Nameless

Baby Steps

The xenophysician went back to her habit of babbling away about her daily life. He now knew how the dorms - actually the whole facility - looked like. She would describe it like she was describing a picture.

In fine detail.

Fascinated with the local flora, she knew which plants were non-toxic for human consumption and how to prepare them.

"I dare say most of them would be safe for you too", the way she volunteered that kind of information made him consider a bit more what where her interests.

Not that the Hunter would ask, no.

"Before I came here today, I went jogging around the facility woods. There is a large dead tree close to the trail. People are using it like a bench, but how come they don't worry about the native fauna?"

He would hear her intently. It was the only window he had to the outside.

She was so generous with describing things, that he could paint such clear pictures in his mind. And his trained mind just made it easy to put together the scenarios in his mind.

That skill came naturally to him - since everyone in his home planet actually needed it. Shared information about hunting grounds, about prey, were precious (and life saving when exploring hunting grounds for the first time).

He couldn't help but soak it all. Work them out, catalog and organize them in such a way that a Hunter would deem useful

They were close to a mountain range on a recently colonized planet. In the periphery of the oomans extended space domains.

Not a a rich colony though. Their main aim was mostly to extract natural resources - and no commodities offered by this planet were high on value, or didn't already have an established supply elsewhere.

"The sources close to the main colonies and established planets will need to run dry, before this place become actually desirable. That if we do not colonize a more interesting place with the same resources first", she explained. In short, investing in this planet was a gamble, that would pay off in four, maybe five generations.

For a short-lived species, it didn't make sense to put so much effort (or faith) in such a place. Unless you already had little to nothing on your name - or if you had so much capital that investing would be mean more than mere planning for the future.

Enters Seizei. Who were running borderline illegal experiments on paper, and not giving two shits about the ethics board, or UNA's sensitivities. Meaning: under the table, that project activities were illegal, breaking a high number of regulations.

(The mafia forefathers would be so proud).

It was not likely this place would be audited. Because Seizei actually gave extraordinary support to the economy of the colony.

Everyone would be willing to turn an blind-eye for some shady business. Because around 195,00,000 people inhabited that insipid rock, and it would be a humanitarian crisis if the planet economy crumbled.

(Imagine the cost of reallocating, given assistance and settling a population of this size. Now add "remote location" to the mix. Just the cost of cryosleep would be astounding, which was a better option than finding vessels that would accommodate active humans for months over months of travel).

And the company was not only investing in the economy - they were low-key buying the rights to use the grounds for what they called high risk research (nothing related to aliens. On paper).

In truth Seizei Labs official business in the planet was local biology research (q future benefit to the colony) and engineering - their first space-tech lab and workshop was well publicized, which worked perfectly as a smoke screen.