Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (24 page)

And there were still reasons to trust in the Captain and continue as if his actions were justified and sensible. Plenty of them. They could all still give the Captain the benefit of the doubt, because for all his reclusiveness, since their spectacular departure from Pestoria Geo Chrysanthemum above Aquilar eight and a half years ago, he’d never really … well okay, he’d let them down, cataclysmically, but it hadn’t actually been … alright, a lot of it
had
been his fault, but there had been worse alternatives and there had always been plausible
reasons
. There was sanity at work. He was looking out for them. He was looking out for
her
. And Z-Lin was XO now, right material or not. And the Captain, when all was said and done,
wasn’t
just some sociopathic murderer. She knew this, because she knew sociopathic murderers. Their Chief Medical Officer was one.

And there they were.

Frowning, she stopped outside the doors to the station. Then she tightened her grip on the eejit’s arm just before he could walk straight on into the doorframe. “Here we are, Thorkhild,” she said. “Hold on.”

“Kill all humans.”

“Right.”

So Mother’s Rebellion were hiding something, she thought as she entered her executive credentials and escorted the eejit through into the humming, slightly-lemon-scented corridors of the station interior. It was no longer a corridor separating chambers, so much as an access way separating floor-to-ceiling machines and vats. The soft humming and sluicing of the material and fluid recycling and repurposing was everywhere. It was like walking into a giant mechanical stomach. Well, that’s what it
was
, really. No ‘like’ about it.

So what were Mother’s Rebellion hiding? They weren’t covering up their own part in the murder. Or maybe they
were
, if only to protect their little human cat’s-paw. This role, at least, she could see the Captain filling. He had done so in the past. Being Captain of a starship, even a mere modular, was a thankless and high-complexity job, and you had to make unfortunate and unpopular decisions. That’s why the AstroCorps regulations had entire volumes on the responsibilities and privileges and obligations of captaincy. Yes, to some extent or other, the Captain had been put in such positions. It didn’t even require the scientifically-dubious aki’Drednanth talent for turning people into puppets. He may have simply been offered no alternative but to do the bidding of The Levelled Blade, lest they turn their destructive minds on the remaining crew. A Captain did what he or she had to do for the people under his or her command, regardless of the cost.

There was simply too much they didn’t know about this case, and they were in no position to perform a full inquest.

Clue’s circling thoughts over the past few weeks had come back to this again and again, and found the possibility of the Captain’s forced involvement oddly comforting. Or perhaps not so oddly, really. Aki’Drednanth could kill a Bonshoon easily, but it would be very obviously
their work
, the work of a mind-attack. This way, using the Captain as their instrument, they could hide their involvement. But from whom? From Thord? From other aki’Drednanth?

Aki’Drednanth could
also
kill physically, although for all their massive strength and savagery there was some risk to it. Humanoid and Molranoid blood was essentially like boiling oil to the aki’Drednanth physiology. Not
instantly
fatal, but certainly an unpleasant experience. Contrary to popular myth, you couldn’t kill an aki’Drednanth with hot water. And even though a number of aki’Drednanth
had
been killed over the years by assorted thawing and warm liquid immersion techniques, it was always disastrously dangerous because of the murderous psychic death-howl that invariably resulted.

They rounded a corner and arrived at the able and medical waste disposal alcove, a single sealed door a bit like an airlock that opened on a smooth, sterile booth that could fit – this they knew from experience – three eejits and a couple of bags of misprinted organs at a pinch.

The specific assault on Dunnkirk would not have resulted in any spilled blood except in the case of a botched equipment-switch, she thought as she guided the stumbling eejit back into the booth. But there had probably still been some sort of risk for the pups. They had scarcely been knee-high to a Bonshoon at the time, and would probably have been noted outside of their habitat even if they had been physiologically up to the task. So all things considered, they probably weren’t trying to cover up their
own
involvement. But in testifying, they’d loaned their priority zero legitimacy to the Captain and his baffling act.

Why
?

Well, so they would stop. And get on with their mission. But that was no answer at all, was it?

“Okay, Thorkhild,” she said, when the big, blank-faced fellow was inside the alcove and facing more or less outwards, blinking and slack-jawed. “This is it. Anything to say?”

This was, she knew, an act of pointless and unprofessional anthropomorphism. But it seemed unavoidable. It wasn’t important that he have something to say. It was important that she hear it.

The eejit obligingly wrecked the moment for her by saying, “Potty.”

“Go later,” she told him, and closed the door. A red light immediately flashed on the panel above the access pad.

- - - Warning + Life signature + Active able tag detected - - -

- - - Enter recycling protocols + Enter override authorisation - - -

Clue tapped in the regulation orders, relayed by Bruce, authorising the destruction of faulty components. Still she hesitated a moment, finger hovering over the controls that would activate the executive override and render everything in the cubicle down to its component compounds in a single heavy 37°C cascade of sludge.

“Goodbye, Hudson,” she said, taking an educated guess at the bottom-shelf eejit Waffa had blinded, retagged with Thorkhild’s identifiers and cranials while Clue was away getting a coffee, and then painstakingly taught to say
kill all humans
just to stick it to her. “You put in good service. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about this.”

God damn you
, Z-Lin thought, and pressed the button.
God damn you, Çrom Skelliglyph
.

The machine gave a muffled
bloosh
, then drained in about six seconds. Z-Lin found herself wondering about the man she’d just dissolved, and re-examining her feelings about the whole series of events yet again. It was truly staggering how many times the human brain could do this in a nine-week period, apparently without getting tired of it.

Had this been an eejit? A wetware component? Biological equipment? Or had he been a person? Had she fallen into that ‘talks like a human and has a human face, must be a human’ trap that Whye liked to talk about? Was it just the knowledge that pure, clinical legal justice was not
technically
being served that had her so upset, or was it the fact that visual, satisfying gut-instinct retribution was not being delivered? Was it just the outrage of needlessly breaking a more-or-less functional piece of machinery – rather blatant switcheroos notwithstanding – that wasn’t to blame for the problem at hand?

That must be it, right? When they got rid of the fabricant that the aki’Drednanth had blamed, the murderer would still be on board and they would be down a top-shelf eejit who needed to be replaced – and most likely couldn’t be. Not with the same degree of non-crapness.

Well
, she thought,
at least Waffa thought his way out of
that
problem for us
.

She checked the inlet to make sure all the bio-waste had been flushed away into the huge series of tanks and vats and tubes, to be separated out and reconstituted into an assortment of vital components and best-not-to-think-about-it consumables. Then she signed off on the report, closed the file, and headed for Waffa’s quarters.

“Commander,” the Chief of Security and Operations said calmly when he answered her chime.

“‘Kill all humans’?” she asked wryly. “Really?”

“Clear case of homicidal misprint,” Waffa said blandly. “Had to be a first time in recorded history, right? Anyway, I take it he’s dog-meat and we can all rest easy in our beds once again.”

“Yes. Just out of curiosity, where is he?” Waffa gave her a staggeringly blank look. “Okay, fine,” she said. She knew better than to push him, by trying to give an official order that he relinquish the fugitive.
Fugitive
, she thought, realising if she even said the word aloud it would be the end of any credibility this case might once have had. He was harbouring Thorkhild, she supposed, somewhere in his extended series of linked-together quarters. Searching
that
, with forty-two ables and approximately zero crewmembers interested in actually helping, would be an interesting exercise in futility. “You do realise, of course, that the pups will figure out what you did,” she went on. “Either they’ll figure it out from the rest of us, or there was something specific and unique about Thorkhild as a Midwich Eejit and they already know the difference between his mind, dead or alive,” Waffa continued to treat her to his award-winning resting-eejit expression, so she gave up. “Well, anyway-”

“What if they’d said it was one of us?” Waffa asked suddenly. “What if they’d said it was one of the crew who killed Dunnkirk?”

Clue had thought about that. It had been nine weeks. It was safe to say she’d thought of
everything
.

“It wouldn’t have made any logical sense for them to make that call,” she said.

Waffa folded his arms. “Oh, this makes logical sense now?”

Z-Lin knew she was right about this, but then she also knew Waffa was right too. Framing anyone but an eejit for the act, of course – framing a
person
– would have caused a whole new set of problems and would have guaranteed the case did not get closed or restricted to the on-board personnel. Claiming it was the work of a botched-up fabricant essentially put the incident on the same level as a tool malfunction causing a fatality, albeit an unprecedented one.

And finding anyone but an eejit responsible, as Sally had pointed out numerous times, would probably also have meant a detour off-mission and a check-in at some higher AstroCorps authority. Investigations, courts, refittings, crew rotations and long-service furloughs, you name it. And they all knew just how likely any of
those
were to happen, didn’t they?

On yet
another
hand, it was a simple fact that any suggestion of disgruntlement from the aki’Drednanth on board about the way the case was handled and the Fleet would probably get wind of it, and the
Tramp
would be black-listed across the length, breadth and depth of Six Species space. You didn’t upset the aki’Drednanth and expect to get away with it, even if they
didn’t
just burn your mind where you stood. Of course, again, this was a uniquely unusual thing for a group of aki’Drednanth to make an issue of … but they still had this unspoken threat hanging over the crew.

“I think it’s in their best interests to handle this before we leave soft-space,” she said, “and to keep the involvement of the AstroCorps brass to a minimum.”

“Right,” Waffa said, “and that’s why they’re probably not going to care if Thorkhild is really dead, as long as we stop investigating.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“You let them blame this on an
eejit
,” Waffa said scathingly. Clue didn’t have a useful response to that, so she inclined her head mildly and turned back down the corridor. “What are we going to do with Dunster’s body?” Waffa called after her. “We gonna mulch that too?”

She rounded on him just a little too fast. The big Chief of Security and Operations retreated, taken aback. “No, we’re not going to
mulch
him,” she said sharply. “He’s a sentient being, not a
fabricated piece of shipboard equipment
, so we’re going to respect his personal wishes and the urgings of his culture as laid out in the Inter-System Space Travel (Passenger, AstroCorps Modular) 319 form that he filled out just after coming aboard at The Warm,” she pulled out her pad. “Appended to his existing Inter-System Space Travel (Passenger, General) 212 form and his Inter-System Space Travel (Civilian In Aki’Drednanth Company) 42 certification that came as part of his travel docket from the authorities of The Warm when we agreed to take him as a passenger,” she swiped her finger angrily, making no effort to hide the fact that she was using her
middle
finger. “It’ll be on your workstation in a second.”

“More forms and reports,” Waffa grumbled. “Just what I need.”

“Yes, more forms and reports,” Clue said. “Tell you what, how about I leave them all with you and you take over the funeral arrangements? You’re good at forms, and you
are
Chief of Security and Operations. That’ll leave me more time to worry about the deep social ramifications of what’s happened, and you less time to worry about the same. Because it’s clearly not doing you any good whatsoever.”

And so it was that, with nobody particularly happy but the issue of Dunnkirk’s murder temporarily shelved, they dropped out of soft-space close to Mobi.

There wasn’t much left of Mobi, but that wasn’t any cause for alarm. There hadn’t been much left of Mobi for about four hundred years now. The planet, scarcely habitable at the start, had been core-mined – a now-outlawed process colloquially known as
cortering
. The population of the system, such as it was, had long since been divided into the civilian locals on a rather sparse-looking old Mandelbrot class superhub array named Sunset and the miners on board
Red Mobi
, the massive six-hundred-year-old converted warship that had settled and begun mining the system’s inner planets in the first place.

Those had been interesting times for the fledgling state of Chalcedony, and
Red Mobi
had needed to operate in her capacity as a warship on numerous occasions. She predated Godfire by a century or more, so her big guns were big and her hull was scorched, battered and
thick
.