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Leucohyle is sitting in the hangar. Sitting on, as a matter of fact, Iota, the handy Conveyance Assistant. Omicron is around somewhere; his distinctive scuttling tickticktick echoes around the bay. She appears to be waiting for someone. The descending Sparrow has her attention; while it does not appear to be what she was waiting for precisely, hey! It's something.
From the cloud of steam that has curled up from the vents of the little runabout peer the haunted red eyes of some predator, their luminescence growing in intensity until the silhouetted shape of some bipedal predator coalesces around them. It advances through the hazy miasma, lids shuttering once against the white wall before squinting and finally resolving into a typically disapproving Reilly, whose scowl accompanies the ineffectual flapping of her hand through the wet-hot exhaust.
Leucohyle squints into the steam, although the red eyes are easily recognizable. She stands up, causing Iota to start its seemingly random scuttle-in-a-radius subroutine, and cants her head towards the smoke. "G-Good-Evening, Miss-Reilly," she says, in her little fluting voice. "...I I believe your ventilation system is in need of tuning."
"Nexus-cursed ol' banger," Reilly swears, half beneath her breath, finally stripping the hat from her head to wave away the surplus of steam exhaust venting from the just-landed Sparrow. She spares a look - or rather, a glare, though the origin of the annoyance is clearly not Leucohyle - toward the little clone, who is standing with her robot armada. "Oi there, Leu."
Tullius Castus is running around in shorts, a tshirt and his ubiquitous 'toe glove' shoes, doing whatever it is he does for exercise. Which today means sprinting, doing pullups on random objects, climbing up and down off of things and stopping to do burpees. And such.
Leucohyle blinks at Reilly, instinctively leaning away from the glaring regardless of to whom it is directed, and offers the Sivadian a wobbly smile and a wobbly wave. "H-hello," she pipes, again, stepping forwards with a faint electronic whisper of wired reflexes as Lucky goes a-healthing by. "Er G-good Evening, Mister-Lucius," she adds.
Reilly slaps her faithful old skulltopper back on her head and straightens both clothes and carriage. "Bleedin' wreck. My apologies," she mutters with one last sour frown back at the Hekayan jalopy. "I'll 'ave a look at 'er once I'm back at th' shop. What's news?"
Tullius Castus comes to a stop as soon as Leu greets him, walking up to the duo all sweaty and breathing heavy and everything. He looks tired and his face is red with exertion. "Ey."
"W-well I I am both relieved and saddened to inform you that I will not be accompanying the Minerva to Earth," Leu pipes, looking, as advertised, both relieved and a bit guilty. "W-well since I rather live in Hiverspace, after-all. But I I am going to of course see the project through to the er, bon voyage, as-it-were." She cants her head to Reilly. "Oh, no worries, mechanical underperformance is is quite vexing."
"I'm not signin' on for th' grand tour of 'ell either," Reilly announces, blunt as the business end of a brick, upon Leu's declaration. "Th' Colonel's done time as Phyrrian an' Kamir both. It's been a long time since either one o' those gave a bumbler's bum about th' fate of organics." When Tullius joins them, she tips her hat toward him.
Tullius Castus's brows quirk upwards just as he raises a hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "Wait, you're not coming with us? Leu, you're the best scientific mind on board. We kind of... need you." As to Reilly's announcement - he simply shrugs. "Eh, well, that's up to you. Don't get me wrong - we all value your unique insights into the ship and such around here."
"R-really? Fascinating," Leu pipes in reply to Reilly's declaration that the Captain used to be a Phyrrian, and then gets lost for a bit, presumably thinking about the various parameters and possibilities and permutations and oh wait there are other people here. She blinks at Lucius. "Oh, well er... as as much as I appreciate that... I'm not from Earth, I joined to er, send people home, not er, leave my own, as-it-were. The entirety of my familial, pseudofamilial, and nonfamiliar social bonds as well as home and materials are all here."
If Reilly is savvy to the snide edge in Lucius's tone, she lets it go, preferring to nudge her shoulders in a vague approximation of indifference regarding the clone's final decision. "If th' Colonel let 'er go, she must not be all that integral t' 'is plans rift-side," she estimates. "'e's ne'er said a whit about riftin' back."
"I'm not from Earth either, Leu, though close enough. But there's no guarantee that that's where we'll go to. Who knows? But I understand, I guess. It's a bit disappointing to be honest." Lucius says with a mild frown on his face, though he shrugs it off. "That's true, I guess, about rifting back."
"He indicated that anyone who wished to remain w-would not be begrudged. It stands to reason, I mean the idea of the rift drive is to sort of not foist unwanted destinations upon people..." Leu pipes, fiddling her fingers together. "Also he did indicate that he would r-remain on Earth and allow anyone who w-wished to return to Hiverspace to er, take the Minerva. The er, leaving schematics behind and etcetera is just a precaution in case, well. In case the ship lands somewhere unfortunate." She crinkles her nose. "I I swear I will be testing the er, metaphorical daylights out of the drive prior to to letting anyone go anywhere with it." Her smooth brow crinkles, "I'm I'm sorry, Lucius. I admit that I will greatly miss the connections I have made, but... I do apologize. Honestly I I did not even know what the Minerva's mission was when I signed on... but you're all very pleasant and it will pain me to see you go."
"So what's left t' test?" Reilly asks with a look toward the drive in question, getting down to business.
"Ah, you've got a point about that." Lucius grins goofily, wiping the sweat again from his face as it flares up. "I had a feeling he'd be doing something fucked up, being Porter and all, but I had no idea what I was really signing up for when I did." His ice blue eyes shift to Reilly as she puts her question out there, and then to the drive.
"Hrm? Oh, let's see, conductivity, basic wiring tests, alloy compatibility, functionality as a ship drive, of of course... scanning for structural instability..." Leu ticks off, consulting neither PDA nor dataslate, although there is a lot of text scrolling by on her little holo-specs. "...and well then once we've actually got it running... on will go the er, 'artifact'."
"The artifact." Reilly makes the word sound like the death sentence it almost was, and her gaze shifts inexorably toward the offending obelisk in question. She approaches it, clambering up onto the platform to execute an uneasy circle around it, raking it top to bottom with her scrutiny. "'ave we e'en determined what this bleedin' thing does?"
Tullius Castus chuckles, though he's not got much to say as far as the techinical aspects. "Maybe I feel like I don't have anything else to go for. That artifact could do fucking anything."
"...well there's an input on it that matches precisely to the cable you hypothesized was the er, power-cabling, Miss-Reilly," Leu pipes. "Th-that's what I was looking for when everyone thought I was just going to er, plug it right in all willy-nilly." Her expression, when she turns to Lucius, is sad to the extent that she actually wilts a little bit. "W-well that's unfortunate, Mister-Lucius. I er. Well I I suppose I had assumed since you never expressed unfulfilled needs that, well. Your needs were fulfilled."
Reilly's eyes never leave the relic. "That's what I'm worried about," she mentions toward Lucius, patently less concerned about his will to live when compared with the potential danger of plugging in an ancient construct of demonstrably malevolent gods. "Those crystals in th' Alina's drive 'as t' be what opens th' rift. They're similar t' th' Moebius Drives from Normalspace... well, except not. Look," she finally decides, opting for a visual aid by way of transmitting her own research data to Leucohyle's datapad. It compares the difference between a standard OS Drive, the Alina's Drive, and the Moebius Drives found in the few remaining vessels from a forgotten era.
Tullius Castus shrugs. "I've got nothing waiting for me here in Hiverspace, is what I'm saying. I don't particularly think we as Outversers, and especially, humans, have much of a chance of holding on to our traditions and culture without being swallowed by the folks who call this place home, in the long run. That's just me. Maybe I'll find something more that I like, elsewhere." He just kind of stares at the schematics with little understanding in his features.
Leucohyle's little expression doesn't change much, but her eyes slip out of focus for a few moments and the holoprojector on her wrist hums to life, bringing with it a display of what Reilly has sent her. "Well it's still regrettable," she pipes to Lucius. "I suppose I take being born here for er, granted sometimes." After a few moments of introspective lip-nibbling, she turns back to the drive. "I I can only assume that these circuits here," she points, and the display zooms in, "and er, there, you you see where if you overlap the schematics these parts here are dissimilar... these are the conduits for the, well whatever the 'artifact' produces, to energize or or activate the internal crystals and produce the er, rift phenomena."
"Rift phenomena," Reilly parrots, and suddenly she looks so tired that she is bowing her head into her hands and scrubbing her lined face with her fingers. "Queen an' country. 'ow does it open th' rift an' 'ow does that rift differ from th' average shift to Otherspace or 'yperspace in conventional OS an' spindrives? Does it run th' risk o' quantum dislocation like a Moebius Drive? More importantly," she exhales, lifting her eyes again and fixing them on Leu, "if it tears a lit'ral rift in spacetime, can we close it afterward?"
"W-well I don't know," Leu pipes, apparently highly irritable at even having to squeak such things. "It's not like any piece of of machinery I've ever worked on and and and it plugs into a stone obelisk with runs on." She gestures at the offending Artifact. "It's it's preposterous!"
Reilly grinds her teeth. "I don't either. Cor blimey." Her arms fall to her sides. "We 'ave three days t' solve this. Th' Colonel's like t' use it whether we understand th' consequences or not. OS Drives allow a ship ta skim th' edge o' spacetime. If it dips off-course," her hand rocks in illustration, "that ship ends up who knows where in the multiverse. This is normal; e'ery ship with an OS Drive runs this risk. So th' rift drive must be able to zero in on specific spacetime coordinates in a way that doesn't cause collateral damage t' th' universe it's jumpin' from."
Leucohyle absorbs all of this, nodding, her little fingers fluttering in the residual aftershocks of her tiny exclamation. "If if that's the case, wouldn't the drive also need s-some manner of specialized navigation inputs to er, tell it which spacetime coordinates to to direct the ship to? 'You need more adventure in in your life,' he said. 'You need to get out,' he said. Pip! Straight from the labs, d-diving into breaking the laws of spacetime."
"Moebius Drives do this. Sorta." Reilly is off to the races, flicking out a flat blank holodisplay before her and gliding her fingers across its surface until it is comparable with the dimensions of the average blackboard. Figures and equations flow from her southpawed stylus in a hurried scrawl of engineer's chickenscratch. "Moebius space is zero-dimensional. All points are one point. Th' navigational systems remember your quantum position an' realign you t' lit'rally warp t' a second quantum position. In 3003 this phenomenon swapped Earth, Mars, an' Luna with extradimensional versions o' themselves - almost like a rift."
"Except not unidirectional, as most recorded rift phenomena tend to be. A bidirectional rift would hint at traversable white/black holes, commonly referenced as Einstein-Rosen Bridges." Leu prattles, leaning over the drive and display in a pale little parody of a southern Earth mechanic. "Oh I I hadn't even researched Moebius drives. How fascinating. Now was the planetary swap produced by a drive or just by a related phenomenon?"
Reilly presses the heel of her hand into a scrunched brow, her wince prominent. "Sin an' sterlin', why didn't I take that second semester o' quantum theory," she growls sotto voce, pondering the problem a moment before deigning to answer Leu's question. "It wasn't a drive, but it was th' basis for th' drive. Centauran tech, developed as a sort o' time machine, bur th' Thul got their tent'cles on it an' when they turned it on, 'alf a star system just..." She trails off, substituting a shrug for a conclusion.
Leucohyle just makes one of those faces. One of those faces that anyone who's ever spent any time at all with Alastair Hall as a face that's a prelude to, "Oh honestly what manner of... time machine? Thul. Bloody PRIMITIVES." She flaps her pale, circuit-traced hands, uttering little affronted pips. "Who does that? Imbeciles!"
"I don't know. But I know your Colonel said th' Thul played a role in riftin' Sanc back t' Normalspace, way back when. They know somethin' we don't." Reilly clicks a button on her stylus, saving the notations and sending them to Leu's tablet. "Speakin' o' Sanc. When we're done with this, I'd like t' talk t' you 'bout doin' some work o'er there. I like your Limbics."
Leucohyle perks up. Science talk and Robot talk? Gee willikers! "Oh? Wh-which model? I'm going to to be patenting the er Self-Defensive model, like er, Omicron here, shortly, paperwork is occuring as we speak, going to to borrow some capital from Father because those dreadful Opodians have been bullying me about the Technology Expo so I'm I'm just going to withdraw from their little contest and make the robots myself. And and I've gotten the schematics back from Vortek regarding the Observationals, seeing as that buffoon on their staff decided to attempt to to make good publicity for their company by giving away my products." She wriggles her nose for a moment, and smiles sheepishly. "I I may have a a bit of strong opinions about that."
Reilly's head slowly starts to tilt, the way a dog's might when presented with a series of foreign commands from his master. "Uh," she says a full five seconds later. "Yes?"
"Sorry, bit of of a sore spot. I'm so glad we're off of that dreadful planet." Leu pipes, and after clearing her throat, adds, "So, er. I have the small fellows here," she digs a coin-sized bot out of her hair, "Personal Assistant, removes dirt, debris, dead skin, they're also good for er sanitizing an area, clean room, or even gathering samples if if you remember to rinse them with saline first... annnd..." Releasing the small one, she digs around in her pockets until she produces Theta, one of the walnut-sized Observationals from the team that did a lot of underwater work, "Observationals, whose operation you are familiar with, and and you already know Omicron, Self-Defensive, and and Iota, Conveyance."
"All o' th' above," Reilly elects, thumbing the clicky top of her writing instrument and killing the translucent screen. "Ones that can work, ones that can see, ones that can supplement SanSec. I'll e'en pay you t' develop new models." She tightly closes her eyes, massaging one temple with a finger. "Anyway. Rift drive. Where were we."
"Oh delightful!" Leu perks. "I'll be able to pay Father back in a a jiffy then. He knew I would. He's so very proud," she babbles for a little bit and then blinks back at the drive. "Actually it is getting close to the start of my rest period, and I would like to er, get back to my lab in time to to synchronize with my nightly mnemonic matrix backup... But er if you stop by the er, labs tomorrow we can get some schematics together and you can peruse them in your leisure time between well... working on this... drive." She peers at the drive, as though it's done something impertinent, which of course it has. The artifact doesn't even get a look. It knows what it did.
Reilly nods after the clone. "Go t' bed. I'll keep workin'. Notes'll be in your inbox by mornin'."