Chapter Twelve: Tech Sleuthing

Icarus and Dae work to decode the wormhole network's addressing system by analyzing satellite data. Through radio frequency experiments and drone surveys of 342 wormholes, they successfully map the civilization's coordinate system and discover a network of gates that potentially spans the galaxy, offering an alternative to their original sub-light journey toward the galactic center.

Icarus hypothesizes that the wormhole network must have address identification systems, reasoning that the aligned satellites holding the gates open should transmit this data. After discovering the correct frequency to query the satellites, Icarus and Dae collect network packet responses in hexadecimal format. Dae travels back to the home system to gather address data from the local wormholes while Icarus analyzes the packets. By comparing data, they identify swapped field values that indicate source and destination addresses. Over three weeks, they send drones through all 342 wormholes to map the network. Each drone reads address data, captures images for navigational reference, and scans for additional wormholes. Analyzing the extracted data in a spreadsheet, they determine the civilization uses a 10-bit byte system and deduce the coordinate system uses radial distance, galactic latitude, and altitude measurements similar to Earth's approach. Testing conversions reveals a close match, with minor drift likely due to stellar proper motion or periodic updates. Examining the full 3D map in the holotank, they observe that most destinations are relatively local, but several long-distance jumps suggest the network could circumnavigate the galaxy. Icarus proposes using the wormhole hubs as a faster route to the galactic center instead of continuing sub-light travel, selecting a hub seven degrees around the galaxy at the same distance from the core as a leading candidate destination.