The Celebrimbor left the station first thing in the morning the next day. Taylor and her crew had everything they needed and she didn't want to pay the docking fee to stay longer.
Their next stop would be an out of the way star system where she could modify the ship without raising too much attention. As it turned out, the ship's navigation system had a full map of the galaxy with information on every available system. Most of the data was freely available on the extranet, including the star charts Taylor had been looking for, but it seemed that Admiral Zorah had also left some of the results from the flotilla's exploration. Those were mostly system without an active relay but within a few day's travel from one.
None of them were marked as suitable for quarian habitation.
However, there was one close by that was convenient for her. It had two gas giants, including one with rings like Saturn, six terrestrial planets, though none in the habitable zone, and several asteroid belts of various compositions around a K-class star about twice the mass of the sun.
A perfect little hideaway rich in exploitable resources.
"Let's head to P3X-2559," Taylor said. "It should take about three days, right?"
"More or less," Lela confirmed. "We'll need to refuel on the way but there's a depot here," she pointed to the second system on their jump chain.
"Let's go then," Taylor nodded.
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Mordin stayed on the bridge to keep an eye on things while Taylor, Lela, and Niusa went to the engineering bay to get started on the upgrades. Even if they weren't in the Terminus Systems anymore, he said it was prudent to keep someone there at all times in case of emergencies.
"This doesn't look like a fabricator …" Lela said. "I can see where the omni-gel canisters are but the rest doesn't make sense. There's no injector nozzle visible nor focusing lenses for the lasers. These phased-array systems obviously serve a purpose but … I got nothing."
"I'm not an engineer," Niusa just shrugged. "To me it's all Krogan."
"It doesn't use an injection mechanism," Taylor explained. "Instead, the omni-gel is deconstructed into base particles which are moved through those tubes," she tapped a series of black cables, "they use a form of quantum tunneling to ferry the particles to their destination and inject them into the phased-array emitters which use a combination of precisely focused magnetic fields, gravitational manipulation, and particle beams to place them in the right shape and form the atoms and bonds."
"This is … I can't say it's impossible because it obviously works," she held one of the newly printed dishes in her hands, "but the science behind it shouldn't. You can't just … move elementary particles like that." She sounded a bit distressed.
"It merely means your understanding of the universe is … incomplete," Taylor said with a smile.
Lela rolled her eyes behind her mask while Niusa gave out a little giggle.
"Anyway, since we have some time on our hands, I want to build the AM reactor and the base frames for drives before we get to our destination."
"What's an 'ahem' reactor?" Niusa asked.
"It's a reactor that uses matter-antimatter reactions to produce energy, it's several orders of magnitudes more powerful than a fusion reactor though less than a zero-point extractor."
"They're also extremely dangerous," Lela added.
"Without proper containment, yes," Taylor acknowledged. "The design I plan to build uses a four dimensional spatial manifold to contain the reaction and store the fuel."
"But first, we need to finish upgrading the fabricator," she continued. "Most of the pieces are already printed so we only need to assemble everything."
"I can try to help but I'm not exactly an engineer," Niusa said hesitantly.
With the help of two people, the fabricator was ready to go in only a few hours. This allowed them to print the parts for the matter aggregate storage tank and the recycler. With all emitters in place, each part only took a few minutes but the toll on their omni-gel reserves was not insignificant. Once the trio was completed, Taylor connected everything together and chucked some empty crates inside the recycler to recoup some of the costs.
Taylor used the crane at the top of the engineering bay to move the old fabricator and recyclers to one of the storage bays and place the current once in their place since she had calculated things so that they fit in roughly the same space along the wall.
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After the recycler was completed and operational, everyone took a break from the engineering bay for a well deserved lunch break. It wasn't anything particularly special, Mordin put together something for Niusa and him while Taylor prepared for Lela and her. Most quarian meals were some kind of vegetable soup since it needed to be consumed through a straw once sterilized. Thankfully, there was quite a variety to choose from in their cryo-preserved pantry so Taylor could spice things up if she wanted.
Lela went for her shift on the bridge while Mordin followed Taylor back to the engineering bay.
"Alright, let's get started on the reactor," Taylor said. "I'll need to manufacture a few parts with my powers but that will be for later. Since it will take over the current drive core as the primary generator for the ship, it needs to sit in the same place to connect to the power conduits. It will also serve as a cradle to attach the slip and shift drives for a direct connection as those two are major power drains."
"Size of antimatter reactor will match size of drive core?" Mordin asked.
"More or less," Taylor nodded. "Though half the space will be the support structure, the reactor itself is half the diameter of the drive core."
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"Engineering crane not designed to remove drive core," he pointed out. "Operation usually requires docking at special facilities."
"I can cheat for that part, don't worry," she said. "The ship will need to be on backup power while I switch things out, however. No getting around that."
Taylor tapped the engineering console and brought up the plans for the antimatter reactor and the support structure. The reactor itself was a big sphere around five meters across attached to the back half of a much larger sphere, around nine meters across, with the front third cut off. On the exposed flat surface were two indentations to slot the drives and a host of power conduits behind them to route power where it was needed. She had also thought forward and left three cylindrical indents to place zero-point extractors once she could manufacture them.
Like with the fabricator, most of the space in the walls of the reactor was taken up by the control systems and only a two meter wide sphere was left open in the middle. It was inside that sphere that the reaction would take place and that the energy would be harvested.
Niusa pushed a grav-pallet stacked high with metal sheets, bars, rods, and tubes into the engineering bay. The engineering bay had several industrial machines to cut, bend, and drill metals but she found it easier to shape the materials directly with her powers. With a swipe of her hand, several sheets of metal flew into the air and were bent into shape by blue fields. Small spell circles appeared near the corners and fired precise lasers to cut off the excess metal. Everything that fell off was directed to the chute of the recycler for processing.
Taylor moved the parts to her left where Mordin welded them together to form the larger support framework with Niusa's help. Her fine control over her biotics allowed her to mimic telekinesis and steer the metal plates into alignment, freeing Taylor's attention to focus on shaping the pieces in the first place.
In only about two hours, they had the first part ready. After a quick break, coffee for Mordin and Niusa, tea for Taylor, they resumed with the reactor frame. The skeleton was quickly assembled while the missing parts were being fabricated. Mordin and Taylor assembled most of the control electronics in the frame and neutron harvesters inside the reaction chamber.
With everything but the spatial fold generator in place, Taylor cleared a circle at the center of the engineering bay and got to work. She had bought a small crate of silica crystals to use as a base to manufacture the various exotic materials she needed. They were close enough in their base structure that she would waste minimal energy during the process.
She placed one of the metal sheets on the ground and started to engrave a highly complex transmutation circle on its surface with a power. One of the components of Archmage was one that allowed the modification of materials through an Alchemy-like process which saved her the need to create a dedicated power for each transformation.
"This looks closer to occultism than engineering," Niusa remarked. "Are you sure that it will work?"
"Powers sometimes have odd expressions," Taylor explained, "it's part of a defense mechanism to conceal their true nature. There is also an element of usability. Even if it's somewhat odd at first glance, this kind of interface can be easier to use than something purely mental. With the mental enhancement powers I have, it would be trivial to visualize and stay focused while the transformations occur, but this power was configured for someone without them."
"Power expression influenced by cultural context?" Mordin tapped his chin. "With such framework, even primitive civilizations capable of harnessing effects."
"Part of the idea, yes," Taylor nodded. "I'm starting the transformation," she placed five of the crystals inside the circle and took several steps back. "Stand back and do not be inside the circle when it fires off, you don't want to see what happens."
Mordin and Niusa wisely stepped behind her. With an effort of will, she triggered the transmutation and the engraved circle glowed a soft purple. Motes of light rose up inside and drifted towards the five crystals which were lifted a few inches above the ground. The process continued for around thirty seconds until the crystals were fully saturated. Then, a ring of light appeared around each and seemingly squeezed them for several seconds. The light intensified further as the rings grew and stretched the glowing crystal inside them until the light had entirely faded.
The circle dimmed and the five circular crystal dishes lowered to the ground.
They landed with a soft clinking sound.
"Wow," Niusa whispered, "that was a show."
Taylor examined the lenses with all of her senses. Their structure was perfect, not that she expected anything less from her power. She mounted them to the control arrays and crawled inside the reactor frame to place them inside the reaction chamber.
"Alright, it's done," she stretched. "I'll connect it to the power circuit and we can start the bootstrap process."
"Bootstrap process?" Niusa asked.
"Unlike conventional reactors, antimatter reactor converts own fuel during operation," Mordin explained. "Bootstrap involves creation of initial fuel from external energy source."
"Oh, like an ezzo core," Niusa nodded in understanding.
"Exactly. Since we can't afford to suck all the power from the main power bus while underway, we'll use one of the backup fusion plants instead. Hopefully it won't be needed "
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With the antimatter reactor built and ample time to build the rest of the frames, Taylor told everyone to take the next day off and relax. She didn't want to work her friends to the bone for her goal after all. After their customary movie night, Taylor took the night shift on the bridge.
Lela had deemed her proficient enough with the controls to steer the ship in case of an emergency. In normal circumstances, the auto-pilot took care of everything during in-system transit. This gave Taylor some time to meditate and work on her powers.
Up until then, she had avoided using the Designer sub-power of Hierophant due to its apparent complexity but she had an objective in mind and it was the best way to accomplish it. The flight bracelets had been an experiment, one that had been very successful, but it also exposed some issues with her approach. The enchantment sub-power was very powerful for highly focused powers but the costs quickly rose and became untenable if she wanted to add more diverse and polyvalent abilities.
One of her ideas had been to network multiple enchanted items to work together. It was possible and the overhead was minimal but she still wasn't satisfied by the lack of overall flexibility. Instead, she had the brilliant idea to take a page from the playbook of the shards themselves. Instead of attaching the powers directly to the bracelet, which actually bound a miniature sub-shard to the object, she could make an item into an anchor directly and connect it to a specially designed power on her end. This power could then act as a bridge for whatever abilities she wanted to give.
Was this how it had started all?
The Warrior and the Thinker?
Maybe but it didn't mean she had to follow in their tracks. There would be no trigger events, no Faustian bargains, and no deception. Her friends would know what they got and from whom. Though she wouldn't show them Asteria's true form to preserve their sanity. Her mind ran on hardware capable of processing the terrifying eldritch forms of a shard, the towering constructions of ever shifting crystals shimmering with impossible colors, and its custodians but squishy organic brains couldn't.
And so she dove deeper into the intricacies of Designer. The power was centered around three main components, Clusters, Cores, and Modules. The first was required for the other two to function. It was, in essence, a sub-shard and it appeared in her mind in the form of an hexagonal grid. On each tile, she could place either a Module, which was akin to the components used in Combiner, or a Core, closer to what she could do with Prototype but fully programmable, and by combining and connecting different ones she could create powers to her specifications.
Of course, she needed resources to do all of that, nothing was free in the universe after all. Thankfully, her steadfast refusal to use the power until now had allowed her to accumulate plenty of resources. She had been awake for around twenty days so far which meant she had a total of four Cluster improvements, over three thousand Modules, and nearly five hundred Cores.
Or in summary, a massive amount of bullshit.