Episode 124. Part 3
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Arden pulls Valerie Sampson behind him, giving her the scant cover of his body, and starts backing away.
Rick: (Impatient) Why are you hiding that chick behind you, man? Just use her as a shield and let’s get out of here!
Arden has no gun. Rick, however, does have a gun and he brings it up.
Arden: You might want to hear what they have to say before we start shoot them.
Rick: What are they gonna say? ‘Are you ready to die?’
Arden: They might. That’s six seconds more than we currently have to live.
Hell with that. Rick shoots.
The Blue Hands team is covered reasonably well by the open car doors and the man looks quizzically at Rick’s shot ricocheting off the frame. Then he looks over at Rick and Arden.
Blue Hand Man: Put the guns down.
Arden: But I don’t have a gun.
But Blue Hand Man does, and he draws it.
Arden and Rick have no place to go. There is scant cover on the deserted street and the steel mill, though right at their backs and crammed full of places to hide, is surrounded by a high chain link fence. Rick eyeballs it quickly. It would be a cinch for him to climb but Arden, dragging Valerie, would never make it.
They’ll have to stand and fight.
Arden makes himself as small a target as possible, going down onto his knees and pulling Valerie down with him. It takes him out of Rick’s line of fire and Rick, no dummy, takes the opportunity to squeeze off another shot at Blue Hand Man. He misses and is clipped by Blue Hand Man in return. Rick’s mesh takes most of the damage but it’s still a hard blow. Hurting, Rick leans down and says to Arden:
Rick: Man, I really hope Nika and Rina show up so they can try and help.
Arden: I hope they’re surviving.
Rick and Blue Hand Man exchange another round of fire and Arden ducks. As he does so, he remembers Valerie at his back and a second later feels the stab of a syringe in his neck as she jabs him with it and pushes the plunger home. She shows no remorse for what she’s done or even that she’s done it. She is clearly not herself.
And neither is Arden. The drug in the syringe starts coursing through his system and everything goes strange. He barely has a chance to feel betrayal before he starts to wobble. There is nothing Rick can do. It’s done and over with too fast for him to react. He considers shooting Valerie in the head for what she’s done but the woman simply sits quiescent and Rick knows it’s murder if he went through with it.
Then the Blue Sun team makes things interesting and his attention must go elsewhere. He shoots again, buying time to think of a plan for getting out of this mess, time for Nika and Rina to arrive. His shot pings! off the armor hidden under Blue Sun Man’s clothing. The Man’s partner, a blonde Woman, pulls a wand from her pocket not unlike the one we’d seen used before on a certain rooftop hereabouts.
It looks like history’s about to repeat itself.
Rick aims and shoots at the Blue Sun Woman and hits. Given the fact she’s wearing armor just like her partner, she’s pushed back by the impact but little damaged. Rick stands his ground, and shoots and takes fire from the opposition. Neither side backs down. Both sides take damage. It’s a battle of attrition, a fight against time, a contest to see who goes down first.
Rick shoots at Blue Sun Woman again, hits, and the bullet bounces off her armor. Damn. The car she arrived in is sitting on the pavement, its engine purring away, the perfect exit vehicle if he could just get to it. It might as well be on the other side of the planet. Rick’s taken enough damage to be wobbly, despite his mesh vest, and the next hit from the Blue Sun team sends him unconscious.
Arden, meanwhile is horrified and captivated by the drug’s effect on him. His hand is fascinating, if in a smeared kind of way. His field of vision has extended beyond normal, as if his eyes have wrapped halfway around his head. Colors are brighter, shimmering with hues he’s never seen before. Sounds are louder and sharper and carry textures he can almost feel. Heartbeats thunder inside his head, and not just his own but Valerie’s at his back, and Rick’s behind him. The blood running through Arden’s veins is a palpable thing, every hair on his arms as thick as a tree rustling in the breeze. Taste, touch and smell are all heightened nearly to the point of pain. Through the haze of sensory overload, Arden can hear screaming…and cannot tell if the sound is his own, or someone else’s.
Because of his unnaturally heightened senses, everything around him slows down to molasses-speed. He sees the blonde woman approach him as if she’s moving through water, solid and fluid at once. She grabs him and the sensation is quite unpleasant as every square micrometer of his skin registers the contact individually to his already overloaded brain. Her grip might be feather light but to Arden it’s like a vice, and just as painful. The woman’s partner takes Arden by the other arm, doubling the sensation and the pain, and together they get Arden to the car. Overwhelmed, Arden cannot resist them and is pulled, shoes dragging across the pavement, into the vehicle.
Rina and Nika turn the far corner just in time to see the car doors slam and roar away from the scene. There are no distinguishing markings on the vehicle for the women to memorize, no license plates or logos to describe to the police. Nothing but color and general shape. Useless.
Rick and Arden are nowhere to be seen and standing in the settling dust and street trash is Valerie Sampson, abandoned now her job of delivering Arden is done. Nika doesn’t hesitate. She strides right up to Sampson, who stands there looking dazed.
Nika: Where did they take them?
Valerie: …take who….?
It’s like dealing with Mike all over again. Disoriented, disconnected, and disabled. The memory of Mike is the only thing holding Nika back from slapping Valerie into her next incarnation. Rina, on the other hand, leaves Valerie to Nika and instead gets a heading on the car based on its direction out of here.
Rina: They’re headin’ for the spaceport. We’ve gotta fuckin’ book.
And back in the Parliamentary Offices, Christian’s immediate physical duties draw to a close. That databook is still open on the floor and it tantalizes. Bound by his moral and Guild ethics, Christian cannot simply grill his client as to its contents. She would have to volunteer the information freely before he could make use of it. There is nothing, however, forbidding him helping her clean up the mess they’ve made of her office and that may provide him with the opening he needs. She pulls on her clothes, he pulls on his, and together they start picking up.
On the pavement in front of the steel mill, Rina grabs Valerie by the arm.
Rina: I say we take her. Arrange for a hostage exchange, if nothing else.
Nika: No one’s gonna want her. Would you?
Rina: We could question her—.
Nika: There’s no use questioning her, she’s been pumped full’a drugs.
Back at the office, Christian’s conscience is kicking up a ruckus, urging him to openly question Ms. Hill about her databook. He manages to get halfway through the clean up before his loyalty to his crew overrules his professional discipline. He picks up her databook before she can get to it, fakes a double take and says:
Christian: Miranda? Like that broadcast?
Deanna: Oh? Well, yes.
No hesitation or prevarication here, but a straight-forward answer to his question.
Deanna: You saw the broadcast.
Christian: Yes. It happened to be everywhere at one point in time. So yes, I did.
Deanna: You know that Mr. Gibbons is leading the Parliamentary inquest.
Jackpot!
Christian: (mildly) Really? That’s very interesting. I’m sure it will be fair and impartial.
Deanna: It should be interesting. To my mind, this is the first time anyone has taken on Blue Sun.
Christian: Really? Interesting.
Deanna: At least, anyone this high up.
Christian: I guess it’s easier when you have a swelling of public sentiment behind you, knowing you may not get knocked out of office just because they’re not making campaign contributions to you.
Deanna: I don’t know if there’s a huge public outcry about this, unfortunately—out on the Rim
perhaps—the MPs’ constituents out on the Rim are not a large portion of voting population. The Rim is represented by Core Parliamentarians, because most of the worlds on the Rim don’t have a large enough population to warrant their own MPs. Well…Beaumonde might have an MP, but most of the Rim are represented by various Parliamentarians in the Core.
Christian: That’s interesting. They are quite powerful and pervasive, based on my travels out on the Rim. Not just their products, but their sheer presence.
Deanna: Blue Sun? Oh, yes. It’s all suspicions right now, but there’s some reason to believe that they may be more…how shall I say, that they’ve taken considerable..license…when it comes to enforcing their known hegemony.
Christian: I’ve heard they have their own armies, their own secret agents, their own state-of-the-art weaponry which they haven’t even given the Alliance yet. You hear all sorts of rumors and conspiracy theories, but…
Deanna: (intrigued) Oh?
Christian: Something I remember…At one point I met a man, a bounty hunter of some kind, and he talked about people with blue-painted hands. That seemed silly to me, because why, if you were working as secret agents for a company with a name like Blue Sun, would you have blue-painted hands?
Deanna pauses and coming to a decision, beckons Christian over to her primary data screen.
Deanna: (all business) Come here. Look at this.
She types in her passwords and a security cam image shows up on her screen. It’s of a padded room and in it is an obviously badly shaken man, huddled defensively in a corner, whispering just loud enough for the camera to pick up: “Two by two, hands of blue.”
Christian: Wow. That’s disturbing.
Deanna: This man killed twelve people with his bare hands and found weapons before he was subdued.
Christian: Wow. That’s a lot of people to kill. With your bare hands.
He looks at the unfortunate man again. It’s no one he recognizes. So, not Mike. A blessing.
Deanna: We did some brain scans and he’s missing parts of his brain.
Christian: As in, cut out of him?
Deanna: Mm-hm.
Christian: Wow.
Deanna: We don’t know what it means.
Christian: Between that and the idea of mind altering drugs, that’s disturbing.
Deanna: We were going to have him shipped to another hospital and he disappeared in transit, and we haven’t been able to find him.
Christian: Where were you shipping him to?
Deanna: We were shipping him to a hospital on Ariel.
Ariel is only four worlds away, outbound from Osiris.
Christian: And he disappeared in transit.
Deanna: Since you said something about hands of blue….
Christian: The bounty hunter said something about that and a…sonic weapon, I want to say?
Deanna: Well, we have sonic weapons.
Christian: Oh no. Not like the big rifle things. He said something about a weapon that made a high pitched whine—that was it—and he felt ill or something.
Deanna: There have been some unusual deaths reported but strangely enough there have been numerous lapses in hospital security at the various autopsies that were done on them.
Christian: And the bodies….disappeared.
Deanna: Yes.
Christian: They were in transit. Did the ship disappear, that was carrying that prisoner?
He gestures at the security camera vid.
Deanna: He was lost before he got onto the ship. It was a hospital ambulance that disappeared.
Christian: That’s disturbing.
Deanna: (sighs) All right….
Christian: (rising) I’m taking up too much of your time. I’m sorry—.
Deanna: No, it’s just….it’s interesting—you say you…heard about people with blue hands?
Christian: Yes. We were out on….I want to say Hera. Where Serenity valley is? It was just after the Miranda Wave and they were bringing in all the soldiers that were wounded…I don’t really know from what. And I met the bounty hunter—or mercenary, I’m not entirely sure what the difference is—and he had a little too much to drink and started telling stories of running into these two blue handed individuals with a strange whining weapon that made him feel ill. Beyond that...he really didn’t say anything much beyond that.
Deanna: Do you think this person’s still alive?
Christian: The bounty hunter? I honestly don’t know.
Deanna: Do you have his name?
Christian: Reynolds, I think he called himself. Malcolm Reynolds. It was literally one-night in a tavern thing and the next day….?
Christian shrugs.
Meanwhile, back at the steel mill, Rina and Nika are figuring out what to do next. There’s no use interrogating Valerie. Though compliant enough, thanks to the drugs she’s been dosed with, she doesn’t know anything of value—like where Arden and Rick were taken or who exactly took them.
Nika: Search her.
Rina pats Valerie down and discovers a syringe. She holds it gingerly and notes with relief that it’s securely capped. Rina stows it in a pen holster on her sleeve and continues her search. A small earbud is found next and Rina works it free. There’s no evidence of an off/on switch. She stows that in a pocket as far from her ear as possible.
Rina: Nika, what do you think? If we call the police what are we gonna say? That our two friends got snatched and ….what are we gonna tell ’em? We could take her back to the ship. We could scan her for bugs, transponders, whatever. The Alliance had their hands on her—
Rina frowns, takes the earbud from her pocket and before Nika can stop her, she crushes it to confetti under her boot heel. She scrapes up the pieces and folds them into a page torn from one of her pocket notepads, and stashes it on her person. She’ll examine the remains later.
Rina: We don’t want to be tracked. I say we take her back to the ship and we pump her for information.
Nika: That’s the only place we can sit her down and I don’t have the patience to do it here. Let’s go.
They go and take Valerie with them. They walk casually, keeping a discreet eye out for tails. They see none. Nika decides to risk interrupting Christian during his job and calls him on the comm. She’s in luck—he’s turned his comm back on and the call goes right through.
In Ms. Hill’s office, Christian’s comm beeps. He picks up.
Christian: Christian.
Nika: Oh, thank God. We need you back at the ship.
Christian: What’s wrong?
Nika: Arden and Rick just got snatched by blue-handed people.
Christian: (looks at Deanna) Really?
Nika: Yeah.
Christian: I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Nika: Okay.
Christian ends the call and turns to Deanna.
Christian: I wasn’t completely honest with you before.
Deanna: You’re a Companion. I don’t expect complete honesty.
Zing!
Deanna: It’s not an insult. Companions are consummate actors and performers.
Christian: For the record, when I said it was amazing, it actually was. But that’s not what I was talking about.
Deanna: (smiling) And?
Christian: There was no bounty hunter. I’ve encountered them directly. In fact, two of them just took shipmates of mine.
Deanna: (looks askance) What kind of ship are you on?
Christian: A freighter.
Christian pauses and gathers his thoughts.
Christian: You know what an Operative of the Parliament is.
Deanna: Yes.
Christian: You have one that looks like this, only older.
He shows Deanna a picture of Arden on his comm’s photo gallery.
Christian: A friend of ours—a friend of the crew on our ship—was captured by Blue Sun and exposed to a drug that I understand was a variation of the drug that was used on Miranda. Which makes you very … easy to…. talk to.
Deanna: Wait a second.
She pushes a couple of buttons on her desk and the atmosphere of the room changes. The lighting dims and the ambient noise goes down considerably. An audio shield.
Nice.
Deanna: From Hera? We know of an escaped prisoner from Hera.
Christian: Yes.
Deanna: That wasn’t a Blue Sun facility. That was one of our facilities.
Christian: Okay, but they were using it. We were led to understand that they were experimenting using Blue Sun products.
Deanna: We contract out a considerable quantity of our military interrogations to Blue Sun. Parliament has found it expedient to have non-Alliance personnel to do some of the more… dirty work, unfortunately. That way if it’s a problem, there’s someone else to blame.
Christian: I understand. The person who was rescued…was subjected to a chemical called Chempliance which, like its name says, makes you compliant, incapable of lying or—.
Deanna: Chempliance is routinely used by police forces and security for some time.
Christian: This is an apparently longer term, more permanent—.
Deanna: I am aware that they’ve been using it as an interrogation tool.
Christian: Okay, I’m going out on a limb here, because I don’t know what else to do. In looking for a cure, we contacted a doctor and at that point we were attacked by the blue-handed people, who had the silver wand weapon that makes you bleed out of….everything. Your ears, your eyes, your fingernails. Which is disturbing.
Deanna: And this was here on Osiris?
Christian: Yes.
Deanna: Normally, I’d say this is Top Secret, but you seem to know more about this than I do.
Christian: Ah, yes. Well. We were able to come up with what is hopefully a cure, and at that point we learned that one of the Operatives of the Parliament—are you aware of a planet called Sophie? There’s a planet called Sophie and on it is a colony of people who are genetically grown instead of born.
Deanna: Oh, it’s one of those fringe Utopias. I know of them.
Christian: One of the people from there apparently comes from the same genetic stock as one of the Operatives of the Parliament. They look like each other, just separated by a few years.
Deanna: That’s probably not illegal.
Christian: Anyway, he took an interest in my shipmate, who apparently is by coincidence a doctor who has the best understanding of Chempliance of all of us. And two Blue Hands people just took him and another shipmate of mine.
Christian sighs and wraps it up.
Christian: I am telling you this because I am really hoping that you were serious about what you were saying before and this isn’t some part of a very elaborate trap, in which case I’m screwed anyway.
Deanna Hill pulls out her communicator from her pocket and puts it in her ear and makes a call.
Deanna: (crisply) Edward? (listens) I’m sorry to wake you, sir, but I have someone you should meet.
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