There wasn't time to scream, even in realtime.
Bruno felt his Mind collapse and die. Transcendence guttered out like a candle flame in a raw wind.
The cold blackness roared into his very soul, a dark hurricane of torment. Loss burned like some dark acid, shattering his Transcended Self. Gone, gone — scattering its torn threads to the cosmic wind…
In what felt like death agony, Bruno sensed the electromagnetic pulse impact the Sun-Tzu's hull. Holoscreens flickered multicolored visual static and vanished, roaring. Sparks geysered from consoles. Navigation deck lights failed. The deadly pulse leaped like a striking snake of electrical potential from the exploding console—
— ricocheting from the white steel walls—
— crackling, searching, like a living thing—
— to the flapping end of his interface cable.
He felt the charge enter his brain like a lit fuse via the suddenly traitorous conduit of metal and silicon. Bruno's mind seemed to explode in a fireball-hot supernova within his deepest self.
The suffocating blackness was obliterated by a lethal Light.
110010100011110010101010110111111010101110110100111000101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
The crashed aircar was upside down, silent and dark. With clumsy fingers, five-year-old Bruno released himself from his crashnet. He fell onto the inside of the roof with a painful thump. He lay there, panting and dizzy, feeling sick.
Burnt hair, scorched earth, a coppery wet smell. The aching blackness all around. He was very afraid.
Bruno could remember the explosion, the screaming, the long fall. He had no memory of the horrible crash.
His head hurt terribly.
Bruno turned his head to one side and tried to vomit, but there was nothing left in his stomach other than a trickle of foul liquid that burned his throat. Mumma will be angry, he thought, wiping his stinging mouth on a torn sleeve. He had to find Mumma and Papa, somewhere in the crashed aircar. The cabin had somehow become huge in the dark. He called and called, his voice echoing in the small space that had swollen so.
No one answered. Determined, he crawled forward with his arms, because his legs wouldn't work properly. They were numb, but at least they didn't hurt.
Nothing hurt as much as Bruno's head.
“Mumma? Papa?”
His left hand finally found his mother and father, still strapped side by side into their crashnets. They did not reply when he called, no matter how much he cried and pleaded. Finally, he shook them hard, making his head hurt even worse than before. His hands were wet and sticky, and tasted salty when he wiped his face.
Bruno cried, because his parents wouldn't hold him in the darkness, and wouldn't answer him. He had never felt so frightened and alone.
The headache finally became more than he could stand. Dizzy with pain and exhaustion, Bruno finally lay flat on the inside roof of the crashed aircar. Still crying softly, he reached up and touched the left side of his head, where it hurt so much.
His fingers sank five centimeters into his shattered skull. Into something pulpy and wet. Sharp slivers of bone pricked his fingertips. Lights exploded in Bruno's head, and he tasted the color blue, felt the smell of moist hay. He thought that he heard a siren in the distance, but he was in too much pain to pay attention.
Exhausted, he laid his pounding head down on the cool metal, to wait for his Mumma and Papa to wake up and take him home, to make everything all right. The aircar swirled around him dizzily. There were vague murmurs like anxious voices in the darkness, calling him.
Cold nothingness claimed little Bruno with clammy hands, and dragged him down into an unconscious void.
110010100011110010101010110111111010101110110100111000101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
Bruno opened his eyes for a moment, still convulsing randomly. Dim, reddish corridor emergency lights winked and glittered. He watched the main ring corridor of Sun-Tzu flying dimly past him.
Carol was carrying him toward Dolittle. The low, microgravity lope as she ran made his head flop helplessly from side to side. His neck was an agony of fire. Bruno tried to force words past his lips, but it hurt to think, let alone speak.
He thought that he heard Carol telling him to hang on, that Dolittle was very near, but the words were slippery, skidding away like the emergency lights.
“Mumma?” he muttered, and passed out.
CHAPTER TEN
Rrowl-Captain's roar of triumph echoed throughout the command bridge of the Belly-Slasher. He leaped from his command chair and threw his short-furred arms outward. The bridge crew shouted as well, claws unsheathed and drool spooling from excited lips.
The hunt was successful! After the long watches of skulking, they had their jaws on prey at last.
The image of the monkeyship on the main thinplate screen turned lazily. Obviously, attitude control and guidance were gone after the magneto-electrical pulse had impacted the enemy vessel. The contra-matter drive still fired constantly, spewing a deadly exhaust column as the ship rotated randomly. The reaction drive's basic control electronics were deeply protected within the iceball of the human-monkey vessel. But piloting functions were clearly incapacitated.
All as planned, Rrowl-Captain purred to himself.
Dim flickers and flashes of coronal discharge crawled like living things across the surface of the great sphere of the alien ship. It was the only evidence of the enormous electronics-devouring pulse born of the monopole bomb, a smashing Heroic fist that had devastated the electronics of the human vessel.
Rrowl-Captain's batwing ears raised and stretched outward in pride. The victory was not without cost. Many Heroes had died for this prize, he knew. The losses were significant, but acceptable. Blood of Heroes had been well spent on this hunt.
The entire crew of Pouncing-Strike, including the annoying little Cha'at-Captain, had been vaporized in a microsecond by the monkeyship exhaust early on. Little honor there. But the brave captain of Spine-Cruncher would have a posthumous Full Name, to the great honor of his sons and fathers! Rrowl-Captain's Warrior Heart soared.
A price well paid — for victory and honor. Both captains and crewkzin of Pouncing-Strike and Spine-Cruncher had been, even unwittingly, a credit to the Riit and the One Fanged God. He would pay for a Warrior's Honor Ceremony for both crews from his own pride-funds when he returned in triumph to Ka’ashi.
Rrowl-Captain growled once for silence on the command bridge.
“Navigator,” he spat and hissed in rare good humor, “please fly us toward the monkeyship forward hull, where Alien-Technologist has apparently found an access airlock.”
“At once, Dominant Leader,” the proud crewkzin snapped.
“Do not assume the monkeys are without resources, even now,” Rrowl-Captain cautioned. “Follow standard evasive maneuvers.”
“Surely the monkeys are helpless, Leader!”
Rrowl-Captain fanned his ears in humor. “It would appear so, yes. But what is the True Hero's approach with these monkeys?”
“Feint-and-pounce!” the bridge crew hissed and spat in rough chorus.