Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (40 page)

“A whole year?” Zeegon muttered, stumping wearily down the lander’s access ramp. “Man, I’m gonna be counting the days.”

“Bunzo would be happy to welcome you back,” NightMary said. “But the price you have paid this time will not cover a return visit.”

“I have no idea what that means and I don’t care,” Z-Lin said. “We found what we were looking for and have satisfied the requirements of our mission, so if you’re going to let us leave then we’re not going to ask any questions.”

Sally met them at the entrance of the lander bay.

“We’ve got an incoming object,” she said without preamble, “looks like an escape pod or-”

“
Holy crap what happened to you
?” Z-Lin shouted.

Sally looked down at her ripped, burned, bloodstained uniform, then raised one hand and opened and closed it reflectively. Decay couldn’t help but notice that the hand was about the only clean part of her entire body. “Little run-in with NightMary,” she said. “Lost a bit of blood but came through in one piece. Well, technically ninety-three percent of a piece. NightMary’s not that bad once you get to know her. Anyway,” she turned and ushered them down the corridor, favouring her left leg slightly, “it’s either an escape pod or a missile.”

“Bunzo said Janus had probably been put into some sort of high-stratospheric drone,” Decay remarked. “We didn’t see it actually take him, it was all too fast.”

“How
was
Bunzo once you got down to the surface?” Sally asked. They reached the elevator and ascended a couple of levels to the blister bays. “We’ve just had his charming wife to deal with.”

“He was insane,” Z-Lin summarised.

“Alright then.”

The incoming object arrived, the ship’s orbital attitude and the docking blister airlocks and the catchers all acting with a synchronised smoothness that could only have been achieved with the assistance of a synthetic intelligence or, in this case, Horatio Bunzo and / or NightMary. Decay looked through the bay door viewscreen and suppressed the urge to shudder as the object settled in blister bay 1. It did look like a torpedo casing, but it also had elements of the little hunter satellites – dense technology, and purposeful. It was like, he thought, a miniature Fergunakil gunship.

But most of all, it looked like a coffin. It gave him a deep, cold, unpleasant feeling, and as he turned and glanced at Zeegon, Sally and the Commander he knew that they all felt the same way. Even someone with the human-face-reading skills of General Moral Decay (Alcohol) could see that.

It fell to Z-Lin to open the pod. She was the ranking officer on the scene, their illustrious
bonsh
ing Captain conveniently cowering in his chambers or being chewed up by his shoe-shining machine or who-knew-or-cared-what-else. And she
did
have to open it. The pod had a soft-glowing access panel on the nose, and everybody knew that what was inside was going to be bad, and everybody knew that Bunzo could have prevented the bad thing from happening but hadn’t, just like everybody knew that he could have opened the pod himself but was making them do it.

A pair of green lights turned red and began to flash, and the pod opened to a strange wheezing, whistling sound. It was the sound a human throat made once it had screamed itself hoarse, and then gone on screaming for another ten hours or more. It didn’t sound like a person, though – it sounded mechanical. And so it took a moment for them to connect what they were hearing with what they were seeing.

The second she
did
recognise the vivisected mass lying in the centre of the pod as the remains of Janus Whye, Z-Lin swore and slapped the access panel again. The pod closed, the red lights went green again, and the blister bay was silent.

“Did I say NightMary wasn’t all that bad?” Sally mumbled.

“It’s a medical unit,” Clue said, pale-faced but determined, leaning in to study the lights and the mechanisms. “Way beyond anything we have on board, and fitted with engines and compensators and stuff, but definitely a treatment and diagnostic unit. The damn thing’s…” she straightened, looked away towards the airlock, steeled herself, and carried on steadily. “The God damn thing’s cutting him open, but it’s also the only thing keeping him alive.”

“Only Cratch has the skills necessary to extract him from that pod,” Decay said, “and replace all his organs and skin. Unless you want to leave him in there until we can get to a proper medical facility.”

“Hell no,” Z-Lin said.

“Not even if that was an option,” Sally said. Zeegon was still standing, staring at the pod as if he could see through the lid, but the other two glanced questioningly at the Chief Tactical Officer. She grimaced down at her fist again. “I’d be willing to bet my
other
hand that this pod’s going to keep on torturing him until we get to the edge of the Bunzolabe, and then just crap out and let him die.
This
was what NightMary was talking about. This is exactly what she predicted,” she looked up at Decay, then to Clue. “That we’d let the Rip out of his cell.”

GLOMULUS (NOW)

It was the wolf hour, and they were maybe ten hours out from the Bunzolabe. Z-Lin stepped into the medical bay and into the epicentre of the warm, melancholy sound that was reverberating through Glomulus Cratch’s little domain and – if he had calculated correctly – the nearby precincts.

“What
is
that?” she asked in a near-shout.

“Old Earth cello,” Glomulus replied, raising his own voice just enough to be heard over the strains. “As Clarissa Chole herself said,
a life lived without hearing the sound of a cello played in an empty house is a life lived waiting
,” he looked around. “Not exactly an empty house, but the old place does seem a bit more spacious since we donated a third of our eejits to charity. Rather pointlessly, as it happens. On The Warm.”

“Mm,” Z-Lin said, and waited. After a few moments, Glomulus sighed inaudibly and gave Wingus a nod. Then he got up, crossed the room and turned off the music himself while Wingus was still looking confused.

“What can I help you with, Commander?”

“We’re going back into the Bunzolabe.”

“I’d heard.”

“You had something of a battle of wills with Bunzo last time.”

“NightMary,” he corrected her mildly, “but to all intents and purposes, yes. I suppose I did,” he allowed himself to preen a little. “And for my part, might I say, I won? I mean, it’s hardly my fault if-”

“You’re coming down to the surface with us this time.”

“I – excuse me?”

“The crew has rather neatly switched places on who wants to stay on board the ship and who wants to go down to the surface,” Clue said. “Everyone seems to believe that the
other
was the preferable alternative.”

“Even you?”

“My vote would have been to stay with Bitterpill,” the Commander said, “or ideally not to have come back here at all. But in this case, it happens to be the better course for me to remain on the ship with Janus, Zeegon and Decay, while Sally, Waffa, Janya and Contro go to the surface.”

“Contro!”

“He managed rather well last time with only minor issues from the life support and a mild fear of juggling,” Clue said, “and he may have had that before we even came to the Bunzolabe. And his record for unique contact and communication scenarios is pretty good. And most importantly, I don’t have to explain or justify myself to you so why am I even talking? Sally wants you in her sight when they go down there, and she says there are some pretty compelling reasons for you to be … if not an asset with Bunzo, then at least a game piece of some interest to the machine. So you’re going.”

“Fair enough.”

“Right.”

“Of course, you’re assuming that we’re going to get anywhere near the planet,” Glomulus went on, “and that Bunzo or another of his personality facets isn’t going to just blow us out of the sky as soon as we appear.”

“Janus was pretty confident he wouldn’t,” Z-Lin said, “if only because if he
was
going to kill us, he’d want to do it in a more creative, lingering and horrible way.”

“Sounds awesome.”

“Doesn’t it.”

“I’ll consider it a little shore leave, then,” Doctor Cratch smiled, then grew serious. “And now, if you’ll forgive my lapse into analysis – I wouldn’t want to step on our esteemed counsellor’s toes, after all – I get the distinct impression that you’re leading with news you really wish was more contentious, in order to distract attention away from the
actual
reason you came here,” he tilted his head, and Clue grimaced. “Sorry.”

“There’s one other thing we need you to do,” she said grudgingly, “before we get to the Bunzolabe. Captain’s orders.”

“Ooh,” Glomulus said eagerly. “The Captain himself, eh? And what does our mysterious, glorious leader wish from this humble house-arrestee?”

Instead of answering, the Commander gestured curtly for him to follow her. Then she led him into the surgical recovery ward where Dunnkirk’s sleeper-frozen body and the pieces of his pod had been stored as their voyage dragged on and nowhere along the Chalcedony border seemed willing or worthy to take his worldly remains. Glomulus hadn’t really been in here, more out of respect for the fact that he wasn’t supposed to than respect for the dead Bonshoon. He was fairly sure some of the crew still thought he’d been responsible for Dunnkirk’s death,
somehow
, even though the investigation was closed and it seemed pretty obvious that there had been some sort of astonishingly shonky cover-up, even by
Astro Tramp 400
’s pretty low standards.

Maybe, he thought, he was about to see the final sorry act in this squalid little comedy.

“You need to revive him,” Z-Lin surprised him by saying. No, actually, it wasn’t a surprise – Glomulus was thunderstruck.

After about ten seconds he became dimly aware that the rest of Z-Lin’s orders were sticking in her throat, so he gave a polite cough and forced his voice to idle condescension. “He’s dead, Commander.”

She spared him a withering glance, but at least it gave her voice back. “He’s perfectly preserved at the moment of death,” she said, “or only a very short time afterwards. Moreover, the main point of structural damage for a dead Molranoid and the first point of bodily breakdown-”

“His blood has been removed.”

“Exactly. His blood was removed and carefully stored. Viable. If it had been left in his corpse, it would have congealed, settled, burst the blood vessels and their seals, ruined the organs. But it was removed, leaving his body in optimal condition.”

“Yes, but Commander,
still dead
.”

“And preserved with this sleeper pod freezing apparatus.”

“Yes, with damage that would have made it fatal anyway, which was the only reason we used it on him – he was already
dead
. And he’s been in there, moreover, for almost exactly a year by this stage,” he studied the Commander. “You don’t want me to bring him back to life,” he concluded.

“I’m glad you’re finally giving me that benefit of the doubt.”

“But you do want me to disconnect him from the sleeper, run some stimulating agents through him, put his blood back in, and hook him up to an intensive care unit, then sort-of-kind-of activate the sleeper units again,” Glomulus stressed. “This
is
what you’re asking me to do. Get his pumps flowing and his organs squelching and his brain-stem flickering. And keep him that way. Dead but breathing.”

“Yes.”

“Indistinguishable from a Molran in a sleeper pod.”

“Yes.”

“Even though actually keeping his body frozen and his blood bagged will preserve all his organs and tissues far more effectively than maintaining him in a persistent vegetative state, which will start to cause degradation within about three or four days.”

“Yes.”

“And even though this sounds like the sort of thing
I’d
try to convince
you
to do.”

“Try not to remind me of that.”

Glomulus cracked his knuckles, so fascinated by this request that he barely even noticed the pain in his augmented fingers. “Shore leave
and
a fun little science project,” he said.

JANYA (THEN)

“Okay,” Z-Lin said as they trundled the capsule – what Zeegon was calling ‘the torture pod’ – into the medical bay, “get everything set up here as much as possible, and we’ll go and get Cratch. Just … do what you can to keep the pod from killing him.”

Janya, Contro, Sally, Z-Lin, Zeegon and Decay were all in the medical bay, each of them blank-faced with their individual versions of shock at the abrupt brutality of what they had witnessed. The eejit nurses Wingus and Dingus, and Janya’s assistants Westchester and Whitehall, were also present. Technically, of course, Janus was there too although everyone was doing their best to pretend
that
fact did not exist. Waffa was still outside with a crowd of repair and maintenance eejits, doing his best to repair the damage NightMary had done in her apparent fit of pique.

“I think it’s entirely out of our hands whether it kills him or not,” Janya said, “and the only thing we can really do is not touch it.”

“
I know that
,” Clue snapped, then ran a hand across her eyes. “Damn it, I’m sorry.”

“No need to be,” Janya said. “Although if what Sally says about the apparent contest between NightMary and Glomulus is true, have you considered the possibility that as soon as Glomulus steps out of the brig, she will have won and will simply kill Janus out of hand?”

Z-Lin stared at Janya. It was a look she was beginning to find as familiar as it was tiresome. “I hadn’t considered it until
now
,” she said in outrage.