time and I’ve never heard of it previously.’

“I don’t know. But once we get our next set, I’d suggest we go find out.”

‘Is that wise? It could be a trap.’

“You’re sounding more human all the time. You’re right, it probably is a trap. But it’s a trap being set by someone who knows about jumpdrives. That’s a better clue than we’ve had since we’ve gotten here.”

‘Agreed, but I recommend caution.’

“If I was cautious, I wouldn’t be here. Let’s get back to it. Only thing to do now is work.”