I doubt Eric knew about the that little feature of his tracker and now the colonists are rid of him.

As you can probably tell oftentimes I am not humanity's greatest fan

it seems. We'll see what happens to the other prisoners as the story progresses.

The slips are going to make things interesting as while not sentient they are very intelligent and empathy may make communication with them possible to some degree.

Like Xia said, I'd buy the guy who named the Seussfish a drink. I was laughing my ass off when that idea came to me :)

Xia does need a good rest but she wants to make sure that the colonists are cared for to some degree before she allows herself that luxury. She's just that kind of person, but she has a good team to support her.

I'm glad you're enjoying it and I'll try to keep doing what I'm doing to make it an entertaining read.

basically just emits a tracking signal and we'll see later whether the engineers can figure out a way to use it for another purpose or if it's even still working after the kill command was issued.

It's possible they were domesticated or that their inherent empathy allowed it to see that Xia was *safe* and that the people were being affectionate and meant it no hard. It's even possible that it's due to the way she tried to soothe it like the Saer bees, we'll have to wait and see ;)

*hugs*

Amethyst

is a good incentive and it's really bringing our castaways closer together.

When I was researching extinction level events I discovered that only some hardier insects and fish, small burrowing animals or subterranean species and perhaps a few other creatures built for survival would make it through. I thought, 'hey this is a bonus I won't have to create many indigenous species'. So I concentrated on two really tough insects, some fish, and a few other things. When I got to the other things the small burrowing animals gave me the urge to create something cute and cuddly, because you know I do love the cute and cuddly creatures.

Xia really is coming into her own as a leader for these people and little things like what she did with Kyle make a huge difference to these people who really need a leader and a little hope right now.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

I did a lot of research on various subjects and I did envision the nano-contruction kits as a limited sort of molecular assembler, but with various pre-programmed options for types of buildings useful to a colony to make them easier to use in a situation such as the one on Unity. They would have had some for specifically for general use buildings, some for factories or mineral extraction, and some for a variety of other purposes. They could of course change these or add other types of buildings or things like a factory for other molecular assemblers, but they would have to have someone familiar with nano-programming and the actual physical designs of buildings and/or devices to add these extra options or reprogram them, and none of her crew really had that expertise. Normally they probably would have had a Saer'khi with those type of skills with them, but their circumstances weren't normal.

There is also the matter of materials. Nanites in this story were created by the Saer'khi and it was a new technology to them, so I tried to take an alien viewpoint on much of their tech, including nanites. They don't actually make things from nanites themselves to build or create matter from seemingly nothing or alter molecular structures from one thing to another, they are merely there to shift matter that is already there into the proper configuration and they need to have the right materials available for certain things, you can't make steel beams with no iron. Most of the pre-programmed buildings would be made of fairly easy to acquire materials such as stone and/or wood.

So while they can create anything allowed by the laws of physics, the nanites need to be both programmed with the right set of blueprints and have the proper materials available to do it. I did it this way to avoid hand-wavium like the replicators in Star Trek.

*big hugs*

Amethyst