Episode 306: Blowing the Whistle, Part 2

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04 Oct 2520
Cathedral of Lorngaard

Faria has a friend at the Cathedral and arranges for the meeting to take place there. a representative from each of the three parties shows up. Major Tanner arrives as the face of the PDF. Apparently we’re not going to get the General for something like this. He’s also the first to note that for all the charges leveled against Blue Sun, they are oddly lacking in representation at this meeting.

Joshua counters that we should present our evidence before we got BS involved. See the evidence, judge for yourself and if you feel the evidence is actionable, then by all means, invite them. However, he feels some parties in this group may have an interest in keeping this as relatively quiet as possible.

We show them the laptop. We show them the hardcopies of the paperwork from the mine. We explain the existence of the ‘stitches’; their surgery,which goes beyond what’s needed to treat Prion disease; their behavior and their treatment at the mine. We explain how the stitches were provided via Gordon through the hospital. We describe how Arden was given the run-around when he toured the facility. We recount how Gordon mysteriously declined to visit a man who had information vital to his area of expertise—allegedly developing treatment toward curing TSE—and what we discovered when we went in that night. We submit we found evidence of surgeries beyond what is normally used to treat prion disease. We give him the details of the medical shipment we commandeered and explain a little about the drugs in it and their possible use.

By the end of the presentation, Major Tanner has a few questions.

Tanner: What I’m confused about is for months, we’ve been complaining about the unfair labor practices. (to‘Jackson’) And you’ve been brushing us off as if it’s no big deal about this. Now all of a sudden it’s a big deal. My man tells me that you and your security chief have ditched the mine and put him in charge.
Arden: The security chief’s in charge?
Tanner: No, my man Jones, at the mine, says that for months his attempts to organize have failed and then all of a sudden you and the security chief leave the facility.
Arden: (to ‘Jackson’) I knew you were nervous about being there. Was it because the security chief was there?

Joshua has to think fast: that change of heart question would be the major sticking point (no pun intended) in the whole matter. Why would Jackson suddenly change things at the mine if he and Escobar were going to be gone? Why would he change anything if…if Escobar was gone….

Joshua: He was…he was intimidating the-the-the…everyone, in-including me. I-I’d said things t-to him b-before but he…he jus-just brushed them off. Um…and then I-I overheard, um, him getting a call from someone, and he-and he, he basically vanish-vanished. I don’t know where he went. But, but i-i-it was the-the opportunity I was looking for to return the-the mine to-to-to control, control—Corone control. So that it could, that it could, could return to its normal function. And, um, but…but…

Faria speaks up.

Faria: I cannot speak in detail of anything revealed to me in confession. But I can say that Escobar told me of his intention to leave the planet. I’m not sure when or how.

Joshua backs the man.

Joshua: I-i-i-it certainly makes sense, with the way he rushed off after that-that call.

Major Tanner sits and considers it.

Tanner: So. This guy decides to…something spooks Escobar.
Joshua: I-I-I’m not security. I don-don’t know what happened. Just that he-he left.

Arden jumps in.

Arden: for whatever reason, Mr. Jackson here was kept from doing from what I’m sure was the right thing until Escobar left. Or disappeared from the mine. And when that happened he fell into talking with us and when we tried to find out what was going on, it came to light that Doctor—
Tanner: Who are you?
Arden: I’m Dr. Arden, the medical officer on our ship.
Joshua: They were, they were—he was a member of the ship that-that brought me back from Pericles Station. Um, they were-they were stuck. Like, um…the, the… They were stuck on—their ship was broken. And so when Escobar left, I-I-I…I thought that they might be—they seemed capable, or what I saw of them, and so I thought they might be…I ought to bring them in.
Arden: So Doctor Gordon signed all the transfer papers for the quote-stitches-unquote that were working at the mine. Upon investigation we discovered he had a private surgical area set away from the hospital, heavily guarded. Also the protocols he was doing with his patients didn’t seem quite right to me, involving neural depressants, immune-suppressants, and who knows what kind of odd medical procedures. Anyway, his patients ended up working in the mines as ‘stitches’. Then they were there for about a month before they disappeared and another batch of stitches came in and started working.

Joshua takes up the ball.

Joshua: If you’ll take a look at the-the documents which I handed you and-and you’ll see that-that the…the stitches have a very high death rate. There’s a very high death rate involved and those that didn’t die were shipped out to…to…Osiris….and….

Arden steps in to cover the lack. It’s shaping up into something like a verbal tennis match. Back and forth across the table, one man supporting the other.

Arden: Obviously the Mining Guild should be concerned about this. Corone ought to be concerned about it because it’s their mine. And we thought the PDF would be the proper authorities to be alerted of this.
Rick: Well, the question is why are these modified people who survived the mine then being shipped to a Blue Sun facility on Osiris?

Tanner sighs.

Tanner: It’s a…strange tale you’ve woven here, Mr. Jackson.
Joshua: It seems very odd, I know.

The Miners Guild representative looks over at the Corone representative:

Guild: (to ‘Jackson’) So you don’t think this is Corone’s doing?
Joshua: I-I-I, no. No, I don’t think that—no, I think that Gordon in cahoots with Blue Sun put Escobar in place and set up something beneficial to him. Not to Corone.
Corone: We would never support hiring brain-surgery victims. We’re miners. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t really feel powerful enough to, ah…I don’t have responsibility to say how Corone should respond to this, but I think that we should send a report back to our people and find out what’s going on. I mean, seems like you did the right thing to bring it to the attention of the authorities. It probably should have gone through the administrative—
Joshua: Well, with the-with the Cortex down, sir, it didn’t seem like there was—it seemed immediate and I-I-I’m sorry for taking initiative without ah, consulting with…um…

The Guild Rep speaks up.

Guild: I think this is a good sign that somebody at the Blush Mine is responsible, unlike the previous times we’ve had to deal with them. I think we should track down this Doctor and find out what’s going on. This is just crazy. What are you going to do about it, Major?

All eyes turn to the man from the PDF.

Tanner: I’m not sure this is a law enforcement issue, to be quite honest. What happens on the planet should be with the planetary police. But…it does have interstellar applications if Blue Sun is funding this and is responsible for this.
Arden: The slave trade is still illegal in the Core worlds.
Rina: They’re trafficking humans across intersystem lines for nefarious purposes.

All the reps get up as one and walk a little distance away from everyone else and pull out their comms to call their superiors. For the next several minutes we have three different simultaneous conversations in hushed tones echoing to the Cathedral vaults high overhead.

The calls end. The reps come back. They sit down.

Tanner: You say you have evidence of these medicine, the neural depressants, things like that?
Arden: Right. And the electronic evidence is on this computer.

Rina holds up the laptop and puts it on the table.

Arden: We suspect it’s booby-trapped in some way. We haven’t unlocked it. But we also have some drugs that were found at the surgical suite.
Joshua: We don’t suspect the laptop has evidence.
Rina: We know.
Joshua: We saw them cleaning files because they thought that Doctor Arden was—
Nika: We watched him download it so they could wipe it. Just in case Doctor Arden was going to tour.
Joshua: Right. What she said.
Rick: And there was some mention of the PDF being interested in some of the research that was going on down there.

At the mention of the PDF’s alleged interest in these activities, Tanner frowns.

Tanner: Hm. All right. We’ll take that. (points to the laptop) And we’ll see if there’s anything worth pursuing on it.
Arden: As a doctor involved in the treatment of the Prion disease, I’d be interested in the medical information that is also on that laptop.
Tanner: Perhaps you should… come along. Perhaps the whole crew should come along.

Uh oh.

Arden: Why would the crew need to come along?

Tanner just looks at him and Joshua states the obvious.

Joshua: You’re not under arrest, but …you’re under arrest.

And not just Arden. We all are.

Tanner: These are some serious accusations that you’re making. And there may be some counter claims. How did you come by this information? This laptop? You said you did some investigation.
Arden: Yes.
Tanner: And how did you get this laptop with all this information on it?

Either Arden doesn’t realize he’s being led to a confession of wrongdoing or he’s simply unable to lie. Tanner stays cool and collected and keeps the questions coming.

Arden: I… picked it up off the ground and took it with me?
Tanner: Off of…the ground?
Arden: Mm-hm.
Tanner: So what makes you think it’s got information in it?
Arden: Because…I saw someone downloading information into it.
Tanner: Where did you see that?
Arden: Because I’m guilty of trespassing?

Thanks, Arden.

Tanner: I’m just saying you’re all going to come back to the base with me.

Sure. Of course.

Rick: All right. Sounds good. I’ll go with you.
Rina: Sure. I’ve got nothing on my schedule to do.
Arden: That doesn’t change the fact that I would like to see the medical information on the laptop.
Tanner: Of course.
Joshua: Me, too.
Tanner: (to ‘Jackson’) You’re not with the crew.
Joshua: No,no. I-I work for the-the mine.
Tanner: You might be interested what’s on there but you’re not obliged to come.

Meaning the rest of us are obliged.

Joshua: I don’t know if Corone would let me come. Like, I just, I just want to make sure that, like, um…I-I put, put Jones i-i-in charge of the mine temporarily while I was away handling this for Corone. I’d like to get back to my job at some point and, like, uh, maybe see about…Jones seems to have done a good job, I’d like to-to see him rewarded for it.
Corone: Why don’t you go make sure that no one else at the mine is complicit in this. From what I gather, anybody who had any knowledge of this has got to be immediately sacked and brought forward to the authorities. Because we’re not going to tolerate this kind of thing.
Joshua: Ab-ab-absolutely. I’ll-I’ll-I’ll make sure that anyone who—
Corone: That includes any employees or labor people that might be pushing this through.
Joshua: Of-of-of course, sir. I-I-I’ll go fix it.
Corone: (to Guild) It might not just be Corone. You might have had people involved in this. You probably needed somebody to smuggle these bodies out or whatever. So…(points to the laptop) Put the data on those computers onto chips. We want somebody from us to see it. (to ‘Jackson’) Since you brought this forward, you know more about it.
Joshua: Yes, sir.

The meeting adjorns and the crew of Summer’s Gift is ‘escorted’ onto the military base for ‘questioning’.

The base itself is in much better shape than when we’d initially found it. Someone’s gone in and removed a metric butt-ton of sand from the structures and buildings. There are fancy fighter planes and ships. For Rina, it makes the ride to the gallows a little more pleasant as she oogles the ships. One fairly large ship, looks out of place. It’s the prison barge mentioned in the hospital tour of yesterday. Did we manage to save its passengers from the stitches’ fate? We hope so.

The headquarters building is easily the shiniest building on the grounds, gussied up with a fresh coat of paint. Major Tanner escorts us to a conference room where we sit down.

Tanner: The General is not available, but he did mention when we gave our initial report that you are not unfamiliar to us. That you’re people working with….you’re Carter’s men, right?

Carter? Mike Carter? Rina goes very still inside.

Tanner: Before we go much further….

Tanner pushes forward a data book. It’s open and its screen is on. Pictured on it is a blurry security camera feed picture of a man in wiring tech coveralls and hard hat, sporting a small beard of mustache and goatee.

It’s Mike. Rina would stake her life on it. Considering where she is, she may yet.

Tanner: This security shot was taken on a You-Go fuel tanker headed in to Blue Sun. That’s the last we had. You know anything about this?
Arden: Actually, no.
Nika: No.
Tanner: I’d thought this would be the last place he’d go.
ArdenBlue Sun?
Tanner: Mm-hm. Last we heard he was in Kalidasa somewhere.

True. It’s where we told Nguyen we’d dropped Mike off, the last time we were guests on the General’s base.

Rina: It’s where we dropped him off.
Arden: That’s the last place we saw him, too.
Nika: Twenty months ago.
Rina: Twenty-two months ago.
Arden: Has it been almost two years?
Rina: December, 2518.

Twenty-two months since we’d dropped him off on Salisbury, but not since we’d seen him. However, Tanner doesn’t need to know that. Joshua risks a Read on Tanner: They know more than they’re saying. It’ll come out sooner or later.

Rina is studying the screen, looking for and memorizing any data she can glean from it. It’s raw camera footage, with no sign of cropping. The date stamp on the feed says October 6 of this year, making the picture only a month old. The background visible in the picture confirms that the feed is from the interior of a ship. Rina can make out a fuel cell of some kind and there is a camera ID string showing but nothing else in the margins to tell her exactly which ship the feed is from.

Arden: You said he was coming to Blue Sun. So where was he when this picture was taken?
Tanner: So you’re interested in him.

Rina says nothing, refusing to blow Mike’s cover. Arden, however, comes from different school of thought.

Arden: Well, he was a long-time passenger aboard out ship, staying many a month on our ship. We’re no more interested than that. Nika: We dropped the man off nearly two years ago, so it’s not like it’s a big deal either way.
Arden: Yeah. It’s curiosity, is what it is.
Nika: (pointing to Arden) He is the nosiest person I have ever met.
Arden: You said you needed to get this straightened out. What do you need straightened out? Yes, that could be Carter. I don’t know. It definitely looks like him. The last time we saw him was in Kalidasa. Is there anything else?

Yes, Arden’s definitely from a different school of thought.

Tanner: Tell you what. We’ll look into this box first. (puts hand on laptop) And then we’ll get to the interrogations.
Rina: (speaking over Tanner) Be careful. If you don’t get the lock right, it will affect the hard drive.
Joshua: Wait a minute. Did you say ‘interrogations’?
Tanner: I don’t see why you should be interrogated, sir. I don’t know if you know who these people are—
Joshua: I have no idea what’s going on.

Rick brightens right up.

Rick: Waterboarding?
Tanner: (looks askance) We’ll see.
Rick: Excellent.

Joshua protests.

Joshua: They are nice people. I mean, they helped me out.
Tanner: If everyone is forthcoming, there shouldn’t be any need for any unusual methods.
Rick: Fun-time waterboarding?
Tanner: If you want to go waterboarding, we can see you do.
Rick: Excellent.
Joshua: I don’t understand…

Eventually, the resident computer geek/guru is brought in to inspect the laptop and Rina repeats her warning about the lock-hard drive trap. He looks, he says ‘all right, he leaves and comes back with a single tool. Into a small hole the tool goes and snik! pops the lock.

Home free.

Joshua: Wow. That’s amazing. It’s like a spy novel.

The geek tucks his tool defensively away and glares at Joshua.

Geek: Back off.

The laptop gets spun up. Apparently the man liked keeping a visual record of his work and soon everyone is watching footage of the surgeries Gordon’s performed on his patients. Not only do we see brain surgery where he’s removing stuff from his patients, we also see him introducing stuff. What look like small receivers implanted into the brain. Specifically at the base of the brain, where voluntary motor control and emotional response reside.

Enter Rina’s earlier conspiracy theory. Was it only just last night?

Rina: See?! I told you. Nobody believes me.

Even a paranoid is right every once in a while.

Tanner motions a man over and issues an order.

Tanner: All right. Get this Gordon in here.

Two minutes later, the response comes back.

Mili-grunt: Sir? There’s no response from Gordon. We sent out a car down there but there doesn’t appear to be anybody at his facility right now.
Tanner: All right, well get me G and find outwhere this guy is.
Nika: Try the prison barge.

And as she says that we all hear the rumble of engines from across the compound. We look and we see the prison barge launch into the air.

anner: Why would I try the prison barge?
Nika: They were shipping out another batch of stitches today.
Rick: He did say something about how they wanted to leave, anyways.
Joshua: They might have mentioned it to you, sir. But you were too busy interrogating them either of them to get that across to you. I’m sorry.
Tanner: (lightbulb!) What, you mean that ship that just left?
Rick, Rina, Joshua together: Yes!
Rick: They said something about how they were planning on leaving anyways.
Tanner: (to Mili-grunt) Get air control. See if we can’t get them to stop that barge.
Mili-grunt: (listening on comms) We’ll see if they can get some ships up there. (pause) The barge is not responding, sir.

They’re getting away. Rina snorts angrily and paces.

Rina: Well, yeah. Of course not. What? They’re gonna say, “Oh, yes, please come and board us! And shoot us down!” You’d think they’d—
Nika: Rina!
Arden: Take a chill.
Rick: Waterboard me? Please?
Joshua: Could you please stop asking to be waterboarded? It makes me nervous.

After a few more minutes, the Mili-grunt gets the news from Air Control.

Mili-grunt: Uh, sir? We lost the barge.
Nika: How do you lose a barge?
Mili-grunt: Well…they had some, uh, electronic countermeasures and then they went to pulse before we could get our short-range fighters out to them. We didn’t try a long-range ship because it’s just a barge…
Mili-grunt: We got a fix on their last trajectory, so if they don’t have fuel enough to make more than one pulse we should be able to intercept them.
Joshua: Oh, I’m sure you’ll intercept them.
Arden: Just out of curiosity, what trajectory?
Mili-grunt: It was headed out to New Canaan, that area…possibly one of the bigger planets. Near Meridian Rina: Somewhere else in this system.

Meridian, where we’re going next. Coincidence? We all know what Rina’s thinking: no.

The interrogations commence. And it’s got to be the gentlest interrogation on record. We’re taken off and asked questions. Nothing more. No waterboarding, much to Rick’s disappointment. No torture, much to Rina’s relief. At the end of her interview, Rina’s Twitchy gives her a loud hard ping! on what she’s told as she’s released.

Interrogator: Well, it doesn’t look like we have anything here we can hold you on, so we’re letting you go. But, you know, try to stay out of trouble.

And the unspoken message she perceives is very much a: we’ll be watching you.

She tries not to twitch as she leaves.

Arden wants to know if he can get a copy of the medical records off the laptop. Tanner doesn’t think so.

Arden: Why not?
Tanner: Evidence in a crime.
Arden: But it’s evidence that can be used to treat other people.
Tanner: I don’t want anybody else doing this sort of thing. They’re making robot-cyborgs or something.
Arden: I don’t want anybody doing this sort of thing either, but you can still learn from it.
Tanner: Don’t make me reconsider pressing charges.

And that’s the end of that. They let us go. We leave.

Corone grudgingly but publicly commends Jackson for his work in blowing the whistle on the practices at the mine. He’s given his old job as Mine Administrator, ostensibly to keep him in place to keep an eye on things. That takes care of Melvin Jackson’s life—it’s ready to take the man back. Joshua’s job is done here.

Arden starts setting up what he needs to give Joshua his old face back. Which would be Cmdr. Wyatt’s face. Joshua would like to go back to Wyatt’s face because it’s familiar to him and the crew. Arden agrees but admits if could have his druthers, he’ll never let Joshua be anyone else, ever again.

Joshua also asks Arden for a full brain scan. Seeing the footage of the wet ware going into the Prion patients has made Joshua anxious to rule out similar devices having been implanted in him. Blue Sun has done countless surgeries on him since he was a teen. God and Blue Sun alone knew what all’s been done to him.

Nika hunts down cargo that can take us to Muir, where Faria wants to go. We could use a paying job—we’re out of food again. We still have all those meds we took off Gordon’s truck, however. We may have a source of cash in those, assuming we can find a buyer for them.

Nika also leaves a general mail message for Decatur informing them of our travel plans to Muir. It may be possible to have them meet us there.

And that done, we take up our lives as best we can.

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