Episode 204: Meridian Encounters, Part 3

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We quickly divide ourselves up into teams. Rick will ride the Gator to the IED site and go the rest of the way on foot to infiltrate the camp. Rina will drive him there. Nika and Arden will take a shuttle each. Jake and Christian will ride along in a shuttle each, with Jake accompanying Arden in case his shuttle goes down and Christian riding with Nika. We have 15 smoke grenades, 10 concussion grenades and 15 flash bangs. The shuttle teams will start tossing them out into the camp to create covering chaos on the ground.

Rina: See? Aren’t you glad I convinced you to bring the damn grenades?

Nika tells us to keep the concussion grenades back for last and Rick chooses two flash bangs and a smoke grenade for himself while on the ground. He’ll wear his ballistic mesh and take his sniper and assault rifles, too. His pistol and his knives are going in with him as well. Rina packs her assault rifle, a flash bang and three concussion grenades in addition to her usual gear, with her tool bag on top of the pile. Both Christian and Jake have rifle skill, allowing each shuttle to have a shooter. Christian takes seven smoke and three concussion grenades, six flash bangs and an assault rifle with him on his shuttle. Nika takes the same complement of grenades and her rifle.

The plan will have Nika and Arden flying as air cav for our man on the ground, with Jake and Christian playing door gunner. Rina’s job is to drive the Gator around in the woods and play rubber ducky for the perimeter guards to shoot at.

Rina: Are you sure I shouldn’t have more grenades?
Nika: You’re driving. You don’t have anybody else in the Gator with you. You’re best bet is to keep moving.
Rina: What’s Johannes doing?
Christian: We’re not taking him.
Nika: Taking Johannes with us? That’s insane.

Johannes has been listening in the entire time and now speaks up.

Johannes: I’ll go with you.
Rina: (jokingly) Well, I can strap him to the roof and have them shoot at him.
Johannes: Can I come with you, Rick?
Rick: While I’m on the ground?
Johannes: I might be able to help you.
Rick: You can come with us in the Gator, but I don’t know once I’m out of the Gator…
Johannes: I’m pretty good on my feet.
Rick: Are you good at being quiet?
Johannes: Yeah.
Rick: I don’t have a problem with you coming in the Gator, but we’ll see about the rest afterwards.

Christian was reviewing our postions on the vehicles and at this exchange he turns to Rick.

Christian: We’re taking the pothead?
Rick: He just asked me if he could come and—
Christian: Arden, please check him out to make sure he doesn’t have any slow reflexes or anything that would get us killed in a fight.
Arden: He’s physically fit. He’s not slow. I don’t know what else I can say without breaking confidentiality.
Christian: You don’t have to break confidentiality. All you have to say is whether or not in a fight he’s going to be more of a liability than an asset.
Arden: I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.
Christian: (to Johannes) You realize if you come with us, there is a very good chance that you are going to die. You realize there is a chance you can cause someone else’s death.
Johannes: Fair enough.

So Rina’s picked up a wingman in the Gator: Johannes is coming. Nika takes him out back and has him prove to her that he can shoot. He shoots just fine and Christian issues Johannes a rifle. Rina decided to add a shotgun to her equipment list, for close encounters. We also pack a radio transponders each. In case our regular comms don’t work, we’ll still be able to track where we are.

Wednesday, 21 Feb 2520
06:30hrs, local time

We turn in for the night to rest up for the mission, and the following morning move out early. It takes us a half-day to get to the IED site and our drop off point for Rick. Johannes gets out of the Gator to follow him.

Johannes: I’ll come with you—oh, c’mon.
Rina: I need you to help me with the diversionary tactic.
Johannes: But you don’t know where Fong is, right? You’re going to need help looking for him.
Rina: You don’t know where he is, either.
Johannes: I know doctors. I’ve seen a lot of doctors. Besides, you folks might need me.

Johannes seems strangely animated now, in a way we’ve never seen him and there’s something about him that makes us remember all the other little quirks and twitches we’ve observed in him. Like is ability to mimic another person’s mannerisms, before winking and claiming it’s all a joke. Like his penchant for answering questions before they’re asked. And the woman that Johannes pointed out to Arden earlier in the clinic was indeed ill with the Prion disease, yet her case had gone undetected by others.

Hmmm…..precognition, perhaps? A reader? Either way, he could be useful in a fight, creepy though he sometimes can be. Rick asks him point blank:

Rick: If you were to come with me and I tell you you have to leave and go back to the Gator, will you do it?
Johannes: Sure.
Rick: Okay.
Rina: Okay. More party favors for me. Bye. Have fun.

Rina watches Rick and Johannes disappear into the brush, and then puts the Gator into gear and drives carefully off-road past the blast site, going further up the mountain. Her job is to roam around near the camp, creating a distraction and waiting for the pick-up signal—a whole bunch of sudden static on a predetermined comm channel.

Rick has a rough map of the area and he and Johannes make good time, better than if they’d remained on the marked trail. Johannes proves to be a reasonably fit kid, perhaps surprisingly so for someone who’s supposed to be a drug addict. Then again, Johannes has spent the past three weeks on a ship eating regular meals and being unable to indulge his drug habit at his accustomed levels. A mini-drying out, as it were. It doesn’t take them long to crest the hill over the camp.

Looking down into the hollow Rick and Johannes see a broad bowl in the mountain side cleared of trees and dotted by several buildings, with an informal equipment yard with tracked vehicles to the side: log puller, claw, bulldozer, etc. The river runs through it downslope and there is a small dock with a boat tied at the end of it. One of the buildings looks to house barracks and the other of the large buildings looks to house the mess hall and the administrative offices for the logging camp. The camp is surrounded by a wire stockade fence, topped with razor wire. The stockade entrance is flanked by cross barriers made of wood. Of which there is obviously plentiful supply. The road runs through the gate. At the moment there are only two armed guards in view, strolling their beat with their rifles slung low.

Johannes stops for a second, standing very still, and Rick pauses to wait for him.

Johannes: Having some trouble. Something’s come up.
Rick: (low voice) What’s going on, man? What do you mean?

Johannes shakes his head and sighs.

Johannes: All right. They’re pretty messed up down there. Ahhh….I think he’s on the second floor. Of this building.

Johannes points it out below. It’s kinda weird, but Rick just goes with it.

Rick: How many people are inside the building, do you think?
Johannes: There’s six and …well…five or six.

Not too bad odds, three-to-one. Rick settles to wait for Rina and once he hears her approaching, he sends the static signal over our channel.

In the Gator, Rina’s actually enjoying herself, plowing through the bushes and toppling baby saplings. The Gator has all it’s lights blazing and a loudspeaker mounted on the top of it and when she crests the rise over the camp, she thumbs it live and in her best Alliance-forces voice hails the people below.

Rina: Attention, Camp! This is the Federal Marshals. Come out with your hands up and your weapons down. You have one chance.

One of the men runs into one of the buildings, the other runs to the stockade barrier. On the high ground above the camp, Rick turns to Johannes.

Rick: Whaddya think?
Johannes: I think we should go in.
Rick: Let’s go.

Johannes puts his rifle down and goes into the hollow for the camp. Rick follows. They make it through the fence and to the corner of the two-story building right enough. Johannes pulls Rick back in a sudden move, narrowly missing being seen by another armed guard.

Whew.

Johannes: Take a look. (points around the corner)

Rick looks. It’s clear. They go forward.

Meanwhile, Rina backs the Gator up and starts plowing along the ridgeline and then barrels down into the compound to start making donuts in the main yard of the camp. The Gator’s armored, so rifle fire does nothing more than plink! off the chassis. She tosses some flash bangs and zooms around making donuts some more.

Rick and Johannes slip into the building unobserved. Stairs go up immediately in front of them, with a hallway off to the side leading to the cafeteria, glimpsed at the far end. Rick turns to Johannes.

Rick: Should we go up the stairs?
Johannes: Yeah. (a beat) You first.

Rick heads on up the u-turn stairs and debouches in a hallway that runs the length of the building’s outer wall. It’s empty. He checks behind him and Johannes isn’t there. Great. There is no time to look for the young man and Rick pushes on without him. A door on the hallway opens up unexpectedly, filled by a large man holding a pistol. He looks odd and twitchy and ready to shoot. Rick shoots first, then shoots again when the other guy misses. Even though Rick manages to hit the man both times, it seems as if the hits just don’t register. The man falls to Rick’s fire nonetheless. Is it Prion disease? Has the man been infected? Rick isn’t sure, beyond the fact the man didn’t look or act entirely right. He moves on to the door the man exited.

Outside, Rina’s whooping it up and barreling around like a mad thing. She’s drawing fire, which pings off the Gator harmlessly. And she notices that the people doing the firing are shooting with complete disregard for other people and property. Their shots hit the buildings, the equipment, the woods…perhaps even each other. Rina keeps plowing around, keeping an eye on the barricaded entrance to see if it’s clear for her to bust right through when it’s time to go.

Aloft, Nika and Arden buzz the camp in the shuttles, dropping their smoke grenades to provide our men on the ground more cover. Jake is busily filming everything.

Inside the building, Rick looks through the door and sees an older-looking man, tied up inside. He looks a little odd, but thankfully not Prion disease-odd.

Older man: Ah. Who are you?
Rick: I’m Rick Allen from Summer’s Gift. We’re here to rescue you. Are you Dr. Fong?
Older man: Please untie me.

Rick wastes no time cutting through the ropes with his knife and gets the doctor to his feet. Fong asks if Brisbane hired Rick to rescue him and Rick says yes, more interested in getting them out of there in one piece than being accurate in his response. Fong is grateful and delighted, saying at last his years of service to the townsfolk are being rewarded. Fong excitedly says that Rick has to be careful, that the camp personnel seem to be infected with some sort of brain disease.

We’re well ahead of you there, sir.

Rick leads the doctor down the stairs, comms the shuttles for pick up, and keeps an eye out for more personnel. At the bottom of the stairs, he hears some sounds coming from the cafeteria and Rick takes a risk and investigates. Stepping into the cafeteria, Rick hears the distinctive sound of a knife hitting the wood wall behind him and as it fades, Johannes’s voice calls out quietly.

Johannes: Rick. Is that you?
Rick: Yeah.
Johannes: Okay, c’mon. Let’s go. I heard gunfire. Is everyone okay?
Rick: I ran into someone. I took care of it.

They both get out of there and Rick asks Johannes if he’d eaten anything out of the cafeteria. Johannes tells him no.

Above the camp, Christian alerts Rina of the pick-up signal and tells her where to go. She leaves off making donuts and drives for the buildings. She hears Rick call her directly to tell her exactly where the rescue party is. She pulls up to the walls, pops the doors open, yells at them to get in. They pile in and she puts the pedal to the metal and zooms for the barricade entrance. She blows through it and an explosion goes off to either side of the Gator. The Gator buffets through, and there’s a grinding noise as Rina drives on. But the Gator is still running, Rina’s still on the road and getting away from the camp is the first priority. She’ll suss out what’s wrong with the Gator later.

Rick is in the back, asking Johannes what he was doing in the cafeteria.

Rick: What were you doing in the kitchen?
Johannes: I thought I heard something.
Rick: Why were you gone so long, man?
Johannes: How long was I gone?
Rick: Long enough for me to go up the stairs, kill someone, and rescue the doctor.

Those in the Gator look over at Johannes for the first time.

Fong: And you’re wounded.
Johannes: No, I’m not.
Fong: There’s some blood…
Rick: (firmly) What happened to you?
Johannes: Huh. Maybe I am wounded.

Everyone looks and sure enough, Johannes has some blood on his sleeves.

Rina: (grimly) Is it his?

On further examination, it doesn’t look like Johannes was wounded at all. Not his, then. So, whose?

Johannes: No, I think…I think I’m okay. Maybe I…Maybe some of that loose fire just hit someone or somthin’.
Rick: Probably.
Rina: Let’s just go.

We drive. Rick is undeterred.

Rick: How could you tell where the doctor was?
Johannes: I couldn’t. I was just guessing.
Rick: You guessed?
Johannes: Yeah. But it got you moving, didn’t it?
Rina: Can we grill him later? Like when we’re safer?
Rick: If you’re drivin’, then what am I doing? I can ask him questions can’t I?

We all have our head comms on and everyone in our party can hear what’s going on. Christian chimes in over the channels.

Christian: How about making sure no one’s following and shooting them if they are?
Rick: (reluctantly) I can do that, I guess, but I’d have to open a window, right?

Not the best of ideas.

Rina: Let’s just hope they don’t have air support.

And we drive on down the mountain. In the air, Nika and Christian’s shuttles get locked onto, but no missiles follow. Perhaps there are no missiles at the logging camp, just the targeting system. No one pursues us and we get back to town unchallenged.

Fong is grateful to be back.

Fong: They’re all crazy people up there, but now that we know, we might be able to defend ourselves better against them.
Rick: (muttering) Now that we know, we should just go bomb the damned place.
Christian: What was all that medicine for, Doctor?

Christian gestures to the storage lockers Rick and Rina had laboriously packed with the med shipment.

Christian: The medicine. The forty-five tons of medicine.
Fong: For healing people.
Christian: Which people?
Fong: Does it matter?
Rick: Why did you need so much medicine? I mean, your facility could barely hold that amount. And your nurses didn’t even know how to get into the facility.
Christian: Well, it matters if, for example, that was a Browncoat camp and someone needs to know about it.
Fong: What do you mean ‘someone needs to know about it’? The delivery was to me.
Christian: (all right, fine) Ohhhkay.
Rick: The medicine was just for the town?
Christian: It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.
Rick: No. We saved his life, I think he can answer one question truthfully. The people of the town did not ask us to save you. We sorta did that because—
Christian: We needed to get into the facility and—
Rick: We weren’t going to let some innocent person be butchered and also, this town needs a doctor.

Fair enough.

Fong: We have been asked to build a hospital. By people who I believe have the good of this system in mind.
Christian: (lightbulb!) They’re waiting for a war. (A beat) That answers that question.
Fong: I’d barely answered it.
Christian: No, you answered a whole lot. More than you know.
Nika: Thank you.
Christian: Does anyone else want to give him the rest of the medicine?

Meaning the five tons we’d taken as payment.

Rina: Do we have enough of what we need right now? You don’t think we’ll run into people further into Blue Sun who might need it more? He’s got 45 tons and they’ve got none? (To Fong) Nothing against what you’re doing here. But you already have 45 tons.
Christian: Okay. You’ve got a point. Let’s go to Muir. I’m tired of this world. I really am. Let’s go.
Fong: It’s yours. (Meaning our meds)
Rina: Just sayin’.
Christian: You’ll want to confer with our doctor. He’s been seeing your patients for you.
Fong: What?! Giving them all sorts of drugs and things? I’ll go check them….

He turns right around to do just that. Nika sighs and just walks away. What else can you do?

Rick: Why does he want to make a hospital?
Rina: Glad I spoke up when I did.
Christian: We can’t be picky.
Rick: I guess.
Christian: We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s going to notice it til it’s already here.

Thursday, 22 Feb 2520
09:15hrs, local time

We end up waiting til the next day before we take off, to allow Arden to take care of last minute things with Fong and his patients. Which turns out to be following behind Fong and issuing antibiotics and such as backup to Fong’s more homeopathic remedies. And then there’s the matter of the money Johannes owes us for his passage.

Johannes: If you can get me to the bank at Perth, I can pay you.
Christian: We’ll stop on the way.

And Rick is still not satisfied as to what happened back at the camp. Rick takes Johannes aside in private and grills him. How did Johannes know where the doctor was? How did he know the guard was right around the corner and coming their way? How did he know that the people they’d encountered were in an altered mental state?

Johannes: Do you people believe in magic, Rick?
Rick: No, I don’t believe in magic?
Johannes: Well, here’s my story. I can hear what they’re thinking and what they were thinking was some pretty crazy shit. Some pretty crazy mi tien gon.
Rick: So you have some extrasensory abilities?
Johannes: Somethin’ like that. But it’s not always….all that great.
Rick: I can imagine. I guess…I can’t really imagine, but…. (pulls it together) What happened in the kitchen? You knew there was someone in there.
Johannes: I had to … I was just doin’ what you were doin’. Takin’ care of business. There was some violence. It wasn’t my blood.

Meaning the blood we found on him.

Rick: How many people did you kill?
Johannes: I think there were four.
Rick: Okay. As long as you didn’t get injured or bitten…okay. I take it you don’t want me saying anything to the rest of the group.
Johannes: You can tell them the story if you want. I don’t think they’re gonna believe it. If it’s any consolation, I’m going to try to get to a place where I won’t do that anymore.
Rick: Hey, you helped us out, so….

There’s something owed Johannes for that and hints at how we can square the books.

Johannes: There’s a planet where I’ll be normal. (A beat) It’s called Miranda.

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