"But is it not that Nina Stella made the trip to a new system while we were amusing ourselves in the park?" Arlen said, apparently caught between delight and suspicion.
"Yes. I took a transport back, since I wanted to recover my energy."
"No wonder I hadn’t seen anyone else’s Cycog wearing a synth," I said. "Is it something that comes with Rank Ten?"
[[A reward for me,]] Artemis said.
I was always disconcerted when someone else’s Cycog answered me: an especially weird reaction given that it sounded like there were only a handful of Cycogs pretending to be all the rest. Every Cycog here could really be Ydionessel.
The problem was a big one, though. While Artemis' synth wasn’t an obvious giveaway of Nina’s Rank, as soon as our livestream came up, her name wouldn’t be hidden any more. Going into a PVP-enabled area with Nina Stella was like painting a target on our group.
"Can we delay formally starting the Challenge?" I asked, glancing from Artemis to the rest of our accompanying drift of light motes and Renba. "I was thinking we should do that anyway."
"You were?" Silent said. "Why?"
"Because there doesn’t seem to be many options left other than heading further into that rift. And over a hundred people are going to try to do that at once. We could race to be first, to get into a side passage before the crowd sets the whole thing ping-ponging, but that would only make it more likely we’d injure ourselves being hasty."
"True enough," Nina said. "Can we delay starting, Temi?"
[[Yes,]] Artemis replied.
"We’ll decide how long to hold back closer to arrival," Nina said. "And concentrate for now on figuring out possible entry points." She put an image of The Wreck up in our shared visual space: one of the much-analysed annotated versions that were circulating on all the DS sites. "Presuming we do go in through the damaged area, the next big question is whether the area beyond the damage is still pressurised."
"It is a derelict," Arlen protested. "For many years. Centuries. Can there be any chance?"
Nina shrugged. "This is a simulation, and set up to be the most difficult Challenge in the system. There could be anything."
"Fair point," Silent said. "The important concern is that if we punch into an area that’s pressurised, we’ll be blown away by our own success—even if we don’t cause an explosion. But, here– " He added a set of diagrams where the images of The Wreck had been dimmed and overlaid by enormously detailed pencil lines.
"A group with the game’s strongest player, and a structural engineer," I observed. "I’m starting to think we could actually win this."
It shocked me to discover how much I wanted that to be true. I’d always considered it a near impossibility, a thing to give a try, with failure almost inevitable. But now that it seemed achievable, I kept remembering Dio talk about the Boon, about the prospect of real answers. I wanted to know what was really going on with this game, even if it only meant that I could finally relax and just let myself enjoy it.
Silent had smiled and shrugged. "I’m far from the only person who has put in this sort of work, but I have a few ideas that depart from popular opinion. You can see that the majority of levels exposed appear to be a combination of bulwark and large empty chambers—probably water or fuel storage. There’s even a few mini icebergs floating among the debris that suggest escaped liquid."
"Juice." I made a little face when they all looked at me. "I keep thinking The Wreck looks like an orange that someone’s put their thumb into."
"I’m guessing it was a ship collision. Something relatively slow that was pulled away afterward—see the warped metal here, but also here?" Silent pointed at the annotated image. "A consequence of this is a loss of access to cross-passages in the upper levels—if there’re any present, they’re hidden by debris, or pinched shut, so to speak. The next several levels down look to be more promising, with dozens, even hundreds, of rooms and corridors exposed. Plenty of side-passages to try, at least. From the look of the contents, I’d guess these levels to be systems levels: engineering, processing, and perhaps warehousing. No living quarters appear to be exposed, except possibly in the small section visible at the deepest point of the impact crater, where we can see what’s been dubbed the dentist chair."
"Flight couch," I murmured.
"That is just as likely," Silent agreed. "It’s the only item we can make out distinctly at that level, which is nearly half a kilometre down."
"And it’s where half these teams are going to aim for," Nina said. "I was thinking the shafts are the best option for avoiding the debris." She indicated the numerous green circles on the publicly annotated map, marking anything that could be an exposed tube, shaft or other vertical passage.
"Same," Silent agreed. "Though I’ve excluded what I suspect are liquid channels rather than transport corridors. The same problem holds with any of these entry points, however: any sensibly designed ship is going to have interior bulkheads to manage hull breach. Entering the ruptured area is only going to bring us up against a barrier."
"Wouldn’t those sensibly designed ships also have some method of dealing with getting between damaged and undamaged areas?" I asked.
"A few internal airlocks would be logical," Silent agreed. "I’ve some guesswork on probable locations for them, but that’s going to take some trial-and-error exploration, which is the third-best option. I want our first objective to be this."
He highlighted two of the many vertical lines partially visible through the damage. "Of all the conduits, these appear to be the most likely to form part of a transport system. See this ridging? Think of it in terms of rails."
"We’re definitely not going to be the only people heading into them," Nina said.
"No—and it’s very likely going to be sealed as well. But what I want is to investigate upward, not down. A transport corridor leading to the skin of the ship is likely to point directly to an airlock. If we can identify any airlock entrance over this damaged point, we can shift to looking for other external airlocks, using the distance between the two visible transport corridors to extrapolate the location of a third."
"Allowing us into the proper ship," Arlen said, delightedly.
"We will be watched," Imoenne murmured.
"Definitely," Silent said. "And Nina’s presence in our party will bring extra attention. But most everyone will be racing downward, and we won’t become really interesting until we’re inside the second airlock. And then, well, we could leave the inner door open, which should prevent the outer door we’ve used from being operated."
Nina brought up magnifications of the twisted edge of the ship where we’d be searching first. "It’s a gamble," she said. "We need external airlocks to be identifiable in a way the groups searching randomly missed. We also need them to be active. And then we need to succeed in opening one." She smiled at Silent. "But it’s a smart play, keeping us out of the debris zone during the initial rush, and, ideally, separates us from rival groups."
"We’ll have to keep our mouths shut once our stream starts," I said. "The other groups will have people feeding back to them on rival groups."
Silent nodded. "I’ve arranged for Amelia to coordinate our guild in monitoring the competition. We can probably manage a bit of misdirection—make it appear we’re just hanging back, searching randomly while we wait for it to be safer to head into the impact crater."
As the others debated code phrases over strict text communication, I thought again of Dio’s suggestion. Could we really win this? And would that lead to actual answers, to the truth about Dream Speed? Or the Starfighter Invitation?