Episode 308: With Friends Like These, Part Two

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Part 1

We board and passing through the passenger lounge Nika sees the Tokarev sitting on the table.

Nika: Somebody wanna tell me about the pistol on the table?
Arden: It was Rina’s present.
Rina: (quietly) Yeah. That would be mine.
Nika: (annoyed drawl) Well, stick it in the goddamned gun safe.
Arden: That would be a first.

Rina refuses to touch it.

Nika: (points belowdecks) Weapons locker, woman!
Rina: (growls) Fine.

She snatches the box off the table.

Nika: What’s your problem with the gun? It’s beautiful.
Rina: (evenly) Is it a bribe? Or is it a gift?
Nika: For what?
Rina: Is it a bribe from Brian or is it a gift?
Nika: I don’t know what you’d think he’d be bribing your ass for, but it was a gift.
Rina: Fine.
Rina stomps down the stairs to the locker. A resounding slam from the locker door drifts up the stairs, followed a moment later by the crash of a cabinet hatch and a Russian curse. Nika fills her lungs and yells in the direction of the stairs.

Nika: You slam any more doors I’m taking the hatch off your quarters.
Rina: (coming off the top stairs) Fine! Nothing’s happenin’ in there anyway!

She comes even with the rest of the party.

Rina: Look, I have to get that part—I know it’s not poisonous, Arden, but still. We don’t want tritium leaking into our water supply. Anyone coming with? No time like the present.

Joshua declines, saying he should be here if we call for help. How’s he going to help? Faria’s got our only shuttle, it’s not like Joshua can ride to our rescue in it.

Arden: (cajoling) Road trip!
Joshua: (jaundiced) Really
Arden: Yeah.
Joshua: It’s a junk yard.
Arden: It’ll be fun.

Of course! A trip to the junk yard is what all emotionally and/or physically beaten up guys need to make themselves feel better.

Right.

We all pile into the Gator and drive it to the scrap yard. There’s a lot of stuff at the yard that makes Rina drool but she’s a woman on a mission and she doesn’t stop to browse. She hands Nika a list of parts to go after once we’re there and Arden, seeing that there’s nothing but a long boring wait ahead asks Joshua if he knows how to play chess. Joshua does. As Rina finds a place to park the Gator, Arden suggests they scav enough pieces to make a chess set and play a game as they wait for the womenfolk to finish up their shopping.

We park the Gator some little distance away from the M-33 and approach the ship on foot. We see it’s a cargo container ship, only built on a much larger scale. It’s built like a brick, made to haul some serious payload and damned if it doesn’t strikes us as familiar. We examine it as we get closer and we’re all certain it looks like something we’ve seen before but where? It’s hull insignia has been hastily spray-painted over. Rina actually takes a turn around it on the ground, just to be sure. It’s a belly-loader, meaning it puts belly on the dirt and opens up the belly doors, with a ramp touching ground. On the huge ramp leading to the cavernous hold is a man in a jumpsuit cradling a rifle in his lap. He looks a little nervous. Twitchy even. His uniform is a little odd—not PDF Navy or Alliance Navy, but definitely a uniform of some What’s our business here, he wants to know.

We’re here for the ITCV. Gregorian sent us.

Oh, yeah. Hang on.

The man comms it in to someone somewhere aboard the ship. As we wait we see it is indeed being scrapped and scavved by all comers, and it looks like it’s already had some substantial work done on it. The overall configuration of the ship is familiar though, and it nags at us like a name almost remembered. The man with the gun says the Captain’s off the ship for a while but we’re cleared for entry and escorts us to the engineering level.

Walking through the ship we see some of the cargo containers opening out into the catwalks of the cargo bay and we realize—FINALLY—that the M-33 is a prison barge. In fact, it actually has Alliance Corrections stenciled on the inner walls of the open container units. Not only that, but we realize it’s probably the SAME prison barge that blasted off Highgate a week ago.

Looking at the cargo bay a little closer we notice offset from the center of the floor are six pylons of New Tech origin, making a rectangle of four with two spaced evenly on one side. Based on what we know of cargo equipment, we think the pylons are force field generators, and given it’s New Tech, fairly expensive.

Arden: (murmuring) If someone could afford force field generators, why would they be junking the ship?
Nika: (quietly) Best guess? Prisoners took over.

Rina overhears and unzips her coveralls just a teense further down, so as to get at her gun easier.

We’re escorted right to the engine room and told the part we need is there. We’ll have to dig for it. And we’re not the only ones in the engine room either. There are a few men in here already, busy dismantling the engines. If it has a bolt or a screw, they’re undoing it and taking it off. They look more like salvagers than engineers and if Rina wants that part, she’ll have to act fast. Rina gets right to work, taking in the cavernous engine room a moment before diving into the workings. She’s on her back and it’s a tight squeeze and the damned part is behind numerous pieces of equipment that must be removed first.

That’s going to delay things.

Rina gets Arden to help her and he crouches at the opening of the engine works, handing her the tools she needs as directed. And as Arden and Rina are busy, the rest of the crew start noticing the little things. How the ship’s crew are kinda shifty, how they don’t move as if they’re accustomed to being on a ship, and the fact that even though they’ve thrown the hsip open to salvage, the crew seem rather interested in keeping an eye on everyone. Joshua tries getting a read on the ship’s crew, but nothing solid comes through.

Joshua: (quietly apologizing for Nika's loss) I'm sorry.

There’s a long pause where Nika looks at Joshua to gauge his intent and determines he's serious.

Nika: Are you okay?
Joshua: Yeah. As okay as it gets. I'm fine. Well... relative to this morning.
Nika: I'm sorry about that.
Joshua: Not your fault. Not really his fault either. I'm just ....a little raw.
Nika: That'd be the understatement of the century.

There are a few of the ship’s crew standing in the engine room ostensibly to keep an eye on things. One of them gets a call on his earpiece and he puts a hand to it and listens.

Guard: Okay…(to the rest of us) If you’ll excuse me…?

He leaves the engine room for the crew lounge just outside. Joshua moves to the engine room door to check on the man. Joshua pokes his head around the jamb, glances out quickly, pulls back in. He’s seen the guard walk over to other crew members and point in our direction…and those other crew members leave for’ard, away from the engine room.

Joshua goes back to Nika’s side and tells her what he’s seen, wary of the returning guard.

Joshua: (quietly) Not good.
Nika: (quietly back) What’s going on?
Joshua: Remember those in the lounge, next to us? Left.
Nika: Paranoia.
Joshua: Maybe. But…
Nika: Yeah.
Joshua: Enough that I—
Nika: (loudly) Rina! Is that valve actually gonna work for us?

Rina fills her lungs and hollers back.

Rina: Probably. Better than the one we got now.
Nika: Well, how long’s it gonna take?
Rina: S’gonna take me half an hour. It’s really stuck in here. (A beat) Why? We gotta go?
Nika: Well,…I sorta gotta pee….

Rina rolls her eyes at the equipment hanging over her head.

Rina: Seriously, woman?
Nika: Little bladder, you know?

Which comment earns Nika a raised eyebrow from Arden as Rina thrusts her hand out to him.

Rina: Torch.

He hands her the torch from her tool bag. Rina fires it up and starts cutting.

Guard: Hey, you’ll have to pay for everything you cut through.
Nika: How much is the valve gonna cost us anyway?
Guard: How big is it?

Around twenty pounds. And it’ll be an extra five, ten credits for the stuff Rina’s gotta cut through. Joshua goes back to the door to watch our backs and finds the people who had left have returned.

With submachine guns.

Joshua goes back to Nika and murmurs into her ear.

Joshua: We’re boned. They are extremely well-armed. With submachine guns.
Nika: Really?
Joshua: Yes. Really.

Nika looks around the engine room. The only exit is the door to her back, the one that the men with the submachine guns will walk through any second.

We’re boned.

Nika: Why don’t we backpedal into engineering. Shut the door?
Joshua: Unfortunately, the doors slide.

She looks. It’s true. They slide.

Jam them?

The men with the guns are outside the engine room. The men inside have nothing but hand tools. We weigh our chances of escaping from the locked engine room via different means against running for it under a hail of bullets.

We shut the doors.

Joshua mans one half, Nika mans the other as the servos slowly glide the doors shut. The men outside pick up their pace. Inside the workings, Rina’s calling for more tools as Arden notices what’s going on.

Rina: Hey, Arden. Hand me the pliers.
Arden: In a moment.
Rina: Sooner would be better than later.

Arden rises and draws his gun to cover the doors. The doors are closing agonizingly slowly. The gap in them is down to a yard and the men with the guns are coming up fast.

Arden: Rina. Come out of there.
Rina: What? I can’t come out of—.
Arden: You might want to come out.
Rina: And do what?
Arden: You really need to come out.

The doors finally close, mercifully before the men outside start shooting…but not before one of them slides through at the last second like a batter sliding for home base. He’s armed with only a pistol and since Nika’s closer to him, Joshua leaves her to deal with the man while he tries to lock the doors against the rest.

He’s not fast enough. The men on the other side have hit the controls to open them…and the doors starts sliding apart.

At this point is all about gaining control: Nika kicks the gun out of the sliding guard’s hand and it goes flying under some equipment. Rina’s stowed her tools and is squirming back out. Arden covers the guard on the floor with his weapon. The guard crawls out of kicking range, fearful for his head…or his crotch. Connecting either with Nika’s boots would put him in a world of hurt, which he’d like to avoid thank you very much. He scrambles to his feet.

Arden: Hands in the air.

He complies. We herd him next to the other two people in the engine room with us. They don’t give us any trouble. Apparently we’re the only ones with guns in the room. However there are a lot of people on the other side of the door who have guns who want in. Joshua manages to punch in the right sequence to get the doors to close again. It remains to be seen if he can keep them shut.

Nika grills the man on the ground.

Nika: You wanna tell me why you came in here with weapons drawn at us?
Guard: Uhh….no.
Nika: Good. I’ll just kneecap you.

She draws her gun.

Guard: My men are right back there. (points to the door)
Nika: And?
Guard: If you shoot me, they’ll shoot you.

Hello, you came in here with weapons drawn. Nika’s not entirely convinced that shooting us wasn’t the plan to start with.

Guard: Drop the gun.

Like hell.

Seeing Nika has the man on the ground well in hand, he turns his attention to the two others who happened to be in the room with us. Arden gestures them to the deck.

Arden: Kneel.

They obey meek as lambs—they aren’t part of this altercation and don’t want to be part of this altercation and will do what we tell them to so they can survive this altercation.

Arden: Cross your ankles.

Ankles cross. And hands go on heads for good measure. One has to wonder of they’ve done this sort of thing before. Former prisoners, perhaps?

Joshua attempts to lock the door and he manages to do it. There might be overrides, but for now, the damned thing is closed.

Joshua: (Whew!) Tensest door closing, ever…

Nika tells the guard on the deck what’s what.

Nika: Get on your comm. I don’t know what you people’s problem is, but we have no beef with you. All we wanna do is pay for the part we wanted and we want to go.
Guard: Sounds good to me. (engages comm) Hey, Boss!

He’s not getting through to the Boss. He looks up at Nika.

Guard: You wanna talk to the guys on the other side of the door?
Nika: Knock yourself out.
Guard: Louis?

He holds the comm to his ear. Listens.

Guard: Yeah. It’s locked? Okay. Do we have those things where we can flood the engine room with sleeping gas or anything? No?...(whispers back)….Say we do.

Nika turns her gun sideways and shoots two rounds into one of the consoles.

Blam! Blam!

Guard: All right. No, they got us back here. Yeah. No, I tried. I got a couple of ’em. But uh…yeah, they have overwhelming forces. They’re all armed.

Joshua isn’t.

Joshua: Hey…!
Guard: Small arms.

Enough of this. Nika snatches the comm from the man.

Nika: Hey, Louis.
Louis: Who is this. All right, whom is this?
Nika: Why don’t you tell me what your problem is with my crew when we came on board just to purchase a part?
Louis: Are you one of the people we’re told to just to hold here?

It’s not fair to engage in a battle of wits with someone who’s clearly unarmed, but Nika takes advantage anyway.

Nika: I guess.
Louis: Oh. Well, we’re ordered to hold you here.
Nika: For what?
Louis: Ummmm….for the Boss wants you to stay here.
Nika: Yeah. And who’s your boss?
Louis: Uhhh…Mr. Alexander?
Nika: Mr. Alexander.
Louis: Yeah.
Nika: Name means nothing.
Louis: Doesn’t mean anything to me either.
Nika: Wonderful.
Louis: All right.

Clearly unarmed. Right. Nika gestures him to go over with the others. He goes. When he’s kneeling like the others, Arden has Rina frisk the prisoners for weapons. She finds a stun stick. Prison grade. Packs a punch. She hands it to Arden.

Does the name Alexander mean anything to anybody, Nika wants to know. Nope. We all come up blank. Nika gets back on the comm.

Nika: I want to talk to Alexander.
Louis: Uhhhh…okay. We got more guys out here, by the way. So, you know, you just might wanna surrender peacefully. That way when he gets here he won’t be upset.
Nika: I will happily sit here peacefully. You guys stay on your side of the door, we’ll stay in here, and we’ll just what for him to get here.
Louis: You guys just open the door, put your guns on the floor and step away—
Nika: Yeah, no. Not happenin’.

What’s he take us for? Idiots?

Louis: Well, I’m just sayin’. That would probably make it go easier on ya.
Nika: I’d rather just sit in here peacefully until Mr. Alexander gets here.
Louis: I’ve seen him break fingers and stuff.
Nika: You know what? When he comes and he comes in, we’ll not have the weapons anymore.
Louis: I’m just sayin’.
Nika: You’re just sayin’ an awful lot. And it ain’t soundin’ like anythin’ useful. Get him here.
Louis: Okay.

She cuts the comm off with an eyeroll. And in a couple of minutes, we can hear an odd sound…like hissing.

Joshua: Rina….Rina….Rina…?
Rina: Yes?
Joshua: Could you come over to the door?

The sound’s coming from the door. There’s banging. They’re burning their way through.

Joshua: (to Rina) Do something with it.
Nika: I do not want a firefight in here. I do not want to get shot by a submachine gun.
Rina: (calmly) Neither would I. All right. Let’s see if I can’t make the doors a little more secure.
She looks.

Rina: Pipe. Look for pipes, stick ’em in the tracks.

Rina grabs a length of pipe and threads it through the dog wheel while the others look around for pipes to lay down in the door tracks long enough to keep the doors closed. That way the guys on the other side can’t just cut through the lock and slide the doors open enough to stick a gun or themselves through. Ten inches is all they’ll need. With the proper length of pipe in the tracks, however, there will be no wiggle room and they’ll have to cut a hole through big enough to admit them. That will take time, hopefully time enough for us to find another way out of here.

Rina starts looking for a way out of the engine room through the workings themselves, discovering a route through the engine chambers. It will take some time cutting through it with her torch. Meanwhile, the rest of the Gift’s crew tie up the prisoners securely and manage to jam the doors, standing by them in case the opposition cuts through.

Joshua looks over at Arden as they start laying the pipes in the tracks.

Joshua: Why did we leave? Why did we leave the ship?
Arden: Our ship?
Joshua: Yes. I was told we left the ship for a reason, like we were looking for parts. Like a roadtrip. Do all roadtrips end like this?
Arden: Lately.
Joshua: (very softly) …Okay…
Arden: Which is why I’m glad you’re here with us.
Joshua: Uh..yeah.
Arden: If it was just Rina and I, we’d be so screwed. Cuz you know how perceptive we are together.

Rina figures that since the ship is grounded and there is no plasma or other nasty crap flowing through the engines, she might manage to find an access or maintenance hatch to the outside through the engines themselves. She starts making her way through the workings of an engine to find one, encounters stuff she has to cut through and engages her torch.

The engine has lines running to it, those that carry fuel and accelerants to aid combustion and unfortunately some of it must still be lingering in the engine. It doesn’t react well to her torch flame and it starts getting smoky. God knows what that crap is. It’s making her dizzy but she doesn’t pass out. She keeps on working, cutting her way through, pulling her shirt over her nose and praying whatever that shit is, it won’t kill her until we can escape.

She gets past the bottleneck and yells for the crew.

Rina: MARINES! WE ARE LEAVING!

They follow her voice, end up in the vast metal tube of the combustion chamber, duck past the secondary burn coils, and fetch up against a spot in the engine that’s translucent—meaning that it’s thinner than the rest of the walls. Rina applies her torch, her hammer, and then her booted foot to it, busting through the weakened metal. In a minute she’s got a hole big enough to escape through.

It’s a jump of almost two stories to the ground. We take it and hit the dirt running.

The alarm has been sounded, the M-33 crew is fanning out to find us. We take cover in the piles of junk to evade them. We have to leave our Gator behind—it’s the first place they’ll have sent people to intercept us. We hit the perimeter fence and cut through the chain link and squirm through. After that, it’s a hard jog back to our ship on foot for the couple of miles it takes to reach her.

It’s dark by the time we hit the outskirts of town and we pause to get our bearings and clean up a bit.

When we push on to our ship, we take on enemy fire—a sniper is waiting for us. Why there’s a sniper, we have no real time to suss out. Our first priority is to take him out and get aboard our ship. The airlock door has been damaged. The external lock has been tampered with, though unsuccessfully, and Rina has to cut through the damned thing to open it. She grabs her torch and prays the flame doesn’t make her much of a target.

Nika finds two people on the ground who may be working with the sniper. She takes cover behind the forward struts of the Gift and lays down covering fire for the rest of the crew. The two bogies on the ground fire back. Arden and Joshua determine the sniper’s position and commandeer a fire truck nearby to ram the container the sniper’s lying on. The fire truck crashes into the container. The sniper gets away and takes up a more protected position and continues firing at our crew. Arden and Joshua are stunned from the crash and it takes them a moment to recover.

In the course of all this, no one has much time to wonder why the sniper is such a rotten shot that he can’t pick off anyone, despite his superior elevated position. That doesn’t come clear til later.

Under the Gift, Nika’s down to her last few bullets. Above on the airlock stairs, Rina takes several hits from the sniper but her vest soaks most of the damage. She’s stunned but she’s still up and she’s still working away at the door. Joshua revives first and drags Arden out of the truck.

More shots are fired. Nika is nearly out of bullets and wishing she’d thought to pack a spare clip. Rina’s got three, but she and they are out of reach. Joshua runs for the airlock stairs. Arden revives and gets to his feet and follows some distance behind.

Rina takes another hit from the sniper and goes down unconscious. Joshua makes it up the stairs and finds her bloodied and slumped against the hull. It takes him a moment to see what she’s done and complete the job. He gets the damned door open and drags his friend and lover aboard as carefully as he can.

Arden books it up the stairs and notices the lights of an approaching vehicle. No sirens blare from it and he ignores it in favor of getting his ass behind cover. Arden yells to Nika he’s got her covered—go! Nika races for the stairs and gets up them at double time. Arden mans the door and as he’s pulling it shut behind Nika, he sees the vehicle he’d spotted grind to a halt down below and an individual climb out.

It’s a man, thin and long haired, bearded. It’s someone Arden recognizes, someone with a legitimate beef against us.

It’s Joseph Potemkin. He’s back and chances are likely he’s pissed.

Prison does that to you.

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