EP603: An Equal Share of the Bone

[eytanz]

Escape Pod 603: An Equal Share of the Bone

AUTHOR: Karen Osborne
NARRATOR: Ibba Armancas
HOST: Tina Connolly

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To kill a theriida, you need gunboats and suits, laser cutters and open-mawed cargo bays, brawn and a stout heart, and God on your side.

We, of course, had none of that.

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I learned in the merchant marines to never shoot a theriida with a standard railgun. They’ll thrash and writhe and put angry holes through your hull, and eating vacuum is nobody’s idea of a good trade run. No: a theriida’s distributed brain needs a distributed solution. If you don’t have a spinal lance capable of wide-range dispersal, move on. Don’t even try. Back in the academy, before Eliot and I signed on with Garuda, we used to inflate massive plastex balloons with pressuregel and deploy them beside our training vessels, taking turns at the lance control. It wasn’t anything like the real thing.

Inexperienced spacers often believe that the glimmering purple sac in a theriida’s bioluminescent belly is the animal’s brain, but that is only because we mammals forget that the universe is a multifarious, violent parade of a hundred thousand ways to be mortal. But we weren’t inexperienced. Our captain, Nate, had thousands of hours of piloting time. I was the best gunner this side of the Mercy War. Eliot could make a working engine out of spit and vomit. That’s why we believed we could handle a theriida kill.

Hubris. That’s the word.

Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!

[Katzentatzen]

This was “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin-level space-ruthless. I loved the body horror of the unknowable radiation-transcendence. Sometimes I fear that love is too strong a force.

[Michael W. Cho]

Loved the imagery caused by the radiation stuff.

[Jethro's belt]

I'm OK with the handwavium science but I do not understand what happened in the story. Perhaps I was a bit busy driving but did I miss a clue?
   

[Ichneumon]

I'm OK with the handwavium science but I do not understand what happened in the story. Perhaps I was a bit busy driving but did I miss a clue?
   

Space truckers down on their luck tried to harvest a fusion-powered space-whale. The radiation turned the two guys into space-whales and the girl uploaded her brain into the ship before her body died and is looking for a cure for her space whale friends. That's my 2 sentence summary.

I did like this one. The point that greed motivates exploration was right on.

[CryptoMe]

Space truckers down on their luck tried to harvest a fusion-powered space-whale. The radiation turned the two guys into space-whales and the girl uploaded her brain into the ship before her body died and is looking for a cure for her space whale friends. That's my 2 sentence summary.

Awesome summary!! Though I thought she was only interested in curing her lover.

I definitely liked the concept of this one, even if many of the details were handwavy. Would love to hear more about this universe, possibly with some less handwavy explanations in a longer format novel?

[Fenrix]

This was excellently dark and hunts the borderlands of cosmic horror. The narration was killer, too.