We All Died At Breakaway Station by Richard Meredith - SF - SFBookcase.com - Reference of Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels/Authors.

Series: Misc
Volume: 1
Genre: SF
ISBN: 0099388804
Pages: 244 pages
Publisher: Arrow
Price: 2.25
Reader Rating: 9 out of 10
Votes: 9

We All Died At Breakaway Station by Richard Meredith

Description: When race survival teetered in the balance...

We All Died At Breakaway Station has a grisly side that must be noted right at the top. Meredith's characters are the revivified Dead, casualities of war brought back from the Other Side by advanced medical techniques, and given a kind of life so that they might crew the starship that will take them home to serious medical rescue work and the semblence of a normal life. They are tens of thousands of survivors who did not survive, not really zombies but also not really fully human. They range from people missing internal organs to the disembodied consciousness of the ship's computer, a starship captain who Didn't Make It but whose higher mental functions were salvaged for spare parts. In an endless and possibly hopeless war with an alien race no one can understand, they are the only spacers available to crew their hospital ships back to the Home planet, to be put back together as best possible. They have come to Breakaway Station, and have found the place where they will have to make their hardest decisions.

As in his Timeliner books, Meredith has found an intellectually satisfying idea which is the fulcrum of the narrative. He posits a communication system that allows instantaneous messaging across interstellar distances. It works by sending a signal out at the speed of light through a series of relays, which then maintain the signal and allow quantum travel of the communication stream instantaneously, as long as the signal is not interrupted. Whew! The aliens have caught onto this, and are doing everything in their power to knock the system out. At the crucial moment in the war, an Earther expedition has found the alien's home system, and word must be sent to Earth. The crucial relay is Breakaway Station