After that, Izairis surrendered to her mind, and repeated trips into the dredge while on the Knell had focused her skills considerably. It was Izairis’s code-replication ability that had helped Arrohauk get through the security protocols of Apho Scion to nab Oush during his staged combat matinee. She’d been forced to do it, of course, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been hard feelings. Oush rarely spoke directly to her.

Izairis also confessed that she’d played a roll in Naecia’s abduction. Once Arrohauk had detected Naecia’s research transmissions, Izairis had been the one who hacked her work schedule so that the Knell could chase her down over the Vaski steam fields. Naecia found herself surprisingly ambivalent at hearing the truth. She supposed she would have done the same, and Arrohauk was coming for her one way or another. Naecia actually empathized with the little nun’s situation. She stood to be returned to those she loved until Aptat had come along and murdered her ticket home.

Not all of their priors knew weapons or ciphers, or physics-shattering space travel. Not everyone was considered so special. Izairis had a second prior, down below the forger, some type of mop weaver. That was it. A weaver of mops. Oush’s second-deep was a boblet shepherd. Boblets, apparently, were small, roundish, six-legged oinkers, bred in order to guard the perimeters of livestock farms on some distant planet. Naecia had probed for more but Oush maintained there was nothing else there. Just memories of these tiny gruntlings that could gang-devour a would-be predator in the blink of an eye. That was the thing: being a Stringer didn’t mean that everyone who came before was onto some great mystery. Why couldn’t Naecia have been one of those, occupying the same cord as mop weavers or boblet shepherds?

She pushed her lament aside and retrained her focus. Izairis had said something about encryption sentinels. “What about them?” Naecia asked.

Izairis, who had reengaged at the prospect of freedom, gestured derisively to the display on her access pad. “Well, you’d think they would have thought about bottlenecking the network connections at the dock so nobody could hammer down the security protocols and slave the ship to a parasitic shuttle!”

Naecia wasn’t super keen on the lingo but she got the point. “So, no way to get through it?”

“Locked out is locked out, Naecia.”

“Oush? Do you see anything we might repurpose to construct a relativistic jet gun or a geometric laser?”

Oush rolled his eyes. “Those aren’t real things, Naecia.”

“You’re the one with the theoretical weapons architect lurking in there somewhere. Are any of those theories worth a shit?” She was tense. Time was running out.

“You don’t have to raise your voice,” said Izairis, covering her ear nubs with hanks of purple robe.