Five Unicorn Flush

by TJ Berry

  “You said you could take on nine of them,” said Mary in the earpiece that the men hadn’t thought to look for.

  “Shut up,” said Jenny.

  “Or did you mean that you can only take nine. If there were seven more, you would have been fine?” asked the sarcastic starship AI that Jenny had just decided to disconnect when she got back on board.

  “I hate you,” said Jenny.

  “I’m not overly fond of you right now, either,” said Mary. “I’m stuck out here without a captain.”

  “So go back to Jaisalmer. I don’t care. I’ll figure something out,” said Jenny, rubbing the back of her aching neck. Her arms were strong from years in the chair, but this was a lot of climbing for one day. And something told her it was just the beginning, because she sure as shit wasn’t planning on waiting around to be murdered and eaten.

  “If that horn is still inside a bod, I’m going to bet it’s inside a Bala and stayed there during the Century Summit,” said Jenny, laying down on the mattress and easing the cricks out of her back.

  “That corroborates the conversations I heard Governor Dan have about the creatures on this ship,” said Actually.

  “Beings,” said Jenny. “They are beings.”

  “Creatures… beings… what’s the difference?” asked Actually.

  “The difference is that one you harvest for parts and the other one you don’t,” said Jenny.

  “Fair,” said Actually. “Of the Bala in cold storage, there are two of elvish origin, one centaur, and one Bala of mixed parentage.”

  “Is the mixed being part-unicorn?” Jenny asked hopefully.

  “No.”

  “That would have been too good to be true,” said Mary. “I only know of one part-unicorn in the entire known universe.”

  “Me too,” said Jenny.

  “I’m thinking about something,” said Actually.

  “Congratulations,” said Jenny.

  “I checked the records to see if there was any mention of unicorns in all of the recordings I’ve captured during my years in service. I found seven thousand nine hundred and fifty six separate conversations about unicorns, each one an average of twelve minutes long.”

  “Nice. Filter those for conversations specifically about horns,” said Jenny.

  “There are about fifteen hundred conversations about those, an average of three minutes long.”

  “Huh,” said Jenny. “People were having quicker conversations about horn. I’d think it would be the opposite.”

  “Furtive conversations,” said Mary. “About a rare and highlysought material. If you had it, you wouldn’t want anyone to hear about it.”

  “Actually, play one of the fifteen hundred conversations at random.”

  The speakers crackled with a deep voice booming out over a large room that echoed.

  “Do you know who I am? I am Gonall of the Oizuk. You cannot detain me.”

  Metal rattled as the voice grunted. Gonall was chained.

  “We seem to have already detained you,” said a nasal voice with a laugh. “And your crew.”

  Hooves beat on the metal floor.

  “Unicorn?” asked Jenny excitedly.

  “The Oizuk are a centaur family,” said Mary.

  “Centaurs are wankers,” muttered Jenny, which was accurate, but not relevant to the task at hand.

  “If you are after our unicorn horn, we have hidden it in a secure location,” said Gonall.

  “We will find it,” said the nasal voice.

  A high yell, not unlike the screeching of an alarmed horse, rang out across the room. The chains rattled and Gonall cursed and sputtered. There were flopping and slapping sounds. Someone was fighting. The flapping became wet and the cries more plaintive. Jenny’s heart sped up when she realized she was listening to a murder.

  “Turn it off,” she snapped. Actually shut off the audio.

  “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

  “Humans don’t enjoy experiencing the deaths of other humans,” said Mary, by way of explanation.

  “That observation does not seem to apply to the humans on my crew,” said Acutally. Jenny got the chills again.

  “Did they take the horn out of the centaur’s ship?” asked Mary.

  “We got no horn from that crew,” said Actually. “Hey, have you traveled faster than light?”

  “I have,” said Mary.

  “What does it feel like?” asked the generation ship.

  “Like flying.”

  “What?” asked Jenny. “All you do is fly. Everything feels like flying to you.”

  “No. What we’re doing now is floating,” said Mary. “We fart out propulsion gasses and float along. But going into FTL is as if you’re soaring through a never-ending tunnel of light. That’s flying.”

  “I stand corrected,” said Jenny. “Play a different recording, but not one where someone’s being killed.”

  The speakers hissed to life with background noise. The people speaking in the recording were whispering in a space that barely reflected sound. Somewhere small.

  “Did you offer it to them?” asked a high voice.

  “No, I’m waiting until they call me up to speak with the Governor,” said a deeper voice.

  “Kamis, don’t wait. They might take us to the processing room without seeing the Governor first. You can’t hold off any longer.”

  “Let me handle it, Min,” said Kamis. “If we tip our hand too early they will simply take the horn and kill us anyway. I have to be delicate.”

  “You think you’re some master negotiator, Kamis? Just tell them you have a bit of unicorn horn that you’re willing to trade for our freedom. You don’t need to tell them where it is.”

  “Min, humans who would kill and eat their own kind would surely not draw the line at torturing the information out of me. I could not guarantee my silence,” said Kamis.

  “Mother always said I shouldn’t have married a sneaky little elf,” said Min.

  “That’s all of the relevant conversation,” said Actually. “The rest of the recording is the two of them arguing about the origin of their relationship and the mother’s disapproval of the woman’s mate.”

  “But they had horn,” said Jenny. “What happened to them?”

  “Those two beings were captured eleven months ago. They were slaughtered in the processing room and packed in cold storage while they still had meat and fat on them. As far as I know, they haven’t been eaten yet,” said Actually.

  Jenny swallowed hard.

  “Let me hear the recording of their processing.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes”.

  “Wait,” said Mary. “Read a transcript of the processing instead.”

  “Brilliant, Mary,” said Jenny, her stomach muscles unclenching. She couldn’t take any more shrieking death right now.

  “Good idea,” said Actually. He read the transcript in his own voice, running both parts of the conversation together. It was barely intelligible, but Jenny got the gist of it.

  “Please, no. I beg you. By the eye of Unamip, I beg you to spare my life.”

  “We have spared no one’s life, why would we spare yours?”

  “Because I have riches to offer. With the jewel of Palpebral, you could have the devotion of any woman or man you desired.”

  “I already have that, what I need is meat.”

  “Wait, please. My husband has unicorn horn. I can tell you where it’s hidden. You be able to go anywhere in the universe that – no, stop, no, no, no, no, stop, no, no.”

  It was strange to hear such an emotionally charged moment spoken with a flat computer affect. It still made Jenny wince, but it wasn’t as viscerally awful as the live recording would have been.

  “Kamis had it,” said Mary.

  “Read his recording,” said Jenny.

  “I can offer you unicorn horn. Please don’t. You don’t have to do this. I forgive you for Min. Just stop. Please. I can put our drive into your ship.
Please.”

  “That’s it,” said Actually. “He died much faster. Probably due to the use of an axe instead of a knife.”

  “Oh god,” said Jenny, imagining what they would do to her if she made it into the processing room.

  “Don’t worry, the old executioner had a penchant for screams and violence,” said Actually. “He died in an accident and was frozen several months ago. His apprentice is much more humane in his processing style. He will likely render you unconscious before bleeding you. To make the meat taste less bitter.”

  “Small comfort,” said Jenny. “I’d rather not be bled at all.”

  “Honestly, you’re lucky your upper body is so muscular, because your lower body has atrophied to the point of uselessness in terms of edible foodstuffs,” said Actually.

  “Rude,” said Jenny.

  “Inhumane,” said Mary.

  “That is why I shut down the ship. If I could suck them all out into the vacuum, I would have by now. There is no one of value on this ship. I wonder sometimes if perhaps allowing them back into society would taint civilization to their ruthless ways. Better not to risk it and exterminate them when the chance arises,” said Actually.

  “I tend to agree,” said Jenny.

  “We cannot be moral arbiters,” said Mary. “We’re here to get our crew safely to our destination, not to make judgments about their fitness for civilized pursuits when they arrive.”

  “I can tell you’re Reason-built,” mused Jenny. “No programming lines wasted on ethics.”

  “Hm,” said Mary. Jenny couldn’t tell if it was a noise of agreement or if Mary was miffed.

  “So Kamis had horn on him. And it was likely hidden inside of his body.” said Jenny. “And if it was inside of him when he was stored, it would have been exempt from confiscation and transport by the Pymmie.”

  “That is a wonderful deduction,” said Actually. “Sadly, I cannot even get you out of this room, let alone into the cold storage room.”

  “Not unless I’m dead,” said Jenny. Mary gasped.

  “Oh Jenny. No.”

  “This is what you call a Jenny Perata sort of plan,” said Jenny with a smirk.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Incident Report #34

  Crew Injury Incident Report #34

  Location: USS Well Actually

  Crew Member: Captain Geneva Perata

  RSF Date Code: 19087412 Time: 0912

  Human-readable format. Video and audio logs attached.

  Incident Description:

  On the morning noted above a signal, from 585 kilometers off the system beacon in the lower right quadrant of Jaisalmer space, invited all passing ships to make contact with the source of the broadcast. My captain, Geneva “Jenny” Waimarie Perata, insisted on visiting the unfamiliar ship, against my explicit advice. (See Contact Report 13-22, USS Well Actually) It is my belief that the captain was experiencing the effects of opiate withdrawal and was not able to cogently assess the ramifications of her actions.

  Upon boarding the USS Well Actually, Captain Perata attempted to restore function to their disabled systems. Working cooperatively, she and I were able to reactivate the Well Actually’s audio interface. The AI from that ship was outdated but still functional. The Well Actually explained that his crew were starving to death and had resorted to eating each other in order to survive. For the last three decades, they had flown through sparsely occupied space, luring unsuspecting visitors in and slaughtering them for meat.

  The Well Actually and I worked to guide Captain Perata to a safe exit; however, against the advice of this ship, she chose to return to the Well Actually in order to locate a piece of unicorn horn.

  Based on records provided by the Well Actually (see Additional Materials 90-99), it was 99.4% certain that Captain Perata would be “processed” (rendered unconscious, killed, then frozen for later consumption) within twenty-four hours of her capture. Incidentally, the crew of the Well Actually attempted entry into my hull and systems during the entire time of her incarceration. Due to my extraordinary defense skills, they were unsuccessful in their attempts.

  After exploration of several options, Captain Perata, the Well Actually, and I determined that the only way to bypass the processing room would be to render the captain as close to lifeless as possible in order to fool her captors. I realize that this conclusion will likely end in a suite of diagnostic tests, or possibly my deactivation, but none of my logic centers could see a solution more likely to succeed than the one proposed. The percent certainty of her murder was 97.8%, with that final 2.2% only because I had accessed Captain Perata’s personnel file and service record, and determined that she has the extraordinary ability to escape near-death situations. I also determined that she was willing to undertake extreme and non-obvious maneuvers in response to challenging situations (see escape at Varuna Detention and Rehabilitation Center). Her chances of surviving the plan we devised were 9.8% – an acceptable margin better than without our intervention.

  Over my objections, and despite having access to no equipment other than what was in the sparse crew quarters in which she was incarcerated, Captain Perata proposed that we decrease the temperature in her room through a careful venting of atmosphere in an adjacent sealed compartment. Using a calculated burst of my cutting tools in her area of the ship, I was able to cut a ten centimeter hole in an unoccupied maintenance room, vent the atmosphere, and drop the temperature in Captain Perata’s room to well below freezing.

  It was our expectation that the crew of the Well Actually would discover her apparently lifeless body and move her directly into cold storage where she would be revived by the application of heat in the same manner.

  Our expectations were not borne out by reality; however, leading to the grievous injury of Captain Perata. At this point, the transcript is the most accurate depiction of the events as they occurred. Also, it shows the terrible attitude that I had to deal with.

  Transcript below:

  Perata: OK, go.

  Stagecoach Mary: Are you absolutely sure? Once I start, I can’t reverse the damage.

  Perata: Yes, go. Before I change my mind.

  Well Actually: This is exciting in a bad way.

  Perata: I agree.

  Well Actually: I feel like I’m about to undergo major surgery. Perata: I feel like I’m about to almost die. [pinging sound]

  Perata: Was that it?

  Stagecoach Mary: Yes. I’ve breached the hull in the maintenance room.

  Perata: It was quieter than I thought it would be.

  Well Actually: Almost anticlimactic. I didn’t feel a thing. Perata: Is it depressurizing?

  Stagecoach Mary: Yes. I can see gases venting from the room. Well Actually: I don’t feel most areas of myself any more. I can’t tell.

  Perata: How long before it gets cold in here?

  Stagecoach Mary: Just a minute or two. Jenny, be careful. Perata: I am always careful. In any case, the rest of this is up to you two. My part is just to lie there are hope they’re not hungry for Kiwi at this very moment. Oh I feel that. The temperature went down quite a bit.

  Well Actually: Sorry, I’d tell you how much, but they cut me off from environmental controls after I tried to suffocate them all.

  Stagecoach Mary: The temperature in your room went down by ten degrees.

  Perata: OK, here we go.

  Stagecoach Mary: If you want to speed the process, you could try collecting some water out of the tap and pouring it over your hair. Water is a thermo conductor and will speed your hypothermia. Do it quickly, before the pipes in the room freeze.

  Perata: [shrieks] That’s so bloody cold. It’s better make this go faster, Mary. I’m already shivering.

  Stagecoach Mary: It will. [four minutes of silence]

  Stagecoach Mary: How are you feeling, Jenny?

  Perata: Cold. Not good.

  Well Actually: What’s that clicking sound?

  Perata: My teeth. I think they’re going to break. My hands are bu
rning.

  Stagecoach Mary: That may be the effects of frostbite. You may lose a couple of fingers. Maybe your nose.

  Perata: What? You didn’t say that. Oh gods. I can’t stop shaking. Stagecoach Mary: This is normal. You’re in the first stage of hypothermia.

  Perata: This is taking longer than I thought.

  Well Actually: It’s only been five minutes.

  Stagecoach Mary: Down to negative nineteen degrees Celsius. Perata: My head hurts. The water in my hair is frozen, but I’m not shivering any more.

  Stagecoach Mary: Do you feel hot?

  Perata: [slurred] Yeah, are you sure they didn’t fix the breach? Stagecoach Mary: No, they didn’t. You’re in stage two. You’re going to feel warm now. Just sit back and talk to me. You’re doing great.

  Perata: [slurred] You both better do this right because I been in lots of sticky situations and never died so if you let me die this time then it’s your fault and not mine.

  Well Actually: Don’t put that on us. This was your choice. Stagecoach Mary: Shhh. You’ve got it, Jenny. If something goes wrong, it’s our fault. But nothing will go wrong. We’re going to do this with military precision. Remember you were a captain in the Reason Space Force; you lived through the Siege of Copernica Citadel. You can definitely come back from this.

  Perata: Damn right. My eyes hurt.

  Stagecoach Mary: Then close them. Get some rest. When you wake up, you’ll be in cold storage and you need to be ready to search.

  Perata: [mumbled] Ready to search.

  Stagecoach Mary: That’s right, Jenny. Ready to search. Ready to search.

  [no audio for three minutes]

  Stagecoach Mary: Jenny, can you hear me? [no audio]

  Well Actually: I think she’s dead. Do I call them now? Stagecoach Mary: Wait. If you call them and they feel a heartbeat they might decide to process her to be sure. She can wait just another minute.

  Well Actually: This is probably pretty stressful for you. Let me know how I can help.

  Stagecoach Mary: Just be quiet so I can listen for a heartbeat. [no audio for one minute]

  Well Actually: And?

  Stagecoach Mary: Four beats per minute. Call them now. [depressurization alarm sounds]