It was official.

Rix had to be a Terran. Or some kind of inexhaustible xeno that she'd never heard of before. Which was probably the same thing.

Blyyn was exhausted just trying to keep up with the figure who kept coming back for more gear, either to be loaded into the Esperanto, attached to the hull, or connected to the station.

She’d fallen asleep while pushing the cart to the docking bay twice. Her muscles were sore to the point that she almost didn’t want to move. Even muscles that she didn’t know were there were sore.

And even though the Terran must have been tired, he certainly didn’t show it.

He just kept clomping along in that almost annoying steadiness.

At least twice she wondered if this was some kind of TACIT joke that she wasn’t smart enough to comprehend. She still wasn’t certain that it wasn’t.

She’d never heard of the TACITs being anything but almost absurdly formal, but Munto had even appeared to relax from being formal to the point that she knew she was talking with an artificial lifeform.

She’d seen the one message come in and wondered what it meant.

The coordinates had to mean something, but they weren’t in galactic standard so they had to be something else. Something TACIT maybe? Or something Terran?

Maybe whatever FTL system they’d used to cross from.

She thought about the Terran and all the species she’d ever read about, even putting aside some of the more outlandish fantasy ones from the stranger stories.

There were always some species in those stranger stories that just seemed impossible. Strong, fast, predatory in some, gentle giants in others; horribly large to the most adorable small; absurdly smart to barely able to do more than act on instinct.

The Terran seemed to be almost nightmarishly constructed – strong, fast, almost incapable of tiring (at least in a Quinn context), large, predatory eyes and build, and smart enough to manipulate a voidship without anyone else onboard or astounding amounts of computing capacity onboard, at least when a TACIT wasn’t hooked in.

None of the species in her stories were ever constructed this way. There were a few that were close, but they were very often dumb or supernatural in some sense, like talons made of compressed carbon or transforming from one species to another by the effects of undiscovered sources of radiation.

And even with the medical field still operating, Rix didn’t bother with taking off his suit. At least unless he did so while she was asleep.

Each time she’d woke up back in her nest, making her wonder for just a moment if it was a fantastical dream before her aching muscles told her that it was a reality.

She was still considering Munto’s offer though.

She’d told the TACIT that she didn’t want to leave, that she had her duty, but she knew that to be a lie. A good, very convenient lie, but a lie all the same.

And so the TACIT and the Terran had exhausted themselves equipping the station with enough automated fabrication capability, she could easily turn the station into a ship itself and sail off to see the galaxy.

She could even dine on the finest cooked meals as though she had just visited the Highest Quinn House and dined with naught but the highest elder, prepared by their most honored chef.

She felt even a bit guilty having ordered a few samples in place of her normal mealworms. It wasn’t that they weren’t still delicious, but to have fresh bloodfish, warmed to body temperature, sprinkled with salts and vegetables was a treat that she wasn’t about to deny herself.

Being fair, the fabricated food wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. It was more adventure in a single mouthful than she’d experienced in months, even with her trips to the inner system.

She’d seen the bandwidth of the station’s GALNET link all but evaporate. The TACIT Munto seemed to be downloading an almost ridiculous amount of data through the link and sending out inquiries for more data all the time.

She had no idea how Munto could afford the premium fabrication templates, but she wasn’t about to question it.

Using her own data sources, she pulled up the old history of the system.

The original arrivals of Quinn had found the system mostly ill-suited for living, much to their chagrin, but had rejoiced at finding such rich debris fields to devour.

They hadn’t be equipped for the scale of orbital refining that they decided on, but they had made do, expanding rapidly and spreading into various functions: collection/mining, refining, construction, ship building, and shipping.

It had taken decades, but the system was working. The system would be exhausted one day, but the current estimates were that it would provide a reliable source of ores and gases for at least another thousand years.

At that point, they would likely be able to turn to the vast fields of ‘scrap’ and use advanced version of the ‘mass scoops’ that now adorned her station and produce even more.

She wondered for a moment where all the materials were going. Were they being used to build for her people? Were they elevating some new species that had been naught but a footnote in one of the many new stories from across the galactic realm? Was there some conflict going on between a few disparate species, at least one of whom was willing to pay for the resources?

She wasn’t certain about any of it. Not that she normally minded, but it seemed strange to consider where all the vast resources might be going.

Ships came and went. Building modest sized cargo vessels, vast though they might seem, required a massive amount of materials to be properly refined and purified to be acceptable.

The system was still little more than an outpost of the Quinn, self-sustaining in terms of major resources, but still a heavy importer of the finer parts of Quinn life.

Turning back to the histories, the early miners had run into massive energy discharges when approaching the debris fields. Some of the vessels had even drifted too far inward to be recovered at the time, leading to avoidable deaths, had they been even remotely able to extract themselves far enough to be pulled away.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The edges of the fields had been enough to start and as the edges blurred with the slow expansion by various void forces, the energies had dissipated, sufficient that it could still be detected, but was only harmful to vessels who shouldn’t be in a debris field anyway.

The miners had told stories of course. Of dark mysteries and strange debris that had eluded them in the fields, of glimpses of strange species hiding among the debris, having adapted to doing so after the cataclysm destroyed their worlds.

There was never any truth to such stories, but Blyyn couldn’t ignore it. A Terran, 900 years late, in search of a colony that never came to be, of a species that didn’t seem to exist except as a kind of footnote and even then only the barest of hints.

Yes, Blyyn had seen the search history being executed by Munto. The Terran didn’t seem to exist or had little more than a ‘Extinct’ note with it.

Was it possible that something with the Terran’s strange FTL system had caused all of that damage and this was the only evidence?

What was the energy field then? What caused them to be destroyed? Why had none others of their species come looking for them? Why had they not claimed this space as their own?

So many questions filled Blyyn.

She saw the airlock cycling light blink and saw Rix entering and all but sagging to the floor.

She gapped her beak in a small sign of relief.

Even the Terran could become tired it seemed. It was perhaps a bit strange that Rix had chosen her station to appear tired, but it was perhaps that he sought comfort in the completion of his duty. He was an individual doing the work of an entire house by himself.

She questioned what kind of culture fostered that type of being as she left the command center and walked, stiffly, to the docking bay.

It didn’t seem like the kind of culture which had strong familial bonds, tending towards those bonds of a duty well fulfilled.

She wasn’t certain if she admired that or not. Being a Quinn, she felt she should feel that much more of a kind of obligation to familial bonds, but being without a house, she wondered if that was still the right path for her. Her own achievements in a duty well fulfilled had resulted in several offers of a house joining. She hadn’t want that though. She’d wanted to keep to her duty.

And here she was, considering abandoning her duty to join a nightmare made flesh and an artificial the likes of which none of her people had ever dared create aboard a ship equipped with archaeotech that was somehow almost ridiculously advanced and hugely behind, headed for some wildly unknown location.

It was crazy. It was ludicrous.

And yes, she wanted to go.

She couldn’t deny it anymore.

She wanted to go, but… as she entered the docking bay filled with silvery light, she wondered if she even could.

The suit containing Rix was sprawled on the floor, the helmet beside it, revealing the Terran to be lying front down.

Apparently hearing her entry, Rix looked over at her.

He didn’t appear to have the device that he used to do translation and without wearing the helmet, it seemed unlikely that they would be capable of doing any more than one way communication, him talking to her.

He didn’t say anything, but continued looking in her direction. The gaze was steady. Not the furtive of many Quinn, not a stare of intensity like a predator, but a gaze that seemed to let her know that he was there and was observing her.

She couldn’t put a feather on what was different about it, but it seemed… comforting seemed the wrong word in her head, but it was the only one that came to mind.

She’d never considered herself to be a xenophile, nor a xenophobe. It wasn’t that she didn’t not seek them out, but she had never been interested in going out into the void to meet them either.

She’d been content with a simple life. She still was.

If the Terran and the TACIT left and she did nothing else for the next few years other than stay here and continue to do her duty, she would still be content.

But the fringe of her feathers still wanted to feel the rush of strange winds in them, to fly under strange stars, to become damp or dried on strange new worlds, filled with species not interested in a local gossip and the texture of the mealworms as much as knowing about what else was among the stars and the beings that resided there.

She walked over and settled into a seated position near the prone Rix. He appeared to close his eyes as she settled into position and returned his head to a resting position on the floor.

She didn’t imagine that it was comfortable, but supposed that perhaps much like her own exhaustion collapses, it hadn’t much mattered, even if only for a time.

She’d never had much in the way of dreams growing up. She’d always considered that she would be part of her house, perhaps as a medical professional or a preener of feathers. But she had become neither. And being houseless had changed her view of not only Quinn society, but of the galaxy at large.

And here she was, actually thinking about why she couldn’t go with the Terran.

She glanced at the medical field generator.

The Terran being lost out of time and not even remotely up on the latest in inoculations against the various galactic maladies was only half of it. Who knew what the Terran might be carrying to which she had no defenses.

Rix opened his eyes again and looked at her. She didn’t notice immediately, lost in thought, but did after a time.

He lifted his head enough to gesture to his mouth, careful to hide those… bones.

Blyyn could only guess, but decided that he must be hungry.

“Munto?” she vocalized into the heads-up display.

‘Yes?’ came the text only prompt.

“Is the fabricator capable of producing Terran foods?”

‘As I don’t know what Terrans used to eat, not exactly. If you’re asking if the fabricator can produce foods a Terran can and likely will eat, then yes. I’ve highlighted a few that I think he’ll eat.’

“That’s all. Thank you.”

She bobbed slightly, looking back at Rix and gestured to her own mouth before standing up.

Rix’s face gaped slightly, mimicking her own happiness gesture and returned to the floor.

She walked through the well traveled corridors to the autofabricator, finding the TACIT walking frame there, having run out of power again. She took a moment to hook it back into the nearest power supply and continued to the autofabricator, past the various stacks of parts.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know what any of it was, but in this moment, they didn’t seem important.

Blyyn brought up the menu and found the filter option that Munto must have added just for this.

The list was fairly short and none of the menu items sounded especially interesting to Blyyn. One even sounded downright dangerous to try and serve, if the translation was even close. Fiery winged meat with congealed lactose and protein filled by a technically edible mold.

She could only guess at what it was to the Terran, but given that it had toxin warnings for most species, she didn’t want to try serving it.

She settled on a cooked piece of meat surrounded by fresh greens. It wasn’t particularly interesting, especially since it wasn’t as fresh as she preferred when she did dine on meat and it was overly cooked, but if that’s what the Terran would eat, she wouldn’t deny it.

It took a few minutes to print.

She took the opportunity to look at the various parts and pieces in the hallway, trying to discern where the various pieces would be going and to what purpose.

One stack of blocks seemed entirely foreign. Like nothing she’d ever dealt with before.

Stepping over to the stack, she picked one up and tried to figure out what it was and why 26 had been printed.

‘Trinary computation devices,’ came the prompt in her HUD.

“Is that a new technology or an old one? I’ve never heard of that before,” she mumbled.

‘Old. It’s what the Esperanto is based on. It appears to have the benefit of being exceptionally robust, but having far less bandwidth than standard quantum pairing channels.’

“Why don’t you just upgrade the Esperanto?”

‘To do what I’d want to do would likely involve building a new ship or putting the ship into a repair dock.’

“Like?”

‘The fusion systems need overhauled to something more efficient for a start. This one operates at a mere 63.1%.’

“Compared to? I’m not up on my fusion systems.”

‘Standard TACIT fusion-fission systems operate at no less than 85% efficiency. Operations less than that call for heavy maintenance.’

“Anything else?”

‘Lots, but the meal you printed for Rix is finished. I took the liberty of adding a container of water.’

Blyyn looked over and confirmed that a container of water and a small plate of steaming meat on a pile of fresh greens was there.

She picked them up and paused.

“Does he eat with his hands or does he do something weird?” she asked, frozen from taking a half step away from the autofabricator.

‘He normally uses… tools. Apologies if that sounds odd, but your lexicon does not appear to have the equivalent word.’

“Do I need to print some out?”

‘No. He’ll be happy enough at cooked meat and water that he will likely use his hands in any case.’

Blyyn still wasn’t certain about this meal, but she did have to admit that the cooked meat did at least look somewhat appetizing, even if it didn’t smell it.