Episode 305: Blush Bismuth, Part 3
Down the slope and across the compound, Rick has made his stealthy way to the crusher facility and the tanks under it. The crusher lies quiet, now that the mine is not running, but the tanks are apparently a 24-hr operation. He wanders through the crushing area, a space filled with giant wheels and drums and in the stillness of the turned-off facility, he hears sloshing noises. Following them to their source, he realizes they’re coming from inside a room-sized tank. It takes him a minute to find that hatch that will allow him to pass inside and when he does, Rick finds a lone individual working by the light of a utility lamp, the single bulb’s glare bright against its wire cage, hanging by its hook overhead. The stark lighting makes the mess all the more depressing, but the man assigned to clean the tanks seems cheerful enough, mopping and vacuuming the sludge into a tube set into the floor of the tank. Unless Rick misses his guess, the man is actually singing a sea shanty.
Sealed in a can. Wrangling sludge. Singing.
Amazing.
He does a double take when he sees Rick walk inside.
Man: Whoa. Ya scared me.
Rick: Jones?
Jones: Yeah. Somethin’ wrong?
Rick: I was told to find someone who went by Engels.
Engels: (leans on vacuum/broom) Now who told you to find someone like that?
Rick: I can’t tell you any of the specifics but supposedly you were giving information to someone, smuggling out information?
Engels: (to himself) I guess if they wanted me dead, they could just kill me….(to Rick) You…they sent someone? You’ve come?
Rick: (just go with it)Yeah.
Engels: I’d…what are you gonna do? Are you gonna shut us down?
Rick: I can’t tell you everything that’s going on, but I’m here to find out if there’s bad things going on.
Engels: Wait a minute. Come with me.
Engels unhooks the self-powered utility light from overhead and carries it with him to another locking bulkhead-style door, pulls it open and walks through.
Engels: Follow me.
Rick follows….into a room with more sludge in it. Ankle high. Engels shuts the door and they’re sealed inside. He sighs in relief.
Engels: I didn’t think anyone got my message. I only had a few minutes to send it, but…(sighs) It’s the only thing that’s kept me alive these last few months. What do you want to know? What can I tell you. How can I help?
Rick: I need to know more about what’s going on. I just posed as a mine worker for a while in the main mine. What’s up with the stitches?
Engels: Ah, the stitches. I don’t know entirely but what I’ve managed to figure out is that some doctor down in, ah, down in the valley, down towards Lorgaard in some old Navy base or something like that, has a thing doing some kinda surgery on these guys and bringing ’em in here. They work one shift, then they’re shipped off somewhere Coreward—those that survive. You know that they’re not right in the head, that there’s something wrong with them. I think…I don’t know that they’ve been lobotomized or what but something is … gone wrong with them and they are….
Engels shakes his head and tries a different tack.
Engels: Before the mine went so high security, we used to go back and forth to town a lot more and we heard about the Prion disease, and I’m wondering if these guys have that thing. Cuz…I heard tales that it makes you kinda crazy. I thought it was more like Reavers, but….um, I’m not sure. But…anyway. They’ve replaced all of our lower tier people, either promoted them up or just didn’t rehire them. Which these are guys that have been here for years, some of them. It’s not great work but it’s their only source of income. Brought in these guys, from off planet most of them.
Engels casts a look at the closed door and leans in closer.
Engels: Some of them, with tattooes and such, were like, Naval—not officers—but spacemen. So what kinda Navy boat got…well, I don’t know what happened to them but for whatever reason, they were sent to that camp, had the surgery, and were brought in here.
The Navy? Their personnel? That healthy men were lobotomized and sent here to disappear? If Rina had been present, she would have immediately thought that it was a method of getting rid of political adversaries the way one would launder dirty money…an untraceable way to move something covertly. In this case, human lives. No matter who hears this, the question remains: why?
Engels: Something’s not quite right. Also, there’s something weird about sound. They don’t like squealy high-pitched sounds. Sometimes that’ll set ’em off. They can get very aggressive. This is why I think it might be Reaver Disease, because when I say ‘aggressive’ I mean they won’t stop.
Rick: Yeah, I heard that if they ever look you in the eyes you’re supposed to back away from them.
Engels: That’s probably wise. You gotta calm ’em down before it gets too far. And they’ll calm down on their own, usually, but if they are confronted they just go….nuts. And I mean they just won’t kill a man, they’ll…keep killin’ him. Until there’s nothin’ left, almost just a pulp. I heard tales of Reavers. I thought they were supposed to be out in space. Not here in the mines.
Rick asks Engels about the security cameras next. Are they there to keep an eye on the stitches. Are the other miners kept from leaving the mine because of that? Engels replies that most of the miners are sticking around because they need the job. In principle, any miner who wants to leave can leave, but everyone’s been told that they’ve been exposed to a toxic form of lead. They are given treatments for it on-site before they leave and are told that the treatments are over 100 credits apiece. Given the size of their paychecks, few if any of the miners can afford to leave the tender mercies of Corone after about five treatments—they owe the company too much for their treatments. At least, until their contract is over. If they wish to leave before it’s up, the miners are required to pay for their treatments in full or face jail. It is, in effect, indentured servitude, with the miners working off their incurred debt for the privilege of staying alive til the next treatment or until their contract ends.
Or course, the more cynical and paranoid would wonder if the toxic lead even exists and if the treatments are actually necessary, much less real. But that’s not Rick’s job to determine just yet. The practice alone is enough to land it on the abuses list.
Engels’ original contract said that any incidental medical costs would be covered by the company. It’s standard issue for the Mining Guild. However, every time Engels has tried to contact the Guild, he receives no answer. Which of itself is not surprising, he says, because Corone Mining doesn’t normally play by the Guild rules…but…..
Rick tells Engels that no word is getting out anywhere because the Cortex has been shut down. What about Escobar, he wants to know.
Engels tells him that he’s not regular mining security personnel but military. The only thing he knows about Engels is something he learned from someone else named Stanley, who saw Escobar arrive on a military ship. Some sort of tank lander. He wasn’t wearing a uniform so there’s no telling which military he’s from, especially nowadays with the Alliance Navy and the PDF being rivals. Engels says he doesn’t think he’s one of the General’s men.
General? It takes Rick a moment but he realizes that Engels is talking about General Nguyen, who has established his military base on the site of the abandoned one, where we got the Miranda weapons cache over a year ago.
Rick: All right. All I can say right now is just keep doing what you’ve been doing and we’ll come back for you. You’ll know it when something crazy happens.
Engels: I can probably talk to some of the men, I mean….I don’t know if they’d be willin’ to fight but…I might be able to at least get them to….some of us are afraid that ….Sometimes as a form of punishment, Escobar will take one of the stitches and put him in with one of the men. And he’ll…I don’t know what he does to them, but whatever it is, that’s usually the last time we see our man.
Do what now? Oh hell no.
Engels: Or if we do see him, he’s bloodied up.
Rick: Probably using that high pitched noise I would think.
How many security guards are there, Rick wants to know next. There’s about a dozen, plus Escobar. Rick says there’s a chance that the stitches can be used to distract the guards. Engels isn’t sanguine about it—it’s like setting fire to the mines as a distraction technique to try to escape. Risky. Too risky. Rick tells him to tell the men Engels trusts about this and
Rick: Talk to whatever guys you trust. I’m not going to say anything about this but I’ll try to get back to you but you’ll know if anything…happens.
Engels: All right… (vastly relieved) …I can’t believe I got through.
Engels gives Rick a hearty handshake.
Engels: I had to stay alive….I was able to do it.
Rick: (shakes hand) You just have to hold on a little bit longer.
Engels: All right. All right….
Rick heads out of there and goes off to look for the others on our team. It’s not hard to blend in—by now Rick’s covered head to toe in the pink stuff and he looks just like any other miner to anyone watching from the guard towers. He can quickly see that there’s no one in the guest cabin—it’s lit up like Christmas and the screen walls show one’s at home. Rick goes downslope to check the shuttle and it’s there that he finds Rina and Arden with the paperwork. Secure inside, they can talk freely.
Rina and Arden show Rick what they’ve found, he shares what he learns with them and the puzzle pieces start clicking into place. For whatever reason, the mine is a front to cover the tracks of lobotomized Prion patients traveling from the field hospital near Lorngaard to the Core. The paperwork Jackson slipped us doesn’t specify their final destination but it does mention that processing is done on Osiris. Blue Sun and Corone Mining are involved, though we don’t know to what end, and somehow Escobar knows about the operation. The victims are put to work for a one-month shift and then moved—should any survive their term of employment. We’ve all witnessed their treatment here as workers and Engels’s description of further abuses are quite frankly sickening. High-pitched noises, Reaver aggressiveness… Arden is convinced that the victims were culled from Prion patients who have progressed almost to the Reaver stage of their illness before being lobotomized.
The next shipment of stitches bound for the Core is in about a week. Not only is a batch of victims leaving the mine, a fresh batch of victims is heading into it. There is no indication in the paperwork of ship names or captains. All we know is a shift change is coming.
We don’t have much time.
Rick also mentions the miners affected by the lead poisoning and their need for treatment. He asks Arden if their treatments really cost 500 credits. If we leave, we probably need to take these miners with us because they want to get out. They’re basically indentured servants. Arden’s knowledge of Core-side pharmacology tells him that the treatments should not be so expensive. Furthermore, this entire story of the lead poisoning sounds fishy to him, given the fact that there’s on one-shot drug that would cure something like this, but without access to the medical building’s records, there’s no way he can be certain if the poisoning is a hoax or the truth. The more he thinks on it, the more it sounds like something pushed onto people to keep them in line.
Arden hails Jackson’s office via the shuttle’s comms. In Jackson’s office, the phone rings. He and Nika had been conversing when it came through.
This is what transpired:
Nika: (coming through the back door) Oh, thank God.
Jackson: Um..uh…okay.
Nika: Come on. Upstairs. Now.
They leave the back entrance and get upstairs to his office. She shuts his office door, puts her back to it and declares she’s staying here.
Jackson: Oh, I..are you…? What happened?
Nika: I’m fine.
Jackson: (firmly) What happened?
Nika: I’m fine.
Jackson: No, you—
Nika: You know that your security is a rapist waiting to happen?
There is no trace of stutter or timidity in Jackson now. That man no longer exists. In his place is only calm authority wielded by an experienced undercover agent.
Jackson: Is he looking for you?
Nika: Oh yeah! I would almost bet money on that.
Jackson: Would you be willing to be bait?
Nika: (no fear) Yeah.
Jackson: Get me a syringe.
The plan: Jackson will tranq Escobar if Nika is willing to be bait to draw the man out. She’s all for it.
At this point the phone rings and it’s like flipping a switch inside Jackson—he’s back, in all his timorous twitchy glory. His hand shakes as he punches the button and answers the call.
Jackson: Jackson’s off-ff-ffice. What c-c-can I do for you?
Phone: Jackons? This is Arden and Rina.
Nika: (to the phone) You are a mind reader. Yes!
Arden: No, no. That’s Joshua.
Nika: I love you more and more today.
Jackson: What can I do for you? Is...is there some assistance I can provide for you?
Arden says he has information he needs to discuss with Jackson. He doesn’t mention details, this call isn’t secured. Jackson says if it’s official company business? If it is, he’ll have to go see him at his location. Nika suggests the crew meet her and Jackson in the office. Jackson quickly seconds that suggestion. Nika calls out we should bring a tranq syringe and again Jackson seconds that motion, saying there is a problem that requires our specialty. Nika also advises us to come through the back door since it has no cameras on it. Arden agrees to come up and ends the call. Once they’re both in the office, he quickly fills Jackson in on what we’ve learned. Rina’s opinion is we should blow the whistle on the mine and bust the slimy operation wide open. We have enough evidence to start an investigation and while that’s going on, the workers can be freed, right?
Jackson and Nika fill us in on what’s been happening to them and we quickly decide that getting Escobar is our first priority. We can come back and rescue the miners after we do that.
Nika and Jackson tell us of their plan to lure Escobar close enough to tranq him with the syringe and bundle him up and getting him out of here. The downside to this is he’d have to get close to Nika, or Jackson would have to get close enough from behind to stab him with the syringe. Rick says he can shoot Escobar with a tranq dart from a distance before he even gets close enough to Nika to possibly hurt her. We all agree that reaching out and touching someone from a distance is best. We all check our comms to make sure we’re all on the same channel and once that’s done, Rick takes to the water tower and its catwalk. Rina and Arden go back to the shuttle to prep it for a fast getaway.
We wait til he’s in place before we go for Escobar.
While we wait, there’s some chatter over the comms from Jackson. Going meta for a moment in his role, he wonders out loud who we should appoint in Escobar’s place once we extract him. Rick says we’ll have to figure out someone we can promote to the position, possibly from the inside since it cannot be him. Whatever. We’ll tackle that problem when we come to it. First we need to flush out Escobar. Since everyone else is in the office, including Nika, Jackson puts hand to phone and calls Escobar to come over. And just like that, the jittery pencil-neck geek is back in the room with us.
Jackson: Sir? S-sir? I-I’ve got a…a security issue in my office. S-some woman, like…she’s hysterical, like…I-I can’t make her stop… talking, like—
Escobar: (sarcastically) Tell me about it.
Jackson: And-and-and…and I, I really could use you to, like…to come and take her out of my office. Like, I-I can’t get any work done, sir. I was-I was filing paperwork, sir.
Escobar: All right. I’ll take care of it.
Jackson: …okay….
Escobar: Look, if she’s hysterical, don’t even bother tryin’ to pay attention
Jackson: I-I won’t. You know what you’re doing. You’re Security. I-I-I trust you. Sort of.
Escobar: Yeah, she’s probably upset. She kinda threw herself at me and I wasn’t having any of that, so…
Jackson: I, I wouldn’t know anything about it,sir.
Escobar: Well, we got that training video about STDs from the local girls, so …
Jackson: I’ll-I’ll keep that in mind.
Escobar: Probably wise.
Now Nika has to look all teary-eyed…or whatever.
Time passes. More than enough to have Escobar walk from the security building to the office building several times over.
Rina: Oh crap. He’s gathering his forces.
From outside on the water tower catwalk, Rick sees two people emerge from the security offices. He checks them out through his rifle scope and comms the news.
Rick: Two people coming your way. Neither one’s Escobar. They’re goin’ for the front door.
Jackson: (to Nika) Isn’t this the point where you escape out the back door?
Nika: You want me to go, then.
Jackson: There’s the back door. I can explain everything here. If it comes to that, I can say you got away from me. I’m not like I’m security material.
Nika: (to everyone) Since they’re comin’ in the front, I’m goin’ out the back.
Jackson: Escobar’s not there.
And that’s when we piece it together, why Escobar isn’t coming himself. He doesn’t have to. He’s got the camera feeds on the entire camp—no matter where Nika goes, he’ll know where she is and can pick her off at his leisure.
Jackson: Maybe you shouldn’t leave….oh well. It’s too late now.
Because we have two goons about to come through the front door.
Nika: I’m headin’ back to the cabin.
Rina: You goin’ through with this? Cuz we’re standin’ by in the shuttle.
Nika: I know.
Rina: (mental facepalm) Arden, our project just went tits-up.
Arden: As usual.
Nika: I have your pistol, you have mine. We’re good. It’s fine.
Rina: All right…
Doesn’t the routine go: So how are we doing? Same as always. That bad, huh?
The knock comes on the front door. Jackson answers. The two security guards question him.
Guard 1: You got some kinda…woman trouble, sir?
Jackson: She-she es-escaped.
Guard 2: Escaped? What, you were holding her prisoner?
Guard 1: He’d need to.
The two guards think that’s pretty funny.
Jackson: Sh-she tried t-to…claw at me.
Guard 1: Claw at you? (winks at the other guard) Really? You got some fight in ya, don’t cha?
Jackson: Oh no, no. No. No fight, no fight. N-n-no.
Guard 2: Don’t let her tease ya.
Jackson: She was, sh-he was…uh…
Guard 1: Ya want us t’round her up?
Jackson: No-no-no, iii-it’s too, too much trouble. I’m trying to get—I’m just trying to get some paperwork done, like, you know, they make so many extra forms for them being here. Like, I’ll have to fill them all out and…iii-it’s all right—like y-you can go back.
Guard 1: You don’t need us?
Jackson: Uh, no, no…I appreciate it though. You’re good people.
Guard 2: (shrugging) All right, bud. Get to sleep soon. You take care.
Jackson: Yeah….uh-huh. Like, uh….That’s the idea. Yeah. Okay.
And the entire time Jackson is stalling the guards at the front door, Nika’s slipping out the back and doing a run around them for the cabin. When she gets about a third of the way there, as she draws even with Rick on the water tower, Escobar comes out from behind the office building and starts stalking her. From his vantage point on the tower, Rick is able to see him and from the way the man moves, Rick can tell he has experience with moving stealthily.
The bait’s working. Now we just have to spring the trap.
Rick: (via comm) Escobar’s behind you.
Nika: Rick. I am trusting you to make this shot. Because I am not confident in any way, shape or form that I’m gonna be able to take him down.
Rick: You’re probably not gonna be able to. But it shouldn’t have to come to that. (a beat) You may also want to hide your throat mike.
Nika: Oh, shit. I won’t have the ear wig, either.
Using small movements, Nika surreptitiously pulls off her ear comm and her throat mike and stuffs both down the front of her pants. And she keeps on walking, feigning ignorance of what’s coming up behind her. Rick carefully lines up the shot, taking careful aim to drop him with one shot.
Back at the office, Jackson grabs some papers and hustles out of the building. He has the perfect distraction. He runs toward Escobar, blowing his position.
Jackson: Sir! Sir, you need to fill out a sexual harassment form. She harassed you, like…I just thought about it as I was coming out of the office. Si-iiiirrrrr!
Escobar turns around.
Jackson: Your form. The sexual harassment form!
Nothing but a look of disbelief from Escobar. Jackson runs upslope toward him, thrusting the papers forward.
Jackson: I saw you from my window. I need your signature, please. And I need you to show the bad places that she touched….show me the bad places….
Yup. A look. Of sheer and utter disbelief.
Rick has his sights set firmly on Escobar’s neck. He breathes out, holds his breath, squeezes the trigger. The dart flies true.
Th-thhhhhhh-unk!
Nika turns around at the commotion and from fifty feet away sees Escobar stumble and reach for his watch to sound an alarm. She starts closing the distance.
Nika: Hey, what’s goin’ on?
Jackson: Are you hurt? Are you hurt, sir?
Nika: Escobar?
Escobar: (woozily) Lock…down….
Nika: What’d he say?
Jackson: (to everyone on our comms) Roll with it. Keep going.
Jackson closes in.
Jackson: Sir? Are you okay? Can you sign this form?
On the water tower catwalk, Rick aims, exhales, and squeezed the trigger again. The dart flies and plants itself in Escobar…and the man plants his face in the dirt.
Score!
From Escobar’s wrist comes the tinny voice of his staff, demanding to know what’s going on, sir, do you copy? Jackson is right there to handle it. He leans down toward the man’s watch and mimics Escobar’s voice.
Jackson: Stand down the alert. It was a mistake. Thought I saw something that didn’t happen. Stand down.
Watch: What’s up? What happened?
Jackson: I thought the woman I’d called in was armed. She wasn’t. I’m going to deal with it. Privately.
His tone makes it clear: Gonna nail that crazy bitch.
Jackson cuts the channel and motions to Nika they’ve got to get going. He grabs one part of Escobar, she grabs another and they start dragging him to the shuttle. On the tower, Rick asks who’s staying and who’s going. Nika says Jackson will help her get Escobar on the shuttle. Rick volunteers to stay behind and keep an eye on things with Jackson. Nika agrees and announces the rest of us are heading out.
Nika: Rina. Fire us up. I’m on the way in.
Rina: All right.
She gets the engines spinning and Arden gets the stuff we need to truss Escobar up. Once he’s aboard, Nika warns Arden Rick had to shoot the man twice. Arden checks the man over, sees he’s pretty deep under but he’s alive. Rina calls out from the cockpit.
Rina: Can I hurt him? Just a little?
Arden: Shush. You’re driving. (to Nika) You staying or going?
Nika: (reconsidering) I’m flying.
She takes over, we take off, and upon hearing Arden warn Rina off his patient, she orders Rina to sit up front with her. Rina complies, grumbling. Nika comms Jackson on the ground, telling him to come up with a cover story that we had to go to town for something. Jackson assures her he’s got that angle covered. And so we fly, with our target bagged, all our men accounted for, and no one killed or wounded.
As capers go, it went. And none too shabbily, either.
Yay, us.
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