Not mass mutilation; not defiled corpses.

You trained for the unexpected. You trained to be responsible.

When her body adjusts and her mind stops running in all directions, she speaks.

“Ragtime, seal bridge.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Chapter Five

Ragtime: Fin, Salvo

“And that’s when you recorded the message?” asks Fin.

“Affirmative.”

Fin can feel her thinking, “these primitive colonials”. Earthfolk often mistakenly see Bloodroot as agrarian because they do not wear their technology on their sleeve. At the edge of his awareness, he is cognisant of his and her IFCs synchronising public data about themselves.

“That seems like enough for now,” says Fin.

“I’ll show you to your pods and where you can stash your stuff. Please meet me in the bridge in fifteen minutes.”

The bridge, if you can call it that, is in Node 1, and Salvo is already there when Fin arrives. Campion is in the cupola watching the sun go down on Bloodroot. Fin wonders why Campion would need to view it right now. The Ragtime literally passes it every ninety minutes. The tugbots stow away gear from the Equivalence, berthed to the Ragtime like a tick. A spherical floatbot trails them – internal comm facilitator. In the bridge, Campion seems calmer, certainly friendlier.

“Captain, just to summarise what I’ve understood,” says Salvo. “The Ragtime is a passenger ship. You have a standard AI, a software captain, that takes the ship from Earth orbit, through several bridges, to this point in Bloodroot’s orbit. You woke up to find that, for some reason, the AI has gone silent and thirty-one of the passengers are dead, dismembered. Is that about right?”

“Yes.”

Fin notices Campion makes a funny hand gesture; must be unconscious, rolling thumb over index finger repetitively.

“You’ve been running the ship alone?” Fin says.

“With the bots and the backup basic AI, yes. I’ve been doing the minimum to keep the boat afloat to avoid contamination of the scene.”

“Will you show us around?” asks Fin.

“First things first. I need to know that you both understand that I am the captain. For all of our sakes, I need you to do what I say when I say it,” says Campion.

“Yes, Captain,” says Salvo.

“Well, hang on a second… Captain. What if you’re the murderer?”

She thinks for a moment. “Then I’d steal your shuttle and escape to Bloodroot. I’d find a way to disappear.”

Fin can’t tell if she’s joking. “I’m a repatriator. You wouldn’t get far.”

“I don’t know what a repatriator is,” says Campion.

“I find people who don’t want to be found,” says Fin. “Especially aliens.”

“Fine. How do you propose to vet me?” she asks.

“We won’t,” says Salvo.

“You’ll remain a person of interest until we finish the investigation,” says Fin.

“What does that mean? You’ll lock me up in the brig?”

“You have a brig?”