Teresa holds a seminar in a lecture hall at the University of Cambridge, presenting a rather politically incorrect topic. Later, she has dinner with her friend Dr. Adrian Wight, who urges Martinez to take a vacation instead of attend a scientific journey to the desolate Planet Pygar later this month because he is worried for Martinez' health. She declines. Two weeks later, the two of them travel to Pygar and get settled in.

Several days after their arrival on Pygar, Martinez leaves the security of the science compound on Pygar and explores the deeper caves on her own. She stumbles upon a strange rock formation and is soon telepathically confronted with an entity that threatens to kill her. Amused by Martinez' defiance, the entity instead opts to play a game with Martinez. Establishing a permanent telepathic connection, the entity leaves, knowing that Martinez would try to come after it and either kill or study it due to her curious nature. After, Martinez would wake up in a hospital bed in the compound, where she is told that she was found unconscious in one of the caves below the compound, making her doubt the entire ordeal even happened. Following this, Martinez is put on compulsory leave and upon returning to her quarters to pack up, Martinez hallucinates that the entity left a note for her, wishing her good luck with her endeavour. The letter is signed simply with a lower case S.

Deciding the use the spare time during her compulsory leave for anything but getting well again, Martinez decides to look for something to occupy herself with. She is contacted by a Guildkeeper of the Core, Cordelia Lyell, who offers her a generous payment in return for a service that would be disclosed as soon as the both of them could meet in person. On Durban, Lyell revealed to Martinez that she is looking for a way to prevent her own inevitable death from old age. Initially very sceptical, Martinez primised to Lyell that she would try to work on a way; given that she took herself for one of the best in the field of bio-engineering, Martinez figured that she would be able to come up with something eventually, though it might come too late for Lyell. Over the course of the next few months, Martinez discovery that she can abuse the telepathic connection to the entity in certain conditions, allowing her to tap into the knowledge of the entity to fill in blanks in her own knowledge, at the drawback of suffering debilitating migraines afterwards. With this, admittedly, unfair advantage, Martinez creates a set of nanites able to be programmed to fulfill almost any function within the human biology and fits them to suit Lyell's needs. With the reward gained, Martinez purchases a Pelican civilian transport and names it the Pendragon, intending it to become a vault for her to store future samples of the nanites. She tells Adrian Wight that this is merely a means for them to get rich, while in reality, she figures the income would serve well to devise a way to kill the entity linked to her.

Given the relative novelty of the nanites, Martinez decides to test their durability by cloning a human and accelerating the growth of it by a factor of 64. Since the nanites used in Lyell's case were designed to prevent biological aging, Martinez would know definitively whether they worked if Contessa did not die of old age within a few months. While she reckoned with some failure to occur that would kill Contessa, none such would reveal itself, leaving the Doctor with a girl that grew way too fast, unable to speak or perform any higher mental tasks, thus prompting Martinez to look into a way of using the nanites she created to implant memories into Contessa to supplement for the non-existent own ones. She briefly deliberated killing Contessa to spare herself the trouble, but in the end, she did not.

Armed with a potentially very profitable product, Martinez contacts the Gallic Brigands in the hopes of making connections within Gallia. The aim is to exchange samples of the nanites used to halt the biological aging of Cordelia Lyell for goods and services that would allow Martinez to build a remote laboratory for the more delicate projects she couldn't do within Bretonian jurisdiction. The Brigand representitive agreed to a meeting.

Meeting with the Brigand escort, Martinez, Wight and Contessa travel to the city-planet of Marne and meet Rousseau, a Brigand Warlord. The Doctor proposed a deal to Rousseau, a partnership and offered him a sample of the Deus Formula, the same one used on Cordelia Lyell to halt biological aging, as a gift. While initially exceedingly sceptical, the Warlord eventually yielded to the Doctor's exceptional speechcraft as well as Contessa as living proof of the Formula's potency, and agreed to offer her and her associates space and resources on Boulogne Base in exchange for their services.

Following a link on the neural net, the Doctor is contacted by a man called Jonathan Kalh who offers Martinez a generous sum of money to outfit his vessel with a hyperspace module. While Martinez herself was not capable of providing him with what he wanted, her colleague Adrian Wight could, and so a bargain was struck.

Adrian Wight observes the finishing touches on the hyperspace module that had been built over the course of the last couple of weeks on board of the Amenhotep, Jonathan Kalh's vessel. The task was little more than busywork for Adrian, as quantum theory was something he had studied inside and out. While watching, he thinks about another project of his he gave the name Skyhook, which focuses around harnessing hyperspace technology for personnel travel, the main problem of this possibility being the inherent inaccuracy of a hyperspace jump that could simply spat out a human in the vacuum of space instead of the desired end point.

Kalh's XO approaches him from behind and startles Adrian, who drops his PAD in surprise. The impact of the device on the metal ground floor gives him an idea on how to approach the problem of Skyhook, though he would need a sufficiently large vessel to prove his theory. He notes that they would need a Bustard Civilian Carrier in the near future.

Adrian starts the search for a suitable Bustard that suits their budget and soon finds what he is looking for. While the Titanic itself has seen better days, the price tag made the necessary repairs worth the effort.

Adrian contacts AP Manufacturing of the Core for a plea of repairs. While he initially misnames them as Atlantis Manufacturing, which is a Maltese production firm, Martin McKinsey agrees to see Adrian and provide the repairs necessary to restore the Titanic — for a fair price. From APM, Adrian manages to obtain several samples of the substance called Narcrahtite, which he hopes will be the key to Skyhook.

Martinez seeks contact with Auxesia in the hopes that they are able to provide aid in Adrian's project. Wanting to procure knowledge about the entities known as Cult of Technology to Sirius, Martinez believes that the armour of the Cultists' carriers might be able to function as an insulation powerful enough to contain hyperspatial travel within a replica vessel, the Titanic, thus allowing personnel transport onboard. Auxesia denied access to their dossier on the Cultists at first, requiring Martinez apply as an affiliate in order to receive what she wants, which she did.

Having been asked to participate in an expedition to a newly found, defunct Nomad City in the orbit of Planet Knososs in Omicron Xi, Martinez and Adrian participate, treating it more like a side-errand.