Episode 416: Miranda Calling, Part Three

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Nika thumbs the hand comm live.

Nika: Rina. Joshua. Where are you guys?

Rina and Joshua are on the station platform underground but the signal comes in clear. Rina stows her flashlight and grabs her comm.

Rina: We’re on the way out. What’s going on?
Nika: (drawls) Yeah, I think it’s about time to power up and go ahead and go.

Reavers. Rina pulls herself together in a flash.

Rina: (brisk) All right. ETA in two minutes. We’re on our way. (to Joshua) Let’s go. Incoming. Now.

She grabs Joshua and gets them the hell out of there. They hoof it as quickly as they can back to the ship. Back on the bridge, Nika quickly and efficiently goes through preflight. Once Rina and Joshua are on board, Nika goes faster through the warm-up and when Rina gives her the go-ahead from the engine room, she fires the Gift up. She gets on the horn.

Nika: Okay, guys. I think we may have company so let’s get off the ground.

Kiera and Arden stumble out of their respective beds and make ready for lift off. Arden heads to medbay, straps himself onto the exam bed and falls back asleep. Kiera follows him in and eyes the straps.

Kiera: That’s a good idea. You got anything to sit in, in there?
Arden: (cracking open an eye) No. But there are the beds in the wardroom.
Kiera: Yeah but those I have to strap down in.
Arden: (wicked grin) I would have to strap you in, then.
Kiera: I know. (eyeroll) I know.

Nika takes the Gift aloft. Joshua’s in the copilot’s seat manning the sensors. As we fly upward, he spots an energy signature about 500 kilometers away flying in our direction. Joshua taps the screen. Nika spares him a glance.

Joshua: Right there. Headin’ our way.
Nika: Is it leaking anything?
Joshua: There’s heat. It could be.

Nika sets us a course to get us the hell outta atmo. Joshua keeps tabs on our bogie on the scopes. It appears to pick up speed but we’re going to break atmo before it does. Nika preps for going to pulse and Rina jiggers the systems in engineering to give her more power. She’s not entirely able to get things going before we break atmo. Once clear of it, pings start proliferating on our scanners. At first Joshua’s not sure he’s reading the sensors right but he alerts Nika anyway.

Joshua: We got signal. Here. Here. Here. And here. There’s a lot. I mean, I could be reading it wrong. It could be dust motes.

Nika’s listening with half an ear, busy with flying and plotting a course to Blue Sun. In medbay, Arden remarks to Kiera strapped into a nearby chair.

Arden: I’m glad she’s awake now. I would hate to be doing this under the conditions she was under five days ago.

We manage to gain a little lead on the bogie to our rear. Doing the math in her head, Nika realizes that we’ll want to hug the atmo until we can get into a bit of clear space before we pulse. At the moment, we’re too close to Miranda’s moon to engage pulse.

The Reavers behind us speed up. We increase our speed and manage to keep them off our tail. It’s clear pretty quickly that whatever the Reaver ships are faster than us and will catch up. Nika races against our opponents for the clear point. She manages to make it without getting caught.

Arden: This is going to be so awesome. This is the best day ev—.
Nika: You sit on my bridge and say that one more time, I swear to God I’ll duct tape your mouth shut.
Rina: (from the comms) Thank you, Captain.

Nika’s a better pilot than the ships chasing us. What she needs is a spot over Miranda where she can go full throttle and pull a fast one on our pursuers. Nika and Joshua scan the area for possibilities and she decides to lose them by going through the debris field. It’s a wild and hairy ride dodging the tumbling wrecks and flotsam but Nika is in rare form. She dodges and dips, swerves and dives, avoiding the debris and egging our pursuers on. She’s barely scratching the paint job.

Nika: (weakly) Jesus Christ.
Joshua: He’s not here.
Rina: (comms) Apparently he’s her copilot.

Joshua checks our backtrail—it looks like not all of our followers were able to tail us through unscathed. As we’d hoped, they’re getting wiped out on the debris. A big icy chunk of it slams into one of the bigger ships to our rear. Joshua points the scanner at another nearby piece of debris, scans it.

Joshua: Now. That one. Look, it says so right there on the—
Nika: Get off of my shoulder!
Joshua: Lookit the metal content of that one. If they hit it—
Nika: Joshua. With you in my ear I can’t concentrate.

In medbay, Kiera grips her chair and puts up with the jinking.

Kiera: I am so not drunk enough to handle this right now …

It’s a good thing she can’t see what Joshua sees pop up on the scanner. One of the Reavers has just launched a missile at us. Nika hears the warning beeping in her ear and takes evasive action.

Nika: Evade! Evade!
Rina: (from the engine room comm) Nika, talk to me.
Nika: No time!
Rina: That bad, huh?
Joshua: Missiles.
Kiera: Missiles?!

Nika jinks the Gift hard a-port. Stomachs and unanchored objects aboard get tossed around.

Nika: Bwahhhh!
Joshua: (over the PA) It’s all good!
Rina: Going for the gun turret.

Rina quits the engine room for the gun turret belowdecks. We have countermeasures we can launch from the turret. Nika jinks us hard to starboard and dips down, jinks hard upward, then slings us to the side again. We hang on as best we can.

Nika: (muttering to herself) Nobody goes into an asteroid field…
Joshua: Very cool. We just scared away Reavers.
Kiera: (yelling toward the medbay comm) I’m gonna sedate you!

Nika’s ploy works on the missiles. They spend themselves on the debris and things in the field go ka-boom! It makes for more debris but at least it’s not debris made out of us. Of course, we still have the hostile ships on our tail. If we can manage to survive just a little bit longer in the meat grinder, we can outlast everyone pursuing us. Nika aims us for another big chunk and dodges at the last possible second, hoping to fake out the persistent ships behind us.

BOOM!

The debris clips our hull and the sound booms throughout our girl. The ship shudders from the impact and Rina is slammed hard against the lowerdeck walls. Everyone else is strapped down but they still get stunned bouncing against their restraints. Rina scrapes herself off the deck and keeps going for the gun turret.

Kiera: Let’s not do that again.
Joshua: No, let’s do that again.
Kiera: Like I said. Sedate you! When I get out of this chair!

Rina gains the gun turret and starts strapping in. The hiss of the micro-debris on our hull is louder here and Rina prays our hull integrity holds up. Nika fails to dodge another chunk of debris and the CRUNCH! reverberates from stem to stern. The Reaver on our tail isn’t so lucky—it wipes out on the debris.

Having gained a little breathing room, Nika flies us the hell outa there. Not having the Cortex up and running makes astrogation tricky at the best of times and times right now sure aren’t the best. Nevertheless, Nika plugs in the coordinates and engages pulse.

Whew.

Rina quits the turret, the pulse making her trip down below a fool’s errand, and she makes her way to the upper deck again. Kiera unstraps herself and steps onto the bridge to look over Nika’s shoulder. Outside the bridge windows, the stars flash by incredibly fast, dopplering a bit from our speed. It’s a pretty display but it’s not pretty enough to distract the doctor from seeing the bad news on the scopes.

Our sensors show someone is following behind us. They’re in pulse too, going the same speed as we are. The second we drop out of pulse, they’ll drop out of theirs and the delay between the two drops will allow them to close the distance between us.

Kiera: Is that another ship on the sensors? What am I lookin’ at? (looks, groks) Crap.
Nika: Crap. (a beat) We got a couple of things we can do here.
Kiera: All right.
Nika: If it keeps on following us and just follows us all the way through, I can just take it into the more populated area and hope that there might be a back-up somewhere nearby. We can have the heavy weapons rolled out when we come out of pulse and take a pot-shot at it and just hope for the best.

Nika reviews our course. It will take us close to one of the gas giants, Fury, and its moons. Could we use them to our advantage?

Nika: We can potentially skim close enough to one of its moons as we drop out of pulse and hope it hits it. Not as maneuverable as we are.
Kiera: We also might hit it, too.
Nika: There is that possibility. Or we can pull the ugliest maneuver I’ve ever pulled in my life. Again. And …. (hisses to herself) … Jesus Christ.
Kiera: Which is?
Nika: Eject a cargo container at them in pulse.
Joshua: (getting it) Holy crap.
Kiera: That would be interesting so long as you don’t send mine out.
Nika: We’ve done it before. It worked last time. (considers) It tore the shit outa the ship and Rina about killed me …
Joshua: Holy crap.
Kiera: Have you determined that they’re actually not friendly?

Nika turns around in her chair and gives her a narrow look.

Nika: (heavy drawl, yikes!) In general, when folks start lobbin’ missiles in your direction, they ain’t your friends.
Kiera: Okay, all right. Just wanna make sure.
Joshua: I feel like I’m in Bizarro World. Kiera’s asking if we can parlay with them and—
Kiera: I didn’t ask if we could parlay.
Joshua: It seemed to me you were asking to parlay. “Are they friendly?” That’s parlay talk.

Kiera: Get outta my head.

Rina steps onto the bridge.

Nika: Rina. The last time we dropped a container in pulse at a Reaver chasing us, we took enough damage—did we drop out of pulse, due to the damage we did to ourselves?
Rina: (thinks) The damage we took didn’t require us to drop out of pulse but it did damage a couple of our directional vanes. Remember? That’s how we did that flippity-flop landing.
Nika: (remembering) … Oh, yeah …
Rina: It’s going to make landing a mite tricky.
Nika: A lot of money changed hands on that one.
Rina: Yeah.

If memory serves, a lot of underwear needed changing too. We’d narrowly missed crashing into a heavily trafficked spaceport on Beaumonde that time. Arden pokes his head in, catching the last bit. He looks at Joshua.

Arden: So we’ve dropped another container?
Joshua: Not yet. She’s thinking about it.
Arden: I thought we got away from them.
Joshua: (shakes head) They’re chasing us in pulse.
Arden: Unnnh.

Arden crosses his arms on the back of Joshua’s chair and the two men watch the knot of passenger, engineer and pilot working out the details.

Rina: Can you do a barrel-roll while we eject? It might steer us clear.
Kiera: So … where are you aiming this thing right now?
Nika: Fury.
Kiera: How much population we lookin’ at here?

Fury has three main moons, Coldstone, Blackwood, and Seventh Circle, and their populations are rather low. The total population of Fury is around 120,000 people.

Nika: Having backup is pretty small.
Kiera: Damn.
Arden: Moving along. Is it possible to use maneuvering thrusters like this?

He demonstrates with his hands, mimicking the movement.

Rina: No.
Kiera: No.
Nika: No.
Joshua: (pained) Ooh.
Arden: There’s no air resistance in space.
Joshua: (undertone) It would be interesting, though.

We can’t do it because we’d have very little maneuvering control in pulse. We go back to discussing ejecting the container at Fury. The lack of population is a plus—less people to hurt if things go south. It’s also a minus. Habituated to light and well-behaved traffic, how would they take to us screaming down on their heads?

Kiera: Which means that ship traffic is like, “Wow. We might see a ship once every four months.” Not good. Is there anything else we can go to?
Nika: Not the way we’re aimed right now.
Joshua: If you want to drop the container—
Arden: We don’t have to drop the container. We could drop the shuttle.
Joshua: It’s better to drop the container. Follow your instincts, Captain.
Rina: Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll make it happen.
Joshua: (to Nika) You know what you want to do, do it.
Rina: (to Nika) I say we do it.
Nika: All right. I’m debating between essentially using one of the moons of Fury to slingshot around, hoping they hit that. But that could potentially land them in a populated area and I don’t like that idea. I don’t think that’s the appropriate measure to take.
Joshua: You’re the Captain, Captain. Listen to your instincts.
Nika: (sighs) Yeah. My instincts are to just about to tear our ship apart, too.
Joshua: What’s your point? Do it.
Nika: (resigned) Whatever.
Joshua: Do it, Captain.

Silence. Then:

Rina: So we’re doing the container?
Kiera: What do we need to do? Is there anything I can help or just sit there and pray?
Arden: Praying.
Nika: Pray a lot.
Kiera: All right.
Joshua: Okay.
Nika: (to Rina) Get us ready to drop the container. I can attempt a barrel roll around a moon, see if we can hit’em with it.
Joshua: Wow. This really is Bizarro World. We’re asking to parlay and now we’re talking about praying …
Arden: I really don’t know what praying is going to do for us, because there isn’t anyone to listen, but …
Kiera: Well I can’t shoot it. Can’t get out of the ship and go get it. So I’m just kinda stuck.
Arden: You can’t prove a negative, so I can’t prove there isn’t a God. Which means you have to prove to me there’s a God.
Joshua: No I don’t.
Rina: Do we have any empty containers belowdecks, forward?
Kiera: Don’t drop mine.
Rina: No, I know you’re forward to port. I say we do the one to starboard.
Arden: Wouldn’t it be better to do the one in the middle?
Rina: No. We want as much distance away from the vanes as possible.
Arden: From the engines.
Rina: Right.
Arden: But if you do the one on the side, it’s going to go right by the engines. If you do the one in the middle it will go between the engines.
Rina: Not if it twists.
Arden: I don’t know. I’m not a—you’re the expert on this mechanical stuff. It seems if you drop it off the side, it’s going to go closer to the engines than if we drop it from the middle.

Going through the idea step by step, we realize that one of the reasons we were so damaged the last time we did this is we weren’t able to impart anything more than inertial thrust to the container when we released it. That’s because we were simply unhitching it from our frame. If we could give it a push when we threw the latches … explosive bolts should do the trick.

Only we don’t have any. Do we have any other options? Could we rig our gun rounds into mines, rigged them to behave like mines? Or what if we came down out of pulse and just gunfight it?

Arden: They have missiles, though. Missiles versus cannon, missiles wi
n. Nika: Yeah. We’re better off attempting to launch the container, honestly. Sounds like. Or again, attempting to slingshot around the moon and coming back around the side of it as it comes out of pulse.
Joshua: You know what you want to do. Do it.
Rina: Slingshot around the moon and launch the container as we slingshot around?

If we had explosives, we could eject that container clear of our girl. The last time we did this, we didn’t. Actually, the last time we did this, a Reaver ship was attached to the container, making it harder to eject. Explosive bolts would have come in mighty handy back then, as they would now.

Rina: See? This is why we need grenades.
Joshua: (quietly) We have grenades.
Rina: Yes. We do.

We have a supply of grenades for our assault rifles’ grenade launchers. And if Rina ever needed a demonstration of a grenade’s utility outside said launchers, this one’s a pretty convincing one.

Rina: I can rig something up because I took demolitions as a specialty.
Nika: Go to it. Get on it and see what you can make out of that thing and see if you can make the container itself explosive. Can they hit it and just have the damned thing explode all over them?
Joshua: Let’s start by launching first.

We crunch the numbers. Jettisoning the container isn’t the sticking point—simple physics is. Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Unlike the last time, when we had a Reaver shuttle attached to our container, the container we’re going to sacrifice has nothing in or on it. As a result, its mass is going to be the low number in the equation, which significantly reduces the force we can achieve with it. We need to increase the mass or increase the acceleration to give the force sufficient punch to actually damage the ship following us.

Rina: What would happen if we launched it as we slingshotted around, using the inertia of our slingshot?
Kiera: Uh…
Rina: We have a lot of empty containers.

Inertia really is the key. Of course, if we could lay out a minefield of these in our wake so the Reavers can crash into them as they come out of pulse, their speed of coming out of pulse would be even greater than if we slung the containers at them coming around the moon. The Reavers’ pulse-v would do all the work for us. If we dropped out of pulse and simultaneously released the containers and the Reavers dropped out of pulse immediately after us … Or better yet, crashed into them while still in pulse …

Joshua: It’s all about perfect timing.
Nika: Here’s the question I have for you. And it’s going to burn fuel like a cào nĭ mā. Can we drop out of pulse, jettison, and hit pulse again? How much time between them? So they have no reason to drop out of pulse as they come straight through that field? How quickly can the pulse engines refire?

Dropping out of pulse is a rather noticeable thing. The Reavers will know we’ve dropped out of pulse and our hitting pulse again won’t fake them out. However, if we curved our pulse line beyond the horizon of one of the moons before dropping out of pulse, the moon would hide our actions from the Reavers’ scanners. They wouldn’t know we’d dropped out of pulse and therefore wouldn’t drop out of pulse in response. They would plow into anything we set for them at full pulse speed.

Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Container Mass times Pulse Acceleration equals some Big Damn Force.

If the Reavers follow us in the above scenario, they stand a good chance of perishing. That being the case, the recovery time between pulses is rendered moot: with the Reavers dead, we’d have no further reason to pulse.Rina pulls up a schematic of the Gift’s deck plan on the screens.

Rina:(tight grin) So which ones do you want to jettison?

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