<snip>

“Much biting and clawing among your clutch mates?” A bit of dry humor as from the stories other humanoids had told him siblings were as prone to squabbles as much as clutch mates were . “Served as a Marine rifleman, a lot like a Gnal clutch.” A deep rumble and dark king of his face as he laughed.

In a more serious tone, “I am a computational linguist, essentially we look at all languages as cyphers, or conversely all cyphers are languages.” “Morning Bright” took another sip of his drink.

Alita downed a bit of her drink as she thought about it

“Biting and clawing… I don’t know if I would put it that way. How about complicated and messy? We all pretty much get along but we’re spread all over the place so we can go quite some time without being in the same room physically. As far as linguistics go, I don’t believe Bre saw them as computational. Some of her journals described them as intuitive. Whatever her theory, it worked quite well. I’m curious what possessed you to become a rifleman?” Alita wondered if she had used the right word but it was too late now. Better just to finish her drink and see what became of the conversation.

• Alita

“Intuition actually has as much to do with it as dose the math, you have to start some where, and where you start has a lot to do with how fast you crack the problem” Morning Bright said as he reached for a pork rib,” As for the Corp, there was a war on and the recruiters saw some one who could make a type fore phaser man portable”. Swallowing the rib”In the end one of the unit armorers rigged a mount for a century gun that worked very well.”
The Gnal didn’t really consider his service as anything other than his duty, it was his appointment to a Starship he was proud of.

Ensin “Morning Bright”

Alita studied Morning Bright a bit more carefully for a few seconds. She didn’t feel as id she was committing some cultural faux pas considering the subject matter they were discussing practically begged for her to do so. Still, she didn’t linger, it wasn’t her way. Anna had taught everyone excellent manners.

“Yes, I can see where that would be incredibly useful. Did you have a problem with the weight of it all? And while I respect the sciences, if you ever feel like security work I’ll gladly take you on.”

• Reia