You stare at Anai, your mind whirling with the possibilities. "I think we need to reunite Anai's mind with her body. To learn all that she knows, including where the Shard is and what it does. Ariavari, can you mindsearch for it?"

Ariavari purses her lips, "for organic minds or their remains, yes. For a machine-mind and their echos, no."

You are not to be denied. " 'Or their remains'? If you mean souls, then perhaps it would be possible to parse by age? The Terra Incarnadine is old, and probably has some old ghosts, but wouldn't an Eldar or Necron have left an imprint older still? Also, you mentioned that you had an interest in Anai, though you didn't use that name at the time. If you had a connection way back then, could that also be a lead?”

Ariavari stares at you. "When did you learn some of the basics of Psychics? You are totally mind-blind!"

You shrug, "incidental to learning what I could about Eldar. Yours is an old race heavily steeped in Psychics and Psykers, so some of the mechanics come up in passing. Putting them together leaves a rather incomplete starting point, but a starting point nonetheless."

Ariavary frowns at you, "be careful what Knowledge you seek, for it comes with a price."

You stare right back, unafraid to meet her gaze. "We humans have long known that when one stares into the void, the void stares back. I sought knowledge of the Eldar and Necrons so that when Kamas make its inevitable appearance, I can hurt it far worse than it has hurt me and my crew. The key to this will be getting Kamas to walk into a trap of some sort. To do that, I need bait. So I ask again, Can you search for Anai's mind by the age of her soul, or your connection to her from long ago?"

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Ariavari sighs. "not by the age of her 'soul', but perhaps by our connection."

You nod, "then I'll go and find Jace, see what he knows of the as-yet unmapped portions of the Terra Incarnadine, and figure out how to set a trap for a reality bender."

Four Hours Later…

The Dark Angels have spread out through the Engineering spaces, searching for emperor knows what. When you ask Jace about the un-mapped portions of the ship, you get the distinct impression that he is hiding something.

"Alright Jace, we may have a stray 'machine-mind' aboard this ship, and we need to find it. So fess up, or at least give me a reason why you cannot talk about the un-mapped areas."

Jace thinks on it for a moment, "the only areas I haven't mapped are the center of the Plasma and Warp drives, for obvious reasons, and the main Computer Core due to unusually high levels of electromagnetic radiation. Levels that would ruin any scanning instrumentation in moments, and the operator moments later."

You sigh. "Ok, so those three areas are out of our reach for the moment. But wouldn't lethal levels of radiation pretty much melt the computer core? I'm no Enginseer, but dataslates are usually more fragile than people in my experience. And I'd expect a Computer Core to be more fragile still."

Jace pauses dead-still. "That logic holds up. So this 'machine-mind' is in the main Computer Core. I'll have to work on a way to access it safely."

You shake your head, "I need you working on something else actually. Kamas the Technomancer survived the destruction of the Gilbi shipyard, and demonstrated some serious reality-warping abilities when it came after me on Vrenna. I need some way of trapping it, preferably permanently. Man-portable would be ideal, but I'll take what you can make."

Jace un-pauses, tapping a toe on the deckplate. "A stasis field would work, but I know not how to make them. Perhaps the Inquisitor might know how, or have access to them?"