Naecia was in disbelief when they finally tracked down Aptat and found them still alive. And not just alive, but completely unharmed. Only the carapace gave any hint that it had just been in a small nuclear explosion, with a few nicks and inconsequential burn marks. There had been some grumbling among the ship’s crew that they ought to just rescue the rare elements and leave Aptat on the float – especially now that all the guush had been wiped out. The argument had merit, but the prospect of galactic annihilation made for strange couplings, and the stringhunter had done as they’d asked without trying any sleight of hand. For the time being, Aptat – and especially their suit – were assets. If Naecia was able to get the Switch working, they were setting themselves up for a conflict with the Scythin, and the indestructible carapace would be essential.

The drone was a misshapen ball of polymers, having just narrowly escaped vaporization at the edge of the blast radius. Similarly, the coil of caridianite had melted onto its spool into a lopsided, globular chunk that looked like a meteorite. It nevertheless remained elementally sound.

Perhaps feeling sanguine that they’d actually been plucked out of space rather than left to drift until the day the Universe finally went to holes, Aptat agreed to help Naecia work the caridianite back into shape. Using a combination of the magmafier and the ship’s modest machining hardware, they were able to melt down and extrude the blob back into wire.

Over the next cygie, Naecia installed the fresh wire into homemade receivers appended to the axon diadem and connected it to the machine’s data output. She added some leftover caridianite to the interferometer prongs at the top of the machine to boost its fidelity, thus enhancing its ability to quickly gather particle data for cataloguing.

She found herself in a bit of a trance as she went through the repetitive exercise of layering the wire around the prongs, and, as she did so, thoughts of the lanky Earth pilot drifted into her conscious mind. E. Naecia vowed that if they got out of all this alive, she’d find out about the woman who had conspired with the scholar to commune with the Oblivion Fray.

If they got out alive. The first of many ifs that stood between now and being able to save her family, who didn’t even know they were in danger. She took hold of the puzzle amulet at her neck and pretended to feel her brother’s touch. What she knew – or thought she knew – about the Scythin, seemed to make every if more insurmountable.