Arcta Hydraia in bed by herself, wearing nothing. It was a good Vedani bed, of variable shape and texture, solid plush bioplasmic. These were nice quarters, heart of the blocks.

In Arcta’s hand, a leaf of paper from a small notepad, crinkled from being in a pocket. The words on it:

angled arched
corridors
shivering elements
a dance of memory
deep within
somewhere
beyond the bottom
on the other side
of the wave
a sound transcending
time and space
I hear it

({something somewhere anchoring to this spaceless reel of wide-ranging presence. little if any control. there is this, and there is this. far. far. seeing. this will be hard to remember, or will it?})

She recalls the mysterious yet apt correspondent during her years at the Institute of Sphere Dynamics, whose dialogue sparked a couple theoretical breakthroughs. Nothing classified, just good erudite banter with a developed mind.

“There might be something in our blind spot. I see the edge of something here, look.” Soleil, who had gained some experience with camera spotting, indicated a corner detail on two views. A thrill tingled across her scalp – the glint, the curve, felt familiar.

Draig recalculated the external viewing camera aiming parameters. There was a ship where there hadn’t been one before.

“That’s Drift X!” exclaimed Toller, pointing.

“That ship brought us back to Alisandre,” Soleil explained to her old friend. “I don’t believe them to be hostile. Can we comlink?”

“Let’s,” said Draig, establishing the channel for vocal exchange.

The linkup established with a chime. A woman’s voice came through, straightforward and urgent. “We were sent, by the people who need you, to pick you up and bring you to them.” At the sound of her voice, Derringer could not stop himself from smiling with an edge of incredulity, but he didn’t interrupt. “We should use this ship. Please consider coming aboard quickly. We are in danger.”

Toller requested, “Ask them if Wendel Harper is captain of that ship.”

Soleil looked at Draig and Toller, asking, “Which of us is least pursued by authorities right now?”

“That would be me, amazingly,” said Derringer. “I’ll talk.” He arranged his shirt and mustache a little before speaking when prompted. “Is Wendel Harper the captain of that ship?”

A pause. “Yes. She knows you.” The voice also sounded knowing.

“Let’s go!” said Toller. Soleil nodded to Draig. Derringer also nodded.

Draig took all this in and responded with a nod. “Okay, here we go.” He began to trade boarding details and equipment specs with Drift X. They had a hopper. He aligned their entrances. Before prepping everybody for the crossing, he informed them, “When we’re off, this ship is going to go home with no record of this voyage. I’m going forward with you; that way your information will be safe from my being questioned, and perhaps I can be of more assistance.”

“Okay,” replied Soleil, “Thank you.” His risk being with them was immense. They were lucky to have him.

The hopper took them over two at a time, gliding across the air between hatchways. Leiv Gruun and Gretz Manoukian did the receiving. Toller high-fived Leiv, and Derringer and Gretz played a volley of ghost ping-pong before embracing each other. Draig observed all the surprise familiarity with a touch of wariness, keeping an eye to their surroundings. Soleil patted the ship.

After the hacked government vehicle sped away on its own trajectory, they were joined momentarily by Captain Wendel Harper and Karma Ilacqua. Wendel recognized General Alisandre from news, and judged the unofficial nature of his presence by their circumstances, and his lack of baggage, uniform, or attendance. The rest, she knew. She had gotten accustomed to the talented street kid, the private investigator, and the Princess Ascendant.

Karma was smiling despite herself, with the private investigator eyeing her surreptitiously from within her field of vision. This was already serious business, but these were serious guests. That was General Alisandre. That was the Scion Princess. Both had missing persons alerts, the General’s fresh to the occasion. Plus a kid. She walked up to Derringer and stood six inches from him, looking up into his face. “What are you doing here?” she ended the question in a half chuckle.

“Being right where you want me, I hope.”

Karma Ilacqua: I wasn’t expecting a call from you. This seems like a costly exception.

Arys Steinman: Correct, this is an emergency call from underwater.

KI: What kind of emergency?

AS: There’s a new appearance in the vicinity, somewhere in the air you won’t have noticed. On that vessel are people who need to come to us with the shipment.

KI: Oh, wow. Now we have mystery passengers? That sounds so potentially complicated.

AS: We wouldn’t ask you to compromise the current priority if it weren’t of approximately equal importance.

KI: Of equal importance in a multi-corporation versus fanatics standoff over a hidden advanced research facility.

AS: Yes.

KI: Send me the data. We have to do this?

AS: You have to do this.

KI: You’re lucky I found us an elite team.

AS: I expect that of you by now. You don’t disappoint.

KI: Your gin is in that shipment, you know.

AS: We are all hoping the best for the success of this transfer, myself for multiple reasons.

Karma brought the newly-informed strategy to Captain Wendel Harper elsewhere aboard Drift X. The ship was posing as a momentary standoff substitute, replacing one and ready to be replaced by another when called. Normal enough amongst the motley private forces present, including the supply exchange which brought them their goal objective. The shipment capsule was aboard, with auto-nav capability in case it needed to make its own way to its destination. The Foundational threat remained stoic. The change in plans presented a danger spike, but that was within their contract. They needed to pick someone up. They could do that, and Drift X had a special edge that suited the occasion. “It could be less difficult than you think,” responded the captain, “We can keep your secrets if you can keep ours.”

Karma factored this into her processing: secret means of locomotion. Just her kind of thing, actually. “This is all secret. It’s a layer cake of secrets. It’s secret who we’re picking up.”

“It’s secret how we’re picking them up.” Wendel delivered this with eye contact confirmation.

“And it’s secret what we’re bringing, and that we’re bringing it.” The boss ladies did some extended nodding to each other. Karma clarified by continuing, “We won’t be needing to say anything to others about what we see. Our contract confirms this.”

“We are professionals of just this kind.”

“Yes. I feel comfortable riding with you.” Not much was comfortable about this situation, so Ilacqua’s ordinary statement came across as extreme placid bravado. Her additional presence also piqued a sense of very high stakes, beyond that which was already evident. Starweavers live in this zone. So does Karma.

Draig could hear Dragons along these corridors, nearer and farther. They were present in many places, while being elsewhere. The etheric ventriloquism of the Viridian Phasing collective projection created a hall of mirrors across their dragonroad dimensions. Draig’s experience of this was different from the dragonroads in that he would not sublimate along pathways of coexisting occurrences of his embodied element. Only Dragons do that. This entry of himself as a human was also different from his other emergency entry, and maybe every time would have to be unique.

He had a sense of distances from dragon entities or their echoes, which were functionally the same to him. He could contact either a Dragon or their echo. They were aware of his gaze; those protecting the Pan-Galactic Imperium by participating in the Viridian Phasing had more or less chosen to respect him, if by secondarily vouched opinion. They helped him along, opening successive search doors and leading him to the next. He felt these portals open in his mind, though they were not his mind. He used his own sense of the Dragon he was searching for, his accustomed advisor Arkuda, to make successive choices of direction along these spaceless corridors. This was like nothing he’d ever experienced, yet he made his way along with self-assured determination, like when he’d been searching in the halls as a child. This was what he had to do.

A familiar sense of his Councillor colleague grew distinctly until he actually found an echo, which he rushed toward. “It’s me. There you are.” Within range, voice imprints here delivered unmistakable identity. Draig had only to project clearly for Arkuda to know who he was.

“Yes. Oh, hello.”

“You sound like you’re in a bathroom.”

“There are unusual properties to where I’m speaking from. It’s very interesting that you’re here, in this way.”

Draig opened his eyes to get an image of the people in the room: Princess Soleil undisguised, Derringer, Toller, and himself. It was an odd image for his usual context, a sparsely furnished room with mugs on the floor. He transmitted this image clearly in his mind’s eye, relying on Arkuda’s knowledge of situations to accurately assess their degree of duress. “We are traveling together unsanctioned and unrecognizably. This is off the books, everything is off the books, we’re all off the books. We need to find you. Can we get to you? I have an excellent military mini, rendered untraceable. We have to go quickly.”

The barest of pauses. “Come to the planet where you took your Alpha base academy training. Write down this triangulation and atmosphere level. It’s about to happen. Come over now.” Arkuda shut down this echo.

Draig opened his eyes with a gasp. He took the notepad and pen from Derringer’s hand and scribbled down the information he’d just received. “Let’s go,” he said. They stood, leaving their mugs.

Draig had decided on a hidey-hole off the map, something with comfort and sustenance before they were off to wherever they were going on the run in their untraceable vehicle. Campaign logistics. He knew Derringer already knew the place, and it turned out that the kid, Toller also of single appellation, did too. The place was at least new to Soleil, so the spot wasn’t entirely blown. A local bird of paradise had adopted them, and decided to cheer them on with its loud, clear call.

They had one of the rooms above Joe’s seaside tavern in Dalmeera, rather than one of the subterraneans. They were all sitting on the floor with mugs of Hot Silver, which Toller was also allowed. Draig had been coaching the others on how to support his intended trance; that was mostly to be present, quiet, attentive, and ready to respond. He felt confident that he understood the ability of his special operational privilege well enough to get some of the information they needed. He could figure out how to begin as certainly as starting up a familiar vehicle. This was a sort of seeking, which he’d done before with this being (but which has always never been done before).

He closed his eyes; then he opened the first door, which he had known was there. Like the entry to a cellar, it wasn’t a place that was needful to go. Draig would consider himself someone who only approached unfamiliar mental states needfully, and here he went opening the door. It wasn’t locked, and it wasn’t really a door, just a helpful human analogue for the portal which he was sure had its own special word, if it existed for anyone else.

After the first door was another door. This was a different place. This was not inside his own mindspace, even though that was how he accessed it. He saw his own mind differently, as a place that was connected to other nearby places, like a house in a neighborhood with a street outside. This street, which he’d accessed by stepping neatly out of his own mind, was made of these portals. Each successive portal was one choice out of many, with ways back to where one began, like in physical space. The Viridian Phasing was a different version of space, and this experience of it was an adaptation to his human existence. It was similar yet different to the way he’d traveled it before, less voluntarily just before the fleet had been attacked. His intention shaped this process into something more familiar, his keyholder access as the original point organizer.