“This ship could actually fly again, though not through the slipstream,” Bishop says. “The destruction wasn’t to her thrusters, but to her warp drives, life-support systems, and the hull. Atmo leaked out, they had to make an emergency landing.” We can see the Ianeth’s mind at work, visualizing in a way that neither human nor Cereb can do. It’s almost cinematic the way he projects the crash simulation against the back of his retina. Calculation merges with imagination, and we can see what he perceives as the most likely scenario. We see it all. The dead-on hit from some unknown Cereb space force, a final leap into the quantum slipstream to escape. They might’ve made it several hundred light-years before they had to reenter “real” space. They needed someplace to touch down. Pushed to the farthest edges of the galaxy, they were desperate. They might’ve made it, too, Bishop thinks, moving around to her gutted belly. But something followed them. A scan of the belly show the split compristeel, the scorch marks. A sticky hull-bomb attached itself to them before they could make the jump. They probably counted their blessings when they escaped, and the Cerebs let them think that. When they were making their descent, it detonated. They probably never knew what happened, only that they were crashing.
What do You think about The Immortal Game (Rook's Song)?
