“On average between sixty and ninety cycles galactic. Sometimes a year or more.”

Naecia sprang to her feet, her sense of justice flaring. “A year! Imprisoned in that little cabinet?”

“And I don’t require sleep. How about that? I experienced every cyclisecond. Felt every moment of time fully. Of course, that was all I knew. I’d been born in that vault. It was where I’d been when my core was first ignited. From my perspective, that was life. Only once she started getting me out to run our operations did I see the larger world. That made it harder to go back in.”

The horror of living inside a stand-up vault and never even having the temporary escape of sleep was unfathomable to Naecia. It made her own captivity seem like hardly a trifle. “How many times did this happen? How many times did you have to go back in?”

“Hundreds. Naturally it became unbearable the more I saw of the world. I very quickly went from assuming life was one way to realizing it was the other way. Mother had designed me with a robust neural processor in order to pull off our schemes, and so I ended up doing a lot of living inside of my own mind. It’s what kept me from decohering, to borrow a term from myself.”

Naecia saw the odd transposition of their situations. Stringers wanted out of their own heads. Aptat had retreated into theirs in order to avoid going mad.

“I created my own world up here,” said Aptat, putting a finger to their skull. “Forged my own plans. Figured things out for myself.”

Naecia shook her head, still finding it difficult to process the torture Aptat had undergone. “I would have screamed until she was forced to deal with me.”

“Perhaps I would have done the same had I been made with a voice.”

“What? You couldn’t speak?”

“Silent. Child,” said Aptat, raising their brow.

Naecia raised hers back.

“This ship was called the NineBlades when Mother ran it – an obvious reference to the dilaceration cannon, and a subtle giveaway about the ship’s armament that I never cared for. I changed it once she’d been relieved of command. Anyhow, Mother gave me everything but a voice. Once I was free, I bought myself a vocal organ, had it installed and changed the name of the ship.”

Naecia shook her head and exhaled. “Wow.”

“Don’t get the idea that it was all bad for me. It wasn’t like I took nothing from our partnership. Other than the questionable blessing of life and this smokin’ bod, Mother gave me two extremely valuable gifts. First, a stunning clarity of vision. Second, a key to untold riches, a secret only few others were privy to at the time: Stringers. Thanks to her, I got my start.”