Shreya: still cute.

They get about twelve minutes of surplus hugging in before Devika gets the go ahead to enter the span of Dysofrag fields beyond the colonial border checkpoint.

"Thank you." She responds (voice only) to the leon who's coordinating her navigation. "Please keep comm chatter to a minimum once I've entered the field. Need to focus on safe debris traversal. Have high value cargo aboard."

"Understood," the navigator replies.

The transmission cuts out.

Devika's SLAYER is not hailed again as it threads its way between the outermost clusters of dense orbital detritus.

Deskyl scoots the occasional particularly annoying piece of frag out of their way, being careful to return them to predictable headings when she's done.

Shreya watches.

”So these are the Inner Colonies, huh?”

For some reason, she’d expected things to look different here?

But the view through the SLAYER’s optics is just like it’d be back home. Obviously, the dysofrags care not whether humans or dragons lord over them.

“Yeah. Sort of?”

Devika highlights a couple of spots on the forward screen.

”Those are the coordinates for the inner settlements, we still have a few degrees to go.”

“What’s that one called?” Shreya points to the nearest settlement, then at the two adjacent to it. “And that one? And...”

“Outpost 5, Outpost 4 and Outpost 3.”

“You colonials continue to be really bad at naming stuff.”

    "It makes sense that things in the Draco territories would have more interesting names, she says, since the dragons are so focused on their aesthetics. The colonials probably have different priorities."

"Outpost 2." Devika continues her survey of the area. "That's where I was--where they said I was brought up."

She has memories of a happy childhood: a good coven, enthusiastic peers, and countless adventures.

"Pretty sure I've actually never been there."

"But the place you really were as a child, where's that?"

"I don't have any idea."

"But the mission?" Shreya wonders if she's misheard or misunderstood something just now, because it really sounded like Devika just claimed not to know where her own infiltration proposal's target is. "You told Artha and Culamine that you'd--"

"--I told the dragons what they needed to hear. I had to get myself and Deskyl clear of the Draco Territories while a window to do so remained open."

    "Deskyl knows she could have just asked. But Devika needs to feel in control of things, right now; she's not ready to trust them, or anyone really. And Deskyl can find it with magic, anyway. With your permission, of course," she directs at Devika.

Devika gets the wind knocked out of her a little by—needs to feel in control of things—but pulls herself back together by the time DZ’s done speaking.

Deskyl makes her feel small. Not actively, not maliciously, just as an emergent property of the facts of their vicinity. Is this how the secessionists feel around their dragons?

”Permission.” She grips onto the one word that absolutely requires a response from her. “I do want to find that place, stop those people. I won’t tell you not to if you have a way to magic us to their doorstep.”

Deskyl nods and positions herself in front of and slightly below Devika, near the wall.

    "She needs you to think about what it felt like to be there. She'll rotate to face the way we need to go."

“Okay.”

She closes her eyes and puts herself back in the place where she came from. She remembers the slight chill of the winding halls, the persistent smell of anesthetic in the air, the fluorescent light, the dizzying lack of external reference frame...

Even before Devika opens her eyes, there's a gentle nudge of intuition, pushing her deeper into the dysofrag field, and when she does open them, Deskyl is facing just the same way.

Devika maneuvers to intercept a passing plate dysofrag. The worn biomech creaks around them during the rebound; she kicks off on vector matching Deskyl’s directions.

Deskyl looks distant for a moment when she comes out of her trance.

    "She says the mind-reading isn't involuntary yet, but it will be next time."

Devika registers this warning only distantly; her attention is on the task at hand.

She avoids deploying flash plates, since those will immediately alert Veda or other nearby colonials to their course correction, and instead does her best to maneuver through oncoming debris using just grappling tethers and the SLAYER’s own limbs.