On the void strider, days turned into day-blocks, and Ryen-pack began to settle into a rhythm. For an hour every day, they would climb out of their nest and jostle their way through the dense clusters of other packs sharing the time-block to try and get their meat and water from the nearest life support block and use the toilet–a couple of times, Roztek had cheerfully said “It’s so edges and right because it returns to the meat tanks and turns back into food”, which even Ractun’s ears twitched upwards at, though she had dourly muttered something about that being nothing compared to the resource loss of war.
The rest of every time-block was spent meticulously scouring their part of the Nest Ring for anything that had broken down and cleaning any messes that had been made during their time-block–or, occasionally the previous one, if other packs had been lazy, or none at all, if they thought they could get away with that.
And when the obligatory hour was up, Ryen-pack quickly retreated back into their nest, where they could hold each other and be close and not have to deal with other packs. The rest of the time they spent holding each other and talking quietly or wiring up one of their civilian watches to the comm screen to watch a movie or making love. In the meantime, the oxygen levels would fall in the daytime and rise at night in an endless cycle until the simulation of Hope’s atmosphere gradually shifted from miserable to somewhat bearable.
More and more, they found themselves silently staring at the approaching planet on their screen as it grew from a dot to an ever more detailed disc. Ractun shivered, and it wasn’t entirely because the nest was cold. “Hope looks…really unoptimized,” she murmured, a little ways away from the rest of the pack.
Tauk pressed himself up against her, passionately running his hands over her scales. “We know that,” he said, looking apprehensively at the screen. “The gods think we will have to be connected to how many wars?” he went on.
“Too many,” muttered Ractun, turning away from Tauk. “Our best years will be deleted wastefully because we will be doing war in many cities in series. Is rotating many edges in the city-graph on Hope to connect to Ikun such that Ikun’s centrality in it is high, is actually an instance of something you think will take little time? All nodes of Ryen-pack will eventually be deleted on an alien planet!”
Kyada looked over with an oddly intense expression, her ears sinking. “Ractun. It equals our optimal strategy,” she said in a measured but firm tone. She straddled Ractun and cradled Ractun’s head in her hands, alternating between licks and little nibbles. “The city-graph we left was soon to be losing nodes and edges and becoming an instance of something dead. We will create hatchlings more safely on Hope than there.” At the mention of the word hatchlings, she wrapped a hand seductively around Ractun’s uniform’s zipper and began to unzip it.
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“Not now,” said Ractun icily.
Kyada paused. “Me making love with you is an instance of fairness because it equals the optimal strategy for Ryen-pack’s cohesion. That’s especially true if we see incohesion in Ryen-pack’s nodes,” she said gently.
“I’m not an instance of an incohesion source!” protested Ractun, “I create a command causing you to stop!”
“Okay, okay. Kezdtun’s ears! Ractun! I didn’t say that!” said Kyada, rolling off of her. In her absence, Tauk and Ractun had closed the space she left behind and were now rolling back and forth on the floor of the nest, playfully trying to bite each other’s snouts. Kyada sighed heavily, wondering if it would make Ryen-pack more cohesive if she joined them or lay next to Ractun, and ended up doing neither, awkwardly remaining in the middle instead.
“Also, Koranah dominating the Climate Control System when we were on the homeworld doesn’t imply that the city-graph is dead, yes,” said Ractun dourly from behind the notebook she had pulled out and begun to draw in, “It’s just an instance of politics.”
“It does for Ikun!” said Kyada indignantly.
Tauk and Roztek stopped their passionate roughhousing to gaze intently at Kyada. “You create resource-beautiful words,” said Tauk, laying a hand on Kyada’s chest and feeling her scales under her uniform. Kyada shot a glance at Ractun, decided that showing Tauk extra affection wouldn’t hurt Ryen-pack’s cohesion, and gently bit down on his ear. “Will Ikun move to the city-graph on Hope and retain high centrality there?” he asked hesitantly.
“Tauk, yes,” reassured Kyada, licking Tauk’s snout.
“When I was a hatchling the pack I was a node in moved 7400 kilometers across many city-graph edges to be in Ikun for a reason,” blurted out Roztek. “Ikun being connected to the city-graph on Hope will make the city-graph very resource-beautiful and system-beautiful. A pack aligning with Ikun is always equal to its optimal strategy!”
“Well, I don’t know that,” muttered Kyada softly.
“We’ll certainly be fine!” said Roztek cheerfully. He licked Tauk’s and Kyada’s snouts in turn.
They settled back into their quiet rhythm after that. Ractun began sketching a drawing of Ryen-pack in the nest while the other three started a new branch of some random forgettable TV show. Every time the story-threads coalesced, they flipped back to the telescopic image of Hope, anxiously checking it even though it had not visibly moved.
“I feel fear,” admitted Tauk presently, “Do we?”
“A little,” said Roztek.
“A lot,” said Ractun, “We’re all blundering into an unmapped foreign city-graph and creating an unknown number of wars. This may be dangerous! Nobody knows the topology of the city-graph after many iterations of this. The reason is that Project Hope equals City Center Nytektak’s vanity project. Forget them!”
Kyada’s golden eyes raked over the top of the nest, studying a loose thread very intensely. “Yes. We feel fear. Despite that, Ryen-pack will always be a system-beautiful, fully connected clique. I know we love us,” she said, pulling her packmates close.
