Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (14 page)

To this end, Sally had dusted off the blueprints of the Sally-Forth Engine Mark II, planned and parts-collected but never really constructed, and had made a few changes.

She’d learned a lot in the intervening years, and the engine was now barely the size of a janitorial. She hadn’t assembled it, simply put, because she was employed aboard an AstroCorps modular and even though their computers were generally small-beans dumb, they could sync up to the synthetic intelligence aboard larger ships, not to mention synth hubs at settlements and Chrysanthemums. So while they weren’t exactly
aboard
a synth-run vessel, sooner or later the
Tramp
would end up becoming one, however temporarily. Like she had when they’d docked with the
Dark Glory Ascendant
, and the
Moritania
before that.

Even if all her courses and training extensions and hideous counselling sessions with Feathers Muldoon hadn’t encouraged her to
not
bring a potentially treasonous techriarchy-overthrow machine into a working environment where the synth was literally the only thing keeping the organics alive, there were common-sense considerations. This had been before old Feathers had finally vanished, the way Sally shamefully admitted to herself she had been fantasising about for years. In those days, certain things were more tightly observed and controlled in Sally’s day-to-day life, a holdover from those black marks she’d received as a student. In fact, a whole heck of a lot of things had been more tightly observed and controlled back then, and not just for Sally. It was amazing how little you could get away with in a crew of three hundred and fifty humans, Molren and Blaren – compared to, say, how much you could get away with in a crew of over
six
hundred eejits.

But there
had been
common-sense considerations. Printing or otherwise acquiring the sorts of components required was a difficult thing to justify unless you did it slowly, as Sally had. And putting it all together, and testing it, was well-nigh impossible.

Well, who was Chief Tactical Officer now? That’s right, Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed was. And it was just as well she
had
been squirreling away the bits and pieces for the Mark II, because it sure didn’t look like their glorious leaders were giving them much ramp-up time for this suicide mission. And nobody would be laughing or muttering about her being a Cancer collaborator, either, when she put the Sally-Forth Engine together and saved their space-crazy butts with it. Oh no.
Now
, synthetic intelligence or no synthetic intelligence, it was all absolutely hunky-dory.

Of course, whether it would be a game changer against
Horatio Bunzo
remained to be seen.

As she’d suspected, there was a conference to mark twenty-four hours before their emergence on the borders of Bunzo’s scary little empire. They held it not in the official conference room off the bridge, but in one of the recreation areas up in the common dome, next to what Sally had long since come to think of as Janya’s domain.

The Commander lent this impression further credence when she gave Adeneo the floor almost straight away.

“As you all know, in a few hours we will be exiting soft-space near the outer limit-boundary of the solar system known as the Bunzolabe,” she said formally.

“And we’re all sort of hoping that the next thing you say will be ‘this is a
bonsh
y rumour started by Zeegon as a prank’,” Decay said.

“‘And we are in fact about to exit soft-space near the outer limit-boundary of a solar system featuring a resort that serves drinks with cherries on sticks’,” Sally added.

“‘Real cherries, not those gummy ones out of the printer that taste like bile and sadness’,” Waffa amended with the enthusiasm of a man partial to a drink and not yet completely resigned to a lifetime of AstroCorps rations.

“Can we focus?” Z-Lin asked patiently.

“I thought we were,” Zeegon remarked.

“
The Bunzolabe
, and particularly Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World,” Z-Lin continued, “is a restricted and highly-classified volume of space with more rumours and fairy tales and myths than hard facts to its name. It
is
a dangerous region, but subject to grave misinformation. With this in mind, the Head of Science will tell us what she’s found out in the course of her research,” she turned to Janya.

Adeneo gave the Commander a level look, but straightened in her seat and consulted her organiser. “Hostile environment,” she said, “level six. Technological infiltration and corruption an extreme likelihood. Minimal organic life, zero sentient organic. Robotic drones in great quantity and of unknown type and complexity, controlled by a single-ident but widely-distributed non-synth electronic intelligence.

“I found no official
confirmation
that this is in fact the digitally-transcribed consciousness of a human being, rather than simply a unique form of experimental super-complex computing cortex gone wrong and left to corrupt for close to seven centuries. There is evidence of emergent development of the robotic drones on a software-hardware evolutionary scale, the last
reliable
witness having been three hundred and seventeen years ago. Development has doubtless continued and diversified since then.

“Ship seizure and crew targeting is not necessarily assured, but the prerequisites to safe return from the Bunzolabe are unknown and seemingly in flux. Last reliable witness, again, is from three hundred and seventeen years ago and reports of interaction and all related violence-triggers, behavioural cues and response models are not only in flux, but prone to variation from witness to witness. In conclusion, we are about to enter a region of space controlled by a rogue computer cortex with an indeterminate capacity to commandeer our own electronics, and land on a planet populated by a mechanised intelligence of unknown motives and reaction thresholds, and unknown but presumably high hostility level,” she lowered her pad.

“Okay,” Z-Lin said into the silence that followed this spiel. “That was certainly … a series of…”

“Facts,” Janya said. “And even these were far too heavy on conjecture to acceptably clean up. It’s really more of a probability scatter.”

“And the
probability
is that all the myths about Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World have some grain of truth in them,” Decay said, the natural upcurve of his Blaran mouth increasing as he grinned a fang-flashing grin, “and the Commander’s attempt to imply that they’re all just fairy stories would probably have worked better if she hadn’t gotten the Head of Science to read up on it all.”

“I don’t even know what a level six hostile environment is,” Zeegon complained, before Z-Lin could do more than glare at Decay.

“They go to ten,” Janya replied, “and six is the highest score a planet with a breathable atmosphere can get.”

“
Alright
,” Clue said, “we’re heading into a dangerous place. Plenty of ships have gone in and failed to come back out. The good news is, we’re following an insertion profile that corresponds closely with those missions that
did
come back out. In effect, not massive military, not hostile-intended, not cortex-infiltration-centred. An approach, landing, communication and reconnaissance mission, which has a strong
probability scatter
likelihood,” she favoured Janya with a look that the little scientist ignored with all the towering serenity of a glacier ignoring an angrily-chattering squirrel at its base, “of resulting in survival and success.”

“Not to sound like destiny’s fool,” Zeegon said, “but why us, exactly? If it’s not an AstroCorps special operation, not a strike of any kind against Bunzo, if it’s just a matter of harmlessly poking our heads in and saying howdy, why are we doing it?”

“Because that’s the job, Mister Pendraegg,” Clue said. “That’s the job. The last reliable witness event occurred three hundred and seventeen years ago, but that’s not the last time anyone vanished into the Bunzolabe. We’re going in, we’re going to establish a peaceful dialogue if we can, we’re going to look for signs of the missing ships and crews we have on file – and which I am about to share with you,” she added, raising her own pad, “and then, if we can at all help it, we’re going to hightail it out of there, alive and unified in our commitment to never go back into the Bunzolabe again, just like every other crew to escape Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World intact,” she looked at Janya once more. “If, in the process, we can reset that ‘last reliable witness’ counter to zero, that will be a bonus.”

“So it’s a rescue or recon mission,” Zeegon said. “Why not say so?”

“I just did,” Z-Lin said flatly.

“And why tell us all this so late?” Sally asked the question she had been wanting to ask for some days. “I mean about us going there in the first place. Why wait for Zeegon to find out? When
were
you going to tell us?”

“It’s not like there’s a point of no return,” Clue said, “at least on this side of the border. It’s not like we could delay telling you until it was too late and then we’d all just cruise on in.”

“Are you sure that wasn’t what you were hoping?” Sally asked.

“Please,” Z-Lin said, “as if this wasn’t going to be dangerous enough without half of you staging a mutiny in the middle of it because we hid our destination and mission from you.”

“Half of us?” Decay said mildly.

“We can all-stop outside the Bunzolabe for all the preparation time we need,” Clue said, ignoring the Blaran, “and that’s what we’re going to do. There seemed little point in telling you before that. We’re going where we’re going, but we don’t need to dive straight in there.”

“Maybe you didn’t want us to suggest we fly somewhere else?” Sally suggested.

“You can do that when we’re at all-stop even more easily than you can at relative speed,” Z-Lin pointed out reasonably, “and the space beyond the Bunzolabe is safe. We can park there, and you can overthrow the ship and set a course for the planet with the cherry-drinks. Try to set a new course now, at relative speed, you’d need a synth to program it.”

“So you’ll let us vote on it?” Zeegon asked. “We decide there’s too much truth in the myths and we want to go somewhere else, and you’ll be okay with that?”

“No,” Clue said, “there won’t be a vote. That’s why I was careful to say ‘mutiny’ and ‘overthrow’ just now. If you turn us away, it will be an illegal action performed by non-Corps crewmembers on an AstroCorps vessel. Civilian revolt, in short. I have a feeling we’ve been here before.”

“Fool us once, shame on you,” Zeegon said, but he didn’t sound like his heart was in it.

“When did you last suggest we try to fly elsewhere when we were headed to an unknown or dangerous place and I told you our orders?” Z-Lin asked. “Seems to me if you were going to do that, you would’ve done it before now.”

“Always a first time,” Zeegon said, although now he was barely muttering and doing so purely for the sake of appearances.

“So we have orders to go here?” Sally pressed. “An actual mission?”

“We’re not just here on a whim, if that’s what you mean.”

“Really,” Sally said with deadpan cynicism, then went on, “so what’s the goal, and who’s sending us? You, the Captain, someone higher up? Who are we looking for and trying to rescue?”

“The
ship
is going in,” Z-Lin said, “with the Captain and myself, at least, as AstroCorps officers. Non-Corps crew have a little more freedom, although you are still heavily obligated as crewmembers and your loyalty and devotion to duty are ridiculously beyond question by this stage. But short of civilian revolt, this is what’s happening. The
Tramp
is going in. Anyone who wants to stay behind, it seems there are small self-sustaining habs on the Fleet boundary markers,” Clue went on, “but let me be clear. If we don’t make it back out of the Bunzolabe, you’d be stuck on the buoy we drop you at. These habs are low-grade exchange fitted, which means half gravity, maybe one-third. They have atmosphere, but it’s minimal sustainable – there’s no wriggle-room for fancy oxygen-eating stuff. The exercises you’d need to do to keep from going gee-lass, losing your bone and muscle structure – a lot of them would be denied you.”

“Still sounds like a reasonable alternative to flying into a restricted-and-classified solar system,” Janya remarked calmly. “Sitting and reading doesn’t use up much oxygen, and a little frailty and therapy afterwards is a small price to pay.”

“And there’s minimal power and a basic lander-style printer, not even of the quality we have on board the Tramp,” Clue went on, “and our printers are
damaged
. You’d get basic dietary supplements, water from the condenser, and that would be it. There’s a checker crew that cycles around the system once every five years, and the cycle itself takes about a year and a half. Last one was, at a glance, two years ago so even if we drop you at the first buoy scheduled for checking, it’s going to be a three-year wait for pickup. And they don’t deviate, so you’d be in for an eighteen-month tour of the perimeter before the Fleet representatives ferried you back to civilisation. And again, these are
Molren
we’re talking about. They’re in no particular hurry. They wouldn’t make an exception to drop you home. Their first priority is that everything’s quiet, and their second priority is that they complete the requirements of their cycle.”

“Can I ask why we’re not just sending a lander in, and leaving the relative-capable and life-supporting modular out here?” Waffa asked. “I guess this falls under the general ‘why the
stonk
are we doing this at all’ query-umbrella, though.”

“Landers don’t make it,” Janya said. “Statistically speaking.”

“She’s right,” Clue nodded. “According to the reports, most of which are pretty light on confirmed details, nothing smaller than a modular has ever gone into the Bunzolabe and returned.”

“I love this mission so much,” Zeegon said. “I want to marry this mission and father its children.”

“Get in line, punk,” Waffa rejoined. “This mission is
mine
.”