The Deep Shade was a place where the sun was a mere suggestion, filtered through layers of permanent mist and the jagged, overhanging lips of the canyon walls. The air here was perpetually cool and heavy with the scent of wet stone and ancient moss.
For Mark Turner, this damp purgatory was the perfect laboratory, a sanctuary far from the prying eyes of the Olo'eyktan's scouts. He stood at the center of a grove of ancient, stunted trees, his posture rigid as his eyes glowed a steady, rhythmic cyan, reflecting the high-density data streaming across his retina.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED: BIOLOGICAL COMPILER ACTIVE]
[MAPPING LOCAL CELLULAR ARCHITECTURE...]
[TARGET: SKY-WOOD SAPLING - STRAIN T-4]
[STATUS: READY FOR SEQUENCING]
"We aren't building a boat," Mark told the exiles—Kìreysì, Sänume, and Txon—as they stood around a sapling that pulsed with a faint, greenish light. "A boat is a dead thing. It is a shell that carries you across the water. We are programming an organism. If we want to survive Rì'al's wrath or the metal-hawks of the RDA, this ship must have a will of its own. It must know when it is hurt, and it must know how to fight the wind before we even feel the gust."
The first month was a grueling exercise in Molecular Sculpting. Mark had identified a specific genetic strain of "Sky-wood," a timber known for its natural air-pockets and low-density fibers.
But where the Tayrangi simply harvested it and allowed it to dry, Mark intended to rewrite its growth pattern from the seed up.
He knelt before the primary seed-pod, his Kuru connected to a nearby spirit-tree root that acted as a biological uplink. The System projected a holographic overlay onto his vision, highlighting the grain of the wood in neon cyan.
[WARNING: STANDARD CELLULAR ALIGNMENT INSUFFICIENT FOR HIGH-G LOADS]
[PROPOSING ALTERNATE GEOMETRY: DOUBLE-HELIX LATTICE]
"Now, Sänume," Mark whispered, sweat beading on his blue forehead as the System's processing load strained his Na'vi brain. "Guide the fibers. Use the weaving techniques of your mother, the ones she used for the great hunting nets. But do not let them grow straight. If they grow straight, they will snap under the pressure of a high-speed bank. They must spiral. They must seek the strength of the circle."
As Sänume applied her ancestral weaving pressure, coaxing the young, pliable shoots to curve and interlock, Mark manipulated the nutrient flow via the System's chemical synthesizer.
He was siphoning specific minerals from the rich canyon soil—trace amounts of carbon and silica—and injecting them directly into the sapling's vascular system.
[INJECTING GROWTH CATALYST: ENZYME-7B]
[CELLULAR REPLICATION ACCELERATED: 300%]
[MONITORING TENSILE STRENGTH... 40%... 85%... OPTIMAL]
Under their combined effort, the sapling didn't just grow; it braided itself into a double-helix lattice. The System monitored every cell like a hawk. Whenever a microscopic stress fracture appeared in the digital simulation, a red pulse would flash in Mark's HUD, and he would signal Txon to apply a mineral-rich poultice to that specific spot, "cauterizing" the growth with concentrated nutrients.
"It feels... angry," Sänume whispered, her fingers vibrating as the wood hardened beneath her touch.
"It's not angry," Mark replied, his voice strained. "It's concentrated. It's the difference between a tree and a spear."
By the end of the first thirty days, a sleek, amber-hued skeleton sat in the mist. It was thirty meters of hollowed, reinforced grace—a multi-tiered hull that possessed the tensile strength of Terran titanium but weighed less than a single Windtrader sail.
The exiles saw a miracle born of the earth; Mark saw a perfectly rendered biological aircraft frame, a skeletal masterpiece waiting for its muscles.