Taylor didn't expect to figure everything out in one night, even with all seven of her forks. One of the fundamental limits of the simulation system made it impossible to increase the time ratio faster than real time without degrading the accuracy. If she had already built the powers, the accuracy loss was negligible since the hardware had something to extrapolate from, but during experiments with new configurations, it would often have completely unpredictable results.
She guessed it was one of the reasons precogs were fuzzy around trigger events.
After some experiments with Modules, she managed the first step, to create a very basic power. She could manifest a small beacon that shone with a soft light. It had the minimal number of components to work, an interface to direct the power, a way to target where the light should appear relative to her body, and a pair of effector modules to emit the light itself.
This gave her a better understanding of how everything interacted.
She continued to experiment for a while with her forks to create various minor powers. Then, she stepped up her game and unified them all into a larger unit with a single control system. More or less the equivalent of a grab-bag cape. Once this setup worked, she modified it so that the control system connected not directly to her but to an external beacon with the help of some special interface components.
With this, she proved that her initial idea was viable.
At least in theory.
"It feels very strange to be disconnected from everything," Delta said. Around her wrist was the prototype interface bracelet. "Let's go, interface test number one."
She put her hand in front of her, palm facing up. Beta and Gamma were monitoring the host side while Alpha and Epsilon watched the modules themselves. They watched in slow motion, thanks to their accelerated thought speed, as the interface in the bracelet picked up Delta's thoughts and transmitted them to the control array, switchers, routers, and combinators lit and enabled the right sub-power, targeting information flowed along the virtual connections and effectors burst to life.
Let there be light.
"Test one successful," Delta said. "Using a single power worked."
She dismissed the light and the system went back to its idle state. They all poured over the data and checked that everything had reset properly. Their first few tries before the interface was implemented, improperly flushed data lines resulted in some involuntary power activations.
"Interface test two," Delta announced, "multiple powers."
A light appeared above her right hand but quickly fizzled out. Delta clutched her head in pain.
"Ow," she grimaced, "there's a problem with the information feedback system, I got only garbled mess back."
"Hmm," Gamma brought up multiple holographic screens. "Looks like the multiplexing through the interface was faulty. The interface sent the correct packets but the demuxer didn't buffer correctly."
"I think it's this part of the enchantment," Beta pointed on the screen. "The packets were dispatched to the all of the channel buffers simultaneously. The result was garbled data."
"I see …" Gamma tapped her chin.
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When Niusa came to fetch her for breakfast, she let four of her forks continue and followed her friend to the cafeteria.
"Wasn't too boring?" She asked.
"No, it's soothing to watch the stars pass by," Taylor answered with a smile. "Maybe I'll get tired of it one day but I hope not. I was also working on a project in the background."
"Oh, a project?" She asked with clear interest.
"It's a surprise," Taylor winked.
Once they reached the cafeteria, she plucked a cereal bar and poured herself a glass of juice. She wasn't much of a breakfast person. She had enjoyed the eggs and bacon her dad used to sometimes cook in the mornings but once she had joined the Wards, cooking meals had fallen to the wayside in favor of other things.
Mordin had his customary cup of coffee, industrial strength, and a bowl of … something. It looked like cat food, cubes submerged in a thick liquid, but Taylor hadn't dared to ask what it was. The can featured a happy looking salarian on the side. Lela took some coffee, sterilized, and a packet of quarian oatmeal. They had an entire crate full of the stuff in cryo-storage in an assortment of flavors.
"I think the antimatter reactor has finished bootstrapping," Lela said.
"It should have finished two and a half hours ago," Taylor said. "How did you know?"
"The sound," she explained, "it dropped a few octaves when it started to idle."
"Perfect," Taylor stretched her arms. "I'll connect it to the power system today."
Since they had nothing planned that day, Lela offered to introduce them to some krogan card games she had learned to Tuchanka. Taylor was surprised krogans even had card games but she understood as soon as the explanations started. Those card games were very competitive and involved an unusual degree of physical activity. With no actual krogan in the crew, however, the risks of physical injury were minimal.
After a few hours of lightly pushing each other around, they switched to watching a movie. This time, it was a recently released film 'based on real events' about the attack on the citadel two years prior. It featured a Spectre called Saren Arterius going rogue and leading an army of geth to attack the citadel. The hero was another Spectre, a human woman named Alexandra Shepard, who opposed him. The movie ended with a final confrontation between the two at the center of the citadel while a massive space battle raged around them. Some scenes were apparently based on real footage from the battle.
Mordin called it unrealistic, Spectres weren't action movie heroes. Taylor agreed that the story was probably embellished but she had also witnessed the kind of clusterfuck some operations could turn into when shit hit the fan.
After lunch, Taylor made a quick detour by the engineering bay to connect the antimatter reactor. She quickly printed several long cables and adapters to connect from the ports on the reactor, rated for the full output, to one suitable for the auxiliary feeds. To make sure that the cables wouldn't melt, she configured the reactor to run at a lower output. With everything connected, she switched the power distribution system to pull from the new reactor and placed both fusion plants in backup mode.
Once she was done, she met with Niusa in the lounge and continued to read The Lord of the Rings with her. Lela brought one of her model kits and started to build it while Mordin disappeared into his laboratory. Even though the quarian vessel had a mostly utilitarian design, the common living areas were built with comfort in mind even if they were on the smaller side. It made sense, a happy and well rested crew was less likely to make mistakes at a critical moment.
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It was the last day of transit, Niusa was on bridge duty during the morning which left Mordin and Lela to help Taylor with the slip drive frame. It was smaller than the reactor, coming in at only three meters in diameter but the structure was similar with a central ovoid chamber to hold the core surrounded by control systems in the walls.
Since the drive needed to be opened for maintenance, she built it in two symmetrical halves with connectors linking them. The bottom contained the power systems and the top half housed the control systems. It was built the same way as before, Taylor would take the structural elements and shape with her powers, then Mordin and Lela welded or bolted them together in the right shape.
Once the housing was built, Taylor slotted the freshly printed control arrays into place and connected them to the control computers. At the same time, Mordin did the same with the power injectors. Lela took care of wiring the connectors and the interlock system that held both halves together.
The last step was to build the core. This time, the core required several different types of crystals embedded inside a matrix. She placed five flat sheets of metal on the ground and engraved the transmutation circles. She also explained why while doing it to Lela to avoid any confusion.
"Get behind me," Taylor said.
When everyone was safely out of the way, she triggered the transmutations. With five at once, the light show was much more impressive. The matrix crystal was particularly impressive due to its large size, the sizeable pile of smaller crystals she had placed inside the circle slowly merged together like mercury and formed an egg almost two meters along the biggest axis. On its surface were numerous hexagonal shafts to slot the various space-warping crystals that were being produced by the other arrays.
"That is impressive," Lela nodded, "but the light show seemed superfluous."
"Powers are very fond of dramatics," Taylor shrugged. "Personally, I think it has some charm. Compared to the energy required to rewrite matter, the special effects are a drop in the bucket."
With telekinesis, Taylor slotted all the crystals in their proper receptacles and encased the core inside the drive frame.
One down, one to go.
They went for a quick lunch. Afterwards, Mordin left for his turn on the bridge and Niusa came to help with the final drive. It was the same size as the other but the inner chamber was a regular dodecahedron. Without Mordin and his near intuitive understanding of the blueprints, it took twice the time to assemble the frame properly. Niusa and Lela handled the power distribution together as it was the easiest part while Taylor took care of the rest.
This time, the core needed twelve different types of crystals plus the matrix. Nearly the entire floor of the engineering bay was covered in metal plates engraved with transmutation circles. It also completely emptied their stock of silica crystals.
"If you feel a headache building, look away," Taylor warned. "Some of these materials exist across four or more dimensions and organic brains have trouble coping with it. You might also feel slight nausea or a feeling of existential dread, it's perfectly normal."
"Hold on, existential dread?" Niusa asked.
"Just slightly," Taylor reassured her and started the transmutations.
The light show began and the seed crystals started to shift. For the smaller components, several of the crystals flew up and shot towards each-other. Instead of colliding, however, they started to merge together but the resulting mass did not grow. Instead, they were being folded into other dimensions and arranged into the proper structure.
"Ugh," Niusa grimaced and looked away.
The most impressive was the matrix, the hyperdodecahedron existed across twelve distinct dimensional axes. Its surface was constantly shifting as the transmutation process rotated it along various axes to suck in the material from realspace. The various slots on the different faces, of various dimensional cardinality, made the matrix look like it was hollow from certain angles.
Half an hour later, the final crystal touched down on the ground. Taylor picked everything up and quickly assembled it. She aligned the matrix so that the part inside of realspace was the right shape and slotted it inside the drive. The interlocks clicked shut and she placed the drive inside of its receptacle on the support frame.
"Is it over?" Lela asked as she peeked between two fingers.
"Yes," Taylor said. "Sorry for that, I didn't expect that strong of a reaction."
"You warned us," Niusa said, "but it's another thing to see it with your own eyes."
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With everything ready, they only needed to find somewhere to park the ship once they reached P3X-2559. If the map they had was accurate, the best place was likely at the L2 point behind one of the gas giants as the massive planet would protect them from the sun.
Taylor went to take a shower then watched some asari drama with Niusa to pass the time.
After a few hours, Mordin announced their arrival over the intercom. They all moved to the bridge and Lela piloted the frigate in place. Mordin checked that their orbit was stable several times while the rest of them shot down all non-essential systems on the ship. The two fusion plants were brought back out of their idle state to full power as the drive core spooled down.
Taylor hoped nobody showed up as their ship was more or less a sitting duck without any weapons, shields, or propulsion.
"Drive core, offline," Mordin announced. "Fusion plants, nominal. Operational window, five days."
The antimatter reactor was placed in standby state to allow for the transfer.
"I'm going," Taylor said. "Cut the artificial gravity in the engineering zone and prepare to depressurize once I'm there."
"Understood," Mordin nodded.
She left the bridge and made her way to the back of the ship. While the engineering bay and core room were connected, the door between them was too small. The only way to get the core in and out of the ship was to partially dismantle it, something that should only be done at a specialized dock. She had toyed with the idea of storing the cores in a pocket dimension during the swap but she wasn't absolutely certain that the transfer wouldn't destabilize the element zero, even after all of the residual charge had been purged.
Instead she would be using portals to move things about. One pair to move the current core outside the ship, as there wasn't enough space inside the engineering bay for two, and another to bring the new core into place. Then she could move the old core back into the ship for processing.
Taylor immediately noticed the absence of gravity when she stepped into the hallway leading to the engineering bay. The system was split into multiple zones that could be controlled individually, presumably to be able to perform maintenance or selectively turn them off to save on power.
The door closed behind her and she heard the bulkhead seals lock in place.
"Depressurizing," Mordin announced through the radio.
She felt a current as the air was sucked into the circulation vents. By the time she reached the engineering bay, the air had thinned considerably. She waited several more minutes until only faint traces remained and entered the core room. Being able to fly, the lack of artificial gravity didn't bother her one bit. She simply hovered in the middle of the room and ran the final checks. The core was fully powered down and all of the relays leading to it had been switched off.
One by one, Taylor disconnected the various conduits and connectors that attached the drive core to the ship. She used telekinesis to loosen thousands of bolts at once, some close to the size of her head. With a final push, the core came loose and she took hold of it.
"Opening portal," she announced.
"Understood," Mordin confirmed.
Reality tore open above the core, a perfect circle of warped space that led outside.
"Moving core." "Understood."
She carefully monitored everything as the massive sphere crossed the threshold and continued through unimpeded. The element zero passed through without issues as well. She hadn't even detected any fluctuations. She stopped the core outside and stabilized its position.
"Switching portal." "Understood."
The previous pair closed and she opened a new one connecting both rooms. First, she disconnected the antimatter reactor from the auxiliary circuit and slotted it in place on the support frame. Then, she gently coaxed the support frame into position, connected everything, and secured it in place with the bolts. The slip drive was next, she gently placed it in the cradle to avoid breaking any connectors and bolted it in place. Finally, she repeated the process with the shift drive.
"Switching portal." "Understood."
She pulled the old core inside the engineering bay and onto a scaffolding.
"Closing portal." "Understood."
"Operation complete," she said with relief. "Begin restart sequence."
"Beginning restart sequence," Mordin announced. "Antimatter reactor spool up … twenty percent … forty percent … sixty percent … eighty percent … one hundred percent. Power flow stable."
The full restart sequence would take a few hours but the hard part was finally over.