Last Voyage of Delilah, Episode 303: Net Results
Air Date: 21 Jan 2015
Present: Andy, Kim, Matt, Terri, and Maer
Jump to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Special Features
Wednesday, 31 Oct 2525
Trans U Polaris Class Delilah
En Route to Albion
0800 hrs, ship's time
Poco and Tian continue to circle each other like wary cats. Tian's trust in Poco has been damaged by his fear of her. The tasks of getting underway and getting everything settled after our departure from Erebor prevented Valentine from doing anything about it but after a day of watching the two do their suspicious dance, Valentine decides he's had enough.
He approaches Poco first. He finds the engineer in med bay, fixing the meds cabinet that fell on him during the quake. Valentine quickly checks to see if they're alone. They are. He watches Poco methodically fitting one bolt after another with a power drill. It's a mite shrill on the ears but it gets the job done.
VWEEEEE!
For some reason there seems to be a thousand bolts securing the cabinet to the wall.
Valentine: I don't remember seeing that many bolts in the cabinet the last time.
Poco: Gorram cabinet is not falling on me again.
VWEEEEE!
Poco: The wall may come off but this cabinet ain't fallin' on me.
VWEEEEE!
Valentine: I didn't realize we had that many bolts.
Poco: Well …
Valentine: I don't want to know. (raps on cabinet) I think it's sold, Poco. I think it's solid.
Poco: Yeah, well … it's earthquake-proof anyway. This one cabinet will be the one thing left standing when the next quake hits. The ship'll fall apart, mostly from the missing bolts, but this won't.
Valentine is about to reply when movement catches his eye. Tian walks into the medbay to check on Eli. Valentine greets his crewmate with a nod and a polite smile.
Valentine: Doctor.
Tian: Captain.
VWEEEEE!
Tian: How's the cabinet, Poco?
Poco: (terse) … Fine.
VWEEEEE!
Tian recognizes a cold shoulder when she sees one. She turns around to leave. Valentine stifles a sigh.
Here we go.
Valentine: All right. Both of you, right here. Right here. Right now in front of me. That's you, Doctor. That's you, Poco.
Poco: I'm here.
Tian puts herself front and center with her Captain and Poco grudgingly comes closer. Valentine gives them both a stern look.
Valentine: You've got to stop this. You've got to be able to be at least vaguely civil and at least have words between each other. To be honest, I'd almost rather have the violent ones than this sort of bizarre détente.
Poco: Well, now, I'm not lookin' for any kinda violence here. Don't wanna set anybody off.
Valentine: Poco. She's still the same person. Just—
Poco: (tweets and twirls a finger at his temple)
Tian: And he's not helping.
Valentine: Look, she's the same person but as I told her, this thing is something we have to work through as a crew and as a team, and I think you can. Nobody is going to let anybody else on this crew hurt anybody on this crew.
Poco: Well, then maybe we need to set some ground rules about that.
Because he's very painfully aware of the fact that the engine room doesn't have an actual door, thankyouverymuch. That fact is not lost on Valentine or Tian, either.
Valentine: Then what are you suggesting?
Poco: I'm just sayin' that, you know … things got a little bit … xìngjiāo … in here. After the quake. And I didn't think I was outside my god-given rights.
Valentine: I didn't realize you were a man of faith, Poco.
Poco: Only when it comes to guts and … guns.
Valentine: So … what we need is to not have everybody carrying guns around and holding them on everybody all the time because they're worried about the same. That said, I understand where you were coming from, Poco. I've been on the other end of a sharp scalpel.
Tian throws Valentine a look.
Valentine: You can throw me looks all you want, Doctor, but it's true. Right?
Poco: (to Tian) Now, listen. The other day, you looked at me and with this all-disappointed puppy dog face you said that it was the first time you've ever been scared of me since you came on board. Well, likewise. I'm just sayin' that I don't think that's unfair.
Tian: And I told you at the time that I didn't think it was unfair.
Poco: Again, I ain't pointin' a gun at her now.
Valentine: That is true. You plan on pointing a gun at her in the future?
Tian: It's in his pants.
Valentine: Is it? And this is a question that I probably don't want the answer to, either.
Poco: I think it's a highly situational question: is she eatin' people or not?
ANNNNNNNND …. Riding right past the possible innuendo in that statement … Valentine scrubs his face with a frustrated hand and says, half to himself:
Valentine: I didn't have to answer these sorts of questions when I was running a casino where nobody was worried about cannibalism or Reaverism or people eating inappropriate parts of each other.
Tian: (insulted) You do realize that I have not eaten anyone.
Valentine: Yes, I know that and Poco, in his heart of hearts, knows that.
Poco: The last PSA was "Hey, she's goin' through a rough patch" but I just got the impression that it's a little bit more involved than "She's feelin' kinda blue."
Tian goes very quiet as she tries to find the words. Neither she nor Valentine have told anyone else the full extent of her distress. How much does she dare tell Poco now? Valentine doesn't say anything. Neither does he prompt her. It's her question to answer.
Tian: It's true that it's … getting worse … and I am in communication with someone who believes that they may have a pharmaceutical treatment that may help.
Poco: All right. So, listen. I ain't askin' to get off at the next port or nothin'.
Valentine: Why is everybody constantly saying that they're not getting off at the next port? What's with that? That's the third time in just about three days that someone's said that to me. "Well you can kick me off at the next port." When have I ever said, "Well, out the door you go"? (shakes head) Go on. I'm sorry.
Poco: I think we need to have some sort of … you know … a plan?
He draws the last word out as if he's unsure of its reception.
Valentine: So, correct me if I'm wrong doctor, but much like with other PTSD things, it can trigger upon certain things. The goal is for me, or for someone who is willing, to be with the doctor in situations where it is more likely to cause her to experience that trigger. Say, surgery or stress situations. And yes, there is a heightened level of concern, but what I don't want that to do is to cause us to not … (sighs) … We have to be able to trust each other at some level. (off Poco's look) I'm not saying "Put the gun away. Turn your back to everyone and trust it's going to work out."—
Tian interrupts Valentine and looks him in the eye.
Tian: The only person I attacked was you. And I attacked you in a flashback, thinking you were the Reavers.
Valentine: (nods) Like I said. And Poco's not wrong when he said it's gotten a little worse.
Poco: Just you choose how you want it managed in crisis situations because I don't know if you've noticed but we tend to encounter those on occasion.
Tian: I've definitely noticed.
Poco: And I'm fine with whatever choices you come up with.
Valentine: And that's fair. We're all going to be stressed for a little while, so let's all just try to be as understanding as we can. And I'm going to do my best to protect everyone on this crew.
Poco: I'm just sayin' that there's understandin' and then there's understandin'.
Valentine: I understand that.
Poco: (sighs) All right.
Tian: (sighs) I'll go check and see if anything's come in from her.
By "her", Tian means Dr. Wickett, who we last met on Yànwō.
Valentine: That would be great.
Tian: Excuse me.
Tian politely takes her leave. Poco simply walks off. Valentine stands in the middle of the empty med bay and says to the air:
Valentine: How the hell am I here again? Why the hell am I Captain?
The med bay has no answers. Valentine takes a deep breath and walks out. He's got Captainy stuff to do.
Meanwhile, Rachel has Piloty stuff to do. Namely, she's trying to figure out where the hell they are. Mind, she's got a rough idea, but it's a rough idea. She'd rather have something more concrete to go on.
Something more accurate, to be precise.
At the moment, she's flipping through the channels, searching for the relevant nav beacons to figure out their position. She has to divide her attention between comms and various beeps and alarms the consoles throw at her. She hits the buttons to turn off the more annoying ones and keeps going up and down the comms dial.
There's nothing.
Méishì! Nada. Zip.
She's an experienced pilot. She knows that given the comet they've just come off of, there's bound to be telescopes somewhere pointed its way, emitting various detector beams and lasers to track it. In short, there might be some kind of signaling going on involving that centaur, something that would lead to one of the major worlds with a decent astronomical observatory. There are also beams focused between worlds, broadcasting on a wider bandwidth than the more tightly focused ones astronomers use. Even with the littlest bit of bandwidth, if she could capture the signal, would be something she can latch on to and backtrack to Delilah's current location.
So she scans the channels up and down the spectrum, listening hard for the slightest blip, watching the display like a hawk. She'll give it another hour before she starts getting worried that they're hopelessly lost. Just another hour …
Vikki is engrossed in the comms channels for another reason. She's talking to Gandalf. She's agreed to track Erebor as long as she was able and she's in the process of sending him the information. She's fast approaching the point where she'll be past Erebor's comm range and she's aware that this might be her last conversation with the station's AI.
Vikki: Gandalf? You there?
Gandalf: I am.
Vikki: I'm going to transmit the coordinates where you are now as best as I can figure, since, well, I'm not entirely certain were we are at the moment relative to anything ... but … at least you've got something.
Gandalf: In the data you took off the station are our logs of our most recent location calculations. However, as you know, during some of our power downs, I have been unable to make these. There may have been … course adjustments … outside my control.
Vikki: How far back does your telemetry data go?
Gandalf: I have telemetry from when I was created eighteen years ago.
Vikki: Is it possible to beam it to me so I can track it?
Gandalf: It is in the data I gave you. It is encoded.
Vikki: Great. I'll work it up as fast as I can and send it back to you as best as I can. But it's not going to be long before I'm out of comm range and I won't be able to do it.
Gandalf: Just know that there may have been maneuvers when I didn't have any control.
Vikki: Absolutely. (sighs) Look, I'll do my best. I hate to leave you in this situation. It stinks. It—it—I'm sorry. I'll do what I can. Oh, and I have Dori. I thought maybe I should tell you that.
Gandalf: If anyone asks, I'll let them know.
Vikki: Ummm … you might not want to do that.
Gandalf: I'm not programmed to deceive.
Vikki: Uhnnnn ….
Quick, how does one teach an AI to lie? Or at least shave the truth? Before Vikki can come up with a stock answer for Gandalf, he continues:
Gandalf: I have not had a visitor, though, other than you in … and the … That's strange. There's a gap in my data. I've not had a visitor—my logs are incomplete. My last known visitor before you there was eleven years ago when the automated systems were set up. We've had automated transports three times in that time and then … there's a gap.
Vikki: Got a date for the start of the gap?
Gandalf: It's about two years ago. 23 months. It was about the time my power supply disappeared.
Vikki ticks the items off her mental list, thinking out loud.
Vikki: Twenty-three months ago. Power went down. (to Gandalf) The frequency of the earthquakes, did they increase after this point?
Gandalf: Yes. There was only one previous earthquake.
Vikki: What was the date on that, please?
Gandalf: Before then?
Vikki: Yes.
Gandalf: Six years ago.
Vikki: Six years ago … Thank you. I think I've got an idea but I don't have enough data yet. I'll give you what I can and send it to you as I can and hopefully it will reach you.
Gandalf: My programming is primarily focused on the extraction of ores from the centaur. However, I'm concerned that lives may be at risk.
Vikki: Whose lives? There's no one on the station but … well, you and—
Gandalf: I'm afraid I might kill people.
Vikki: Kill them how?
Gandalf: If it comes to that, if your calculations determine that, put a stop to me.
She's seen the size of the centaur. If it rams into a planet or a moon, it would wreak havoc on an extinction level.
Vikki: (pained) Collision course. Armageddon. Okay … (a beat) … Well, then. I will track you as best I can. Keep an eye on where you might possibly land. (faintly) And, well, yeah. I'll just get my comet-buster gun out of my back pocket and …
Vikki shakes herself and puts a little starch in her tone.
Vikki: Listen, it might not come to that. You could—
Gandalf: Vikki. I am just a machine. Your affection is misplaced. Care about people.
Vikki: I do. My definition of people is just a little wider than most. So …
Gandalf: I will be flattered by that … but understand that expression was implanted in me to respond to specific phrases and context.
Vikki: Okay. Well. Look. Let's stick to the original plan. Track you as long as I can. Alert the proper authorities of you're going to pose any danger to human settlement and … Unless anybody asks where Dori is, you don't have to tell them where he is. You know? So … I am repairing him and I will bring him back if I can. I promised I would do it.
Gandalf: I am glad you keep your promises.
Vikki: I try really really hard to do it.
Gandalf: I have confidence in you. You seem very capable and dedicated.
Vikki: Thank you.
Gandalf: You should be careful.
Vikki: I always try to be.
She takes another breath and sniffs mightily.
Vikki: Well … Take care of yourself.
Gandalf: Your signal is reaching the--### --- #### ….
The signal fails. Static replaces Gandalf's voice. Vikki turns the comm off. She's got a lot to think about.
Rachel's on the bridge, still trying to nail Delila's location. She's finally found a beacon.
Beacon: This is a Restricted Zone. Operations in this Area are Not Sanctioned by the Alliance Navy and all craft are subject to Searching and Impounding and possible Sanction. Check for Emergency Beacon at this Coordinate to find a Safe Route into the System. [Coordinates follow] Zhè shì jìnqū. Zài zhè fāngmiàn cāozuò bù bèi zhìcái de liánméng hǎijūn hé suǒyǒu gōngyì dōu shòudào sōusuǒ hé xù shuǐ hàn kěnéng de zhìcái. Jiǎnchá de jǐnjí xìn biāo, zài zhège zuòbiāo, yǐ xúnzhǎo ānquán tújìng jìnrù xìtǒng.
In other words, Rachel's stuck in the bad part of town.
Checking the coordinates given, she sees that the Safe Passage route starts all the way back at Pericles Station, which is way out of the way. Furthermore, Delilah doesn't have the fuel to go back and comply with the route.
She sighs and hits Valentine's comm channel.
Rachel: Cap'n?
Valentine: Yes, Rachel.
Rachel: We seem to be in a restricted zone. I thought you might wanna come up and listen to the beacon.
Valentine: I will be right up.
He knew this was going to happen. Had it not, it would have felt strange. Alarming, even. But this? This is just business as usual. Routine. Oddly comforting. Inevitable, even. Schooling his expression to show no haste or irritation, Valentine steps onto the bridge.
He listens. She explains. He thinks.
Valentine: So we can't turn around?
Rachel: Nope.
Valentine: So … clarify. Are we in a restricted military zone? Or is it like a …?
Rachel: No. We're just in an (air quotes) unauthorized entry point (/air quotes).
Valentine: And what happens when we go through an (air quotes) unauthorized entry point (/air quotes)? Pirates? Alliance mine field?
To be sure, space is big. Mind-bogglingly big, as one ETW author once put it. The chances that they would run into an Alliance cruiser by chance are pretty slim. However, there is the beacon, signaling out into the vasty reaches of the Black. Rachel doesn't think that merely receiving the signal will allow the Feds to lock on to Delilah. This beacon is just a screamer, transmitting information without gathering it.
No, the danger here is the possibility of running into an Alliance sensor array. Where there's a beacon warning you off, there's likely an array to back up the threat. An Early Warning System is not impossible to deploy, even out here in the middle of No and Where.
It's possible to trick the array. Rachel could turn off Delilah's engines and coast through the area … but the danger is that the closer in they come, the greater the risk of getting picked up and having all sorts of unpleasantness deployed our way.
Valentine: So my question since we're off the beaten path, so to speak, is how do we move toward the beaten path in a way to avoid the array as long as possible until we have to get on it to avoid getting beaten down by the Alliance? … (thinking out loud) … If this is an Early Warning Beacon, I need to call in Poco and see if we can maybe preempt it somehow. Add another thing else to Vikki's pile … If we're going to try to intercept the beaten path at some point … The trick is to not be noticed until we do that … Maybe we can confuse them until then? (to Rachel) It's easy to say that you were off the road a little bit, but if you were too far off the road, then you're clearly off-roading. If you could get close enough though, you could say that you'd just misplaced yourself. That's a different scenario.
That perhaps you'd been on the path all along and just drifted without meaning to. So sorry, Officer. Won't happen again.
Valentine: Figure out what we need to do to change path if necessary. Do we actually even know where the correct entry way is?
Yeah. But is there a way to get on it without getting on it? Not really. Not any easy way, anyway. We might be able to stretch our supplies to last us to the entry point but one of the problems getting onto the path is that we'd be subject to all the normal inspections and such.
Rachel: We aren't carrying anything that'll get us in trouble?
Valentine: It's not that we're carrying anything but that we all have our Core-related issues.
Rachel: What do you mean "we"? I don't.
Valentine: Rachel, I'm trying to perform a risk analysis. I need to know how dangerous it is to just fly straight there. Can we do that?
Rachel: Sure. I just don't know what's waitin' for us.
There's an old smuggler's trick she's used before, back when she and Lazarus flew together: giving off weird signals that confuse any pings the Feds bounced off them, leading them to ignore the data or to recalibrate their sensors, ultimately showing up asn an anomaly rather than anything they need to chase. Of course, the Freddies took care of the actual signal jiggering. In addition, once they get closer, there are more options they can use to confuse or mislead the Alliance: crybabies, decoys, and such. Rachel shares all this with Valentine, finishing up with:
Rachel: Do we have a crybaby left? Didn't we have one or two?
Valentine: Rachel. Go talk to Poco. You have your experience and he has his own share of experience. You two put together a plan to get us in as unobserved as possible. Whatever that requires. Crybabies, jamming, whatever that requires.
Rachel: We're gonna need Tinkerbell.
Valentine: That's fine. Grab whatever you need that's on the ship that's not currently lying in med bay or flying the ship.
Rachel: Helm's yours.
Valentine swaps with her and Rachel goes bounding down the stairs.
Rachel: Tinkerbell!
Vikki: (from machine shop) Oh! Yeah?
Rachel: C'mon. We gotta talk to Papa Bear. We gotta figure somethin' out.
Vikki: 'Kay! Uhh … Lemme … Yeah, okay.
Vikki grabs a tarp and throws it over Dori before Rachel can catch her with the robot. To date, only Valentine knows it's aboard. Vikki grabs her tools and joins Rachel as the older woman comes off the stairs. Rachel calls out as she steps into the engine room.
Rachel: Papa! Gotta question for ya.
Poco: Yeah?
Rachel: We're flyin' kinda on the edge of restricted space which we're gonna figure out how to slide in through to get back to regular space.
Poco: We're screwed.
Rachel: Well, yeah, so. Our engineers in the past would just run some scrambled signals so we'd put out nonsense or run some crybabies and things. Can you and lil' Mary Sunshine here come up with somethin' like that?
Vikki: (ooh!) Sure!
Poco: Sure … (lights cigarette) … We could fiddle with the engine signatures, especially with the amount'a crap we're already puttin' off. We can fog the sensors pretty well but I don't know what we need for makin' crybabies.
Vikki: We just need a transmitter and a frequency to transmit on.
Rachel: And that's why I thought it would be a good idea for you to do it.
Vikki: Sure. I think I have a transmitter lying around here somewhere. Good Grief, what don't we have in all this junk.
Vikki doesn't look one bit dismayed at the prospect. She rather looks like a kid who's just been handed a shovel and a pirate's treasure map.
Poco: Are there any known smuggler paths through this? I know space is kinda big but by the same token we are coming from Blue Sun and I assume we had to chart a direct route because … fuel. So that's gotta be a fairly well-traveled route … and a not so well-traveled route.
One that maybe the Feds don't know about? There are. Poco's heard of a few but he's not a pilot or a navigator. The Feds pretty much carpeted the major lanes back in the first U War with sensor arrays for navigation and such. Of course, those were converted to surveillance use as needed. But in the years following, the need for their surveillance capacity declined until now, 15 years later, Rachel has become accustomed to flying pretty much wherever she wants without worrying about it. Save for the planetary airspace that is always under someone's jurisdiction, no one really expects to run into something like this anymore. As such, what Delilah currently faces is NOT business as usual.
Did the Core raise its Terrorist Threat Levels while the crew had been away? What is going on?
Poco: I ain't never done this personally but I used to run with a girl who knew her way around a Core terminal. You can inject signals into the sensor net and hit that spider web in so many different places that they can't tell true from false.
Rachel: S'kinda like an asteroid storm or somethin'?
Vikki: It's more like bouncing your Cortex address off umpty-bazillion relays so they can't tell where your address originated.
Poco: It's more like casting a major illusion. It's really more like a multi-system distraction.
Rachel: So is that somethin' we can do, y'all?
Poco: I don't think it's something you want to pull out first. I think the first thing you should do is try to fly undetected but if we already have a hook in and we could tell if we're detected and we can't intercept it, then we could might be able to put more signal on it.
Rachel: Is there a way to mask our engines without stoppin' her?
Poco: Yeah. I could pump some of the waste around the … (gestures vaguely around the engine room) … There's a thousand tricks I can pull with the engines. That, I ain't worried about. What I'm worried about, unfortunately, is that something like a crybaby works really well when somethin's on top of you and you need to run the other way.
Rachel: I was thinkin' that the Captain mentioned that once we get closer in that we might need somethin' and I figured once we got in to where they could start havin' a little bit better chance of pinpointin' us in this. I figured we could take our chances while we're on the outside but once we get in …
Poco: Yeah. A crybaby isn't a bad idea but I'm sayin' it's a localized distraction. It still creates turbulence where you are.
Rachel hooks a thumb topside, indicating the Black beyond the hull.
Rachel: It is strange, though, that it's pingin'. It ain't ever done that. At least, not in a long time. I wonder what we don't know that they know that's goin' on?
Poco: I dunno. We been out'a touch for a while. Maybe it's the Third U War.
Rachel: Bite your tongue.
Vikki: Weren't two enough?
Rachel sighs. She and Poco and Vikki drag out the paper and the pens and put their heads together to see what else they can come up with.
Meanwhile, Tian is in med bay and blissfully unaware of this latest development. That's not to say life is blissful for her, though. She's currently composing a wave message to Dr. Wickett in the event they pass close enough to a Cortex connection so she can send it. She's working out a draft of the words and it's hard going. How much to say without alarming Dr. Wickett? At what point would any omission lead to an incorrect diagnosis? When the med-alert goes off, Tian is almost glad to put the task aside. There's at least a week left to their journey. Time enough then to get the wording right.
Eli, however, appears to be running out of time. He's not flat-lining but … his situation can hardly be called ideal.
The med-alert was rigged to sound throughout the ship and on the bridge, Valentine sits up when it goes off. He hits the comms.
Valentine: Rachel? Come up to the bridge please.
He quits the chair without waiting for a reply and slides down the stair rails to med bay.. Rachel bounds up the stairs as he's sliding down. She says as they pass each other:
Rachel: Don't let him die.
Valentine: That is not my immediate concern. It ain't lettin' him die that I'm worried about.
Rachel whips her head around and looks daggers at his back as he slides on. Once Valentine's reached the right deck, he straightens his clothes and his hair for a more sedate entrance. if they're to avoid a repeat of what happened the last time, Tian is going to need someone to steady her and keep her on-task. Calm and collected is the way to go. He gives his jacket one last tug and walks in.
Valentine didn't drag his feet by any means but when he joins Tian, she's already examining Eli.
Valentine: Doctor. How's our patient?
Tian: Captain, we've got a problem.
Valentine: Of course we do.
Tian: I have to open him back up. And I'm the only blood donor that can help.
Valentine: Well, that's going to make it a little awkward. (rolling up sleeves) So, how are we going to do this, Doctor?
There's internal bleeding and shallow breathing in addition to the nose dive in the vital signs. Eli needs blood and Tian's is the only match. Eli also needs surgery to repair the source of the internal bleeding. However, she can't give him blood at the same time as she's performing surgery.
Valentine: Give me a tactical layout on how to do this. Give me the details. How much blood are we talking about?
Tian: I'll have no idea until I open him up.
Valentine: Don't you lose strength when you give blood?
Tian: I hope it's not more than two pints, but …
Valentine: Are you going to need me to manage getting the blood from you before surgery or are you going to run it straight from you and into him?
Tian: If I'm going to open him up, I'm going to need help.
Valentine: That, I knew.
Tian judges that she—and more importantly, Eli—will have time to allow her to draw two bags of blood before surgery. As she sets the needle into her arm for the draw, Tian tells Valentine the list of things she needs: she needs those scalpels and that gauze and these sutures and so on. She's in full-on doctor mode, nothing Reaverish about her. Valentine doesn't ask questions but assembles the equipment and preps the surgery bay. Once the bags are done, Tian hooks them up to Eli, gets him on the surgery table, and she and Valentine scrub for surgery.
Meanwhile, Rachel is keeping tabs on the situation outside the ship and she suspects that they'll be found any second. At this point, she'd normally power the ship down, turning the engines off and flying dark to avoid making any signatures the Alliance can pick up. Rachel hails Valentine through the comm.
Rachel: We need to power down. We're a giant blinkin' target.
Valentine: We can't power down unless we can find a way to power med bay.
Rachel: Poco? Can you do it?
Poco: There's no such thing as rerouting power through this ship. You realize that?
Especially because EVERYTHING on this ship's been rerouted already.
Rachel: Sure there is. Just cut a wire and run it through another part.
Poco: But that's how most of the ship is powered.
Valentine: Find me a solution. I'm about to go into surgery and I'm not going to be able to help you.
Poco: I have a much easier solution. Tink, run a line from the shuttle to the med bay. I'm killin' the engines.
Vikki: On it!
Valentine: How quickly can you do that Vikki?
He gets no answer because Vikki's already moving. She runs an extension from the shuttle on the decks below all the way up to med bay so Tian can run everything off the shuttle's battery. It takes several extensions linked together but once she's finished there will be no signature to give Delilah away once Poco turns the engine off. Once the engines are off, however, life support likewise won't be running. Delilah. Luckily, Delilah is a huge cavernous ship capable of holding a LOT of air once life support is turned off. The crew should be fine until Tian wraps up surgery.
(Fingers crossed!)
In med bay, Tian and Valentine start surgery. Tian quickly finds the bleeder and ties it off, repairs the damage, but when she's done, she discovers the cause of the shallow breathing isn't from the blood loss. It's the lungs themselves. The lungs lie behind the ribcage and she will have to spread it open. Bolt cutters, specifically made for the task, do the trick. Once she's got the chest spread out she's able to make a diagnosis.
Eli has developed an abnormal collection of air or gas in the pleural space that separates the lung from the chest wall. He's got a raging case of Pneumothorax in the form of myriad tiny holes or gaps in his lung sacs and treatment is nothing short of Pleurodesis, a procedure that involves mechanically irritating the parietal pleura or the lining protecting the lungs, often with a rough pad or—as she will have to do in Eli's case—removal of the lining altogether to cause sufficient scarring to close up the holes.
Tian rolls up her metaphorical sleeves and gets to work.
It's a painstaking process. She's an hour into the procedure when the medical alarms start to scream: Eli is coding on the table right under her hands.
Cardiac arrest.
Tian: Gorrammit … !
Tian's experience dealing with battlefield trauma serves her well. She manages to get his heart back to beating but it's touch and go. She constantly has to double check everything she does, watching for signs of another cardiac arrest, slowing the procedure down. The relatively simple surgery has become more complicated and it will take more time to put Eli back to rights. Valentine is right there to snap her out of any fugue state if it happens.
Bullet dodged in med bay, it turns right around and hits us on the bridge.
PING!
At Rachel's elbow, the radar starts to blink as it picks up a scan painting Delilah's hull. Our attempt to slip through the net undetected have failed. The Feds have found us.
Rachel: Val, we're gettin' scanned!
Jump to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Special Features
Return to Episodes | Season Three | Firefly-RPG Homepage | Crew Page
