"I was not truly worried, Ka'ruchaya … but my thanks. It has been a long time."
"I know. And I am sure this is your sleep time. I will not keep you from your mat any longer. Dream well, ruesten."
"I will, Ka'ruchaya. Farewell."
With that, the contact ended, and Hovan went to dreams of the coming reunion that were as pleasant as anyone could wish. Most of the next week and a half saw Hovan and Tarlac together continuously, the Ranger getting a crash course in all the basics of a Traiti clan, from Language to customs and courtesies. The Ordeal was neither short nor continuous, so he would be part of Traiti society for some time, both aboard the Hermnaen and on Homeworld. The more he knew about his adopted clan and culture, the better.
Even without that consideration, Tarlac was delighted at the opportunity for such studies. An acute case of curiosity was another part of being a Ranger, and the few fragments he'd picked up at first only increased his interest. He wondered for a while at their lack of teaching tapes, which meant he had to memorize everything the hard way, but that was fairly minor. His only problem with it was that he didn't expect to have everything perfect by the time they landed. Hovan agreed, but assured him nobody would expect perfection, only that he learn enough to avoid giving serious offense.
The first lesson, reasonably enough, dealt with military customs, and Tarlac found out that wearing his gun had meant respect to the Traiti, not a threat. They had classed Rangers with the military, as fighters—and for one fighter to voluntarily meet others unarmed was a deadly insult. The Traiti were aware that there was no way Tarlac could have known that custom, but even so, the fact that he had come to them armed was seen as a good omen.
Language took more time, but was essential since not many Traiti spoke Imperial English at all, and even fewer spoke it as well as Arjen and Hovan. Tarlac found Language a challenge. English had become universal on Terra and its colonies, even where other languages were spoken; he'd never had to speak anything else, though he'd learned to read the cloudcats' tongue-talk.
And what the Traiti called simply Language had little in common with English. The most obvious difference was its tonality, much to Tarlac's frustration and Hovan's amusement. While the Ranger enjoyed and could appreciate music, he'd never done any serious singing; it took days for him to learn to make his voice do what he wanted it to.
But they didn't spend all their time working. Hovan was proud of his ship, and spent much of their leisure showing Steve the Hermnaen and its crew. Even though the flagship was considerably smaller than a Sovereign-class cruiser, there was a lot to show; it was still a full-scale battlewagon. Tarlac was particularly interested in the small, one-man harassment craft it carried, and since Hovan had flown one of them in combat several times, his interest was just as intense and far more personal. It took only one close-up look, though, for Tarlac to understand why such tiny craft were so surprisingly effective.
Barely twelve meters long, the ships humans had labelled "hornets" were nothing more than a beam weapon and its power pack, with a propulsor and basic life-support system wrapped around it and given some armor and ablative shielding. It couldn't stand up to a hit from even a secondary disruptor, so a single hornet posed only a minimal threat to any Imperial ship larger than a courier—but they were normally launched in groups, used to saturate their opponent's defenses, letting the main battlecraft use its heavier weaponry in an all-out attack.