Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

  They’d made a little more headway talking with the seven aki’Drednanth, although it was still unclear as to whether they had been in any sort of communion with their fellows out in the wider Dreamscape while the ship was at all-stop. What Thord, or even the other breath-drawing aki’Drednanth of the Six Species, thought of the Bonshoon’s death was still anyone’s guess. All they’d really been able to establish was that the aki’Drednanth here, on board the ship, had their version of what had happened and what they wanted to happen next. Sadly, it seemed to line up in some superficial ways with the observances made by Janus, Decay, and assorted others throughout the course of the investigation. It was enough, even if it was dramatically unsatisfying.

  The irregularities, if you could call them that while still acknowledging that this was the first aki’Drednanth litter you’d ever seen, seemed to increase over time rather than fade. The pups continued to cooperate and persisted in not killing each other. They referred to themselves as The Rebellion, or sometimes Mother’s Rebellion, or occasionally even The Levelled Blade. Janus theorised that this last title was some reference to their having been utilised as a weapon by Thord against the Fergunak at Declivitorion, but it was just as likely to be a failure in the use of Thord’s big rubbery interface-webbing gloves.

  Anyway, the pups, whatever they called themselves, had blamed Thorkhild. That meant that essentially they were laying out a track for the investigation to follow, by the obligation AstroCorps had towards the aki’Drednanth and the Molran Fleet. The idea that any aki’Drednanth would ever bother to use this reverence-level authority for anything as parochial as affecting a murder case was laughable and as unprecedented as an able killing somebody, but these were not exactly normal aki’Drednanth and, over the days and weeks, the conclusion seemed purely inescapable. They were weighing in, and in doing so letting the true culprit get away with murder and go on running the ship.

  Because it could only have been the Captain. Z-Lin had a very strong suspicion on this score, and she was painfully aware that Sally had her suspicions too. And the longer they spent confirming and reconfirming the impossibility of it being anyone else … well, they were just making it that much clearer to everyone, so who was to say the pups didn’t have the right idea?

  And they were all looking at her on this. Not because she was the mouthpiece of the Captain anymore, but because she was the last line of defence between him and the rest of the crew. She was the last sane voice handing out the orders and the crew wanted those orders – they needed them – to make sense. Because if the Captain was in charge of their destiny, and the Captain was sneaking around murdering passengers…

  It was a fact that, once upon a time, Clue would have believed that the Captain had done what he’d done for a very good reason, and for the safety and betterment of his crew and possibly even the safety and betterment of the entire Six Species. That his actions, once explained, would have made her feel bad about ever having doubted him and would have utterly exonerated him in the unlikely event of the clear-cut case ever finding its way to a Corps tribunal. Maybe that time had not been all that long ago.

  But she just didn’t know anymore. She didn’t know how much longer she could pretend, and how much longer the others would let her. She wasn’t that great a leader. She was barely Commander material, certainly not XO material, indisputably not Acting Captain material. But she also had to face the fact that they were running, now, on the material they had.

  They had all stopped asking, sometime after the bonefields, what exactly the Captain wanted from them and what exactly their mission was supposed to be. Yes, it was technically a standard tour and on a modular those things tended to have some flex, and yes – the Tramp’s tour had been unorthodox from the start and had proven to have rather more flex than anyone had anticipated. Their destinations, detours, orders and mishaps had all followed on one after the other with a sort of relentless logic, a chain of increasingly tiny, slippery stepping stones that had left them all with the sudden realisation that they were knee-deep in a fast-flowing river, that they could see neither bank, and that wasn’t water seeping into their boots.

  Nobody had really talked about quitting, except in their darkest and most muttering-filled moments. Certainly The Accident had punched the rest of the defiance out of them in this specific sense. If you left a crew of three hundred and fifty, you were just moving on along your career path. If you left a crew of ten, give or take the occasional passenger or weasel, you were abandoning a group of friends in the darkness. And that was how they’d held on.

  It was hard to ignore the obvious, though. Even Zeegon wasn’t making smarmy remarks anymore. Zeegon was a little bit scared. And Clue didn’t blame him. She was beginning to realise that pretending an eejit had killed Dunnkirk may actually be the best way out for all of them. Because they’d come too far.

  “Around this way,” she said, taking the eejit’s elbow and walking him along the curve of corridor. They were past the nearest door leading into Contro’s little chaotic sprawl of quarters, the so-called ‘Contro Tangle’, and Clue breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn’t run into the Chief Engineer. He was probably upstairs in the engine room anyway. If there was one thing that could make this morning worse, she had decided, it would be attempting to explain to Controversial-To-The-End what she was doing. Probably explaining it a half-dozen times, no less.

  The suspicions she no doubt shared with Sally were as-yet unfounded and circumstantial, and yes – a not-insignificant part of her hoped they stayed that way. How and why the aki’Drednanth were making the claims they were was something of a mystery. Nobody had done anything so crass as to actually interfere with the gloves, which was one of the first things Waffa and Sally – and even Janya – had suggested as the most logical explanation for the pups beginning to communicate in such an anomalous way. No, Mother’s Rebellion were obviously playing their own tune, and it just so happened to perfectly match the drumbeat of the erstwhile killer that they were sheltering.

  And that meant that instead of actually solving the case and getting it all taken care of legally and officially, Mother’s Rebellion preferred the crew to either pretend an eejit was capable of murder, or actually believe one was. Either way, it was disastrous for general wellbeing and tension-levels. Even worse, of course, was the idea that revelation of the actual killer might be even worse for everybody.

  Why had Mother’s Rebellion made the statement they had? Why did they care? Clearly, they wanted the investigation to end. Why did they want that? It had to be because they were involved somehow. Clue and Sally were agreed on this much.

  But they were aki’Drednanth. They would be allowed to do basically anything. It was ludicrous, when you actually started looking at the regulations and some old cases. In instances of aki’Drednanth territoriality, it was not unusual for humans and even Molranoids to be accidentally ‘flung’ or ‘impacted’ or occasionally ‘gored’. This generally meant ‘killed in such a way as to make identification of the body difficult’. There had been dozens of deaths over the years. The aki’Drednanth involved were always very regretful, but the general conclusion was “well, shouldn’t have pissed her off.” And where pups were involved? Forget about it. Janus himself had almost been ‘impacted’ by Thord. And she’d very nearly decapitated that Blaran corsair Captain they’d fallen afoul of at MundCorp Research.

  So why derail a murder investigation due to involvement for which they would probably be completely exonerated by any Six Species authority? Unless it went considerably deeper than that, and darker, and suddenly Clue was quite glad they were in the middle of nowhere with no recourse to a Fleet-run legal puppet show.

  Oh. And there was another issue, one she was doing her best not to think about. And that was, if they put it on the official record that a death had taken place at the hands of an eejit – a non-sentient primate homunculus, in the parlance of the greater Molran Fleet – it could very well become the political flashpoint the big M
olran grand-daddies of the Six Species needed in order to move beyond lofty snooting and proceed directly to eradicating the program once and for all. And Z-Lin wasn’t even sure that would be a bad thing, except insofar as fabricants were about the only thing keeping the Tramp flying. In fact, without the eejits they might all have gotten to retire by now, so maybe there wasn’t a down-side. She was still certain only that she didn’t want her name anywhere near that historical footnote.

  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.