Episode 213: Show Stoppers, Part 2
The men return from the lower deck, announcing it clear save for some locked storage areas they couldn’t get into. The Supervisor turns to Nika and asks if she’s got the keys to them. On her affirmative, he sends her down with his men to open the spaces up. She goes.
She has to open the arms locker to them, and our assault rifles are locked up out of sight in a special locker. Even our personal arms—save Arden’s derringer, Rina’s pistol, and the bridge pistol—are locked up. The assault rifles get a look askance but they ask if we have the licenses for them. On our pause, they wave it off, saying they haven’t time to double check paperwork. They have bigger fish to fry.
When the locked spaces below decks are searched and cleared, the upper deck is next. They go through our quarters. Drawers are opened, lockers swung wide. A simple eyeball check suffices for the job. After all, they’re looking for a man-sized man, not a pea-sized object. Our belongings are viewed but left unmolested.
The galley is next and they find Rina with Lem. The little boy is eating crackers on a plate and Rina’s teaching him math with them. When the men enter, she turns around and asks if they need anything, a soda or something? No? Well, then. Rina picks up her son and follows the men around as they continue their search. She sees Christian in the lounge and asks him to take Lem for a minute. Rina follows the searchers to open the biolocks leading to the engine room and the machine shop. They ignore her machine shop for the engine room and go straight for the engine room.
Once inside, they all hear a faint clanging and Rina realizes just where Peale is hiding. She strides forward toward the noise, stomping to cover any further sounds made by Peale.
Rina: Damn cat!
She sees someone’s legs sticking out of an access panel off to the side and she thinks she recognizes them.
Rina: Jake?
Jake: (from the crawlspace) Hey.
Rina: (squatting) Hey.
Jake: I was working on that stabilizer. I think it came loose.
Rina: Sorry, I looked for the part for that and I just didn’t see it. You know, I’d sent Nika for it. God knows what she brought back. So….howzit lookin’?
Jake: I dunno. It’s gonna take some more work.
Rina: Arrghh. Am I gonna have to machine anything? Please say ‘yes’.
Jake: Could you bring a towel? There’s a lot of lubricant spilled in here.
Rina: I thought you’d fixed that leak.
Jake: I guess another one sprang.
Rina: Ah, great. I’ll be right back with a towel.
She gets up and grabs a shop towel from a bin, brings it over to him. Jake squirms back enough out the hatch to reach for it. As he does, Jake gives Rina a tiny little nod. Looks like Peale’s taken care of.
Good on ya, Jake!
The searchers for their part are bored by the entire exchange and gratefully leave the engine room to search the shuttles. At which point, Nika says she can let them into the one, but Christian has to let them into his. She leads them up the ladder to the first shuttle, they take a turn around and it comes up clean. When it’s time to check Christian’s shuttle, however, he blocks their access.
Christian: It is sacred space. I’m afraid if you want to enter my shuttle, you’re going to have to take it up with the Guild.
The Supervisor hears this and walks over.
Supervisor: That’ll take some time. I had to put a landlock on the vessel, so when we get word back from the Guild, I guess we can do that. If that’s the way you want to do it. It would only take us five minutes to do a proper search of the shuttle. It’s your call. We would not want to disrespect the Guild, of course. But if you find you, as you say, are in a hurry, letting us in would definitely speed things up.
Christian considers it.
Christian: One person. No weapons, please.
The Supervisor pulls out a very nice-looking piece—earning an admiring ‘aw, man!’ form Nika—and hands it to one of his men.
Christian: Thank you.
He follows the Supervisor up the ladder to the shuttle, lets the man inside it before going in himself. While they are in there, the Supervisor looks over at Christian and says:
Supervisor: You know, this ship has a bit of a storied past, doesn’t it?
Christian: I suppose it has.
Supervisor: The Second Miranda Wave. The Christmas Eve Wave…
Christian: Oh, is that what they’re calling it? I’ve found that being on a vessel like this has given me access to clients that I would never have otherwise.
Supervisor: I guess its previous owner, with the slavery ring—?
Christian: Ah. Yes. Mr. Potemkin.
Supervisor: It has a way of attracting …troubles… It would be unfortunate if those troubles continued to plague it.
Christian: Life on the Rim is never easy, but how else can I help bring civilization if I don’t go there?.
Supervisor: (quietly) You know……whatever Peale thinks he can do, it’s not going to work. It’s only going to bring attention and misfortune onto this vessel and anyone else involved. Those poor girls…that would be unfortunate.
Christian: I suppose.
Supervisor: I’m glad you know nothing about it.
Christian: Sure.
The Supervisor exits Christian’s shuttle and climbs down to the deck. While the two of them were talking above, the other men continue their search of the ship. Rick eyes the Supervisor and knows that he’s not just a Marshal. The man is too well dressed and carries himself too differently to be a Marshal. Rick’s money is on the man being Secret Service. In short, he’s an agent of Parliament. In keeping with the ruse, Rick mentions that whoever the Supervisor and his men are looking for must have done something heinous to warrant an agent of Parliament to go looking for him. The Supervisor agrees that yes, he must have.
Need we any more proof that Rick’s suspicions were right about these guys?
The search goes on. One of the men encounters Arden showering in the med lab. Oops. No Peale. Nika escorts another of the men to the bridge. No Peale there, either. The search has failed to turn up their prey. The Supervisor delivers his parting shot: If we can do anything to speed up the investigation, they can take the landlock off our ship. Until then….? Well, like what, we ask. The Supervisor says he’s not satisfied he knows everything—meaning he suspects we’ve been less than forthcoming. We ask if we can take on cargo. He replies we can but he’s not sure how long we’re going to be here—we could be stuck here for weeks.
Nika: Why?
Supervisor: (calmly) Because I say so.
Nika: I understand that, but what more can we do to help you?
Supervisor: You’ll just have to think about that. Is there something more you can do to help me?
Christian: That was beautifully done. I’m very impressed.
Supervisor: High praise, coming from a Companion…(a beat)…I’ll be seeing you.
He takes his men and he leaves. We lock the doors behind him and breathe a sigh of relief.
Whew.
Christian looks at all of us and silently points to his shuttle: let’s go. We all get it at the same time—the Marshals may have bugged the ship during their search but Christian’s certain his shuttle’s clean. The Supervisor hadn’t touched anything up there and it should be safe to talk.
We get everyone gathered together. Jake helps Peale out from under the deck plates, who’s looking a little worse for wear, having been jammed up against the fuel tank. The girls are hustled up to the shuttle too. The shuttle’s cramped, not exactly made to hold eight people, but we shoehorn ourselves in there.
We take stock.
- The Supervisor suspects we’re hiding something.
- The Suerpvisor has landlocked our ship.
- The Supervisor will lift the landlock if we turn over Peale.
- The Supervisor considers Peales’s arrest more important than ours.
- Congratulations, Peale. You’ve really pissed some powerful people off.
- We have a very short window of opportunity to pull off our job.
- The Supervisor’s going to be watching us very very carefully, making it very hard for us to pull off the job.
Peale offers to rabbit to give the Supervisor someone to chase, drawing the man’s eyes off us to do the job. Christian asks Peale if he’s willing to die, because we can guarantee that if Peale runs, he will never make it alive to see trial. Peale counters: How do you know that? Christian admits he doesn’t but trials get covered by the press—if the objective is to keep this intel under wraps, the parties involved in the cover-up can never allow the intel to come up in a trial, much less the press. And even though the government at the moment is non-functional, the judicial system is still in session. As is the press.
Peale insists that the Supervisor wouldn’t kill him right off the bat. He would first have to determine that Peale hadn’t made copies of the tape. And though Peale would not be able to withstand torture, he’s certain that they won’t kill him.
And how are we going to broadcast the wave if the Supervisor suspects we’re the ones who have that tape? Well, he doesn’t know that we intend to broadcast it via the show.
There are other details to worry about. The Supervisor knows the Angel Sisters are aboard our ship as passengers. Unless we can make the broadcast look like something completely unconnected to them, they will be implicated and could be taken in afterward for questioning, or worse.
Peale asks us what we know of the Supervisor. Nothing, we tell him, but we’ve got him captured on our airlock camera feed. Show me, he says. We show him and Peale recognized him. It’s Benson, he’s not a Marshal but is in the PPA. Actually….Peale points out that what we’re doing, broadcasting a wave, is not in itself a crime. Just embarrassing to the MP.
But Benson specifically threatened us.
The PPA, says Peale, doesn’t have the authority to do much. He might be able to harass us a little, but not to the extent he’s implied. That’s why he had the Marshals with him.
He’s thrown his weight around at the spaceport on a local level, ordering landlocks, but torture? No. If we can get the landlock off our ship, we may still be able to pull it off.
Once the tape is shown, there’s no point in harassing us anymore. The damage is already done, their mission failed.
Narrowing our problems down to the bare essentials, we have two things to solve:
- The fugitive: Peale
- The Falkan tape: the broadcast
At the moment, no one knows he’s on our ship. For now, as long as he doesn’t show his face to any cameras or to the public, he’s safe.
The Falkan tape, however, is more tricky. Based on how bad the Feds want it back, we’re pretty sure that the information on it can be damaging. The extent of the damage, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity. Is it as damaging as Peale thinks it is? Maybe, maybe not. Should we broadcast it? Yes. If nothing else, it will call off the dogs.
Christian decides to call his friend Stuart Valenci and ask for his help. The man has connections.
Christian: Stewart?
Valenci: Yes?
Christian: I was wondering…after the show, I’d like to invite you over for an After-Show party at our ship, a small get-together, as a way of our saying thank you for everything you do. After the show, assuming you don’t have much post-production work to do, travel on over to our ship and we’ll have ourselves a merry old time. I’m looking forward to it, see you then.
Christian ends the call and he turns to us and says:
Christian: We now have a relatively high profile person on the ship and they’re a lot less likely to storm the ship and start shooting.
Arden: I wasn’t really worried about that.
Christian: Just a little bit of insurance.
Rick: Yeah, but that doesn’t prevent them from trying to implicate your friend in this.
Christian: I sincerely doubt that they will. I’m pretty sure he can protect himself.
Peale clears his throat.
Peale: Your phone call gave me an idea. May I use your communications system?
Christian: Be aware they may be monitoring it.
Peale: (tight grin) I’m counting on it.
Arden: You’re counting on it? What are you planning on doing?
Rina: (eyeroll at Arden) Maskirovka.
Christian: Tell us your idea. We don’t like surprises.
Arden: Especially now.
Peale: If I’m going to be an effective red herring, I need them to believe I still have the tape.
Rina: And possibly be somewhere where you’re not.
Nika: But sending the message from here would—
Peale: No-no-no. I’m just giving them a false idea of what I’m going to do.
Arden: But if you use the comm system and they monitor it and you’re on it, they’ll immediately come after the ship.
Peale: I’m not going to reveal my identity. I’m just going to make a call. They’ll just think the ship is doing it.
Do what now?
Christian: You’re just going to make a call, say something cryptic and hang up?
Rina: Which they can trace back to here as the originator.
Christian: Sure, but without any real evidence…
Rina: Yeah, but they…he’s-he’s…(fails)
Peale: They already know that I can hide here without them finding me. They might being a welding crew to take the ship apart.
Nika: Oh, fuck us!
Peale: I’m trying to make it easy, here.
All of us at once: Do it. Yeah, just do it. Make the call. Fine. Call. Go for it.
Arden and Rina hover over Peale’s shoulder as he makes the call. They notice he calls the Paquin News Network. Good move! Getting the media involved would put the cat among the pigeons. He calls the Network offices and gets their office hours. And hangs up.
Rina: Getting the media involved.
Nika: That’s the way to go about it.
Peale: No. But that would make sense, though, wouldn’t it? So I’ve got to visit the studio. And you guys take the tape to the show.
Christian: They’re watching the ship. You’re just going to leave the ship and go?
Nika: He’s going to have to evade.
We quickly come up with a plan to get him off-ship unobserved. We’ll hide him in the Gator, lower the Gator’s container and drive off in it, and when we get to a good spot to dump him, we’ll drop him off and continue on to the show. Rina suggest taking the spare tire out of its storage compartment—it should be big enough to contain Peale. He’s already demonstrated the ability to hide in tight mechanical spaces. The only concern we have with that plan is the possibility they’ll search the Gator before allowing us to leave. The tire compartment is on the underside of the Gator, hard to get to and inspect. Barring the tire compartment as a place to hide Peale, we’ll be left to having him lying on the floor with stuff on top of him, including us if necessary. One way or another, we’ll smuggle him out and then find a place to let him bail.
Christian: You’re doing a very brave thing.
Peale: (laughs weakly) Please don’t make it in vain.
Nika: Try not to get dead.
Christian: You know our ship’s frequency.
Nika: Take a hand-held with you.
Christian: Oh, no-no-no. They can trace it back to us.
Nika: It’s just a radio. Could be from anywhere. All he has to do is keep the frequency in his head and the radio on him.
Peale scans the crew and focuses on Jake. Peale pops open the cartridge with the Falkan ‘tape’ on holo crystal and hands it to him.
Peale: You’ll do it, right?
Jake: If that’s what’s going down, yep.
Peale: Yeah. I know your type.
That crystal’s as good as broadcast.
Thursday, 30 May 2520
Early evening
To further flummox our pursuers, we give Peale one of Jake’s miscellaneous holo crystals with nothing important on it. That way if Peale is caught by the PPA and the Marshals, that crystal might be mistaken for the one they’re looking for and buy Peale some time.
With Peale’s escape taken care of, we double check our own entry to the show. Jake assures us that we’ve our backstage passes and they’re for the production booth. There are three passes waiting for us. Jake, Rick and Rina take the passes. Arden, Lem, Nika and Christian will attend the show as part of the audience. Arden stashes his and Nika’s pistols in one of the Angel sister’s guitar cases. The band members’ equipment should get through without being checked.
That decided we get dressed in various degrees of fancy and not for the coming event. Christian eventually emerges in a sparkling blue evening gown. Rina opts for the formal look of black coveralls—which for her is about as dressy as she gets. Everyone else opts for attire that falls somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.
As usual, we deal with the pre-op jitters by bantering with one another.
Rina: I’ll be with Mr. Glittery here…Tinkerbell. Whatever.
Christian just flips the tresses of his raven haired wig at her. Arden insists on bringing his doctor’s bag.
Nika: Why? You don’t need your doctor’s bag.
Arden: I need my doctor’s bag.
Rina: In case somebody gets hurt.
Rick: It’s just a thing. (points to Rina) She brings a gun everywhere. (points to Arden) He brings med supplies everywhere.
Peale: I get it. (points to Rina) She kills people. (points to Rick) He brings knives everywhere. (points to Arden) He patches them up.
Christian: (striking a pose) And I look mahhhhhh-vuh-lusss.
Rina: I kill people. (points to Christian) He’s dressed to kill….
Christian: And I’m pretty sure the 5-inch stilettos I’m wearing could kill someone.
Rina: (points to Arden) And he prevents the kill.
Bases covered? Yes. Let’s go, then.
We pile into the Gator, Lem included, with Peale secured in his hiding place. We drive off to the show. We look for tails.
Rina: Does anyone here have SDR experience?
Nika: What?
Rina: Surveillance detection run.
Arden: Yes, actually.
Rina: Good.
He gets the job of spotting any tails. He spots an individual standing outside our ship as we leave, someone who lifts a hand in an odd gesture—possibly talking into a comm to tell the opposition we’ve left the Gift—and Arden keeps his eyes peeled for tail vehicles. He sees none. Then again, if we’re being tracked from the air, he wouldn’t be able to tell.
Paquin, however, is a hard place to tail a subject. It’s like Las Vegas on steroids, with flashy buildings and flashier lights, street performers and gawping pedestrians thronging the avenues….all making it hard to keep eyes on your target. And making it hard to spot any tails.
Thinking we could be followed and not know it, the tension ratchets higher as we look for the perfect spot to have Peale bail out and we banter some more.
Arden: Should I just use my intuition to find the right time to do that?
To a man, we all make the ooh! ahh! sound.
Sarcastically.
Rina: Cuz, you know, you just can’t do it in plain sight. You wanna turn around a corner where you know they can’t see you for five seconds, kick him out the door, and have him run down the alley while you speed off. Yeah. (a beat) Maybe we should have rigged up a jack-in-the-box.
You know, a pop-up dummy in the passenger seat to take the place of the person who just bailed. Perfect for stop-and-drops after dark. Nika just stares at Rina.
Rina: (crossly) What?
Nika: You totally weird me out. (giggles) I’m sorry.
Christian: I think I need new earrings.
Rina: Are you looking for shoulder dusters? Or….?
Christian: Oh no. That’s tacky.
Arden: It depends on the style.
Rina: A discreet hoop, perhaps?
Christian: (miffed) I’m not a pirate.
Rick: You realize you’re taking fashion advice from an engineer who wears coveralls to a fancy event?
Rina: (laughing) Oh, that’s a good one. (High fives Rick)
Christian: Probably small teardrop dangly blue topaz.
Rina: London Blue? Or Swiss Blue?
Arden: What is London Blue?
Rina: It’s a different grade of blue topaz. Don’t you know anything?
Arden: No. Do you see “Gemologist” tattoed on my forehead?
Rina: D’uh! Can’t you see “Detail Freak” tattooed on mine?
Snickers erupt over that one.
Christian: I’d have to see what’s in fashion at the time.
Rina: Seriously, I think the London Blue is better than the Swiss Blue. It’ll bring out the color of your eyes better.
Arden: It depends on what color his eyes are.
Christian: My eyes are normally blue.
Arden: But are they Swiss Blue or London Blue?
Rina: (loftily) Actually, they’re more like a blue-grey. The chameleon kind.
Christian: A steely blue.
Arden: I’ve stopped listening.
La-la-la, not listening.
We manage to find a blind spot to drop Peale off and the banter stops. He pauses with his foot on the running board.
Peale: Thank you for indulging me in this fung jung fei kuang jie, this self-indulgent lunacy.
Nika: I was thinking ‘Charlie-Foxtrot’, but that works too.
Rick: Remember: ‘That’s not a robot.’
Peale: I’ll keep that in mind.
And without another word, Peale takes off.
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