Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (3 page)

“They could keep you in the brig and only pull you out for emergencies,” Janus said. “It worked for me, when you patched me up after Bunzo’s,” he was quite pleased with the way he managed to say the name without hesitating.

“Yes,” the Rip said earnestly, “and that was when they decided to keep me in the medical bay full-time. Remember before that? Never mind The Accident, nobody was prepared for that … but that asteroid you stopped at, with the tomb? The scarabs? It was lucky nobody died. Even simple things, like the MundCorp flier we ran into and the little fistfight Waffa got into, it didn’t go that smoothly with me in the hole. I needed to acclimatise. A doctor – or
medic
, I should probably specify – needs to know his bay. His equipment. His nurses. Otherwise he has to get up to speed and go through the same start-up problems every time, and your average medical emergency is defined by time and efficiency being of the essence.

“Now, I have that familiarity, which is good for everyone. And no,” he concluded, still quite serious, “I wouldn’t risk that for an eejit. Because I
also
know that therapeutic murder of quasi-sentients doesn’t work.”

“I can sort of see them doing this to mess with you,” Janus said, “but I’m also pretty sure they’d be as aware as I am that it wouldn’t bother you in the slightest. Nor would it have any beneficial healing effect, unless they know something about my methods that
I
don’t … so this could really only be about messing with
me
,” he tapped at his pad. “Which is weird at best, and putting me alone in a room with an extremely resourceful and unpredictable mass-murderer at worst.”

“Wait – me again, right?”

“It’s also possible that they might be hoping for some sign-off on your rehabilitation, some check in the shrink-box that will give you a bit more freedom around the ship,” Janus said. “For medical emergencies, and also maybe so you can help out a bit with our new passengers. Except…”

“Except?”

“Well, you’d help with the aki’Drednanth anyway, because you’re interested in them.”

“You can say it,” Cratch said comfortably, “I’m an aki’Drednanth fanboy.”

“Well, right. Plus, Dunnkirk can probably act as a go-between for us with the seven pups. In fact, it’s more likely that Z-Lin got you to agree to counselling sessions in return for maybe being
allowed
to come out and meet and greet with the aki’Drednanth.”

“Clever fellow,” Glomulus said, still comfortable and casual in his seat in the centre of the room, well out of reach of every shelf, wall, article of furniture and piece of equipment. Not to mention Whye himself. “It doesn’t explain why the inestimable Commander Clue would make
this
the price I pay. Which was why
I
had assumed Z-Lin and Sally planned it as a way of … messing with me, in so many words. But then, like you say, it’s going to bother you more than it bothers me.”

Janus shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t think of that.”

Doctor Cratch gave him a dubious look. At that moment, the medical alert began to sound.

“Hmm,” Glomulus said, after they’d both sat listening to the mild, inoffensive counsellor’s-office version of the noise for almost thirty seconds, “or perhaps the powers that be decided in their infinite wisdom to provide me with some sort of an official alibi.”

SALLY (NOW)

By therapist-patient confidentiality agreement there was no sound permitted on the monitoring bumper in Janus’s office, except by special command security override in the event of an investigation after the fact. This was another way of saying Sally could
watch
Glomulus Cratch undergoing counselling, but not listen to what was being said.

She was also authorised to flood the entire office with harmless but incapacitating nerve gas if the Rip so much as lifted his nonexistent buttocks off that chair, and she was sitting with her hand hovering over the button awaiting just that eventuality … but so far, he had behaved himself to an extreme she had to admit was a little disappointing. The silent conversation made for dull viewing, and the bridge – particularly after they’d reached full subluminal and skipped back into relative speed – wasn’t especially exciting either, so Sally was sitting at her station, watching the monitor and listening to Bastards of Punditry. The two-singer exchange, rising from ominously-growled opening statements into howl-out-loud degeneration to
ad hominem
, was a rather fitting soundtrack to the unheard conversation.

Sally watched Janus with a certain amount of sympathy as he struggled, quite visibly, to maintain a comfortable and casual demeanour in spite of all-too-obvious fear of his patient.

Damn it, Clue
, she thought to herself grimly, taking her eyes off the monitor just long enough to cast a glance at the Commander at her auxiliary console,
I hope I know what you’re doing
.

When the medical emergency alarm went off a few seconds later, Sally almost hit the gas button by reflex.

“Shit,” she growled, when she saw Glomulus sitting inoffensive and still in his seat, Janus rigid and wide-eyed in his own. The tall, skinny blonde-haired ghoul actually turned his head carefully and made direct eye contact with the monitors, as if to illustrate his cooperation and lack of suspicious movement. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“I’ll handle the emergency,” Z-Lin said, rising to her feet and pointing at Sally. “You go and get Cratch. Decay, with me.”

Sally spared the monitor a final frustrated glance, debated for a split-second whether or not to knock counsellor and patient out anyway, then decided against it and hurried for the corridor.

Janus’s office was off the secondary bridge, just on the other side of the exchange plane but unfortunately all the way across the
Tramp
’s equal-largest deck. If Sally could have been outside Janus’s door through the entire session – or, ideally,
inside
the office with a gun trained on the good doctor – she would have been. Still, it was easier to jog past the main engineering block and then drop through the exchange using a service duct than it was to detour to one of the ship’s elevators, and no more than five minutes later she was at the counsellor’s door. By then, she had received word from Z-Lin about what had apparently happened.

“Sally,” Janus said as she stepped into the room, “is there a problem?”

“It’s Dunnkirk,” she said, watching Glomulus closely, “he’s had some sort of an accident or breakdown in the medical bay. Z-Lin’s checking it out. She wants us all back in the bridge conference room five minutes ago.”

She still had to check Cratch over, reassure herself that he wasn’t carrying anything extra
out
of the office and had not left anything behind
in
it, and then delay for a few inwardly agonising minutes while she just
watched
him. This, she had learned from experience, was a far more effective technique against almost any
other
criminal she had ever dealt with aside from the Rip, particularly if said criminal was attempting some sort of escape or other covert crime. Timing was usually critical to such endeavours. It was a rare bad guy indeed who factored an indefinite lag, while a five-foot woman in a topknot gave him the stinkeye, into his plans.

Glomulus Cratch usually didn’t operate that way and usually seemed to have all the time in the world to stand innocuously and let Sally glare at him, but it was still a useful technique and she saw no reason
not
to give the man a good old-fashioned big-picture stare-down. It was funny sometimes, the things you missed … although perhaps ‘funny’ wasn’t the word, when you could see the damage Cratch could do with his own torn-off shirt-sleeve.

And moving with him was a meticulous business too. He stayed in the middle of the corridor and kept his hands in sight, but they still moved slowly – and this time, they took the elevator.

By the time they got to the conference room, Clue and Decay were already back and the rest of the crew were seated along either side of the table. The spot at the end, habitually occupied by the massive armoured shape of Thord and her two husky Bonshoon companions, was stark in its unaccustomed emptiness.

Z-Lin barely waited for Sally to get Glomulus seated in his well-separated and accessory-stripped chair. “About twenty minutes ago, shortly after we entered soft-space,” she said, “Dunnkirk was attacked in the medical bay. The emergency systems activated but there was no clear footage captured of the actual attack, which was already well underway by the time his vital signs dipped sufficiently to register a problem. We’re estimating that the attack took less than fifteen minutes from beginning to end. We’re probably looking at a window closer to ten minutes,” she consulted her pad – unnecessarily, Sally judged – and gave a little sigh. “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Zeegon blurted. Everyone, predictably enough, was looking at Cratch. “Dead how?”

“One guess,” Waffa said.

“Our medic was not in the area,” Z-Lin said grudgingly, and Janus nodded confirmation while Glomulus himself contrived to look as wide-eyed and innocent as possible, although when Glomulus Cratch opened his eyes too wide he tended to look a bit like one of those deep-sea fish trying to absorb as much light into its pupils as possible in order to bite its prey in the dark. “He was in the counsellor’s office, undergoing therapy.”

“Therapy,” Zeegon said flatly. “Seriously?”

“I was watching him on the monitor throughout the session,” Sally confirmed, knowing her voice sounded as grudging as Clue’s had, “and Janus was in the room with him. He was there since just after we sent Thord and Maladin off, right through to the medical alert.”

“You were
watching
us?” Glomulus said mildly. “I feel so violated … and yet strangely fulfilled.”

“Shut it,” Sally advised through clenched teeth.

“How did he die?” Waffa asked.

“Dunnkirk’s body was paralysed and systematically drained of blood through two puncture-wounds in his neck. I’ll let everyone who wants to blurt ‘space vampires’ do so now,” Z-Lin paused, waited, looked up and down the table, and then continued. “All the usual biological safeguards preventing paralysis, not to mention exsanguination, were bypassed. Medically.”

“The same equipment Glomulus used to knock out that corsair back at MundCorp?” Janya asked calmly.

“Looks like an amalgam,” Clue nodded, “although everything seems to be back in place and any hybridisation of the equipment was done extremely skilfully. If it
was
the anaesthetic panel and blood transfusion gear from the isolation pod, our murderer would have required not only full access to the medical bay equipment, but also the knowledge of how to combine and use it all in very efficient tandem, as well as the ability to very quickly sterilise the gear and return it to storage undisturbed – and I mean
very
quickly, since I estimate Decay and I turned up no more than two minutes after the procedure had reached its conclusion-” the Blaran nodded this time, ears folded solemnly along the sides of his head. “It also would have required the clearance to mess with the monitors so there was no clear view of the attack, and fub the logs so none of the borrowing and return of the equipment ever showed up. Since it
didn’t
show up,” she raised her organiser pad.

“Not even with Bruce online?” Waffa said sceptically.

“Sorry,” Bruce spoke up from the comm panel in the centre of the conference table. “I realised there was a mix-around at about the same time the medical emergency alarms went off and the monitors started scrambling for a point of view. I’m still not exactly operating with a fully-intact nervous system here.”

“Bruce was also able to find trace elements of all crew members,” Z-Lin said, “so that doesn’t help us much. It even found some aki’Drednanth condensates, although obviously it’s a bigger question as to whether that means Thord or one of the pups. But all in all the crime scene was sterile, clean, with no particulate or imprinted evidence. Pressure profiles, exhalation volumes – nothing. All purged or otherwise fubbed. It was an expert job.”

“I assume we’re all still thinking ‘Glomulus Cratch’ now, in the absence of space vampires, and in spite of the fact that I was on the other side of the ship in front of two expert eyewitnesses,” Glomulus said meekly, and spread his hands when everyone turned to stare at him. “Hey, even
I’m
thinking ‘Glomulus Cratch’, albeit in a more piteous, self-preservationny way than you probably are,” he protested. “I just feel I ought to point out, even if this were some sort of set-up or booby-trap or something that I arranged – that
was
what you were about to suggest next, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Waffa said.

“I was working out the fine details,” Sally admitted, “but that’s the basic gist of it.”

“That being the case, I really would like to point out that the sort of messing and fubbing the Commander is talking about requires
command
-level access and overrides. Especially if it also involved pulling the wool over Bruce’s eyes.”

“You already unlocked the tranks,” Zeegon said, “back at MundCorp.”

“And then Bethel got himself killed with them too,” Waffa added.

“And let’s not forget the other eejit,” Zeegon said, “what was his name? The guy who got pumped full of Bonshoon blood?”

“Chilton,” Glomulus said. “And yes, Chilton and Bethel were the two main incidents leading up to the full command lock-out and deactivation of
all
of the former isolation pod equipment in the medical bay.”

“So, the Captain,” Zeegon said, with just a hint of glee.

“The Captain,” Cratch agreed mildly, “or Acting First Officer Clue, of course, since she has all the override codes. Um,” he hastened as Clue turned a Look well and truly deserving of proper noun status upon him, “or Waffa, who has access to every maintenance and monitoring subroutine on the ship,” he went on innocently, and once again quickly raised his hands when Waffa looked ready to activate his subdermals. “I’m doing everyone,” he said quickly.