Last Voyage of Delilah, Episode 211: Crucible
Air Date: 15 Oct 2014
Present: Andy, Kim, Maer, Matt, Terri
Tuesday, 31 Jul 2525
New Bruges, Meridian
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
Late afternoon
Reavers have hit New Bruges. Valentine has successfully drawn the Reavers away, enticing them to chase him in our shuttle. Rachel is flying Delilah with evacuees aboard … and she's flying to Valentine's rescue.
The trick to playing chicken, so the saying goes, is knowing when to flinch. Rachel is a consummate pilot, possibly the best the Verse has ever seen, but even the best of pilots have their bad days. Today would certainly qualify. Rachel attempts to interpose herself between the Reavers and Valentine and pull a hard burn in atmo. The blow out should take out the Reaver ship.
Instead, she scrapes hull to hull with the Reavers and both ships auger into the swampy earth outside New Bruges. The two ships plow into the planet, dirt and metal flying …
And everything goes dark …
Poco comes to in the engine room. It's dark and there's only emergency lighting to see by. It's hot and claustrophobic. He's bruised and bleeding and there's some random crap lying on top of him—the cause of some of the bruised and bleeding, but not all. Sounds come to him over the hiss of ruptured pipes and the trickle of broken fluid lines: gut churning growls and screams, the scrabble of something horrible coming closer. All his childhood nightmares come home to roost.
Poco shoves clear of the debris and does what his childhood fears scream for: HIDE! Despite his injuries he crawls deeper into the bowels of Delilah, trying to find a place too tiny for the Reavers to touch him, a safe hole to wait out the death and destruction, a haven in the shitstorm he's stuck in …
On the bridge, Rachel wakes still strapped in her chair, and she blearily realizes that she's crashed Delilah into the swamp. Pieces have fallen off our ship. There's fire burning in various places aboard. She unlatches from her chair and goes to her bridge hatch. It's closed up tight, like she's always done, and her hand is on the latch when she hears noises on the other side of it.
Screaming, growling, blood chilling sounds.
She backs away and gets to the comms console. She activates our distress beacon and tries to hail the PDF. No one immediately answers and the sounds on the other side of the hatch convince her to keep her voice down …
Elsewhere in the shuttle, Valentine flies clear of the Reavers on his tail. He hears a faint signal on his comms and sensors tell him it's from the area of New Bruges. It's an emergency beacon. Val turns around to investigate. As he draws closer, his sensors show two crashed signatures on the ground.
Oh gǒu shǐi!
He sees Delilah and the Reaver ship have crashed a couple hundred meters apart. Flying closer, he sees figures on top of Delilah. They're Reavers. They have nasty-looking tools and are trying to bash in one of the airlock doors. Then Valentine sees that the cargo bay doors are partially open …
Gǒu shǐ indeed.
Valentine has only a few options. He can buzz the Reavers and try to get them to chase him. He can try to board his ship but with Reavers on the hull and possibly inside, he can't be certain if he'll survive. The Reaver ship on the ground looks dead … and he sees a docking port that might mesh with the shuttle. Reasoning any cover, including that provided by a Reaver ship, is better than having none, Valentine decides to dock the shuttle to the Reaver ship.
Most of the electronics in the shuttle are still fried. Staring at the controls, he wonders what would Rachel do in a situation like this? Memory hits him then.
The trip when Rachel decided that I was serious about learning to fly Delilah, it showed me the kind of thing that might be missing in my life. I had known she thought Delilah was special. But Rachel loved Delilah with an intensity and a truth that I had never seen anyone display before. That was the night I went from tolerating my ship to learning to love her.
Rachel showed Val how flying wasn't just knowing which buttons to press in the cockpit. There's a feel to it. He manages to do it, despite his inexperience. He makes a LOT of noise docking, damaging the shuttle but Yay! He's successfully docked.
To a Reaver ship.
Great. Now what?
Back on Delilah, Rachel hears the pounding on the top hull but more alarmingly, she hears some noises coming from the rear closet beyond the bridge stairs. Gathering up her courage, she calls through the door.
Rachel: Who is it?
Beam: It's me.
Rachel: (lower) Better stay quiet.
Beam: Let me in. They're digging through behind me.
Rachel: No. I let you in, they get in.
Beam: I'll give you money. You want money?
Rachel: No. I'll be too dead to enjoy it.
She backs away from the door. She and Beam go quiet. The noises behind the closet cease.
There's a gritty slither behind her and Rachel spins around … to see a Reaver standing outside on the glass of the Bridge windows. He sees her and he starts stomping and pounding on the glass. The glass is made to withstand the extreme cold of space, the fires of passing through atmo, and the impact of myriad micrometeors while travelling. The Reaver can't make a dent into it … but he knows she's in there and the sight of fresh meat so close, yet so far away, makes him go nuts.
Rachel knows that the window is tough but it won't last forever. She can't leave the bridge by the stairs. They've Reavers aboard. She can't go outside. There's a Reaver on the window. Delilah's running on battery power, the engines are powered completely off. She edges for the comms console. If she could hail Poco and see if he's still alive in engineering … No. Wait. Engineering has no door, just a shower curtain.
If the Reavers have made it to engineering already, Poco's dead. If they haven't, best not lead them there with comms chatter.
She goes back to the closet door. Yes, Beam is still there and he's getting desperate. He wants in. She asks him what assets he's got? He begs her to let him, for the love of God, woman.
Rachel relents. It's been a long time since the closet door's been opened. It's jammed. She might have to break it to get it open and when that happens, there's no closing it against the Reavers when they break through the rear wall of the closet. She decides to try anyway. The turn wheel is very stiff. She rummages for a lever. She grabs a fire axe off the bulkhead and uses the handle for leverage. Rachel times her pulls on the handle with the pounding of the Reavers on the hull, hiding the noise of the sticky wheel as it screeches loose.
Nevertheless, she's unable to get the door open—the wheel goes only so far and no further.
Back on the shuttle, Valentine listens at the shuttle's airlock for any sound of Reavers. He doesn't hear anything, but that doesn't mean nothing's there. He opens the door slowly and it's a good thing he went slow.
RAWR!
Reaver in the airlock.
Valentine shoots it with Black Rose. The Reaver is at a disadvantage. Its side of the airlock is a tight vertical tunnel with only a ladder for access. As a result it can't move very much and the bullets find their mark.
But the Reaver lives for PAIN!
RAWR‼
There is no question about shutting the airlock door on it. Valentine's crew is in danger. They might possibly be dragged aboard the Reaver vessel and being eaten (or worse) as he's standing there staring a Reaver in the face. Valentine shoots. The Reaver dies. Valentine kicks the body down the ladder.
OMG, the smell.
It wafts up the now-empty tube and Valentine nearly gags.
He climbs down and sets foot on the deck. He doesn't think over much on the nasty stuff smeared all over it. He thinks he's not far from the bridge. He cautiously makes his way for it.
The journey there is … surreal. The ship has all the normal structures and equipment one would expect of a ship: metal conduits, bulkheads, decking, panels with blinking lights. However, though the features are basically intact, they are liberally splashed and coated with gore. It's the stuff of nightmares and Valentine does his best to ignore it as he searches the ship for his crew.
He hears the internal ship comms broadcasting frustrated grunts and groans. He cannot be certain if the sounds are from Reavers still aboard or if they are made by the boarding party outside. Rough scrapes and pounding … are they trying to break into Delilah?
Valentine pushes on. Either he will find his crew aboard the Reaver ship and rescue them, or his crew is safe aboard Delilah. He will not leave until he determines which case it is.
Elsewhere on the Reaver vessel. Tian blinks slowly awake.
It's dark. It's stinking. The smell of blood and worse is thick in the air. There are whimpering and moaning sounds all around her. Her leg is on fire. It's broken. She's hanging upside down. Good for her broken leg, possibly, but all that blood pooling in her head will cause her to black out again if she doesn't get right-side up and soon. Any movement is sheer agony thanks to her broken leg.
Tian struggles for composure. It's hard. She's hanging like a side of beef in what smells like an abattoir and her leg is broken. Even if she manages to get free, she's not sure her leg will support her and then there are the Reavers to get past and ….
Focus, Tian. Focus.
She listens to the whimpering and sees dimly there are five others hanging upside down just as she is. She recognizes one of the voices.
Tian: Mary Ann. Mary Ann. Can you hear me?
Mary Ann: (no coherent answer despite a really good vocabulary)
Tian's vision is adjusting and she can see in the low light of the Reaver ship. There are several more survivors in the chamber other than Mary Ann. Everyone looks banged up, either from the crash or from being handled by the Reavers. There is also a pile of bodies in the corner. Made of a mix of the evacuated settlers and Reavers, they are dead, obviously banged up from the crash.
Crash. She remembers the crash. She tries to think forward from that point … and her mind gibbers away in terror from it. There's a dark spot in her mind, a place her head does not want to go.
She focuses on something else. Her ankles … they're tied together with leather and that leather is run over a hook. She stuggles, trying to get unhooked. The pain from her leg is excruciating. She can't get out of this on her own.
Tian starts swinging herself like a pendulum, aiming for Mary Ann. One swing, two …. three …. Oh God, her leg is going to rip off … Tian forces herself to move past the pain and swings again—and yes! she grabs Mary Ann!
Mary Ann SCREAMS!
Two decks away, Valentine hears the scream and starts running toward it.
It's strange what the mind latches on to in dire situations. Right that moment, Valentine remembers back to an incident involving Tian on Newhall. She'd been working nonstop at her clinic treating the inhabitants of Salt City and he'd just managed to drag her away to eat. As she's moving, she breaks free to treat a man with an arm broken from a dock accident, right there in the street. She rummages through her bag for disinfectant and bandages. She talks as she swabs the open break down and binds it tight: does the man know how to get to the clinic? Yes, he does. There will be someone there who prep him so she can stitch him up, here is a scrip for painkillers, give it to the girl manning the clinic. She will be back in half an hour. No, no, you don't have to pay me anything. They'll give you a pain killer and I'll come down and stitch you up. The man takes the scrip gingerly and shuffles for the clinic. Tian sighs and tells Val that they'll have to eat fast …
Valentine: How do you manage that? Don't you have time of your own? Don't you have to—how do you …?
Tian: What do you think I do in the Black? I've got days and days on my own.
Valentine: But … why? (shakes head, dumbfounded) Why not … take care of yourself? Why not sleep? Eat?
Tian: How long do we stay on-planet? At any given point?
Valentine: Days. At most.
Tian: How is losing a few hours sleep for a few days going to cost me anything? When our next stop is a week later? Or two weeks later, depending on where we're going?
Tian doesn't have a few days. Or a few hours. Valentine prays that she can stay alive for just a few minutes until he finds her. As he runs toward the scream, he thinks:
I hadn't even consciously decided that I was going to keep Delilah. But I remember asking Tian why she gave so much of herself...went without sleep for people she didn't even know. Her answer planted the seed for me deciding to stay Captain...and eventually make her my second in command.
And there was the answer: He was Captain. That scream came from one of his crew or passengers. Somehow he knows that if Tian was still alive, she'd be trying to help whoever screamed.
She'd be with them. He had to save them. It was that simple.
Valentine hears sounds ahead. Even without the benefit of sight, the picture they paint is unthinkable. He doesn't want to go around the corner and be confronted by what he suspects is waiting for him … but if he doesn't, who will? Taking a deep breath and trying not to gag, Valentine rounds the corner … and finally sees what his ears have already heard.
He can make out two Reavers ravaging a hapless victim they've dragged aboard.
It's mercifully dark. The worst of the details are shrouded in the gloom but the victim is already dead. The remains have been violated, eaten, and skinned.
Perhaps it's the adrenaline racing through him. Perhaps his brain is finally overloading on the horror and trying to soften the blow. Whatever the cause, Valentine sees the Reavers and in a burst of clarity, he perceives puzzlement coming off them as they paw at the lifeless body at their feet. Why won't it move? What happened to the life? Where has it gone? It's as if they cannot comprehend what has happened and like a cat with a dead mouse, they seem disconsolate and desperate as they continue to ravage the body. As if, perhaps, by continuing to do they could their victim back yet there is no pleasure to be had in it.
It's macabre and pathetic and were it not so hideous, one could almost feel pity for the Reavers.
Valentine ducks back around the corner. Have they seen him? His heart races. His breath catches in his throat. Nothing happens. No Reavers roar around the corner to eat him. They are still busy with the corpse.
Gorge rising, Valentine swallows thickly and shuts his emotions away, calling on his trademark icy calm to get through this. This can't stand. Tian and his crew are somewhere beyond this horrific scene. He has to get past them. He has his gun. He's not completely defenseless. He's already shot one Reaver dead. He can shoot another.
He edges around the corner again. The Reaver victim is already dead but this cannot go unaddressed. Valentine shoots. The Reavers turn. They see him and ROAR‼!
They come for him, arms and hands grabbing, teeth gnashing, hips obscenely pumping in their frenzy. Their faces, contorted by their rage, are hideously mutilated—ripped, cut, pierced, bleeding and festering. Simply hideous. Valentine shoots and shoots and shoots again. He keeps shooting, hoping to drop them before they can get him. Several of his shots hit their target but it's not enough to take them out. Both are wounded but both are still up and they are coming.
A Reaver grabs Valentine and bites him mightily. The blood smell blooms in the air and the Reavers go nuts. Valentine can see himself all too readily suffering the same fate as the corpse beyond.
He's not the only one. Poco is deep in the innards of Delilah, past the now-not-spinning engine parts and well into places where people aren't actually supposed to go. Beyond the machinery come sounds from the engine room proper. Reavers. In their frustration and rage, they are tearing the place apart looking for the prey they know is there.
Namely, him.
Why the hell did he pick this ship to stow away on? Why did it have to be captained by some idealistic idiot who always pokes his nose where it doesn't belong? If Valentine had just minded his own business and taken off the minute the passengers disembarked, they wouldn't have been there when the Reavers came knocking. Oh, and let's not forget his suicidal move playing decoy so the rest of the crew could get killed trying to altruistically rescue people they didn't owe a damned thing to. And then there was the time when they got shot, gassed, baked, fried, and who knows what-all trying to rescue a son who got captured by the very terrorists he was sent out to kill, only to come away from that fiasco without the son, who went back to the supposedly loving bosom of his government. And here was the crew, still licking their wounds from that debacle only to find themselves plunged kicking and screaming into this pile of rè zhēng gǒu shǐ …
And so the litany goes, round and round in his head, as Poco squirms deeper into Delilah's workings. A rather loud sound penetrates to his position. He cringes and goes still, listening … and it dawns on him that the dissonant ratcheting roar he hears is a power jack. Poco's worked chop shops before. The sound is unmistakable. Even though the Reavers are hunting for him, they're also inexpertly dismantling the ship for parts.
This will buy him time to find a way out of here.
Poco takes stock. Lots of dangerous things run through the engine room. He's got access to all manner of poisonous, caustic, and otherwise nasty stuff. He might be able to get to the reactor and vent it. Force the Reavers to leave. Kill them, even. Of course, Poco would be dead right along with them.
Dying's not part of Poco's game plan. Nope. There has to be an alternative.
Okay, so … not venting radioactive crap all over the place. But that crap is hot and it can be used to make other crap hot, other crap not quite so toxic. Like atmo. He thinks and starts looking around for something he can use as a barricade to keep the Reavers from following him while he crawls to the manual override for the engines. If he can get the engines spun up and overloading, maybe blasting the atmo, it might fry the Reavers to a crisp. Even if he doesn't fry them, the very fact that it's getting hot and starting to overload might penetrate through the Reavers' frenzy and make them clear out. After all, they fly on ships with crappy engine containment all the time. The fact that they haven't all died from it by now suggests that they're still aware enough of it to keep a safe distance.
Or at least minimize their exposure as best they can.
Of course, this won't be good for the ship. Like a dog shaking fleas off its hide, parts of her will shred right off as she shakes the Reavers free. Poco reasons that while the ship will suffer damage, if he can find sufficient cover, he would still come out of this alive.
Maybe.
He crawls deeper into the machinery and spots a communications node. That reminds him that others of the crew might still be alive. If they're alive, they might have more options. But does he dare give away his position trying to contact them? Self-interest battles with an unexpected sense of attachment to the crew.
Gorammit.
He pops the cover off the node and starts splicing wires with his multi-tool. If he can comm the bridge, maybe see if Rachel is still alive … He knows the frequencies the comms run on. He finds the frequency for the emergency beacon and piggybacks onto it, praying that Rachel at least activated it and made it go live. He's got signaling capacity but has to disguise his message inside the beacon as well. He puts his lips to his comms and husks out a short monotone message between the beeps of the beacon.
Poco: Is. Mama. Bear. On. Bridge? Can. You. Fly?
Rachel's head whips around at the sound of Poco's voice scratching out the speakers. She does a victory dance.
YES‼!
She changes the channel from beacon to audio and whispers her reply.
Rachel: Affirmative (a beat) Go live, Papa. Go live.
Go live? Poco blinks and thinks: What's the worst that can happen? Well, it won't be environmentally optimal, pulsing the engines while still on the ground. We might not even get far off the ground. But … It's back to his shaking-the-fleas-off idea. With Rachel asking for power, however, Poco knows they're already on the same page and they've got a better chance of pulling this off alive. If he can adjust the pressure on the Turbo Thruster to go just a short distance, maybe in tandem with the maneuvering jets …
He gets to work making that happen.
Back on the Reaver ship, Tian's got Mary Ann by the shirt and the other woman is hysterical from fear. Tian gives Mary Ann a mighty shake.
Tian: Mary Ann. Mary Ann, look at me. If you can reach my boot knife, I can get us down. We've got to help each other.
Mary Ann looks around wildly, spies the bodies in the gloom, and freezes. Tian takes Mary Ann by the chin and forces the woman's gaze back to her.
Tian: Look at me. Keep your eyes on me. Don't look at the rest of the. Don't look at it.
Mary Ann: Whoever moves is the first one they … the next one they …
Gunshots ring out close by and even as hope of rescue makes her spirit soar, Tian knows they've just run out of time. The shots will draw the Reavers and she and Mary Ann are easy targets.
Tian: Find my knife. It's in my left boot. We've got to get down. Otherwise we will be next. Hanging here will net us nothing. If we move at least we have a chance.
Tian is a combat veteran, able to think past the fear found in foxholes while surrounded by the enemy. Some of her confidence must have gotten through to Mary Ann, because the woman pulls herself together and starts climbing up Tian's body for the knife. She pulls it from the doctor's boot and starts sawing away at the leather holding them up. Tian stifles a scream as Mary Ann tugs on her broken leg in the process. If she can just keep quiet until they're free, if they can make it out of this room and move … they might have a chance. Mary Ann saws away at the leather, sawing, sawing, sawing …
Tian drops to the deck. Her broken leg makes its displeasure known.
Biting back a scream, Tian rolls over. She doesn't let herself think about the wetness she can feel under her hands, soaking into her clothes. Despite the grinding agony from her broken leg, Tian levers up onto her good knee and tries to get her unbroken leg under her. If she could reach Mary Ann, she can get the knife from her and cut her free. Mary Ann is too high for her to reach.
Tian looks at the others who are still alive. They're deaf and cannot hear her ask for their help. It's too dark for lip reading or sign language. Tian hears a yip outside the chamber and realizes her time just might have run out. She climbs up Mary Ann again and starts sawing away at the leather bonds for all she's worth. She's almost blacking out from the pain of her leg but she keeps sawing, sawing, sawing …
Tian and Mary Ann fall to the deck with a THUMP!
Outside, the Reavers close in on Valentine, in his face, breathing his air, charnel breath reeking. Valentine feels the cold kiss of steel against his cheek, feels the edge pressing in for the kill when—
THUMP!
One of the Reavers hears the thump and turns away to investigate. Using everything he's got, Valentine pushes the remaining Reaver off and shoots.
Valentine: Not going to die here, notgoingtodiehere—! (shoots)
He skills the Reaver. Catches his breath. Focuses past the horror. Moves.
Meanwhile, Tian has managed to push Mary Ann away but hears the Reaver step into the chamber. She can't run. Her leg is broken. She can't fight. She's on her back on the deck. She plays dead, closing her eyes and praying that if he grabs her, she can stab him with the knife she's got in her hand.
She listens hard and hears it coming closer … closer … closer. She feels its weight and heat when it crawls over her. She smells its putrid carrion breath as it sniffs her. Tian explodes in one desperate stab.
Her knife sinks in. The Reaver rears back. Their eyes lock …
And Tian looks into the Abyss. Dark. Primal. Covered in blood and gore, she's transfixed as she looks, sees, and inexplicably understands.
The Reaver dies. Tian survives.
Nothing will ever be the same.
HOW TO SPEAK CHINESE[edit]
gǒu shǐ = 狗屎 = gow shih = dog shit Sound clip
Rè zhēng gǒu shǐ = 热蒸狗屎 = Ruh zheng go shee = hot steaming dog shit Sound clip
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