Finding a place to explore and exploit: that was our next problem. As you would expect, the choice of where to go involved many tradeoffs. Should we go to a nearby world that was well known, or a distant world that might have undiscovered riches? Should we go to a well-known, well-populated planet with a hospitable climate, and be a small fish in a big pond, or a more hostile, more unknown, planet where we would spend a lot more on developing the world, but own all the results of our hard labor?
We made a choice. I won't bother you with the details of that choice because six months after we departed, it became irrelevant. Six months after we departed, the gamma ray burst you call "The Big Blip" streamed through our star system, and by our ship. Our system was far enough away that the burst didn't cause any damage, but it signaled that a live HX was now close to our star system! A Live HX! Close! Before that, we knew about the HX, but we also knew we were an HX "have-not" -- there were no HX close to us. That blip signaled we were now a "have", and there was no doubt -- absolutely none -- about where our starship should go! We turned, and headed full bore for the HX.
This also changed the social atmosphere on board the ship. Before turning for the HX, there had been great uncertainty about what relation "the colonists" -- the ex-prisoners of war in our hold -- would have to the ship when we reached our destination. If we went to a well populated, hospitable world, they would likely be sold into some form of slavery, and have little to do with the ship once they were sold. If we went to a hostile climate world, they would be construction workers, and close to the ship for decades. At first they would work from the ship as suitable habitation and industry were developed on the planet, then they would move to the planet, and still work for the ship, until they paid off their indenture. If we found a virgin world -- a habitable world, but filled with low-tech inhabitants -- they would land as conquistadors, conquer the world, and pay off the ship with the fruits of the labor of the people they enslaved. All these relations are very different, so at first there was great uncertainty about what the relation would be between professionals, marines and prisoners as we journeyed to our destination.
When the discovery of the HX was announced, and our intention to go to it, the relation of all the people on the ship quickly clarified, and in the best of ways: we would all be working together to extract HX loot, and if we succeeded, we would all be rich beyond imagining. It was a good relation... Hot dog! It was going to be good!
As we traveled to the HX, everyone on the ship trained to extract wealth from the HX, and from the swarm of ships that would be surrounding it. We were not going to hunt down this HX like one of your tigers hunts down a deer. No, the HX was much too powerful for that, even for us. Like your adventurers to the HX, we would be like mosquitos trying to extract blood from a human. We would look for the unguarded approach, get in, take a little as quickly as we could, then run fast when the breach was discovered, and hope we didn't get "slapped" on our escape. We would also scavenge what we could from those in the swarm around the HX who were less fortunate than we were... or... more fortunate, but weaker and slower. This is what we trained for.
As we trained, the distinctions between prisoners, marines and professionals blurred. Those distinctions became irrelevant because we were now all unified by the goal of winning a big prize from the HX. Those old distinctions were replaced by new distinctions. Some would stay on the mother ship, which would stay distant from the HX and on the edge of the swarm. Some would go to the HX. Those who went would divide into explorers, extractors and security people. Security's job was to protect, which meant deciding when to fight, and more often, when to flee. There were those who would move people and goods to and from the HX. And finally, there were those who would watch others in the swarm, to make sure we didn't become a casualty in the fortunate-but-too-slow category.
All these jobs took a lot of training because the more we trained the faster we got at doing our jobs. So we were all busy during most of the journey to the HX. On a personal note, I got to change my job in a very gratifying way. When we left, I was commanding a prison ship. After the HX announcement, and as people became accustomed to the new routine, my ship turned steadily from a prison ship into a space hotel. Hotel running is still in my blood, so this change gave my life a lot of personal satisfaction.
...We were at the HX for ten years, Earth time. During most of that time we had to simply be patient. The HX would not give us loot willingly, and the swarm around the HX was also dangerous to us. If we simply rushed in to haul away tempting treasures, like in one of your pirate movies, we would die. We had to wait for others to have a "really bad day", then we would take advantage of their misfortune with all the blinding speed we could muster, then move away again just as quickly. We were not alone in doing this, this is the way of the swarm. Why did we do this? For the riches, of course! Imagine Earth without tomatoes, which, for one thing, means life without pizza sauce as we know it. The treasures of the HX can affect a planet's life as much as tomatoes have affected Earth's human life.
By the tenth year we had put a respectable amount of loot in our hold. We were now hardened veterans who knew this swarm well. But, our experience and toughness didn't stop us from having our "bad day", and a quarter of our ship's crew perished in a fifteen minute fight. A thousand good people... pffft! It was Kolob's way of saying we had our share, and it was time to move on. To this day, I curse that we had not left a month earlier! We lost a lot of good people. But those are the risks one takes when one deals with an HX.
In the HX swarm we encountered a Solar System ship. From it we found out that the Solar System was nearby, and that Earth was a "virgin planet" -- it had billions of people and it was low-tech. It was the best place for us to digest some of our newly-acquired HX technology, and perhaps, now that we had some more room and a fully integrated crew, we would add some... "tradable beings"... to our hold.
Once again, as we flew we researched and trained. This time we researched the HX loot we had acquired, and did some preliminary manufacturing with it. We got it ready to be traded. We also trained. Training and manufacturing -- this is routine of space travel.
This time what we would do at our destination was not so clear. The HX is a known quantity that changes little with time. Likewise, uninhabited planets change only when you look at them at million-year intervals. But civilized planets are change incarnate. Civilizations rise and fall, and even species rise and fall when looked at from the time perspective of a visiting spaceship. The Solar System ships we found in the swarm were lower tech than our ship, and the Solar System was close, the journey would take only twenty years, ship time. But inhabited worlds are full of surprises, so we didn't feel we had a perfect guarantee about what the planet Earth we visited would be like. We trained first to be traders, and... perhaps... to be conquerors.