Episode 212: Packages and Pop Stars, Part 3

Surprise!

Bounty Hunter: (into his comm) I think I found them.

The bounty hunter sees Nika and gestures with his gun.

Bounty Hunter: Back into the tube, Blondie. (to Rina) You, too.

Okay….Nika raises her hands and steps back and Rina stands her ground. Rick is off to the side and hasn’t been seen by the bounty hunter yet. Rick pulls two of his knives and readies to throw…. Nika is behind Rina now and surreptitiously keys her headset to talk to the Gift.

Nika: Rina, don’t step back on me because I’d really rather not have that guy shoot me.
Rina: (looking right at the bounty hunter) You got it.

Arden and Christian hear Nika’s tip-off and Arden readies the door. Christian hits all-ship and orders everyone who is not crew—including you, Lem!—to go lock themselves down.

In the elevator bay, the bounty hunter emerges from the elevator and Rick makes his move with is knives, going for the man’s neck. Rick connects and the man goes down. But he doesn’t go quietly. He’s screaming. Blood goes everywhere.

So much for not alerting his partner.

Rina runs forward, helps Rick drag the body into the elevator and takes the man’s gun—now she’s armed and ready. Rick pats him down for his wallet, looking for ID. Nika is still outside and eases her head around the door to check the elevator bay. Just in time for the bounty hunter’s partner to gain a position BEHIND her via the perimeter corridor and see her.

He shoots. She ducks. The bullet hits her. She staggers.

Nika: Oh, shit! RINA!

And the fight is on.

Nika goes through the airlock corridor door into the elevator bay and drops to a knee, takes aim at the remaining bounty hunter. Rina leaves the cover of the elevator and stands behind her and aims over her head. Back in the elevator, Rick finds a billfold and amongst the credit notes is a picture ID/pass card for the Parliament building of a major capitol city. The man at Rick’s feet is allegedly a Parliamentary page. Meanwhile Arden has cycled through the Gift’s airlock, intending to join the fight. He steps out and the bounty hunter grabs him and shoves them both back into the Gift’s airlock.

Shots are fired, both sides take damage. The crew in the corridor is hampered by the Gift’s airlock frame—it’s blocking our shots. Arden is hampered by the close quarters of the airlock, restricting his ability to fight back. We advance toward the airlock, making shots where we can without hitting Arden, the bounty hunter is fighting Arden off and shooting back. The bounty hunter gets the drop on Arden and grabs him, using him as a shield. We comm our sitrep to Christian and he revs the Gift’s engines, making the ship and the whole superstructure of the station shake.

Klaxons blare, metal creaks, the floor jumps.

Arden drops his gun and it misfires, hitting Rina square in the gut. She’s wearing her mesh, twitchy woman that she is, and the impact is nasty, but not lethal. On all the interconnecting quarters of the docking assembly, lights start to flash and shield doors start descending. Compartmentalization against decompression has begun and there’s no telling when we’ll get free if we’re caught on the wrong side of those doors.

Rina gathers herself together and runs for the Gift’s airlock. Nika throws herself on the bounty hunter, brawling for all she’s worth. Rick has been holding our rear and now he moves forward. There are three people dogpiled in the airlock, the bounty hunter drops his gun, and Rina dives for it. She misses it in the general chaos. At least the bounty hunter hasn’t got it to use against us. And we’re just going to town on the guy. Nika’s punching, Arden’s getting his licks in. Rick arrives and curb stomps him…and hits Rina’s hand. Ow. Rina pulls out of the dog pile and hits the controls for the airlock. If she can close the outer doors, she can open the inner doors…and get to the weapons locker. She gets the door closed and the inner door opens.

Jake is standing there fully armed and jumps in to help sort out the mess. The bounty hunter is unconscious—Rick’s quite an effective stomper—and Arden, on the bottom of the pile is in rocky shape. We get Arden to med bay and the bounty hunter gets searched by Rick. All the goon has on him is a Parliamentary Building ID, with nothing else on it. There’s no telling what his rank or position is.

Nika gets Arden to the med bay and realizes he’s hurt beyond her skill to help him…at least, beyond her ability to help him without substantial risk. Rick argues against taking him to the medical facility on the station. Nika wants to know why not, we’ve just been attacked. Yeah, Rick says—by the partner of a Parliamentary page that he’s killed and whose cooling corpse is still holding up the station’s elevator. Nika tells him that the station is outfitted with cameras and the powers that be have probably already seen everything.

Nika takes Arden to the station medical facility, Rina goes with. When they arrive, they find it’s little better than what we’ve got on the Gift. Nika warns Arden not to say a word. About. Anything. The medic on duty has a sawbones look about him, someone who’s seen a lot of gunshot wounds. Which is what Arden’s suffering from. Two of them. Watching the medic working, Rina and Nika can tell the man has wartime experience at this sort of thing and their apprehension recedes a little.

Rick secures the body in a tarp and drags it aboard our ship, then cleans up the blood as best he can. The surviving goon is restrained in a cabin and locked inside. We’ll decide what to do with him later.

Meanwhile, Station Control is screaming in Christian’s ear about the stunt he pulled, revving the engines while still attached to the station. Christian uses his considerable charm and diplomacy to smooth things over and we don’t get arrested for the stunt. After that’s done, he goes to deal with our prisoner. Rick has put the body of the man he’s killed in the cabin with the goon, a nasty bit of psychological warfare, and Christian brings Peale over to look at the body to see if he can identify it.

Peale readily identifies the man as a page and says that there are many people in Parliament that serve more than one job. He knows for a fact that the dead guy has done other duties that are less…savory. Christian remarks that today Peale was the man’s “other duty”. Peale sighs and says he’s not surprised. You get a job, you think this sort of thing wouldn’t happen and yet… He trails off and there’s nothing more to say, really.

Christian announces we aren’t going anywhere for the next little bit—Arden’s in surgery and we aren’t leaving without him. Before Arden and the others come back, the surviving goon revives and starts thumping the walls of the cabin, still tied up, and generally making a ruckus demanding to be let out.

Christian: Do you want me to go in and talk to him diplomatically first? Or do you just want to go in and start questioning him?

Rick goes in to deal with him. Christian follows. It’s going to be Good Cop/Bad Cop.

Page: Are you going to kill me?
Rick: That is up to you.
Page: What do you want?
Rick: What did you guys want? Why did you come after us with guns right out of the gate?
Page: We figured you knew something about Peale based on the way you were behaving at the bar.
Christian: Arden, you mean.
Page: We weren’t one hundred percent sure but we were able to find out that there were some emergency doors opened down here at this level. We were scoping out this level for you to show up again.
Rick: Well it looks like you guys screwed up because here you are tied up and your buddy’s dead, so….
Page: So you want ransom or something?
Rick: No. I don’t care about money.
Christian: Who are you working for?
Page: I work for important people.
Christian: We already know you’re working for someone in Parliament. We just want to confirm it. Who are you working for?
Page: Someone in Parliament. That’s right.
Christian: (to Rick) Do you still have those little snakes, the ones that don’t kill you but put you in agonizing pain for hours?
Rick: Yeah, of course. (to Page) But more importantly, you don’t have the Prion disease, right? Because it’s pretty hard to get fresh meat out here. Why do you think we brought your buddy on board? (looks at the body on the floor) We coulda just left him. There’s no cameras out there.

All righty! Now the prisoner is looking a mite uncomfortable being in the same room as Rick. Best to placate the crazy guy…

Page: I was sent by Falkan.
Christian: There you go. Was that so hard?
Page: It’s not going to do you any good to know that. You probably guessed it anyway.
Christian: Hm.
Page: Yes, we want the chip. She wants the chip. I don’t frankly care about the chip.
Rick: I assume neither of you had any idea what was on there.
Page: I’m guessing secrets.
Christian: And I’m guessing it wouldn’t matter if you did.
Page: Yeah. It’s probably her playing around with some Companion or something. Who knows?
Christian: No. I’m pretty sure it’s not. How’d you get here? Passenger ship or your own ship?
Page: Passenger ship.

The Page shrugs, supremely uninterested.

Christian: Let’s see. What we’re going to do is close the door and let you think about what you’ve done for a while.
Page: (whatever!) Okay. I should’ve probably gone to University instead of being on that tour group.
Christian: Sleep well.
Page: (nods to the floor) Hey, this guy’s dead, I think.
Rick: Let us know if you want a fresh piece of meat.
Page: You guys are some sickos. It confirms everything I’ve ever heard.
Christian: I just want to ask you one thing. We lock you in here five, six days? How long do you think it’s gonna be… before you’re like us?

And on that ominous note, Christian and Rick leave and lock the door behind them.

Christian: We should keep a guard on the door in case he tries to escape.
Rick: I’ll stand by the door for now.

And a few hours pass in this fashion. Christian gets that cargo we’ve delivered transferred off our ship and receives our 50 credits for it. Arden, Nika and Rina still haven’t come back from the station’s med bay. The Sisters are getting antsy, asking if we’re going to leave now or what?

Rick and Christian discuss what to do with the prisoner. Should we show the man the contents of the chip? Do we kill him and space him? Do we let him go?

At the station med bay, the surgeon finishes up on Arden and informs us that while it’s not a good idea to move him, it can be done. Nika says that’s what she’s going to do and the surgeon tells her it’ll be 150 credits for his services. Nika calls in to Christian and tells him we need to transfer 150 from the ship’s funds. Arden speaks up and says he’s got 432 saved up, take it from his funds.

Arden: I just want to get off this fuckin’ station!
Rina: Wow. He really means it. He swore.
Arden: Please.

We pay the doc. We take Arden back to the Gift. Everybody goes away happy. Nika installs Arden aboard, sees he’s comfortable and goes to Christian to tell him the bill’s been taken care of. We all gather in the wardroom of the med bay where Arden is laying up and we have a meeting as to what we’re going to do next.

Christian recaps what he and Rick found out: the goons were sent by Falkan to recover the chip, the goons don’t care what’s on it and the surviving goon thinks we’re cannibals. Rina rolls her eyes and says whatever works. And Nika asks what we’re going to do with the prisoner. Christian says we should first ascertain what and how much the prisoner has broadcast to his superior. Christian confirms to Arden that the good doesn’t know for certain that Peale is aboard our ship, though he suspects. More importantly, the goon doesn’t know the Sisters are aboard our ship, and that’s something to our advantage. but to do about the goon? Lie to the goon, saying that Peale took off on a freighter for parts unknown? That might get the goon off our backs, but it might also put the innocent freighter crew we say Peale took off with in danger. There are no places between here and Paquin we can drop the goon off on. Going back to St. Albans might work, and we could do what we did with Mifuni on Miranda—drop him off 500 miles on the ground from civilization. Rina suggests we drop him off 500 miles above the ground. She makes no bones about it—she’s all for killing him. Just shoot him now. We can’t afford to waste the fuel to go all the way back to St. Albans anyway.

Jake suggests an alternative. The passenger ship Hogarth is slated to leave. We can drug him, get him aboard and when he wakes up, he’ll be in transit to who-knows-where. And Rina counters that with the fact that once he’s awake, the goon will tell everyone about us and what we did to him. Christian backs her up, stating that he could jump on the Cortex the minute he comes to and tell his superiors. Jake says it’s not likely a Cortex terminal won’t be available.—the Hogarth is like a spacefaring bus, all seats and little else in the way of amenities. Rina has an idea: drug him, bundle him up with orders to transport him to the closest insane asylum, and on no account should anyone take what he says seriously. Christian improves on it—drug the page with Rick’s psychedelic mushrooms, strip him down naked, throw him in the elevator, and make it look like he’d lost his mind, and push the button for the nearest concourse floor. The authorities will detain him for questioning and by the time everything gets sorted out, we’ll be long gone. The body of the other page we can dump in transit. No body, no crime, and it’s just the surviving page’s word against ours.

Good enough. Christian goes to the makeshift brig to speak to our prisoner.

Christian: I’ve got some good news for you. We’re going to let you go.
Page: Good.
Christian: Take your clothes off.
Page: Uhhhhh….’kay…You aren’t going to make me eat someone, are you?

No, we have him strip, eat some mushrooms and when he’s looped, throw him naked in the elevator with a little baggie of the things and send him on his way. And we leave the station. Once we’re out far enough we dump the body and continue on to Paquin.

Paquin, the world of carnivals and stage shows and—if our luck is with us—what will turn out to be the most unexpectedly sensational talent contest ever.

Back to: Part 2 | Foward to: Show Stoppers
Back to Season Two: Hitting Our Stride
Back to EPISODES
Back to Mutineers Homepage