They should never have come here.
“I might be able to rig the lander for a completely manual burn, whether Bunzo or NightMary reactivate the systems or not,” Decay interrupted Zeegon’s brooding. “But to stop them from using the computer to shut us down again, we’d have to disconnect all the safeguards and controls. We’d basically be depending on Bunzo to get all his space-junk out of the way up there, and on Zeegon and me to fly the lander to the general vicinity of the Tramp. Ideally, that’d be sometime this evening, otherwise we’ll have to do a bit of an orbit around the planet to find our way to the ship, all without comms or navigation. I doubt we’re going to be able to manage that manually.”
“You think we’re going to last until evening?” Zeegon said.
They stepped into the gleaming spaceport. Despite the pale dawn sunshine filtering across the plain of starships, the building was a blaze of artificial light. Lamps and advertisements and restaurants, signposts pointing the way to classic Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World events that, for all Zeegon knew, were still quietly running somewhere.
Soft music, in the same vein as the Bunzo Theme and with a similar scritch-scritch-scritch-CLONK sound to it, piped through the huge foyer. Morning sunlight came through big windows on one side, turning the interior lighting warm and natural.
“Okay,” Clue said, looking around the seemingly-empty space. “Let’s set up here and keep plenty of clear space on all sides. And remember to be ready with your-”
“You really mustn’t blame her,” Bunzo’s voice was sudden and shocking from the same sound system as the music. “You were snooping around out there in her secure compound. That Yojimbo, it’s full of nasty stuff.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Z-Lin raised her voice, staring up towards the ancient sound-bubbles set in discreet corners of the chamber. “I take it you’re talking about NightMary?”
“Mary, yes,” Bunzo said, “bless her heart. Long gone, of course, but still taking care of us all.”
“Yes,” Z-Lin said cautiously, “we’re actually a little concerned about how one of our crewmembers may have been taken care of-”
“We have a gift, you know,” Bunzo went on. “Mary and I. We see things. Call it massive over-collation of data, infinite-regression subatomic determinism, the simple observation and deduction of cause and effect across centuries…”
“And your visions showed us to be some kind of threat?” Decay asked, when it seemed as though Bunzo was going to clap on for a while. “Showed our counsellor to be some kind of threat?”
“Oh no, no,” Bunzo chuckled. “I’m sure that’s not the case. A simple matter of miscommunication, mistaken identity, high spirits. No, we foresaw that we would die by Damorakind fire.”
“Godfire?”
“So it would seem.”
“So why keep so much of it stockpiled on the surface?” Decay asked. “I don’t know how many hundreds of starships you have stacked up around this spaceport, even if this is the only one of your – what, two hundred spaceports? Even if this is the only one with ships piled up around it…”
“A devil to dispose of, your Godfire,” Bunzo said. “We can’t exactly just throw it all into the sun.”
“We could take it all out of here for you,” Zeegon offered. “Or as much as we can carry, anyway. I don’t know how much that is. We could probably even come to an arrangement about hauling it all away a bit at a time-”
“The Tramp couldn’t carry much,” Z-Lin said. “Only a modular’s-worth each time. And that’s a fraction of a warship’s yield. And that would only be if we had those coded commands I was talking about earlier. There is nothing we can safely do with any of Bunzo’s mini-whorl collection. Or unsafely, for that matter. So please stop trying to contract us out as a hazardous waste disposal firm.”
“Quite so, quite so,” Bunzo said. “There’s no moving that Godfire. And it makes us uneasy.”
“We weren’t made aware of any of this,” Z-Lin said, clearly gathering her patience and just as clearly finding, as always, that there was barely enough of it to keep her from shooting somebody right in the face. “I’m sorry if-”
“You apologise a lot, Commander.”
“You know, you’re right,” Z-Lin said. “And most of the time I don’t mean it. I say it because it’s a diplomatic bandage. I didn’t learn much more basic diplomacy at the Academy. But I don’t need basic diplomacy with you anyway, do I, Bunzo?” she looked around. “You can read my blood pressure and heart rate and pupil dilation. You can tell when I’m sorry or not. So I might as well say what I think, using what I deem to be appropriate language.”
“Now now,” Bunzo said brightly. “A foul mouth never got anyone anywhere.”
“You never met Brutan Barducci,” Zeegon said under his breath.
“And isn’t watching one’s swearing just another pointless fake?” Z-Lin went on. “You can tell when I’m saying ‘shit’-” Bunzo’s nearest speaker gave a scandalised little gasp, “-even when I don’t say a word.”
“On the contrary. Minding one’s manners, and being rude and then fraudulently saying one is sorry, couldn’t be more different.”
“Bunzo?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Where is our ship’s counsellor?”
“I understand she was killed by your ship’s gravity exchange field,” Bunzo said innocently. “Atomic-level gravitational disruption, nasty stuff. Deadly to humans, Molren, Blaren, Bonshooni … ‘most any organic species, really, except Damorakind with their electrical plasma cellular wossnames and such.”
“Bunzo.”
“Your clone-flesh fared a little bit better but its configurations were ruined, both in the printed ables that survived and in the printer itself. And as for the rest of you … you yourselves had a variety of narrow escapes, didn’t you?”
“Bunzo.”
“Sorry. You were talking about your new counsellor.”
“Yes.”
“Well, he was taken by NightMary, most assuredly,” Bunzo replied, and an awkward little laugh echoed through the cavernous foyer. “How very embarrassing. She probably did it as a gift for me, you know. She’s like a cat, see. Leaving little treats in my slippers of a morning, as a sign of regard.”
“You’re going to have to cut the whimsy and just tell us straight-up, if you’re going to tell us anything at all,” Clue said. “We’re none of us cat people.”
“We had a few cats when I was a kid,” Zeegon said. “Never knew one to leave anything good inside a slipper, though. Not entirely sure they ever meant it as a sign of regard, either.”
“Then you understand NightMary perfectly,” Bunzo said, his voice growing theatrically heavy. “She will most likely have Mister Whye in a drone of some kind, high stratospheric, following the night around. She could leave him for me on the terminator line ‘most anywhere.”
“And what would it take, do you suppose, for her to leave him here with us?” Z-Lin asked.
“I don’t know,” Bunzo said, flustered. “I believe she thinks he might … do.”
“Might do what?” Z-Lin said steadily.
“Might do for what?” Decay added.
“Let me answer that question with a question,” Bunzo said. “Are you hungry?”
While the team exchanged glances, there was movement at one side of the hall. A series of gaudy chain restaurants were lined up along one wall, and now one of them – brightly but not particularly creatively declaring itself to be a BUNZO BURGER – had exploded into a bustle of activity.
“Robots,” Decay said tensely. “Basic servers. They don’t seem to be approaching or making any threatening moves.”
“I’m actually surprised at the signage we’re seeing around this spaceport,” Z-Lin commented, looking up and down the line of services. “After six hundred and eighty years, even a language as stable as Xidh would change a bit. These near-arm standard signs should be all but unreadable.”
“The signs are all ad
aptive,” Decay pointed. “Screens, not cutouts. Bunzo’s probably been upgrading them along with the language he uses to talk to us, or in that song of his, based on his conversations with Bitterpill and the starship computers he eats.”
“Oh come on,” Zeegon burst. “Can you smell that?” he drew a deep breath. “Forget what Bunzo’s eating. That’s steakburger.”
They gravitated, in spite of themselves, towards the Bunzo Burger. The robots, smooth grey and-white Molranoids with stylised wedge-shaped heads even wider and flatter than actual Molranoids’, and minus the ears, moved back considerately into the recesses of the shop. As if to highlight the delicacy of the situation, the table and chairs slid silently out through the shop front autonomously, and arranged themselves in the clear space.
Ooh, Zeegon thought as he watched the gliding furniture, futuristic.
But he couldn’t maintain his cynicism. The table was laden with large, perfectly-formed steakburgers. Zeegon was driven to momentary philosophy himself, much as Clue had been with the sign-writing. He couldn’t help but wonder if the gastronomic creation of the steakburger, as well as the cultural idea of a perfect one, had really not changed in seven hundred years. Maybe Bunzo had kept his menus updated as well.
Then again, this place had appealed to Molranoids and humans alike, and Molren weren’t known for their culinary variation. In a species with life-spans that could reach to four, five thousand years ‑
“Get serious, Zeegon,” Clue interrupted his rhapsodising, reaching out to touch his arm before he could step any further towards the table setting. “Bunzo killed every living thing on this planet. So what’s the meat in that burger?”
“Oh come now,” Bunzo said forbearingly. “It’s from our freezers. It’s perfectly good.”
Clue folded her arms. “So it’s, what, six hundred years old?”
“No,” Bunzo protested, sounding affronted. “Only ten or … no, I tell a lie,” he corrected himself, “it’s twelve years old. Perfectly fresh, with modern storage techniques.”
“So ten or twelve years … since a cow came here?”
“No, no, it was the Scunthorpe,” Bunzo said, “they had an excellent galley and a hospitality level cuisine printing facility-”
“I get it,” Zeegon grumped, “I’m not eating the burger, okay?”
“We have lots of delicious rations,” Decay told him, patting the bag slung across his upper shoulder.
“Bunzo,” Z-Lin said again, “Janus Whye. He’ll do for what?”
“So persistent!”
“Yes.”
“It’s something of an ongoing project of ours,” Bunzo confessed, with all the embarrassed pleasure of someone revealing a passion for breeding orchids. “An experiment.”
“An experiment in what?”
“Retranscription,” Bunzo said, “from the mechanical back into the physical.”
There was a long, horrified silence.
“Back into a human?” Zeegon asked. “Into Janus?”
“No no, of course not, no,” Bunzo exclaimed, “goodness me, no. Can you only imagine it? No, of course, studies are ongoing. We wouldn’t expect a perfect retranscription. Probably only a test copy at first, maybe even a fragment, and more augmentation will be needed before the whole parade can fit into one little old brain again. A network of several brains would need to be arranged, first. And always with the option to restore to the electronic sphere.”
“Dude, that’s pretty messed up,” Zeegon said, still staring at the burgers.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Bunzo said, his voice high and fragile. “It takes a special compatibility with the mechanical. An affinity. So unfortunate that your friend Ital didn’t make it as far as the Bunzolabe. She had great affinity. Great enthusiasm.”
“What are you, fifteen?” Zeegon asked scornfully, but unable to keep an edge from his voice.
“I don’t mean to be unpleasant,” Bunzo said, “but after so many years, you come to see that there is nothing truly new, nothing truly beyond the emotional range of human beings, regardless of the body that houses them.”
“We’re leaving,” Z-Lin said.
“I’m just saying, Ital would have understood,” Bunzo said, “and would not have judged. Indeed, how could she judge?”
The wide panel that had borne the BUNZO BURGER sign shifted to a more conventional panorama-display screen. The scene, the sounds of which began to pipe from the foyer’s sound-bubbles, included Ital Constable. The scene was an obscenity.
“Zeegon,” Clue snapped, stepping in front of him where he stood, white-knuckled. It was more shock than anything else, at that moment. After Bunzo’s slow build-up, his cheerful and cordial personality, the sudden shift was jarring no matter how little Zeegon had allowed his guard to drop. “Zeegon. You know it’s fake. How easy is it to make scenes like this? A layman could do it on an organiser two thousand years ago, you think Bunzo couldn’t do it today?” Zeegon shook his head, and half-turned away. Clue stepped in front of him again, challenging. “You having doubts, Pendraegg?” she lowered her voice. “I’m going to tell Sally you had doubts. She’ll punch you so hard in the dick, you’ll piss pelvis. You dare.”
Zeegon shook his head again, this time to clear the red, steaming thoughts from within, and looked Z-Lin in the eye. “You’re right,” he said, “this is lame. If you’ve just had your thousandth birthday and all you’ve learned in that time is to needle someone with fake pictures of his dead girlfriend … what the Hell were we so scared of you for?”
“Hey, let’s not go too far with it,” Z-Lin said. “Let’s all keep the starship graveyard full of dismembered mummified corpses in the fronts of our minds, alright?”
“I’m just showing you what you wanted all along,” Bunzo said, all injured innocence. “You wanted to see something twisted? Well, I dislike rudeness and I dislike being misrepresented. So there, feast your eyes. In fact, I don’t think I want you here anymore.”
“I already said we were leaving,” Z-Lin started.
“You want to ask him to bring the lander over for us?” Zeegon asked.
“Forget it,” Clue growled. “I was a damn idiot to abandon the lander in the first place. Let’s go and try a manual takeoff. We can worry about-”
Decay glanced over the top of Zeegon’s head. “Commander?”
Zeegon and Clue turned. The smooth, pale-tinted robots had reappeared, shockingly fast and silent. And now there were about a dozen of them looming in the entrance of each shop along the spaceport foyer.
“Ah, shit,” Z-Lin muttered. “Gentlemen, arm yourselves.”
Zeegon and Z-Lin pulled out a heavy pistol each. The guns, dense composite projectile weapons from Sally’s private collection, were apparently nicknamed ‘Boddington Mules’. Zeegon had been amused by this, imagining they fired toffees at high speed, but their brief training session with the pistols had disabused him of the notion that they were playful in any way. You had to remember to reload them with a new composite-mass core every hundred shots or so, but there were very few pure analogue weapons more effective against machinery. Janus had had one as well. It, unlike his organiser, had not shown up after his disappearance.
Decay, meanwhile, unslung a slightly more massive disc-fed shredder rifle and hefted it in his upper hands, while the lower slipped out a replacement disc from another bag he was carrying on his hip. The shredder was Molran-designed, usually used for crowd-control. Molren died a lot harder than humans, and were proportionately more difficult to put on the cool-down seat. Nevertheless, the discs in this bag were full of flanged ceramic rounds far more lethal than the usual Fleet carbon beads.
It was heavy, requiring a Molranoid’s strength; and it ran out of ammunition fast, requiring a Molranoid’s second set of hands to make it an effective on-the-move weapon. But unless they were really mobbed, Decay would probably be able to cover them while they made their getaway.
They formed a loose back-to-back triangle and began to shuffle out of th
e spaceport.
DECAY (NOW)
The months following Alr’Wady, in terms of communication and information, were dominated by the rumours and details of the Fleet assault on sovereign Chalcedony worlds. They were all supposed to be united, the Six Species indeed, the Fleet just another subculture. More widely dispersed perhaps, and arguably older and more powerful than the settled planets, and definitely more cagey, but all on the same team. It didn’t take much to set off old suspicions and hostilities, however, uncover old prejudices and grievances.
This was particularly true, Decay had found, among the increasingly human-heavy populations along the Chalcedony border. Humans were temperamental and quick to hate, and they cherished their ignorance like a childhood toy of intense sentimental value. He was no great friend of the Fleet himself, of course, and he had to admit that the settlements in this region seemed to have a pretty darn solid justification for their antipathy.
Even so, there were undercurrents. Rumours beneath the rumours. As comms officer, General Moral Decay (Alcohol) had access to all the chatter, and responsibility for piecing it together into some sort of coherent probability-supported narrative. And the narrative he was seeing here was that there was something brewing. Something that might go all the way to Aquilar, might involve all of AstroCorps and the entire Molran Fleet, and might be the start of a counter-strike against the Cancer. A big one.
Worldships did not attack places. They had warships for that – and according to the reports from the Alr’Wadi, the assault had involved way more than a single Worldship’s contingent of warships – but the Fleet in general simply did not do planetary incursions. Planetary incursions were too conspicuous.
Then again, aki’Drednanth siblings didn’t get along, either. It was a time for new and interesting things.
Ruby Susan was a tiny place, a brilliant red fountaining pulsar surrounded by an oddball little community of mobile, self-contained habitats belonging to a collection of extended families. Like deep-sea animals thronging around a volcanic vent, the Susannim swept around the neutron star in counter-orbit to its swiftly-revolving beacon. They collected its strange floods of radiation and energy in charged webs, loaded it into battery tankers and fired them deeper into Chalcedony space at relative speed and by remote control. Their partners at the far end sent back empty tankers, information and luxury items.
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