Episode 402: Shepherd's Hope, Part Six

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At her end, Rina bites back a curse.

Rina: Really?
Kiera: They already know they’re up in the schoolhouse.
Rina: All right. Fine.
Kiera: If Santa Claus and the other one don’t come back, they ain’t going to come back for these.

Meaning Lovewell and Mountain Man.

Kiera: Do you think Arden will be all right alone on the ship with the one guy? Arden is watching the two patients and what happens if the other guy goes bugnuts.
Rina: (sighing) I can lock him in. Fix it so he can’t leave his quarters.
Kiera: All right.

Off to the side, Nika and Joshua go over what they’ve learned from the latest conversation with the kids. Why only one Reaver? Why is he walking into town? Why is he staying in the woods? Why does he keep coming back? What is so special about the catatonic man that he’s of interest? Nothing about this Reaver seems Reaver-like. Nothing in this Reaver business makes sense. The level of sophistication in the torture, the recurring visits, the incomplete burning down of the in town… Nika says she doesn’t give a good gorram who kills the remaining Reaver, us or the Hunters. She just wants to get the kids out of here. Joshua warns that we don’t even know if the person is actually is a Reaver. How can we be sure without seeing him? And just channeling Rina for a minute, Nika goes along with it and expands on the theme: What if this guy isn’t a Reaver at all but one of Lovewell’s crew and he’s looking for something in this traumatized town, using the prior Reaver attacks to hide his activities? It would go far to explain why the kids haven’t been harmed physically, not if scaring them into hiding and staying out of the way is enough for this faux-Reaver’s purposes. It would explain why the man keeps coming back every couple of nights and maybe what he’s looking for is something that Catatonic Man knows about.

Kiera: That is a very convoluted plan. We’re gonna make Reavers so we can make some money off ’em even if we have to turn everybody bugnuts to bring in one SOB.
Nika: That’s Rina at her best.
Kiera: Yeah, I was gonna say, cuz she’s worth about a thousand platinum.
Joshua: If they just wanted the guy, they could just come in and take him. They’re armed for bear. They could take down a raging elephant with their—
Nika: But they haven’t.
Joshua: Well yes, I understand—
Nika: They haven’t burned the town. They haven’t taken the kids out of here and—
Joshua: Yes, I’m understanding. I’m not—
Nika: And they could have at any given time. They could’ve just smoked them out with a smoke grenade. Which is where I am right now.
Joshua: Look, I understand.

We understand that there’s little we can do about the larger problem of who the Reaver is. There’s no way we can hunt for him, there’s no way we can lie in wait for him—we simply do not have the time and the kids’ safety is more important. It’s not like we have Rick with us anymore with his superlative tracking skills and the ability to pistol-whip Reavers to death. Or even Jake, who can sniper rifle Reavers from a distance with headshots. Let Lovewell’s crew take care of the one-armed Reaver. It’s what they’re here for.

Kiera: Man, you know some interesting people.
Joshua: Rick was Captain Awesome.
Nika: I’m sure everyone in the Verse knows about his story by now.
Joshua: That’s how you build your own legend. You tell your story over and over until everyone knows it. (sobering) Look. I can’t connect all the dots and it bothers me. The fact that the one-armed Reaver is talking to our other passenger and the girl is afraid of the other guy. And I don’t understand why.
Kiera: I told Rina to bring her down and we’ll find out.

Which Rina does after she locks Catatonic Man in his quarters. Kiera goes back to the Gift, still unsure of Arden’s safety alone. When she arrives at the schoolhouse Rina gets the low-down from the others and, getting down on one knee, she explains to Beast what they need to do.

Rina: (softly) We need to get your friends out so they can come with us. So you all can come with us.
Beast: So there’s … bad men.
Rina: Yes.
Beast: Not Reavers.
Rina: No.
Beast: What are they doing here?
Rina: They’re after something in this town and they’re pretending to be Reavers to scare you all into either giving it up or to hide the fact that they’re doing this. People will say, ‘Oh Reavers hit this town’ and they’ll ask no further. But they’re not Reavers. They’re bad men pretending to be Reavers to do bad things and hide them. We want to get you and your friends in that room there out of it.
Beast: They were … pretending to be Reavers when they came in their ship?
Rina: Yes.
Beast: Wouldn’t you … be dead … if they were pretending to be Reavers?
Rina: If they’re pretending to be Reavers, they’re not real Reavers. They’re not gonna act like real Reavers so they’re not gonna kill like real Reavers for the reasons real Reavers kill.
Beast: But if they’re pretending to be Reavers, wouldn’t they pretend to do the things that real Reavers do?
Rina: Up to a certain point.
Beast: Reavers just don’t … talk to you. Not like ... he talked …
Rina: That’s how we know they’re not real Reavers but bad men. We just want to get you out from under this. Please. Get your friends to come on down. Come with us and we’ll take you somewhere safe. Where they can’t hurt you anymore.

Beast thinks it over. You can see the wheels turning in her head.

Beast: Um … I’ll go talk to them. But I gotta talk to them alone.
Rina: Okay. Let’s go.

Rina rises and Beast says to the others.

Beast: You guys go back to the ship. I’ll talk to them.
Joshua: (murmuring) I think we’ve done all we can here.
Nika: You guys …

Nika gestures her crew out the door with her thumb and she turns to Beast.

Nika: We gotta take off soon so don’t be too long. Let us know, one way or t’other.

She leaves and when almost out the door, Rina leans in and quietly asks:

Rina: You want me to retreat and hang on in the perimeter?
Nika: (shakes head) Let’s go.
Rina: Okay. (turns around) We’ll be waitin’, Beast.

When they’re out of earshot of the school Rina trots out her latest idea.

Rina: I say we gas’em and knock them out.
Joshua: What are you—? (thows hands up and out) I’m gone. I’m gone already.

Joshua refuses to hear it and Nika just keeps walking. Rina lets the matter drop with an annoyed eyeroll. Oh well, she tried. Joshua’s still trying to figure out the true story, sifting through all the facts and suppositions we’ve gathered so far on this long long day.

Joshua: Something gorram messed up about this. There’s something that I’m missing …

Nika leaves him to it and keeps an eye on the foraging teams. She notices that they aren’t spreading out into the schoolhouse but they are going door to door, kicking in the doors where necessary.

Rina’s picked up on Joshua’s musing and she adds to it, wondering about the cut marks on the silo victims’ faces. They were shallow, not lethal. Why would a Reaver not kill his victims. Well, they were tied up to be tortured. Maybe it was part of the torture. Yeah, but were they the same cuts on both faces? If so, why make them the same? If the same, that smacks of a signature and that’s something bloodthirsty Reavers aren’t capable of, are they? If not, that’s more proof we’re not working with Reavers, right?

Not that anyone else is buying her theory. Kiera dismisses it, saying that Rina couldn’t have noticed one way or the other because she was busy helping Kiera, plugging a bleeder with her finger. Rina snorts that she could stick her finger in a wound and look around at the same time, she’s coordinated enough to do that.

It’s a short walk to the ship.

Kiera immediately checks with Arden once she’s aboard. She asks him how the patients are and he tells her it’s been touch-and-go. Kiera double checks the straps on the patients, sees they’re secure.

Arden: I haven’t been able to leave or do anything but check them in their beds. But what I’m doing doesn’t gain any value whatsoever by the addition of a second person. It’s a special kind of medicine that you wouldn’t understand with your plastic surgery, cosmetology degrees.
Kiera: Yes. But I can make them prettier. All you can do is fix them. With your clumsy needles. And then you say goodbye.

Outside the contest in med bay, Joshua wants to check on Catatonic Man and talk to him.

Rina: You can’t.
Joshua: What do you mean I can’t?
Rina: I need to cut out the lock first.
Joshua: You need to cut out the lock firs—? (pissed) Then go cut out the lock.
Rina: (softly) All right.

She gives him a wide berth and grabs her tools. She gets that lock open. Joshua gets inside and finds out that it’s not as neat as he’d left it. In fact, Catatonic Man appears to be dead. He’s lying down in a lot of blood. A lot of blood. There are a lot of cuts on his face, neck and arms.

Joshua immediately gets down on the deck and to check the man’s pulse.

As Joshua draws near, he sees the other man’s eyes are open. They are wide and they are wild and they have little if any lids left to them. He’s somehow cut them off with a shard of broken glass. A broken drinking glass lies in the corner, along with the tray of food Joshua had left.

Oops.

And that’s when Catatonic Man strikes, lunging for Joshua. Rina immediately draws her pistol and aims for Catatonic Man. Kiera shows up at the door, having sharpened her wits sufficiently on Arden’s sour mood, and sees a very strange sight: Rina with her gun trained on Joshua and the Reaver victim, who are each grappling for control. Nika’s right behind her and realizing there’s not enough room in the tight quarters to draw her gun as well, she steps back and gives Rina room to work.

The blood makes everything treacherously slippery. Joshua manages to pin him to the deck and dodges a vicious bite.

Out in the hallway, Kiera backs away and trains her rifle on the doorway, ready to shoot the ‘Reaverized’ victim if he dashes out. Nika sees this and moves out of the line of fire.

Nika: If he gets that far, then we got bigger problems.
Kiera: (backing up the hallway some more) ‘Zactly what I was thinkin’.
Nika: If he gets through Rina, she’s dead anyway.

Nika goes aft to the machine shop to grab some duct tape to restrain our ‘guest’. Rina steps forward when an opening presents itself and draws her boot back to kick the crazed man in the head. Joshua’s still busy avoiding the man’s teeth and maintaining a grip on him. Rina’s boot connects but fails to knock the man out.

Joshua: (angry) Don’t kill him! He’s important somehow. (changes grip) Don’t kill him.
Rina: Then maybe you should use your harsh language.
Joshua: (grappling) And eff you too.
Rina: Maybe later.

Joshua maneuvers himself to shield the man’s head from Rina’s boots and Rina changes her game plan. Fine. No killing the obviously dangerous, man-eating, murder machine, no. We’ll do it Joshua’s way. She throws herself on the man’s legs and gets an idea. She pulls the tranq syringe she’d stowed in her sleeve holster, flicks off the safety tip and aims for the man’s leg. And misses his leg completely when he thrashes and sinks the needle into her own. Too late, her thumb’s slammed the plunger home and in a flash she’s out for the count.

Kiera: (eyeballing syringe) Well, she ain’t ever gonna get that again.
Nika: (just returning) Holy Shit, what the hell?!
Joshua: (perfectly calm) She’s Russian.
Kiera: Joshua, you want me to kick her out?

Kiera remains at the door with her rifle and Nika gets a ping on her comm. She drops the duct tape and clicks on her ear piece.

Arden: Um … I think we might have a problem.
Nika: Oh God. What now, Arden.
Arden: Things on the bridge are going off.
Nika: Oh, shiii.

Nika goes for the bridge at a dead run. Kiera hails her on the comm.

Kiera: I could just shoot him and apologize later.
Nika: (over comm) I’ll leave that to you.
Kiera: (to Joshua) Let go and let me kill him.
Joshua: I got him.

Kiera aims for the assailant’s head.

Kiera: Joshua, you want me to kill him or not?
Joshua: No! (changes grip) I’ve got him.
Kiera: You got him.
Joshua: I got him.

There’s duct tape at Kiera’s feet. She shoulders her rifle, picks up the tape and promptly wades in and tapes the now non-catatonic man’s mouth shut. She wraps the tape completely around his head. At least now we don’t have to worry about being bitten. Kiera puts a foot on his airway and presses just so until he passes out.

Subdual done.

On the bridge, our sensors are yarking. Two things are happening at once. Thing One: Lovewell’s ship, the Wolfhound, is taking off. Thing Two: There’s another ship coming in, coming in fast, in a decidedly unsafe atmospheric position. The quality of its flight suggests the pilot’s in control but heedless of safety or lives. Nika sees that the radiation read on the ship is hot. As if containment wasn’t all there.

Nika: Oh God… (slaps her comm live) Arden. Get in the back and start up the engines. Rina’s unconscious. (on all ship) Joshua, help Arden in engineering. Incoming and we are spinning up and getting gone.

Arden quits med bay for the engine room, muttering the start up sequence. In the second class cabin, Joshua picks himself up from the floor and rolls Rina over—yup. Out like a light. He hears Nika’s order and pauses. Kiera offers to stim Rina awake but warns the resultant pounding headache would make her crankier than usual. Crankier? How could anyone tell? Joshua elects to let Rina sleep on and elects to stay with the two unconscious people on the floor. His skills in the engine room are no better than Arden’s and he may do more good here. Kiera hands Joshua the duct tape and checks the prisoner to see if he is still breathing. He is.

Everyone reflexively ducks as the roar of the Wolfhound’s thrusters sounds overhead, the hunters clearly on a pursuit course of the incoming ship, and Joshua looks up.

Joshua: Wow. They actually are who they say they are.
Kiera: No, they just saw money on the hoof blowing smoke. Bounty.
Joshua: That’s a plus. I thought they were going to scram. Cuz … Reavers. I mean, Reavers? We’re outa here.
Kiera: Hell, they’re probably goin’ like: “Cash!”

Wolfhound attracts the eye of the incoming Reaver ship and buys us some more time. We don’t know how much time or who will win the battle about to start overhead. Arden manages to spin up the engines. Meanwhile, Kiera fetches an adrenaline shot from med bay and before she injects Rina she looks over at Joshua.

Kiera: Joshua, is her blood pressure normally okay?

Twitchy overcaffeinated Rina? God only knows. Before Joshua can answer, Kiera sends the adrenaline into her to do its job. Seeing the engineer is in good enough hands, Joshua makes his way to the bridge and parks his butt in the copilot’s chair.

Joshua: Captain. What are we doing?
Nika: (points) Reaver ship.
Joshua: Uh-huh.
Nika: (points) Reaver hunters.
Joshua: Blessed be.
Nika: I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. We still got kids sittin’ in the school. And we can’t stay here. We are not armed for Reavers.
Joshua: I know. I know that.

We can’t sit here and wait for the kids to show and hope the Wolfhound crew wins. We can’t leave without the kids and hope to live with our consciences. We can’t hover our girl over the school but we can fly her over and manage to squeeze her into the area in front of it. Nika gets us over there in record time and we do indeed just manage to squeak into the cleared space before the building. The backwash sets the schoolhouse bell to ringing like a mad thing. Kiera mentions we didn’t have to be so meticulous—hell, the house next door was already burned down, we could have landed on that.

The very second he possibly can, Joshua throws off the straps and bolts for the airlock stairs. He slams into the schoolhouse yelling at the top of his lungs.

Joshua: Beast! If you’re there, the Reaver hunters and the Reavers are battling up in the sky and I don’t know who’s going to win! I want you to come out and bring your friends. I need you to come. I really need you to come!

No response from the hatch. Joshua starts stacking the school desks for the hatch. Desperation makes short work of the project and it isn’t long before Joshua’s through the the hatch and looking around. Coughs and sneezes greet him upon entry, the room filled with dust kicked up by our close landing. The children seem shocked at our precipitous arrival and Joshua is able to order them down to the ground. The bigger kids help the younger and Joshua hands down the little ones. Working together the children all make it to the schoolhouse floor in one piece.

Joshua: (over the comm) They’re coming down and they’re coming out. Anybody else who can help them in, please do so.

Arden quits the engine room and gets down the stairs. Rina’s awake and hears this and claws groggily to her feet.

Rina: (over her comm) You make sure you get everybody out.
Joshua: I’m not leaving anybody behind.

Joshua’s searching for stragglers and hiders. He asks each child if there is anyone else they’ve forgotten, if everyone is down from the attic. Finding no one missing and receiving no answer to the contrary, he takes one last turn around the attic before climbing down and getting the children to the airlock stairs. The children kick up no fuss, cause no ruckus, but let us help get them aboard.

Rina judges she’s better deployed in the engine room and Kiera detours to med bay to check on the two sedated patients, ready to sedate them deeper if necessary. She checks their vitals and realizes they’re as sedated as they can be. She leaves them as they are and goes back to check our occupant in second class.

The man on the floor is dead. His self-inflicted wounds were too many, the duct tape too smothering. Kiera sighs. At least she won’t have to waste sedation meds on him.

The men have secured the children in the passenger lounge and at their all-clear, Nika punches the engines and gets us out of the ruined village. She plots a quick and dirty course for the coast, where the starport and civilization lies. She leaves behind the Wolfhound and the Reaver vessel locked in battle, she leaves behind the lost souls of Shepherd’s Hope. She carries with her a battered crew and seven orphaned children—all alive and in one piece.

Arden examines the children as he and Joshua get them settled with food and water. Aside from general grime from roughing it in an attic and affecting the dress and appearance of Reavers without wounding, they are still basically healthy. No pressing issues present themselves physically aside from minor cuts and scrapes. Mentally and emotionally? That remains to be seen.

Kiera lends a hand with the once-over and comes clean to Joshua about the man in second class.

Kiera: He didn’t make it in the other room, by the way.
Joshua: Okay.
Kiera: I don’t know if you wanna …
Joshua: Like what?
Kiera: I don’t know if you believe in just dumpin’ it. Or incineratin’ it. Or what?
Joshua: Gimme a minute.

Joshua had tried so hard with the man, kept him hidden, kept him from Rina’s bullets and fists. Any answers he’d hoped to gain from the man are now gone with him. When Nika hears the news, she shakes her head.

Nika: We’re turnin’ in the kids already anyway. We’ll turn in the bodies, too. Are the other two still alive?

They are. Kiera’s double checked her work on the sedatives and the two patients are still resting comfortably, all their vitals looking good.

Nika: Well, then, let somebody else deal with them.

Saturday, 24 May 2521
Peña Spaceport, Kerry
Georgia (Huang Long) system
1500hrs, local time

We land at Peña Spaceport, Kerry’s largest spaceport and capital, and inform the authorities there of what we’d encountered at Shepherd’s Hope. We now have to get the kids put in the hands of the proper childcare authorities and the body in the hands of the coroner.

We call the corporate offices of the Chinese version of the Red Cross, informing them that we were unable to deliver their cargo as instructed to Shepherd’s Hope and that we were still in possession of the cargo. The entire town was attacked by Reavers and there was no one left to deliver it to. What would they like to do with it?

Rina: Um. About that, Captain? One of the containers might be a little … messy.
Nika: What kind of messy?
Rina: Burrowing in to make a fortress to hide with.
Nika: Oh, that ain’t a problem.
Kiera: But it’s salvage now, right? So we can claim it.
Nika: They may opt to do that. I don’t know.
Joshua: I don’t know the legal rules on that.
Nika: We’re going to allow them to determine what they want done with their cargo. If they want to pay us for the rest of their cargo and we take it somewhere else, that’s probably a reasonable option. In good faith, we made the attempt to deliver it, okay?

And since they are the Chinese version of the Red Cross, we also tell them we have two patients aboard who appear to have survived the attack as well as seven children who will need guardians. Could they help us with them? We’re informed we must contact the proper authorities first. We thank them and get right on it.

The kids are taken care of and we’re promised they’ll be placed in good homes. Of the children we rescued only Bess, aka Beast, seems to be affected adversely by the experience. The other children were more fortunate and seemed less traumatized than she. Perhaps it was youthful resilience or perhaps they’d somehow been sheltered the full horrors of the situation. Perhaps it was Bess herself that had kept them in the dark. After all, they said it was Bess who’d told them of the silo but they themselves hadn’t seen it. Perhaps it was the slaughter of her parents and others that pushed her past the ability to bounce back has her friends had. She was also the oldest, being eleven, and perhaps was simply more aware of the dangers of their situation and the stress of keeping her friends safe had taken its toll.

We tell the authorities what we know, that as far as we could find out, there was a Reaver that continued to attack the town and we didn’t think it was entirely credible since it didn’t sound normal. Well, the authorities day, they’ve been through a terrible thing and perhaps they didn’t understand what the subsequently saw. Perhaps it was a vagrant picking through the remains of the town to steal food or something like that.

Yeah, we agree. Something like that. Perhaps they could send someone out there to check it out, though perhaps they might not have the manpower to do it?

They tell us they will, and we tell them about the Reaver hunters we met and how they attempted to help and they were engaging the Reavers when we lifted off.

What about the bounty the hunters mentioned, Rina wanted to know. Is there really a bounty or was that a story? Oh, there’s a bounty, they reassure her. Who’s paying it? The Free Planets of Georgia, which is a loose coalition of Kerry, Ithaca, Ezra and Athens. They don’t have a Navy but they pay some mercenaries to handle security for them and the bounty is one way they pay them for it.

Rina: How much per head?
Official: Are you interested in this?
Rina: (how to say it?) Well … people will do really weird-assed and cruel things for money and they will use it to justify anything.
Official: So what’s your point?
Rina: My point is—
Official: Okay, first you’re reporting that Reavers massacred the thirty people who lived in this town and now you’re saying we should do … nothing about the Reavers?
Rina: No, no, no. No. I’m talking about the Reaver hunters. They mentioned the bounty, all right?
Official: Okay.
Rina: And if you dangle money in front of desperate people and say ‘turn in dead Reavers and we’ll pay you money’, what’s to say they’re not making excuses to kill people to turn them in and pretend they’re Reavers?
Official: We don’t just take any dead bodies as Reavers.
Rina: Okay, so how do you verify they are?
Official: If I were to tell you that, that might give you the means to do exactly what you’re sugg—
Rina: I understand. I just …
Official: (condescending) There are things we believe that Reavers do that it would be difficult to impose on a dead body.
Rina: Fair enough.

Who said they had to be dead? she thinks, remembering the silo, and she shuts up. Not that anyone’s ever accused Rina of having a sunny view of human nature, no. She tried to tell them that people could use this as an excuse to kill neighbors for their land and assets with impunity, to build little personal empires while everything was still unsettled. But if the authorities wouldn’t give her the chance to explain it, they’ll find out soon enough.

Joshua: Thank you. Very much. Like, for your time.
Official: We appreciate you rescuing the kids, but um … that’s messed up.
Joshua: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Rina: Very.

Joshua also informs the authorities we have two patients who were also Reaver survivors and they take them off our hands. And also, the man who died in our care.

Joshua: I feel bad for the guy.
Nika: We attempted to rescue everyone we could find, but …
Official: Hey, you did a good job. I wish we could reward you in some way—
Joshua: No. Don’t want it.
Nika: Don’t worry about it. We’re just glad the kids got here safe.
Joshua: Damn straight.
Kiera: Absolutely.

The official in front of us gusts a sigh.

Official: Huh. It’s a crazy Verse and every time things look like they might be lookin’ up, something crazy happens. Like that whole business out in Blue Sun.
Joshua: Wait. Which whole business are we talking about?
Official: You guys haven’t been on the Cortex?
Nika: No. We’ve been out in Kalidasa for a while.
Official: Yeah, apparently that You Go guy got whacked.
Joshua: Wait. Got whacked?
Official: (nods) Killed.
Rina and Nika together: By whom?
Joshua: Do we know?
Official: Yeah, it’s on the news vids. You should be able to download it when you do your spaceport stuff.
Joshua: Thank you.
Rina: Thanks.

And the second the man leaves with the children, the patients and the dead body—and is out of earshot—we’re on our Cortex box like white on rice and it takes less than a minute to find what we’re looking for. We find the news item, click play and the sound bite pours into the passenger lounge:

Reporter: From Verse News—Acting President You Ge was assassinated in his home apparently by one of his own security people. The PDF have apprehended a man known as Michael Cameron Carter …

It’s a crazy Verse out there, the official said. He has no idea just how crazy it is.

None whatsoever.

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