Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

“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.

  “Go on,” Clue said evenly.

  “Or Sally, who is a known but unsung hero of the computer hacking world,” Glomulus went on, turning to give Sally a bright but careful smile, “or the computer itself, seeing as how it is not above the occasional unexpected bit of self-hacking. Or Janya, highly intelligent and resourceful and secretive. Or General Moral Decay (Alcohol), smarter than the smartest four humans on board if their brains were all hooked up into a parallel processor,” he pointed. “Or Zeegon, of course, with his relentless technological tinkering. Or me, again, since I haven’t stopped hacking into the ship’s systems since you let me out of the brig. Although I repeat, out of all of us I am personally certain only of myself and Janus, since we were in his office together when the alarm went off. And then there’s Contro – a man of hidden depths and esoteric knowledge,” he spread his hands. “Need I go on?”

  “You didn’t do me,” Janus said.

  “Well, like I say, you were with me and thus have an unimpeachable alibi.”

  “Even so…”

  “Fine,” Glomulus pointed at Whye. “Janus Whye,” he said dramatically. “The counsellor doesn’t need to hack the ship. He can hack our very minds.”

  “So awesome,” Janus enthused quietly.

  “Alright,” Clue said, “enough.”

  “Yeah,” Zeegon agreed, his face suddenly unaccustomedly grave. “Dunnkirk is dead. Dunnkirk is dead. Dunnkirk. I was just with him. I helped him up…” he shook his head. “He came to the bridge, we headed out…”

  “And as soon as we went to relative speed, he was killed,” Sally said. “Was that … do we think that was intentional? Was the killer waiting for him to be out of contact with Maladin and Thord?”

  “Oh shit,” Zeegon said sickly, suddenly sounding near to tears. “Waiting until he was alone.”

  “Alone except for Thord’s pups,” Janya said. “Have they reacted to this in any way?”

  Z-Lin shook her head, glanced at Decay. “I went past the farm after we finished up at the medical bay, but they just … they’re just rolling and climbing and snapping at each other, they barely even looked up at me. I sure hope they’re right about aki’Drednanth looking after themselves, because…” she shook her head again. “They didn’t seem to be any more or less upset than usual.”

  “Where’s Dunnkirk now?” Waffa asked.

  “Z-Lin released the freezer array components from Dunnkirk’s busted sleeper pod,” Decay said, “and I got him tucked in and basically frozen on one of the spare examination tables.”

  “So he’s getting to rest in the pod after all,” Zeegon said.

  “The array could still function as meat stasis,” Decay went on, when nobody had any further morose observations to offer, “but without the systems installed – with the damage that had been done – it would have killed a living Bonshoon. It could never have worked as a proper sleeper anymore, but to keep the body in stasis…” he sighed, and consulted his own pad. “The blood, and the transfusion extractor, is in storage. It’s still warm. I mean, viable.”

  “Decay,” Zeegon grimaced.

  “Sorry, I know this is one of those squeamish subjects,” the Blaran shrugged his upper shoulders. “What I mean is, the bags were quite professionally swapped out and stored in the extractor system. It’s still workable. The entire lot was returned to lock-down, where we decided to keep it. He’s been dead for too long to effectively revive, even a Molranoid body will … well, all I mean is, the blood can be used in medical emergencies, saving us the time required to print it. That’s where Dunnkirk is now. And the preservation is flawless – no further loss of evidence. It’s all saved up, he’s in stasis until Cratch can be cleared and trusted to conduct an autopsy on the body.”

  “I’m keeping an eye on Hell’s weather reports,” Sally muttered.

  “Yeah,” Waffa said
, “let’s think about this. You said the blood was extracted professionally? Who else can do that?”

  “Basic humanoid and Molranoid medical procedures are part of command training,” Z-Lin said, “and that includes this sort of isolation equipment. So it comes back to Glomulus, me, or the Captain,” she paused. “Probably you too, Decay,” Decay nodded curtly.

  “I could probably do it too,” Sally conceded, “although my med training is pretty rusty.”

  Janya raised her eyebrows a little as everyone turned to look at her. “I am a researcher,” she said patiently. “If I knew anything about medicine, Glomulus would still be in the brig.”

  “You might want to put me back in there until you figure this one out,” Cratch said seriously. “I wasn’t responsible, but it’s clearly clouding the issue and additionally a lot of you look like you have twitchy fingers.”

  “Okay,” Sally said, “as far as I’m concerned this is like a locked-door mystery, only the question is how Cratch managed to commit the murder from the other side of the ship and one deck down, with two witnesses and Bruce watching him.”

  “Bruce, were you watching me too?” Glomulus said. “I do declare.”

  “Think of me as a doctor,” Bruce said, “who doesn’t actually give a crap about you.”

  “Okay, so we move on to actual motive,” Sally said firmly. “Given that each of us apparently has some sort of murderous expertise to bring to the table, which of us actually might want Dunnkirk dead?”

  “None of us,” Zeegon snapped. “Damn it, probably not even Cratch.”

  “Actually,” Waffa admitted, “about the only ones of us who have any sort of motive are me and Zeeg.”

  The helmsman turned to stare at the Chief of Security and Operations. “What?”

  “Dunnkirk squeezed our nuts that time,” Waffa said with an uncomfortable shrug.

  “You mean that scuffle we got into about the Cancer collaborators?” Zeegon winced. “Yeah, fair to say. We were all pretty tense and it was a bit of a – okay, it was a really dumb thing to say. We got off lightly and we were lucky it was Dunster. We said we were sorry, Dunnkirk said he was sorry, we were embarrassed as Hell and we all got on with our lives. I think we all wish it had never happened.”

  “Especially now,” Waffa said, “when it seems to be the only incident Dunnkirk was ever involved with on board ship that might have made an enemy of anyone.”

  “Please,” Z-Lin said, “give us a break. You made a couple of dick remarks in an ugly stress situation and you got smacked for it. End of story. Neither of you could hold a grudge that long, and Zeegon was on the bridge with me and Sally and Decay.”

  “And Waffa was in main engineering with me!” Contro added helpfully.

  “We were all with someone,” Sally said.

  “Except for me,” Janya spoke up. “I was alone in my quarters.”

  “I think we can rule out Sally and Janya,” Decay said with a faint smile, “at least until we locate the box they might have stood on.”

  “Watch it,” Sally growled good-naturedly. “All an alibi means is that we might be looking for a murderer and accomplice.”

  “Sally, as the closest thing to a cop on board, I want you to take the lead on this investigation,” Z-Lin said, “and by protocol we also need Chief of Security and Operations in the loop, so Waffa – you’re on this too,” she stood up. One by one, glancing awkwardly at one another, the rest of the crew stood up and prepared to return to their posts – or, since it was the middle of the night shift, more likely to bed.

  Must be nice, Sally thought, exchanging a wry look with Waffa. There would be no sleep for either of them that night. Oh well, at least we’ll have Decay to keep us company. Blaren didn’t sleep.

  “And we’re just going to maintain our course?” Zeegon asked.

  “Maintain course and speed,” Z-Lin confirmed. “Until we have answers for them, it’s in everyone’s best interests to keep Thord and Maladin from finding out. I have absolutely no idea how they might react, and what they might do. It’s entirely likely that Thord is back in the Dreamscape right now and will learn everything from her pups when we return to normal space. At which point, we’re going to want to be able to tell her exactly what happened and who was responsible.”

  “Right,” Waffa said grimly.

  They began to file out, most of them moving with heavy feet and slumped shoulders.

  Clue stopped in the doorway and turned back to Sally and Waffa. “And I want you both to keep reminding each other,” she said. “You’re looking for the person who murdered Dunnkirk. Not for how Cratch murdered him. Is that clear?”

  ZEEGON (THEN)

  I had that dream again.

  It had been a while since he’d thought about Ital, but the day’s activities had for some reason reminded him of her.

  It wasn’t entirely normal, in these apparently enlightened times, for a person to refer to a prospective partner as being totally out of his or her league, but Zeegon was an old-fashioned sort of boy. And besides, Ital Constable had been totally out of his league. Everybody said so. Heck, back when they’d first instigated the awkward process of becoming an item, nobody had even believed him when he’d broken the news to his friends and colleagues.

  Ital had found that hilarious, and responded by fabricating an official reprimand against him in relation to some security drill or another, the automated components for which his crew had been responsible. There, in front of a crowded workshop full of his friends, co-workers, rivals and superiors, she had chewed him out blisteringly for his incompetence and dangerous lack of attention to detail in the maintenance and upkeep of basic mechanical systems, and concluded by propositioning him, loudly and explicitly, for a sexual act he later had to look up on the computer.

  That was Ital.

  She’d been a high-ranking security officer, directly below Chief Tactical Officer ‘Brutan’ Barducci. She was smart, funny, tough, and lacking in a single molecule of bullplop. Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed was awesome, a force of nature, and in the year and a half since The Accident had adapted to her new position of scary responsibility far better than most of the rest of them, but even she had deferred to Ital. Well, she sort of had to, while she was on duty, since Sally was a non-Corps authority and, more to the point, had technically only been a munitions and debugging grunt back then.

  Zeegon had never quite understood how all of that worked, particularly after Sally came back from her little hunting excursion with the Rip in her custody and the sliced-up mute weirdo Adeneo in tow. This was how he’d thought of Janya at the time and he’d never entirely revised this opinion after half a decade. But as near as he could tell, Sally was an ex-cop and honorary crewmember but hadn’t done any Academy training. She was, however, responsible for Cratch until he could be returned to the Dome for sentencing, which gave her something of an increased de facto ranking among the security teams.

  Ital, on the other hand, was responsible for the entire brig and prisoner incarceration and transportation system. There weren’t that many other prisoners in the Tramp’s brig – or the A-Mod 400’s, as she had been nicknamed back in the day, since she’d never really received an official name – and certainly none as famous as the Barnalk High Ripper … but it was still a big deal.

  Whatever the arrangement and pecking order was, Zeegon didn’t care. Sally and Ital were best friends, and he knew that the boyfriend was never meant to get along with the girlfriend’s best friend, but they actually sort of did get along, and that was both strange and wonderful. On Zeegon’s and Ital’s first shore leave as an honest-to-goodness couple, Zeegon had found himself bracketed by the two women in a seedy bar on Radagast. It had been Sally’s birthday and she’d been hammered.

  “If you ever hurt her,” Sally had told him through a fume of schnapps, “they will never find your body.”

  “And I’ll really be looking,” Ital had added from the other side, “because there’s going to be bits of it I want to
shave.”

  Radagast, Zeegon thought. Shit. Three years. Three years? Three years.

  Barducci had died in The Accident, and Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed had unwillingly taken over as Chief Tactical Officer. Ital had been gone before that, though.

  The bonefields had taken Ital.

  Zeegon sighed, strolled through into his second set of quarters – he actually had three apartments interlinked, now, although one of them was full of machinery and he was considering expanding into a fourth – and dropped into the armchair.

  Their last stop had only been a couple of hours ago, but it hadn’t exactly been shore leave. Just another stopover at another icy rock on the far edge of another uninhabited system. Another long period of nothing-much-to-do while Waffa and The General wrestled with some machinery or other that Zeegon was supposed to be responsible for building and maintaining but did not in reality have the first clue about. At least this time they were legitimately doing something recognisable and necessary, namely digging up carbon to refine and replenish their supplies. Never mind that they could have gone somewhere with heating, running water, people, Zaz Burgers, an atmosphere, and picked up ready-blocked carbon. Never mind that. There’d been some sort of graphite blend on that rock and the Tramp’s refinery still worked, so that was what they’d done.

  And at least this rock had no sign of abandoned Fleet splinter-cult tombs full of awful slimy hive-horde things that were lying dormant inside and awaiting a handy bit of body-temperature to awaken them for feeding time.

  You had to count your blessings.

  Anyway, another uneventful stopover followed by another handed-down marching order. A fresh set of esoteric relative trajectory and emergence equations that Zeegon couldn’t have identified if his life depended on it. Literally. Demonstrably. If his life depended on it. Fortunately, the ship’s computer was a high-functioning moron even without a synth active, and even with the damage done by The Accident. He didn’t need to understand what all the gibberish was, as long as he input it into the helm and got them to maximum cruising velocity before jumping to relative speed. They could go to superluminal speeds – he’d learned this one from experience – while moving more slowly or even while at an essential standstill, as long as they weren’t too close to any large spaceborne masses. Doing so, however, tended to disorient people and made the engines do things that Contro couldn’t adequately explain.