“Were we attacked?” Cratch asked, pale blue eyes wide. Sally’s eyes narrowed, one hand slipping up behind her back and returning with a small, matte black gun. She raised it, not taking her eyes from the man sitting on the bed. “Is that regulation?”
Keeping the most-vehemently-not-regulation thresh-blaster pointed squarely at Glomulus, she stepped forward. She glanced down at the clear prisoner transfer panel beneath the missing cross-bar, and the flake of bowl-material caught in the metaflux. Then she looked back up at Glomulus. Glomulus smiled, but was otherwise being careful not to move from his seat on the bed.
Sally was tempted to test the panel, but there was a chance its polarity was now turned the other way – solid from his side, open from hers – and there was nothing she had that she wanted to risk getting stuck in the monodirectional panel. Not her hand, and definitely not her gun.
Actually, she amended, definitely not her hand. Cratch might use a gun as a means to an end, but he didn’t think much of them in general. He still had his teeth.
Not only that, but if the panels were, as she suspected, reversed to allow Cratch to leave his cell, there was nothing stopping NightMary or Bunzo or Sir Bodkins Shartworthy or whoever from just switching the polarity the moment she touched them. Trapping her.
She sighed. And as long as they were inside the Bunzolabe, there was absolutely no way of controlling Cratch’s imprisonment. She could reset everything and lock it down and shut off the power, and the machine would find some way of turning it back on, just like it had this time.
“Give me a steel box with a lock on the outside,” she muttered, pocketing the gun.
“Or a suitcase,” Glomulus said mildly. “Am I right?”
Sally smiled crookedly. “How long have you been awake?”
Glomulus shrugged. “The janitorial – or NightMary, I suppose – said it was three and a half hours until night fell on the ship you were looking for. I guess it’s been … four?”
Sally frowned. “And you stayed in your cell? The whole time between when you woke up and my arrival just now? And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I must be institutionalised,” Cratch said mournfully.
“Must be,” Sally grunted. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do either way, if NightMary’s got control of the brig and the means of keeping you sedated. I could sit here with a gun trained on you until I fell asleep, but sooner or later I would fall asleep. You sleep about as much as Decay.”
“That’s not true,” Cratch protested. “I had a nice snooze from the … what was it you got me with?”
Sally waved a hand. “You couldn’t have been under more than fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Lovely,” Glomulus smiled again. “Speaking of Decay, it’s a shame he’s gone. I had a special agreement with that Molran. NightMary reminded me.”
“Blaran,” Sally corrected him idly.
“That’s what I said.”
“I could just shoot you in the head,” she countered. “I don’t think NightMary would be able to do anything about that.”
“If you were going to just shoot me in the head, I think you would have done it several years ago,” Glomulus tilted his head slightly in the direction of the right-hand wall of his cell. “Speaking of NightMary, what was it she’s done? That sounded like a hull breach.”
“Sounded like a tantrum to me,” Sally replied.
“Maybe when someone can blow up our ship with a tantrum, it’s time to give baby what she wants,” the Rip suggested.
“I only wish I knew what baby wants,” Sally said wearily. She was about to say more, when Glomulus turned and glanced past her shoulder.
The janitorial had come from nowhere, and before she could reach for her gun again it had wrapped several manipulators around her arms and torso and pulled her down onto its smooth white carrying tray.
GLOMULUS (NOW)
“We still have a decent-length flight ahead of us,” Z-Lin told them, “along the Chalcedony border. Well over nine months, taking shore leaves and other stopovers and possible operations into account.”
The crew looked back and forth at one another. Glomulus, actually blessed with a monitor connection to the conference room this time, was able to watch them on his screen from the medical bay without any need to resort to spying on Contro’s watch. Which was for the best, because Contro had left his watch in one of his other cardigans, and presumably somewhere in his quarters. It had been a while since Glomulus had been able to tune in on it at all, and there was a very real possibility that the watch would remain lost for the foreseeable future.
“What sort of operations, please?” Zeegon raised his hand.
“Not important. Dunnkirk’s funeral arrangements, for a start. If we find that there have been more attacks, for another, we might need to render aid or provide transportation,” Clue waved a hand. “All of this. Either way, it’s a good nine months of flight through soft-space. It’s what is waiting for us at the end of that nine-month stretch that we need to discuss now.”
Here it comes, Glomulus thought, leaning forward in his chair.
“We’re under orders to return to the Bunzolabe,” Z-Lin went on without further procrastination, “and make a repeat landing on Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World. We are to re-initiate communication with Bunzo and recover valuable information that we were not aware of – and not aware that Bunzo possessed – on our last trip. Specifically, the location of a ship we have reason to believe Bunzo knows about. There is also apparently a possibility that Bunzo is either behind these new attacks we have been seeing, or has knowledge of them. We are to ascertain his involvement, if possible.”
Even Glomulus had to say he was surprised, but not as surprised as he was by the response from the crew.
“Bloody Hell,” Waffa said, as Zeegon drew in a deep sucking breath and let it out in a long, thin sigh. Sally leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, and Decay did the same with both pairs of his. There were no immediate objections, no shouts, no demands to be let off the ship or accusations of madness aimed at the Tramp’s officers.
Glomulus wondered if the intrepid Trampsters had finally reached that calm point at the far side of trauma and hysteria, and were now just embracing anything that might bring an end to their ordeal. He had to say, if that was the case it was a little disappointing. He’d thought, after all this, that they were made of more tempered steel.
“When you say we have reason to believe Bunzo has any of this intel,” Sally eventually said, “who are ‘we’ and what reasons are they, exactly?”
“The order comes directly from the Captain,” Z-Lin said, and Glomulus had to award her points for steadiness, “as I am sure we’re all aware by this point and our opinions on the matter are all duly noted. The ship in question is a case not only of high-level classified intelligence, but also something that more recent events have brought back to the Captain’s attention. I have a hard time explaining this because it wasn’t exactly explained very clearly to me. Perhaps it would be best if I just stated the order verbatim,” she cleared her throat and addressed her pad. “‘Return to Bunzolabe. Initiate communication with Bunzo. Make planetfall if necessary. High-level communication to be conducted by the Captain. Location or fate of Vessel CXD-1171…’ here there is a considerable alphanumeric identity sequence…” she said, then continued, “‘location or fate of vessel to be considered top priority. Recent communication with aki’Drednanth passengers has revealed their own interest and connection with vessel, restoring this objective to status of next available for completion. Attacks on Bayn Balro, The Warm, and Declivitorion may be connected to the Bunzolabe, or Bunzo might possess intelligence on the source. Ascertain through communication. Authorisation and classification…’ and another long list of clearance codes and identity tags,” she concluded. “That’s basically it.”
“Those are the orders he gives you?” Waffa said incredulously. “That’s what you get? That’s what you translate
into meaningful instructions for the rest of us?”
“Pretty much,” Z-Lin said dryly. “In this case, of course, we’re being given plenty of time to settle on a plan verbally, with a fairly open-ended set of instructions on the record since Bunzo would be able to read any specific orders and we may not want him to.”
“He might be able to get conversation logs too,” Decay remarked.
“True. That’s why we’re doing our best – with Bruce’s help – to keep conversations off the bumpers. Look, long story short, there’s a ship. AstroCorps wants to know where it is. Our little aki’Drednanth want to know where it is. Bunzo might know where it is. So we have to go and let the Captain ask him.”
“And the Captain will be doing the talking?” Zeegon blurted. “Did I understand that right?”
“Don’t expect anything spectacular,” Clue replied. “He has a habit of conducting his sides of our missions without witnesses and often without us even knowing about them, let alone mentioning it in his orders.”
“Yes,” Sally said in a mild voice.
Zing, Glomulus smiled, but he had to admire what Clue had just done. By reading out their orders aloud, for one of the first times ever, she had completely changed the focus of the debate. Suddenly they were all talking about the Captain, and his actions past and future. And they weren’t talking about going back into the Bunzolabe.
“And when did the aki’Drednanth communicate with him?” Waffa was asking. “When did they tell him about this ship that we’ve apparently had on our to-do list forever? Sometime while he was sneaking around the Tramp like a ghost?”
“Something like that,” Z-Lin said. “You heard the orders, that’s what I have and the interpretation and follow-through on those orders is my responsibility. Telling us where he gets his information? Where the ultimate mission parameters for this modular lie and what their sources are? These are not things the Captain needs to share.”
“Okay,” Decay said reasonably, “but what about these aki’Drednanth we have on board now? Mother’s Rebellion? The Levelled Blade, or whatever they’re calling themselves. I know this is all the information you have, but what possible interest can they have in a ship that’s also on AstroCorps’s radar? This CXD-1171-whatever ship – I take it we’re not talking about the Denbrough or Yojimbo again, not this time,” Z-Lin shook her head. “Is it an aki’Drednanth ship?”
“Another seed, perhaps?” Janya added. “Some sort of aki’Drednanth geo-technology that wandered into the Bunzolabe and got lost there like so many other ships? The so-called Levelled Blade could even be some sort of rescue and recovery operation. We know the aki’Drednanth think very differently about things like this, and they don’t operate according to standard AstroCorps or Fleet models. This might be the way they arrange such operations. Long-term, and with strictly bio-based logistics.”
“Janya might be right,” Glomulus spoke up, making little effort to conceal his excitement. He was meant to be the aki’Drednanth fanboy, after all – let them see that predictable aspect of his personality. “This whole series of events might have been set in motion a long time ago. Thord might very well have been arranged to bring these seven specific aki’Drednanth into the world again, these seven who are perfectly trained and suited to performing such a strange mission. They might be a previously-united team, and this might explain why they’re not fighting against each other,” he leaned forward and tapped a finger on the console under his monitor for emphasis. “We have to accept the possibility that this is such an important mission for them, it cancels out the age-old Drednanth-to-aki’Drednanth tradition of earning one’s passage to the flesh. And that the trip out to the edge and back in was going to be enough to allow them to be born, and grow up a little bit, before we ventured into the Bunzolabe again.”
“Bloody Hell,” Waffa said again.
“Of course, there is a lot we would still need to explain, if this is really the case,” Janya warned. “Thord had her mission, out to the edge of the galaxy with her seed, and the pups didn’t seem to be connected with that in any way we currently understand. Certainly our arrival at The Warm and our assignment to provide Thord and the Bonshooni with passage was simply an arrangement of convenience. We arrived after the attack, and we had relative speed capability. It would be a staggering coincidence if they also had this long-term mission to the Bunzolabe in development, literally gestating, and they happened to run into one of the few ships and crews in the galaxy that had already been to Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World and survived.”
“And remember,” Decay added, “we were only so close to Bayn Balro and The Warm in the first place because that’s where the underspace drive dropped us after the whole thing with the Artist. There’s no way – no way that we currently understand – they could have known we’d be dropped there.”
“Oh man,” Zeegon groaned, clutching at his head.
“Alright,” Janya said, “I’m willing to accept that Mother’s Rebellion have some other agenda, but when they found out that we had been to the Bunzolabe before, and survived, they decided that we might be willing and able to go in there again. And that Bunzo might be able to help locate this ship, whatever ship it is. Maybe ‘find the ship’ was as much on the bottom of their to-do pile as it apparently was on ours, but when the information came together it was enough to raise it to the top of the objectives – same as it was with us.”
“Could Bunzo be working his way into the ship, or the seed or whatever?” Janus asked. “The – what did you call it – the aki’Drednanth geo-tech? Maybe Bunzo’s figuring out how to bridge the gap between the digital upload thing that happened to him, and the Drednanth Dreamscape? Everyone would probably be all about stopping him from cracking that code, right?”
“Knowing what we know about his … work,” Janya agreed, “it’s possible that an aki’Drednanth or a Drednanth seed would make a valued acquisition for him.”
“And is any of this connected with him apparently being involved in the attacks?” Sally asked. It was all misdirection, Glomulus thought again, diverting everyone from the actual dangers of the Bunzolabe and the sheer madness of being ordered back there.
“His involvement or knowledge of the attacks we have seen is pure speculation,” Clue said, “and I suspect – cards on the table – it was thrown in to motivate us with some sort of larger yet more personal stake. But it is a possibility that I feel is worth pursuing. Please also note,” she went on, “since we’re talking about cards on the table, I am not invoking priority zero at this point. While the aki’Drednanth pups are apparently in favour of this mission and the argument could be made for their wishes to be an optimal priority, I think we have fulfilled our obligation in that regard. This is a purely AstroCorps-sanctioned operation and I have to duly acknowledge the non-Corps status of basically all of you.
“Which brings us to the ‘why us’ side of the issue,” she looked up and down the table. “Now, as an AstroCorps modular that has already survived the trip into the Bunzolabe and back out again – more or less,” she amended, giving Janus an apologetic look, “we are uniquely placed to repeat the journey. The feeling is that we must have done something right, and we have a decent chance of doing something right again.”
“When we say ‘uniquely’,” Decay asked, turning to Janya, “do we have a rough idea how uniquely?”
“I found nothing on record of any ship or crew surviving a trip into the Bunzolabe, and then going back there again,” Janya said. “No ship, no crew, no crew members split up and reassigned to other crews and then returning as part of their new crew as consultants. Nobody who ever got out of the Bunzolabe alive ever went back in.”
“And we all know why this is,” Janus said, “right?”
Glomulus smiled again. Now they were back on the topic Clue probably didn’t want them on. It would be interesting to see whether she’d get them off it again.
To his surprise – again – she didn’t actually try. “There’s
a long way to go,” she said instead, “and circumstances can change at any time. At the moment we know where we’re headed, and it’s a lot of weeks in soft-space and a lot of stopovers before we get anywhere near the Bunzolabe. We don’t need to decide the mission brief tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’ll definitely be staying on the ship this time,” Janus said. “No way will you get me down on the surface. I might even stay up in the buoy with Bitterpill and watch skullies.”
“With or without the adapter implant?” Zeegon asked.
“Meh.”
“At least this time we’re a little bit forewarned,” Sally said. “We know to keep out of the night-side of the planet, for example.”
This much was true, Doctor Cratch conceded to himself. Horatio Bunzo was bad – they knew this – but NightMary was distilled death.
“How did we survive, though?” Waffa asked. “I know we discussed this to death after the first time, but that was all sort of operating under the assumption that it would be the first-and-only, so it was all pretty academic, right? I mean, what do we know that kept us alive, and how did we get away? Shit, why are we even thinking about this, when apparently no other crew has wanted to go back in there?”
“Wasn’t it the Sally-Forth Engine that helped us get out of there?” Janus suggested. “Bunzo was quite pleased with that whole development. Right up until he, you know, wasn’t. Or so I’m told, anyway.”
With this, despite the gloom and the general agreement that they were participants in an act of mass hysteria, it seemed more or less decided. They would head towards Bunzo’s, and they would accept this mission that had been thrust upon them. And they all seemed remarkably fine about it. The rest was just details.
Glomulus didn’t get any shore leave, not that he had been expecting any. In a mildly amusing complication, the eight-modular orbital platform they docked at was run by a caste – or a ‘clan’, as he thought they referred to themselves – of orbital lift-and-separate engineers who followed the Path of Gosana. They believed a lot of interesting things, but the relevant one to Cratch was their quaintly superstitious mistrust of charyæ: medical doctors, particularly handlers of cadavers, the professional group of which Glomulus considered himself a rather dashing example. A person who had officially and professionally conducted an autopsy was deemed unclean and in some senses other-worldly. They probably would have extended this to anyone who had tended to a dead body, but that would inevitably have included any AstroCorps-trained crewmember or indeed any non-Corps employee who had been in space long enough, so they had to rationalise it down to just the people whose names were on the forms. They’d judge his corpse-fondling hands to be terribly unlucky, and most likely wouldn’t let him or his hands come aboard the platform anyway.
Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Page 22
