In a perverse sort of way, she welcomed another go at the dredge. If only to try to find the final pieces for the drive, to bridge the gap between notion and reality, to get closure for the thing that had tormented her since she could remember. Doodling schematics rather than paying attention during school, building replicas before she had any idea what they were. The same little rig crafted over and over again, with its processor stacks, shielded chambers and conduit, left around the family’s dwellings. Never knowing what it was or how to make it work, the pursuit had been hollow – her entire life spent trying not just to understand how, but why and what.

The dredge on the Knell had shed some light. Every trip seemed to loosen what was imprinted on the cord, dislodging concepts and ideas that drifted to the surface even after she was out of the box. Calculations, algorithms, theories, materials, suggestions. It was while on the Knell that she had made strides in producing an interface with the physical world so the machine could actually gather and process data on a subatomic level. At the same time her mind had become even more insistent that this computer she was building was an engine – a drive – that could push them across the universe in the blink of an eye.

Which was still a problem. A big problem. Everything it proposed to do was impossible, hemmed in on all sides by the unbreakable laws of physics, including the king of them all, the absolute prohibition against anything moving faster than the speed of light. That’s why they’d called it a cheat drive, it broke the laws of the Universe. Naecia couldn’t bridge the gap between what the machine purported to do and the rules it had to abide by. The physical world simply prevented the feats the machine seemed both destined to achieve and ill-equipped to perform.

But she had seen something new when Dekies had forced her into the dredge. An abyssal reflection, an imprint of something poignant enough for her brain to latch onto and briefly observe. It was what had halted her descent when she’d slipped the cord, keeping her shy of the Oblivion Fray. She’d only caught a glimpse inside, but it had been enough. There was a woman. A human woman whose secret had been lost with her death. And that was who she had to find.

So, with Oush dressed in Aptat’s helmet – tightly – and Izairis wearing the stringhunter’s fancy chest plate cuirass, Naecia laid back into the dredge.