The Sphere of Gilgamesh is being installed on all Skimmers by Ngarra's crew. It is a new technology that will make Xtract mining drones autonomous and able to learn group behaviour. Meanwhile, a grid buoy anomaly has appeared and becomes the focus of interest in 'the Area'. The mimic program has been deployed by the Chinese-owned GlobeCorpMining deep sea mineral harvester, and if combined with the sphere and its red queen sequence will take control of the grid. During completion of overdrive trials for the alternate propulsion system installed on Skimmers a confrontation occurs between all parties.