there, holding what appeared to be a brushed-metal version of the standard doctor's bag.
'Conjecture: faked illness,' the mechalus said with an expression that for the moment was decidedly cool. 'Etiology: uncertain. Observation: atypical odors for human/fraal habitation. Query: nature of callout?'
'We were attacked in system space by ships, one of which was piloted by an alien we cannot identify,' Gabriel said. 'We managed to save the body. It's ... pretty abnormal.'
'Query:' said Doctor Sota, 'recording of attack and response?'
'The computer has saved it,' said Enda and brought up the JustWadeln software.
Delde Sota stepped up to the pilot's seat and paused there for a moment, looking at the smear that still lay across the cockpit window from the first object that had hit them. 'Query: provenance?'
'The residue from an impact,' Enda said. 'You will see it in the playthrough.'
Delde Sola's braid reached up over her shoulder and brushed across the cockpit controls, the hair-tendrils finding one preferred spot and infiltrating itself through it into the computer circuitry behind. The tank flickered with images, dark and bright, too quickly for Gabriel to get a clear sense of any individual one. Delde Sola turned to them then and said, 'Observation: lucky to be alive. Query: repeat occurrence?' 'It happened once before, yes,' Gabriel replied, 'but there weren't any remains we could find.' 'Proposal: autopsy,' said Delde Sota, moving aft and taking her bag with her while looking around for a place to put it. 'Requirements: suitable surface, disinfectant solution-' She smiled briefly. 'Body.' 'We have a table,' Enda said and led Delde Sota down into the 'sitting room' area, where she unfolded the table from the wall.
Wait a minute, we eat off that table! Gabriel thought, but he didn't bother to say it out loud, for Enda was already making her way down toward the cargo bay with the doctor in tow. Gabriel sighed and turned to the computer, telling the cargo bay to pressurize itself with air from inside the docking ring access. He then followed the others.
Enda and Delde Sota were standing there in the chill, looking down at the unwieldily wrapped body. 'Observation: some haste in preparation, programming in phymech insufficient,' said Delde Sota. 'Observation: odor immediately noticeable, some haste suggested. Query: computer interface in this area?'
'There against the wall,' said Gabriel, 'over by the spee-gee apparatus.'
Delde Sola's braid started lo lengthen itself, wavering out and along to where the computer interface was embedded by the specific gravity and metallurgic assay equipment. 'Observation: table too small. Conjecture: even if right size, not much good for dinner afterwards,' Delde Sola said, going over to kneel by the corpse and putting her bag down while her braid insinuated itself into the ship's computer, 'even after scrubbing by marine.' Gabriel blinked at that. 'Suggestion: pathology and food a bad mixture in close quarters. Query: assistance?'
'I'll help,' said Gabriel, utterly horrified a second later that such a suggestion had come out of his mouth. Doctor Sota gave him a look. 'Observation: educational. Also: finder's right.' She opened her doctor's bag.
-and it opened, and opened, and opened, and kept on opening so that Gabriel had to just stare at it. The bag flattened itself out across the floor into an incredibly complex set of dividers and clearfoam-wrapped instruments and objects that Gabriel couldn't identify. There seemed to be many times more room in it for things than the original volume would have suggested. Finally it stopped opening, and Gabriel was almost disappointed.
'I wonder if anyone does a version of that for maintenance tools?' Enda asked, looking down at the 'bag' with what looked to Gabriel like mild envy.
Delde Sota looked from Enda to Gabriel with that slightly wicked look. 'Information: special order,' she said. 'Offer: will assist you in obtaining discount. Suggestion: put ship in escrow.' 'Thankyouno' Gabriel said hurriedly.
Delde Sota raised her eyebrows, looked over the contents of the 'bag,' and selected an object wrapped in clearfoam. The foam dissolved away as she lifted the object, a long, slender, extremely keen-looking knife.
'Invocation: here death rejoices to teach the living,' Delde Sota said and began slicing delicately at the bodywrap film that covered the corpse. It fell away, crinkling dryly, and Delde Sota looked at that with some bemusement. 'Observation: already atypical response in wrapping,' she said. 'Begin recording. Computer, copy to coroner's records, Iphus Collective Medicolegal Authority, Delde Sota recording, this recording under Coroner's Seal, Concord Medicolegal / Concord Pathology and Forensics SR7269563355209782673.'
The last of the wrapping fell away. 'Note dehydration or denaturization reaction in standard bodywrap,' said Delde Sola, looking the body over. 'Report concerns bodily remains resulting from as yet unreported event in Corrivale system space. See attached file recording for details. Initial examination shows bipedal overtly humanoid figure, gender details not specific at this stage, height one hundred ninety centimeters, mass-' she paused to lift the body-'fifty-eight point nine kilograms, atypically low for most humanoid species even without clothing or covering, the subject still being clothed.' She went on for a few moments to describe the strange e-suit verbally. Gabriel noticed that Delde Sola's idiom was growing more human, probably for the sake of the autopsy report. She paused at one point, putting the blade aside-it hovered steady in the air where she left it-and reached for another instrument that she used to sample the slimy substance inside the suit. Her face darkened somewhat as she said, 'Interstitial area between e-suit and skin surface is filled with mucus-like substance, colonized to high liter levels by what appears to be mutated bacteria of geni Orgontha, Salmonella, Escherichia, numerous others. Purposes of mutation uncertain. Mucus is acidic, already moving through pH 4.2 and increasing. Exposure to air or damage to outer e-suit may be implicated. Sample retained in airtight capsule for later analysis. Images saved for later analysis. See attached files. Now removing e-suit.' The mechalus doctor reached first into her kit and came up with an object that looked like four small spheres welded together. She took hold of two of them and pulled. A thin silvery thread spun out between them until it was about a meter long. She left the first two spheres handing in the air, grasped the other two, and pulled. The thread started to stretch out into a shimmering sheet of thin-membrane polymer, probably no more than a molecule thick, but (Gabriel guessed) probably nearly unbreakable. This surface hovered in the air, and Delde Sola recovered her first tool, the straight-bladed dissecting knife. A clear skinfilm applied itself around her hands and up her arms, and she went to work. Slice by slice she removed the e-suit, cutting away the softer portions around the armored parts and piling them up with some care on the membrane 'sheet' that grew to accommodate them as she accumulated them. The head piece was the last to come off. Delde Sola lifted the dissecting knife, made a small adjustment to a control in its butt, then stroked it up the side of the headpiece, around and over the top, and down the other side. The headpiece fell apart in two neat pieces, the back half first. Delde Sota let the head rest on the floor, removing the back half of the headpiece first. It was full of the mucus- gel substance, and the inside of the headpiece was patterned with neurocircuitry. She put the half-helmet aside, lifted the front portion away. The head was human, and it looked very dead indeed.
'Body inside the e-suit appears to be that of a human male,' Delde Sota said calmly enough while Gabriel did his best to keep his stomach under control-as much from the look of the body as from the ever-stronger acid smell that was filling the air.
He glanced over at Enda. She was still, looking at the body, and her face was more completely 'shut down' than he could ever remember having seen it, even when she would fall asleep in the pilot chair. Gabriel glanced back at the body, forcing himself to it. The face was sunken, shrunken, the eyes fallen in, the bones of the skull all too clearly visible under the pallid, green-streaked flesh, as if this body had not been moving and shooting at them just half a day before. It looked rather as if it had been lying in some dry place for a long time, dessicating in the darkness. Though wet, the flesh still looked leathery, papery, too thin to stay on the bones. The expression was anguished, almost a rictus of paimn ... and also rage? Gabriel thought, for he had seen men's faces locked that way after dying on the battlefield. The skull was corded with something like tendons that ran down the back and sides of the skull, down the neck to the chest, from the chest over to the shoulders and arms. The tendons looked like cords of greenish-white material, striated the long way like bundles of twisted fibers. The corpse's muscles were wasted almost to nothing, to cords and strings themselves. The middle of the body was sunken in as if its owner had been long starved. In one spot, Gabriel half thought he could see the contours of the spinal bones showing through the sagging papery skin of the abdomen.
'Age of subject indeterminate because of extreme fragility and denatured status of tissue,' Delde Sola was saying calmly, but her eyes were dark with something that was beginning to look like anger. 'No adipocere, massive tissue wasting in all extremities, atypical cordlike growth or bioengineered network, apparently sourced in the dural layer of the spine and the dura mater, radiating to all extremities and bone/muscle insertions. Exterior appearance suggests all major organs have experienced pathological wasting.' She lifted her knife again. 'Paused,' she said and looked over at Gabriel. 'Observation: some entities find this portion of the examination disturbing.'
Enda got up and went hurriedly away. 'I will listen-' she said as she went out the cargo bay door and shut it
