Hama shouted, ‘Not the Xeelee this time. Callisto spent four billion years settling into its slow waltz around Jupiter. Now I think it’s going to have to learn those lessons over again.’
‘Tides,’ Nomi growled.
‘It might be enough to melt the surface. Perhaps those cryptoendoliths will be wiped out after all, and the route to configuration space blocked. I wonder if the Xeelee planned it that way all along.’
He saw a grin spread across Nomi’s face. ‘We aren’t done yet.’ She pointed.
Hama turned. A new moon was rising over Callisto’s tight horizon. It was a moon of flesh and metal, and it bore a sigil, a blue-green tetrahedron, burned into its hide.
‘The Spline ship, by Lethe,’ Nomi said. She punched Hama’s arm. ‘Our Spline. So the story goes on for us, my friend.’
Hama glared down into the ice, at the Xeelee craft buried there. Yes, the story goes on, he thought. But we have introduced a virus into the software of the universe. And I wonder what eyes will be here to see, when that ship is finally freed from this tortured ice.
-Resplendent, "Reality Dust"