Episode 104. Part 2
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Christian: (leaning into it) Reavers.
Arden: Maybe.
Christian: Close enough for me. (A beat) If they’re not in truth, they are in spirit.
Rina: Really. Arden… (gently, make him see it…) If you found out who did this, what can you do with the information to help these people now? They’re dead.
Arden: I…prefer to know, than not know.
Rina: (getting irritated now) Can you, like, ‘know’ while we’re on our way to Beaumonde? Can you look it up, rather than keep us stalled here?
Arden: Look up what?
Rina: (getting hotter)…God—!
Nika: There might be more information on the ship—.
Arden: That’s what I’m saying.
Rina: (giving in)…For the sake of thoroughness, I have to agree with him.
Nika: Sake of what?
Rina: For the sake of thoroughness. I have to agree with Arden. But. I say we go in armed.
Christian: We’ll go check the other ship out. If anything else, perhaps we can refuel our tanks. Assuming they didn’t rupture their fuel tanks.
Rina: That’s true.
Nika: I’m going to keep the engines running. In case we have to move out fast.
Rina: That’s fine by me.
Christian: Will we be able to dock with them?
The Adelaides have more entrances than any other ships made.
Rina: Including unofficial ones that were made after they pulled all the hull plating off, yes.
Christian: We should probably try to pick up two more vac suits. Eventually we’re all going to need one.
Rina: I’m for getting a few mag grapples for our ship as well. If they have any left. For all we know, this place has been picked clean.
Christian: If they had any to begin with.
From what we can tell from the people whose bodies we’ve seen, they didn’t take much with them and what they did take when they escaped was even sparser.
Christian: What’s the average crew on a ship like this?
The Adelaide usually crews about four or five.
Christian: We are aware of at least four people that were on those shuttles. So it could be there’s no one left behind aboard the ship. But there might be more.
We leave it to Nika to match up ships and dock. We also find that despite the plating that’s missing, the integrity of the Jian Seng’s hull is still intact. We should have atmo once inside.
Christian: If the ship has power and it has oxygen, then we shouldn’t have to wear suits.
Rina: I’m keeping my suit on anyway.
Christian: If you happen to have to move in a hurry, you’re not going to want to be in it.
Nika: You’ll be in a big disadvantage in a fight.
Christian: Even if you could get your finger through the trigger guard.
Rina: (not liking it) All right. Fine. I’ll leave my suit off.
Christian takes his rifle with him, and a spare pistol. Arden takes a pistol with him, as well as his doctor’s bag. Rina carries her tool bag, with a cutter torch, duct tape, the regular tools basically. Nika matches up at Jian Seng’s topside airlock, right where one of the shuttles would have docked.
The distress beacon is still pinging away.
We board.
Checking out the bridge, we find the ship’s systems were put into low-power mode. There is no damage, though there is evidence that some scavengers have boarded Jian Seng before us. Nothing was harmed, just moved here and there in their search for quick booty.
The bridge logs are accessible and we go through them quickly. In them we find out the owner of the Jian Seng is listed as Harkin Smythe and the ship was en route from Verbena. They came out of pulse when they got a distress call and picked up a body.
We descend to the lower decks. We see that there are numerous cargo containers, like the sort we use on our ship, filling the hold. They are open on top, as if they were train cars of the hopper variety. They are filled with white milled rice.
Lots and lots of rice.
And it’s all still there. Any scavengers that preceded us obviously either ignored it or were unable to make a dent in it when carting it off. We decide to take some aboard before we leave. Rina wonders why the rice wasn’t covered up, but left with their container lids hanging open. We surmise that perhaps scavengers uncovered it to dig through the rice for buried valuables. Rina comments, if that were the case, perhaps we should read the manifest.
Christian suggests we split up. He’ll check out the cargo bay.
Rina passes on tossing the crew quarters and goes straight to the engine room. She finds out that someone had removed some of the paneling in the engine room and some of the control gear. In doing so, they exposed something unusual for a ship like this one: she sees a custom piece of work. It’s a tank, for a propellant.
A nitrous tank. A turbo-charger. A Mad Max switch. Rina’s not entirely sure, but it looks like a booster system for the ship. Huh. What’s a ship like this doing with a booster like that? How fast do the clients need their flippin’ rice? She mulls it over. Non-standard equipment. Hidden behind other stuff that was taken out. Maybe the charger wasn’t uncovered by the previous scavengers of this ship…maybe it was being installed after the fact. To move the ship. But by whom? And to what location?
Christian, meanwhile, is poking around in the cargo bay, looking for the manifest. If he were in charge of any cargo, he’d keep the manifest in his quarters, but he checks out the hold first to be thorough. Each of the cargo containers has an electronic manifest board that describes what it carries. It’s pretty much rice, rice, rice. Rice all the way down.
From the rice littering the cargo bay floor, it’s obvious that others have gone through the shipment looking for valuables possibly stashed with the grain. It’s also equally obvious the search came up empty. There is no point in repeating the exercise. Save for a fire axe going missing from its storage clamps, the hold looks pretty much on the up-and-up.
Arden goes looking for a med bay and finds it. Despite previous scavengers’ presence, this med bay looks relatively untouched. Jackpot! There is some pretty decent medical equipment here. Arden starts filling his bag with all manner of useful stuff. He also keeps a keen eye out for the body the ship’s log mentioned. That reminds him to check for the resident doctor’s medical logs. He finds them.
Sure enough, the medical logs mention the body. Furthermore, the body wasn’t a dead body but a live one. In a space suit. The suit was one of them newfangled-tech spacesuits that dropped its occupant into a state of suspended animation. The medic did not feel competent enough to revive the occupant and instead put their rescue in medical cold storage. Which the logs tell Arden are right across the hall.
Arden investigates and finds the suit—with its occupant—in storage, with a battery hooked up to the suit to maintain its functions.
Christian comms the party on all-hail.
Christian: This appears to be just rice. And just be a little careful, because there’s a fire axe missing from down here.
Arden: (responding on his comm) There’s a fire axe missing?
Rina: That’s not the only thing that’s missing. The clutch is gone, too.
Christian: Okay—
Arden: There’s lots of medical gear, in a pretty well equipped medical bay. And according to the medical logs, there’s a survivor in cold storage. Off of med bay.
Christian: We might be able to get somewhere between 20 to 30, 40—depending on what we find—credits a ton for this rice.
Arden: How many tons of rice are there?
Christian: Over a hundred tons. Not too bad.
Rina: I’ll be able to rig up a vacuum, between our ships and fill up one of our containers with it.
Christian: That might work. At the very least, if we can find containers to keep it in, we’ll have food for quite a while. If you don’t mind eating rice.
Rina: Are you kidding? Anything but tofu.
Christian: (agreeing) Rice is not tofu.
Arden isn’t going to examine the comatose body in the cold storage without someone else with him—not because he’s afraid of being attacked by the body, but rather he wants another pair of eyes to catch whatever he might miss.
Christian joins Arden and shares what he thinks happened:
1) the Reavers picked up the distress signal and responded to it at the same time Jian Seng did, or
2) the Reavers picked up the distress signal and laid in wait for anyone else who would pick up the signal, or
3) the Reavers actually put the distress signal out there
Arden: Or 4) there’s no such things as Reavers and something else happened. Some sort of madness took over the crew. There were two bodies found, one was dead and one was alive. In a space suit. A high-tech space suit. It’s still sealed.
Christian: Which reminds me. (Hails Rina) Would you check to see if there’s extra vac suits here.
Rina: Yes. I’m going to be looking for vac suits, mag grapples, any sorts of tools and supplies, cameras, that we can use.
There are no vac suits. Almost all the useful gear that wasn’t nailed down has been taken off already. If Rina was feeling froggy, she could get out her torch and start dismantling the actual engines for parts. If she had the time to spend, she could end up salvaging quite a lot. She opens a channel on her comm.
Rina: Nika, how’s the meter on the taxi running?
Nika: Well, everything’s okay so far. I’m boosting the power to the long range sensors and I’m not getting any other ships in the area. We’re off the space lanes. It’s not like we’re gonna—
Rina: So we’re gonna have some time for me to do some shopping?
Arden: (breaking in on our channel) You mean stripping?
Nika: (off Rina’s comment) I suppose so.
Arden: Of the mechanical stuff?
Rina: (rolling her eyes) Yes.
Arden: All right, just as long as we understand each other.
Because it was a custom add, getting that turbo charger out of there is going to take a custom extract. Meaning it will take some time. Rina mutters to herself: we’ve got the time, we certainly have the beer. Two cases worth, in fact. She surmises the turbo-charger would give our ship a one-shot hard burn for an hour and then burn out, increasing our speed considerably. Especially since our ship doesn’t come equipped for hard burn. And we’d get it all without the attendant extra fuel consumption, since it hooks up to its own fuel supply. In a ship equipped to do a hard burn, normally it costs 50% . With this little jobbie under the Gift’s hood, we’d have a nice little ace in the hole.
All of which makes Rina wonder again why a ship like the Jian Seng even has something like it. She checks the booster’s fuel tank—it comes up empty. It’s been used already, and though it may not have been enough to save the Jian Seng, she’s taking it so it may someday help us out of a jam. She says as much to the rest of the crew.
Arden: Which is just more proof that it couldn’t be Reavers. They chase anything that runs from them and shoot it down as it’s trying to get away.
Christian: If they had anything to shoot with.
Arden: If they’re Reavers, they’ll have something to shoot with.
Christian: Assuming they didn’t because the chase causes more fear in their prey…
And since the Jian Seng shows no evidence of being shot….
Rina: (fed up with the argument) Look, Reavers or not, I’m going to busy. Gentlemen, you hash it out with yourselves.
She gets to work.
Arden: I have nothing to—
Christian: Do you want to go check on this person or not?
Meaning the body in cold storage.
Arden: Yes.
They go check. Christian covers Arden with his rifle. Just in case. It’s not hard to find. They get to the proper locker and find that the door’s been sealed with biohazard tape. Odd. Arden didn’t see anything in the medical records about a biohazard.
Christian: So…they removed the body from the suit and found out that it was diseased?
Arden: Not necessarily. Going by the logs, the person is in a high-tech vac suit. The medic of the ship did not feel confident to get it off the person without damaging the person. So he decided to leave it in cold storage until they could get to someone who can.
Christian: Well, this is your area of expertise.
Arden: That’s why I needed the medical logs. There is no record of a biohazard. I assume if there’s a biohazard and there’s somebody in here alive, be careful.
Without further corroborating evidence either way, there’s nothing but to go forward and hope for the best. They remove the tape and open the door.
There is a vac suit hooked up to that battery. The face plate is fogged over, evidence that the occupant is still alive, albeit in a very slow metabolic state. The lights on the suit confirm it. Arden’s seen things set-ups this before, with patients in cold storage awaiting organ transplants, but this is the first time he’s ever seen a vac suit used for the purpose. Arden looks over the readouts to try to find a name, a gender, anything that could tell him more about the occupant of that suit. Nothing. Furthermore, there’s no telling how long that battery will last, keeping the occupant alive. Arden realizes he’ll have to revive the occupant first and he’ll have to do it on the Jian Seng—Summer’s Gift hasn’t the facilities for it.
This is going to take a while. Arden informs the crew what he intends to do. He moves the suited man into the med bay and gets to work. Christian lends what little first aid he knows from his Companion training. Arden uses the suit controls first to bring the occupant up to speed. This takes some time, going slow and steady to avoid physical damage.
While Arden is sweating over his patient, Rina’s sweating over the turbocharger in the engine room. Like Arden’s task, hers is going to take a while to complete. She starts on the holding tank first. It’s the most accessible.
Hours pass.
Arden achieves success with the suit and removes the helmet. It hisses as it comes off. Inside is a man of African descent. He’s still unconscious but at least he’s breathing normally—a plus.
Rina’s job is a touch harder. She’s too small to manhandle a good portion of the machinery and a lot of her time gets diverted to rigging pulley systems to lift the equipment up and out. In addition, the turbocharger has bits and pieces grafted all over the ship, including a manual switch up on the bridge, and requires hunting the things down to extract them. Still, giving the Gift the capability to do a hard burn makes all that work worth it. Rina keeps at it.
Several more hours into all of this, Nika breaks into our comm channels.
Nika: Pack it up. We gotta go. I’ve got a contact.
Shit.
Rina swears.
Arden: (working on his patient) It’s a little difficult to do right this moment. He’ll die if we move him now.
Nika: Then I’m leaving. Unless somebody can convince me not to.
Arden: Um… ”Don’t leave us. That would be bad.”?
Nika: Then get on the ship. We gotta go.
Rina: All right. I’m going.
Christian: (to Arden) Can we do the rest of this on our ship?
Arden: I don’t think so. Nika, can’t we shut down our systems so we won’t be noticeable?
Nika: I guess we could…sit quiet, here.
Christian: Nika, Rina? Could we shut off the beacon here?
Rina: Certainly. I’m on my way.
Rina yanks the beacon off the Jian Seng’s bridge.
Christian: Do we need power in the med bay right now?
Arden: A little, to keep track of his vitals.
Christian: Otherwise, I say we shut down the engines. Nika, just let us know if we need to run, we will run.
Arden: We need to stay. Do we need to do some diplomacy or…?
Christian: Let’s work, and worry about the specifics when we find out about them.
Rina runs back to the engine room to get some more work done. She might get lucky and finish her task before we have to leave.
Meanwhile, Nika’s still itching to blaze. Christian steps in with his argument.
Christian: Nika. If you want to leave, you’re probably going to need Rina. Until she’s aboard ship, I wouldn’t suggest flying around by yourself.
Arden: Please.
Nika: They’re not going super-fast. Just ….
Christian: When you have an idea of—.
Nika: —a couple of hours.
Christian: Okay.
When the newcomers get closer and we can tell better who they are, then we’ll run. Until then, we’ll be working our asses off. Rina realizes that there’s no way she’s got a chance of getting anything done by herself.
Rina: Christian? You doing anything right now?
Christian: (ba-duh!) Uh, helping save someone’s life?
Rina: Trumps going through the conduits. Okay, never mind.
Arden: I can handle this if you want to go help her.
Christian: I not really sure I can help her. I have neither technical or mechanical engineering.
Arden: You sure? You could help lift things.
Christian: (to Rina) Okay, I’m coming down.
Rina: Thanks.
Christian: (to Arden) You have a gun?
Arden: Mm-hm.
Christian: Good.
Christian leaves Arden for engineering.
Christian: What do you need me to do?
Rina: Okay, you can either be here and hold things while I unscrew them. Or you can go through the staterooms. Whichever you wanna do.
Christian: Which will be more beneficial?
Rina: Helping me, because we can definitely use this equipment.
Christian: Honestly, at this point, if it should be an Alliance cruiser, I’d rather not be caught with as much stolen goods as possible.
Rina: (points at the charger) This way, we can always say I made it.
Christian helps her. Having an extra pair of hands helps considerably and Rina can see the light at the end of the tunnel. By dint of yanking, twisting and some little swearing the charger is finally on its way to getting out of there.
Arden continues working and is rewarded by a great gasp and inhalation by his patient.
Nika breaks in with more news.
Nika: Damn. There’s a smaller ship ahead of the bigger one and it’s going to be here. Now. Prepare yourselves.
Rina: Arden. There’s no chance of throwing your guy over your shoulder and getting him back to Summer’s Gift?
Arden: He’s stunned, he’s shocked—
Christian:—Time to go.
Rina: Okay.
She strips her tools off the machinery and throws them back into her bag. Crap. She leaves the engine room and makes for the med bay.
Rina: (over the comm) It was nice while it lasted, baby. Okay, let’s go.
Arden: I could get him on a gurney, I suppose, til we get to the stairs—.
Rina: (striding into the bay) Dude, you got two people here to fireman carry him out. We’ll help you.
Arden: But you’re carrying stuff.
Rina: Shoulder strap. (She shifts the strap of her bag crosswise.) Done. I got two hands. Let’s go.
Because of the height similarity between them, Christian and Arden take up the patient and Rina grabs the patient’s suit helmet. To make better time, we transfer the patient onto a wheeled gurney. We book out of there, manage the gurney along the stairs and back onto Summer’s Gift. Nika’s standing at the airlock, practically vibrating with the need to fly the hell off.
Rina: Let’s go.
Nika: Well…do we or don’t we? If we run, they’ll chase us.
Nobody mentions the elephant in the room: Reavers .
Rina: If we rabbit, they’ll chase us.
Nika: They’re not any faster than this ship.
Arden: Are they Alliance?
Because, you know, it just could be the Feds and not…the others we’re not mentioning.
Nika: I don’t know, but they’re running a little hot.
Silence.
Arden: What does that mean?
Rina: Without containment?
Arden: What does that mean—they’re running hot?
Nika: It means their engines aren’t in great shape. There’s radiation leaking out of their ships.
Arden: That doesn’t sound smart.
Nika: No. That doesn’t sound smart.
Christian: Sounds like something insane sado-masochistic people might do. You know, the kind that don’t exist, apparently.
He’s the only one that comes closest to saying what we are all thinking. It’s Reavers. And they’re coming for us.
Nika: The ship in front is small. It can’t have more than two people on board.
Rina: How far away is it from the big ship?
Nika: If we can fight them and stop them or trap them here, it would give us an extra hour.
Christian: Could we roll around and hit them with the other ship?
Rina: I say we break out the EMP we have in the hold and we use it.
Arden: No. Don’t use the EMP, that’s—
Christian: —the last resort.
We spend a moment tossing around ideas on how we could use it. We don’t have the power to launch the EMP at a hostile, but that doesn’t preclude us jettisoning it in the path of our enemies.
Arden: Can you rig the engine on the Jian Seng to overload?
Rina: There’s nothing left to work with.
Arden: Maybe we can use what’s left of the fuel to make it go boom?
Rina: No. Not enough fuel. Nothing we can ignite is going to take them out.
She doesn’t have to elaborate who they are.
Rina: I say we rig up some sort of device to slingshot the EMP device out.
Arden gives up and goes to check on his patient in our make-shift med bay.
Christian: (asking Nika) Does this thing have weapons?
Rina: What am I not seeing? There’s something here that—
Christian: I say we run.
Rina: Okay. I say we run. Nika? We got two targets here. One smaller and one bigger, and they’re coming for us. The smaller one, that’s an hour ahead of the big one—
Nika: —At least.
Rina: —how fast is it, relative to us? Can we outrun it?
Nika: No.
Rina: Okay. (Damn.)
Christian: Does it matter that we can outrun it? Once they get close, if they don’t have any weapons, what are they gonna do?
Rina: Okay, how’s this for a plan? The smaller ship—we engage them, take them out, get the hell out of here, leave the EMP behind for the big ship to find and we blow it when they come across it. Remotely.
Christian: No.
Arden: (rejoining us from the med bay)The EMP is not ours.
Christian: For that matter, how do we make sure that it’s exactly where they’re going to be?
Nika: That’s not going to matter much, it’s got a mile radius.
Arden: A kilometer.
Christian: A kilometer in space is nothing.
Nika: Not if they were to dock with it. That would be close enough.
Christian: Yeah, if they were.
Nika: Yeah, if they were.
Christian: That’s a lot of “ifs” for getting rid of our cargo and potential future jobs from a customer.
Arden: What’s cheese for a Reaver mouse?
We all stare at Arden. At least the elephant has been acknowledged.
Arden: Is there a way to make them think there’s people on the ship we just left?
Christian: Heat signatures?
Arden: Or something.
Christian: Does the Reaver ship even have—I guess they must have scanners.
Rina: Yeah…
Christian: Can’t fly without them. But how would they be able to tell?
Rina: How sane are they? What if they are only looking for thermographic signatures?
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