Episode 105. Part 2
Jump to:
14:10 hrs, local time
Nguyen’s office is a modest one but it does have a high-tech executive’s smart-desk, the sort that has a flatscreen monitor for a table top and is touch sensitive. When we approach, Nguyen taps several menus out of existence and looks up. We all sit down to do some business.
Nguyen: You have our package? On your ship?
Nika: Do you need to ask that question again?
Nguyen: No. Just restoring the conversation.
Nika: (waving it off) All right, then.
Nguyen: There is—
Nika: If I didn’t have your gear, you’d’ve known that ahead of time.
Nguyen: I heard tell that you might be interested in some more work.
Nika: The possibility exists.
Nguyen: Massoukis tells me that you were a little bit troubled by the actual cargo, but was it the actual cargo or our lack of being forthcoming?
Arden: Is your office shielded? Can we speak freely?
Nguyen: Yes, you may.
Arden: My concern was that it could be used on people who don’t deserve to have it used on. Like hospitals.
Nguyen: That is always a chance.
Nika: My concern was obviously the latter, not the former. You know how I operate. We don’t play these games.
Nguyen: Hmm. Well, since the official end of the war, we’ve had to play these games. Because not everyone on our side is still as enthusiastic as all of us, but there are reasons why we need to be more careful with such things.
Nika: Well, now you know.
Nguyen: Well, I know what you’re telling me. But I really don’t know anything, do I?
Nika: Feel free to contact Kramer if you want.
Nguyen: You have flown with…?
Nika: She’ll tell you I flew three missions for her since the end of the war, and all three of them I fly exactly now as I did then. Give me a cargo, I’ll take it where you want it to go. Animal, vegetable, mineral. I don’t care, as long as you pay.
Nguyen: Well, then we may have business for you in the future. I hope you enjoyed your meal.
Arden: It was very good.
Nguyen: I’ll send a crew to pick up the cargo.
Arden: When should we expect them?
Nguyen: We’re actually in the planning stages of an operation, but since all you’re interested in is flying…I should be able to peel people off to pick up the cargo.
Nika: What kind?
Nguyen: I thought you were interested in flying transport—animal, vegetable or mineral.
Nika: I could certainly be…piqued that you could be doing something more interesting.
Nguyen taps the table a couple of times and images come to the glass surface.
Nguyen: Have you heard of Chempliance? It’s the latest thing. Alliance security is using it as a non-lethal police device.
Nguyen taps his desk again and what appears to be a shotgun shell appears.
Nguyen: It’s standardized in these shells, but the firing mechanism can be fine-tuned to three settings: individual, shotgun scatter, and a misting spray.
Arden: Chem-pliance?
Nguyen: Chempliance is a sedative…narcotic—we’re not exactly sure how it works but it renders the victim compliant. Capable of being pushed around—
Nika: (interrupting) For how long?
Nguyen: From what we’ve been able to see, for about an hour.
Rina: So we’re talking about a kinder, gentler form of tear gas?
Nguyen: Well, it is certainly a kinder gentler tear gas in the sense that it doesn’t hurt the person that does it, but what it does do is take away free will.
Rina doesn’t like the sound of that. Neither does anyone else present, apparently, as silence takes the room. Then:
Nguyen: And that has always been the trade-off the Alliance has offered, right? Security, for your freedom.
Nika: (Lemme get this straight) So that person will do anything you tell them to?
Nguyen: Well…within reason. It’s somewhat like being…it has roughly the same effect on your willpower as, say, being very drunk. You’re not going to do just anything—
Nika: So you’re uninhibited but you’re not likely going to do something against your self-interest.
Arden: So you’re not going to jump off a cliff.
Nika: Precisely.
Nguyen: Well…I don’t know. We don’t really know. Because most of the people who’ve been affected by it have been either taken into custody and released shortly thereafter or just dispersed. And we don’t really know what the limits of it are, we haven’t been able to get a hold of individual units.
Nika: Because everyone who can take it, talks.
Nguyen: Because of that, too.
Nika: Yeah.
Nguyen: So for multiple reasons, it’s a weapon we’re not particularly fond of. However, it is primarily produced here on Beaumonde. We know where the factory is. But unfortunately, there’s not much cargo transport for you to have a lot of flying involved. We do have access to a delivery vehicle and some uniforms. We made up a mock-up of one of the chemicals used to produce the Chempliant. If our chemists are correct, when they mix this into their batch to create the Chempliant, they will not get Chempliant but in fact they will get something slightly more volatile.
Arden: Sounds dangerous.
Nika begins to laugh appreciatively.
Nguyen: Our expectation is it will possibly destroy the factory.
Rina: (To Arden) What? You didn’t see that coming?
Nika: (gleefully) They’ll blow themselves to hell.
Nika laughs some more.
Rina: (To Arden) I was there two minutes ago.
Nguyen: While it won’t stop them from making it somewhere else, it will…
Nika: Slow them down.
Nguyen: (nodding) Slow them down. There is also the possibility that it may result in investigation once the population finds out what sort of chemicals are being used and what they might find…but the publicity might be able to discourage it from becoming overly popular.
Thus the hook is planted.
Nika: So what would you need?
And Nguyen starts reeling us in.
Nguyen: Well…
Nika: You said you’re planning the operation but it sounds like you’re short something.
Nguyen: The staff here? (He gestures the facility as a whole) The entire staff…are Browncoats.
Nika: Somehow that doesn’t surprise me all that much.
Nguyen: We’ve been exporting them for several years.
Arden: Browncoats?
Nguyen: Chefs.
Arden: Oh.
Nguyen: Fine chefs.
Nika: (getting it now…) Placing them.
Nguyen: Throughout the Core, throughout Alliance ships. Anywhere we can find somebody who is in power who wants the finer things in life. Our people are slowly moving out into the areas—however, with that goes some recognition. While you know that as soon as you put on a waiter’s uniform you could be somebody’s brother and walk up and serve them they probably wouldn’t notice you, but there is the off-chance my people have been scanned…and having them involved in the operation, while that is the plan, we would have to immediately ship them off-planet and do so before they can complete their training and that would make them less useful.
Nguyen pauses.
Nguyen: Of course, you are not on anybody’s … records.
Nika sits back.
Nika: (nods at her fellow crewmates) I can’t speak for them.
Nguyen spreads his hands with a shrug.
Nguyen: A simple delivery. All we need to do is deliver it in, make sure it gets put into their normal operations—there might be off-chance they’d want to test it, but I don’t think so.
Nika: Have they ever tested it before? Aren’t they just going to do it randomly?
Nguyen: Our intelligence tells us they don’t, but there’s the off-chance that they might change that.
Nika: If they’ve been tipped off.
Nguyen: If they’re tipped off. Or for whatever reason they think something’s fishy.
Nika: When’s the shipment go in?
Nguyen: Two days. Would be our best shot.
Nika looks over at Arden and Rina.
Nika: Now’s when you two say if you wanna stick around and hear any further details, or not.
Rina: (firmly) I’m in.
Arden: I’m just interested in the drug.
Nika: Well, our center of morality is laid up for a few days anyway, right?
Meaning our fellow crewmate, Christian.
Nika: So…wanna go play?
Arden: I don’t think he’s the center of morality. Ethics, maybe, but not morality.
Nika: Fair enough. So the center of our ethics committee is laid up for a few days. You wanna go play?
Arden: (sighs) I’ll follow your lead. That way I can blame you if it goes bad.
Nika: (shrugging) Meh. Fair enough. I’m okay with that.
Nguyen: Well, good.
Nika: I want to see everything you’ve got for the intel for delivery schedules, what they usually do and who usually does it. If I have to bluff my way in the door, I need to know what’s normal for them.
Nguyen: I’ll give you everything we have, but there’s one more small piece that may be necessary.
Arden: (oboy) Here it comes.
Nika: Um-hm. You giveth with one hand and you taketh away with—
Nguyen: No, no. Our chemists are 98% sure that just mixing the chemicals will cause a reaction. There’s just that 2% chance it might need the addition of a catalyst.
Nguyen retrieves a small suitcase and opens it up. Inside is an RPG.
Nguyen: That ought to be enough … catalyst.
Nika begins to laugh.
Nguyen: If you need it.
Arden: What kind of reaction are you expecting?
Rina: (To Arden) Exothermic. Buh-duh!
Nika: (through her laughter) And you know, I walked in there thinking ‘Oh look, he’s changed.” Not a bit.
Arden: He’s more subtle.
Nika: No. He’s not.
Nguyen: I must say that there’s a very small chance that you might need this, but odds are you won’t.
We all sober.
Nguyen: Anything we can do to slow down the production of this, or to make the public aware of this sort of thing….
He trails off.
Nika: There’s a trade-off involved.
Nguyen: We’ve heard that there may be some other side effects of this drug, too.
Arden: Can I look over your notes on the chemicals and the drug and the process and all that good stuff?
Nguyen: Sure.
Nguyen hands the info over to Arden and as our doctor pores over it, Nika speaks up.
Nika: There’s a trade-off.
Rina: What sort of trade-off are we looking at?
Nika: (To Nguyen) I want something. I’ll do it. But I want something.
Arden continues reading and he recalls some promising studies he’d come across about anti-depressants similar to the stuff we’re sabotaging, but which eventually disappeared off the radar during the drug trials. Which could mean it was more successful than anybody anticipated, or that they took it in a different direction. Or it literally was an over-the-counter anti-depressant that made you compliant in any case, which would obviously be a dangerous thing as a drug and necessitated being yanked off R&D
In addition, Arden hazily recalls this class of drug having decent success in treating people with violent schizophrenia, where the resulting compliant behavior was somewhat superior to normal behavior-making it a good trade off, but when it was used in normal people, it resulted in compliance unacceptable to most people. From what he saw in the original studies, the study doses were smaller than what we would be delivering, but longer lasting.
The chemical we’re tasked to add to the process would change it from the targeted drug to a volatile substance, a highly unstable one. Arden’s reasonably sure there’s no chance that this will make it poisonous and continue through the process. It wouldn’t be stable enough to use as the intended product. There is, however, a danger we could produce a poison gas cloud. Which in the explosion might very well kill thousands of people, were the factory in a highly populated area.
Thus shines the lighter side of terrorism: Innocents might be hurt by this.
Looking at the evidence in front of him, there’s no way for Arden to calculate the size and the force of any resulting explosion that our sabotage will produce. It is highly probable, however, that if the explosion is big enough to destroy a production plant, the attendant fire will give people enough lead time to evacuate out of danger. After all, it would be plainly evident the smoke issuing from such a fire would be highly toxic and no one would be eager to inhale it.
In terms of catastrophe, it’s a manageable one, even when taking variables like apparatus used and amount of chemicals present into account.
Nguyen goes on to say that his plan is to have an intercept team waylay the legitimate delivery truck en route to the production plant during a normally scheduled run. They would hit it as it passes through a Blackout Zone, taking advantage of the relative lack of security surveillance in such areas. We would then take the place of the legit truck with our own, loaded with the fake chemical delivery and hopefully we’ll have the right codes, and sabotage the plant.
Nika: That sounds like a lot of seat-of-the-pants flyin’. “Hopefully we’ll have the right codes”?
Nguyen: This is not a military installation. We really don’t think you’ll be facing security to that high a scale. It should be relatively simple.
Arden: If it’s so simple, why can’t your people do it?
Nguyen: They could. It’s just that if they have surviving surveillance footage of it, they might just have to leave. You’re going to leave anyway, right? You’re not going to stick around Beaumonde.
Arden: Okay…
Nguyen: No, you are taking a personal risk by doing this—
Nika: All right, all right. We’ll do it. We will do it.
Arden: Depending on the price.
Nguyen: (firmly) This isn’t something we pay for.
Nika: Oh, it doesn’t have to be monetary, specifically.
Nguyen: (All right) What do you need?
Nika: You have enough contacts to get repairs done on our vessel we need to get done, so if we have to get out of here in a hurry we can. That ship was damaged by Reavers on the way in.
Nguyen: Reavers. Really.
Nika: Yes. Really.
Nguyen: I don’t know if it can be fixed in two days. I don’t know what kind of damage there is, but I’ll do my best.
Nika: We took some significant damage, but that’s the trade.
Arden: We’re under a time constraint.
Nguyen: We’ll do our best to see your ship is repaired.
Nika: Okay. Then I guess we have a job.
Arden: Of some sort.
Nika: Have whoever you’re sending over to our ship, come over this afternoon and we’ll have a list of everything we need to have done. Obviously by priority. We have cargo to deliver, so give us about three hours.
Nguyen: All right. I’ll have my people take you back to your ship and we’ll pick up our cargo.
As for the job we’ll be doing for Nguyen, the target is in New Lyon.
Nguyen: I’ll give you directions where you can fly in, obviously we won’t have you going through the spaceport. It’s a yard where you’ll be able to land.
Nika: Excellent.
We could arrange to have our cannabis taken off our ship there, instead of where we’d originally intended to off-lade. Arden’s dubious: we have ten tons of it to move. Nika assures him it can be done.
We wrap things up to take our leave. Nika looks at Nguyen shrewdly.
Nika: How’s your damn business going again?
Nguyen: Things are afoot. We’ve weapons building. People are in positions.
Nika: We’ll see. Tell your students…stellar luncheon.
We leave through the kitchens but take the back way. A delivery van is waiting for us in the service yard, with men tasked to load Nguyen’s cargo off our ship on the way back. We climb in beside them. The men are not the chatty type and neither are we. We keep shut on what we’ve seen and heard til we get back to the safety of our ship.
Once inside, Nika just looks at Rina and says:
Nika: Some days you’re the windshield…
Rina: And some days you’re the bug.
Arden: I hope this is the day where we’re the windshield.
Nika: (chuckling) Me, too.
Our driver and his men take up the cargo. They are pleased. Likely envisioning taking out skyplexes and more with the damned things. They leave happy and we wave them goodbye.
The three of us decide to keep Christian shipside during our op. After all, the guy is recovering from some serious wounds and it wouldn’t do to have him pop his sutures at a critical juncture. If anything, he can man the comms and be an extra pair of ears.
So, that matter decided, we fly over to New Lyon and the yard Nguyen’s arranged landing for us. Jump to:
Back to Season One: Foundations
Back to EPISODES
Back to Mutineers Homepage
