Sunday January 12, 2014
Book 14: Broken Wind — Part III: Exhalation and Exit Strategies

Transcript

NARRATOR: Mialhoua-Ua, "grounded" against the interior hull...

TAGON: Ventura!

This ship is plugged into the station.  I want you to hack that channel and take control.

PARA: Of the ship?

TAGON: Of the station.

PARA: Sir, that's ridiculous.

The station is millions of years old.  The computational architecture is completely alien, and it's in a language nobody speaks.

TAGON: Not nobody.  This ship speaks it.  The station shut down the ship's annie plants and then spun her up for gravity.

That would require compatible protocols, right?

PARA: Sure.  And now we have two systems I don't know how to talk with.

TAGON: But this ship was restored by the Prabstdi.  They studied this relic for a hundred years, and Ennesby has copies of all their data.

PARA: Okay, you're right.  This is possible.  But it's still a long shot.

PARA: I'll need to re-clock Ennesby, and then negotiate this operation with his poor, bifurcated brain, which is manifesting at least three clinically terminal cases of A.I. insanity.

PARA: Show me where to set up.

TAGON: "Up" is right.

The junction is in the ship-spine, two-hundred and fifty meters above us.

PARA: We're back to "ridiculous."