“I didn’t know bruises could get that big,” I said. We were both looking out over the spacedock. I looked briefly over at Aadar. He was eating something odorous and chickpea based. He arched his eyebrows in, I guess, affirmation of my comment, but his mouth was full, so he just said “Mmf.”
“I’ve only seen the little ones, from debris or space rocks” I pecked my fingers at an invisible keypad to mime the action of multiple small impacts. Adding, “And can’t even see those from out here.”
“Yeah it’s huge,” Aadar said around a mouthful of chickpeas. He nodded at the ship in question. “Big impact.”
“Yeah really big impact, but still lucky.” I was starting to get hungry. “As long as the ship doesn’t die.”
“Ship can’t die,” he said, in what he probably imagined was a confident and reassuring manner, but of course ships can die. Ships used to die all the time before transplants, and it could still happen if the damage was extensive enough. Though yeah, total death was unlikely.
“I bet you Noo wouldn’t be upset if it did,” I said.
As the major shipping service, Noo had to work their ships pretty hard. And since the ships were sterile, the only way to keep their fleet fresh was via transplants. That, or use artificial transplants, which were barely functional.
You’d think after over two centuries since discovering the ships we would have figured out how to make artificial organs for them, but their biology was too dynamic for any solution to work for long. It’s as if they didn’t like our artificial or cloned transplants, and tried to shrug them off, even if it meant endangering their lives.
“Naaah,” Aadar said, but he’s the boss, so he’s got to be political. Noo is our biggest client. I mean, Noo is everyone’s biggest client right now obviously.