Episode 309: In The Bayou
Air Date: 02 Mar 2010
Present: Maer, Terri, Andy, Bobby, and Tony
Tuesday, 12 Nov 2010
Meridian City Starport, Meridian
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
23:10 hrs, local time
Nika hightails it up the airlock stairs with Arden giving her cover. She gets inside and goes straight to the bridge, to fire up the Gift to get us the hell out of here. Back on the airlock stairs, Arden sees Potemkin go back to his car and pull out a case from the trunk. Meanwhile Joshua is busy getting the unconscious and bleeding Rina into med bay.
Potemkin pulls a rocket launcher from the case and fires a missile at the Gift. It hits as Arden ducks inside and secures the door as best he’s able. It’s not a very powerful missile with regard to the heavier plating on the Gift. Had she been a ground vehicle, she’d be toast. As a spaceworthy ship, however, it gives her a nudge on her struts, but otherwise she seems fine. Arden yells on the com that Potemkin’s shooting at us.
Another rocket hits us. Nika gets us in the air, informs Air Traffic Control that she’s being fired upon by rocket launchers, and flies on. She gets on the horn to Rick, tells him she’s coming in hot and he should be ready to jump on board. He gives her his location—the nursery—and when we arrive, Rick comms us to tell us that our airlock stairs are gone. We lower a container so he can board it and once he’s inside we just take off.
That second rocket hit must have loosened our sensor package because Nika’s got to work out our heading for Muir and stay in the chair for the entire trip, making minor adjustments in pulse to keep us on course.
Meanwhile, Arden is working on Rina in medbay, stitching up her bullet grazes and doctoring her injuries. She’s out like a light from shock and it will be several hours before she comes to. When he’s done, he straps her down on the table to keep her secure.
While Rina’s still out cold, Nika tells Rick there are presents on the table. Why are there presents? Don’t ask, she says. Don’t ask. Rick investigates the one with his name on it. It’s an envelope. Inside are six seeds. He sniffs them and recognizes them as those from a tropical vine, perhaps an orchid.
So why does Rick have a present, now? Joshua fills Rick in with what he knows about the presents. Rick asks about Arden’s present. Joshua tells him it was a hypo gun with super-adrenalin. Rina got a gun which she put away in the weapons locker. Why? Because she thought it wasn’t good enough? Oh no, it was extremely good, from what Joshua could gather. It’s just that it had emotional weight to it, being the exact same model of the one that she’d lost. Well, what did Nika get, Rick asks next. We don’t know and she’s not telling.
Joshua doesn’t have one, but there’s a note accompanying Christian’s that is addressed to him. It basically says: I got this thinking Christian was on the boat. But since you've replaced him, you can have it if you want. Joshua carefully puts Christian’s present away. When next we’re on Angel, Joshua will deliver it to him.
Once we’re well underway, Nika marches out of the bridge to announce she’s got lights on from engineering and she needs someone to go to the engine room and see what’s what. Joshua goes back to engineering to keep an eye on things. Rina had given him a run down of the more important pieces of equipment and levers and dials and buttons in there—he knows enough to watch them, at least.
Nika checks on Rina, sees she’s still out and asks Arden what her condition is. Well enough. She just needs to rest to let her system catch up. She’ll be fine. Assured her engineer isn’t going to kick it, Nika returns to the bridge to oversee our flight to Muir. It’s going to be fourteen hours straight in the pilot’s chair, a hard slog after the exertions of an already full day. Rick follows her in and spends the remainder of the trip in the co-pilot’s seat to keep her company.
Looking over what she can on the bridge, Nika notices that we’re losing atmo through the outer airlock door. What we’re losing in atmo is whatever’s been trapped inside the airlock, thankfully enough, since the inner airlock door wasn’t compromised by the fireworks dirtside. So we’re not going to decompress. What this does mean, however, is that the outer airlock seal has been compromised and we dare not open that door outside of atmo. Docking in the Black won’t be safely possible until it’s fixed.
Waking up in med bay is not a pleasant experience for Rina. Her last memory is of going down in combat, and coming to several hours later strapped to a table makes her think the worst. She thrashes a moment before she realizes where she is. Arden tells her to calm down while he checks her vitals. She can hear something’s not quite right with the Gift and demands to be unstrapped. Arden insists she lie still until he’s done. The minute he is and the straps are off, she scrambles off the table, hugs Arden her thanks, and hurries to engineering. Arden yells at her to get dressed first—he had to cut everything off her and she’s in nothing but a backless hospital gown. She growls and detours into her quarters to pull on the minimum necessary and continues to engineering.
Wednesday, 13 Nov 2010
Kuiper II class, Summer’s Gift
En route to Muir
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
1345hrs, ship’s time
Nika decides to bring us out of pulse a little early, due to our sensors being mostly out, and gets a horrifying surprise: we come out of pulse INSIDE ATMO at Muir. The planet is coming up at us terrifyingly fast and she has to yank hard on the controls to save us from augering in.
She yells on all-ship for us to strap in. Rick’s already in the copilot’s chair and is ready. Rina and Joshua get to jumpseats in engineering and the passenger lounge respectively and Arden straps in in med bay. Up on the bridge, Nika sees several lights twinkling through the surface growth and aims for a spot off to the side, hoping to land near habitation but not squash it under us. She pulls it off, making a hard landing in the middle of a swamp.
When the shakes subside and the last rattle grows still we catch our breath and get moving to inspect our condition. We’ve all taken some wounds and stun from the landing and being the worst off, Rina gets doctored first. As luck would have it, Arden flubs his initial efforts and makes things worse before making them better. Wonderful.
Despite the ship’s clock, it’s full dark outside. We’re up to our upper deck in swamp water, our struts on the muddy bottom of a slow-moving river. All around are bumps of land with what look like sugar cane or reeds growing on them. Insect life and snakes and fish and other swamp fauna abound. A quick look around from the top hull of our ship show us there are indeed lights glimmering in the distance, though all but one of them prove to be the steady glow of electric light. All the others appear to be firelight, like torches. This may not bode well for parts to fix our ship, and in any event we won’t be able to investigate til morning.
Nika scans the airwaves for signs of civilization and gets nothing but static and what sounds like a religious revivalist preacher, exhorting the souls within the sound of his voice to repent and reform. Further scanning yield nothing but this “Reverend Jim” and Nika cuts off the comms after searching in vain.
We arrange watches through the night and towards dawn Rick notices an unusual amount of bees—odd, because bees are diurnal, not nocturnal. and shouldn’t be buzzing about in the dark. He also sees an unusual amount of snakes and other creatures, some of them of unusual size.
Thursday, 14 Nov 2010
0630hrs, local time
Rick, Arden and Nika elect to slog through the swamp toward the settlement we’d glimpsed during the night. Rina refuses to leave the ship unattended and Joshua refuses to let her stay behind alone. They attempt repairs while the others are out. First on the to-do list is tidying up the ragged tear in our hull where our sensor package used to be. Joshua’s in the water doing this, to spare Rina’s healing injuries contact with the swamp water and she hands him tools and instructions through the opened bridge window.
As he works, he notices that there are an unusual number of ants crawling into the ship, following along the electrical wiring. Brushing them away does nothing but clear a path for more. The longer he works, the more he notices the ants gathering and even chewing on the wiring. There’s no telling how long they’ve been climbing aboard since our landing and it’s quite possible we’re thoroughly infested.
Out in the swamp, Rick has point and he discovers what looks to be a settlement that had been flooded out at one point. It looks like a sugar cane refinery or something. The crew go deeper into the site, thinking there might be something salvageable to fix our ship with. And they find nothing of use. A skull, however, attached to the dilapidated hand rail to the refinery’s office hut is a grisly signpost. It’s adorned with dried flowers and odd markings. Going into the office we see nothing we can use. There’s trash and debris on the floor that on a closer look appears to be little items and trinkets like trade goods gathered here and left. There are also several snakes slithering around in the pile and Rick identifies them as black mambas—aggressive if angered and deadly if bitten by them. He eases back out of the office.
They find the threshing floor next and on the old weathered board floor they find evidence of bloody sacrifices along with old rings of candle drippings. There is no way of telling if the stains and the bones littering the floor are human or from some other animal. It is all-out creepy and they don’t spend much time there.
It’s time they searched for a radio. An operation this size must have at least one to coordinate shipments, right?
They find the radio shack on the site but see that at some point, someone or something took an axe to the equipment, turning it into metal confetti. Nika comms the Gift and gets Rina. Can she raise Faria on the ship’s comm? Rina tries and comes back with a negative. Rina also passes on the info that ants have infested the ship and are chewing on the wires.
Nothing can be gleaned from the refinery site, so they leave and push on for the general direction of the settlement. Rick warns Arden not to speak to the natives AT ALL and after several attempts to argue, Arden is unable to convince Rick and Nika otherwise. He grumbles but he acquiesces to the order.
It’s not too far before they encounter the deeper run of the river, the water over their heads. Since there are crocodiles and snakes and giant catfish in the river, Rick and the others fashion a crude raft of logs and what they can find in the debris of the refinery. Rick’s survival expertise comes in handy here and the raft is float-worthy enough to carry them the rest of the way to the settlement.
The settlement is a collection of huts on stilts and it’s backwoods bayou all the way. Greyed clapboard construction, boats tied to the stilt posts, fishing paraphernalia strung up to dry. They hail the first shack and are met by an old-ish man with a shotgun.
He’s backwoods suspicious of newcomers but seems interested when we say we’ve crashed our ship in the bayou. We’re ordered to leave the guns before climbing up to the hut to talk. We do and introductions are made.
The man’s name is Grissom and this here’s his place. He tells us a little bit about these parts. They’re a small community, don’t got much. Supply ships don’t come too often hereabouts. If we need a transmitter to send a call out, we may have luck with Reverend Jim’s. It might be powerful enough to reach the cities up north of here, where they might have the parts we need to fix out ship. The Reverend lives further on, though, at the settlement proper. He agrees to take us to there in his fan-driven swamp boat. We’ll have to leave our guns behind, though.
We agree and get on his boat and he takes us in. We notice that the motor that runs the huge fan is a hydrogen motor, leaving us to wonder if Grissom has the ability to crack the hydro free of the swamp water or if he needs to go in regularly for it. It’s a little bit of incongruous tech in the middle of backwoods poverty…not too unusual for the Rim, but still. When asked about it, he just shrugs and says he does some tradin’….
Along the way, we pass an island which Grissom gives a large berth, nearly going aground in the shallows to do so. Looking carefully, a hut draped with fetishes is just visible near the island shore as we pass it. What’s that? , we ask him. In hushed tones he tells us it’s Queenie’s place and people don’t go round sayin’ her name or messin’ with her. She’s got voodoo magic something powerful.
Oh, you mean, like what we saw at the abandoned sugar mill? Mebbe so.
The settlement is a larger collection of huts on stilts in the same condition. Washing hangs on lines, children play in the shallows poking a turtle and upslope of a building that’s obviously the general store is a shuttle. It too looks like it’s a part of the landscape, the bayou creeping in on it. The sole electric light shines outside it, obviously hooked up to the shuttle’s power source and there is a bullhorn mounted to its hull.
Grissom pulls up to the general store. Right away you can tell this is a more prosperous place, looking to be three rooms big and in good repair. Several boats are tied to its pilings. The proprietor, by name of Howard, welcomes us.
Howard: What have we here?
Grissom: Well, Howard, I’m sure you’re intrest’d. Yeah, these people seem to’ve crashed their spaceship out’n the swamp.
Howard: (thoughtfully) I see, I see. Didja bring anything? We haven’t had any shipments inna while.
Rick: We didn’t bring anything with us, but we do have—
Howard: Trade goods?
Rick: Yeah, we probably do have some stuff we can trade.
Howard reckons that seems doable. Rick tells Arden he can talk now.
Arden: I’m a doctor. I can help with any medical needs you might need.
Howard looks at Grissom and they trade a look.
Grissom: Perhaps. Our kids haven’t had much doctorin’ so that might be, might be nice.
He gives a dismissive head shake.
We can see that one of the rooms of Howard’s place is laid out like a general store…and that’s in the loosest sense of the term. There isn’t much on the shelves really. Certainly not in the way of trade goods. There are a few glass bottles polished up to a shine here and there. Homemade lures. Salvage. Hand braided rope. Everything’s of primitive quality. To call it a general store is a stretch, but it’s a collection of things apparently for sale. It’s minimal but it’s there.
Rick: Do you have any way to contact any of the cities up north that may have ship parts?
Grissom: (to Howard) Right. Yeah. I was thinkin’uv Reverend Jim. His radio might go far enough. Whuddya think?
Howard: Well…when the moon is full it’s poss’ble to get signals from Busterhead Isle. I dunno if Busterhead Isle has a spaceport but they prob’ly have communications with towns’n such.
Rick: Okay. When’s the next time the moon goes full?
Grissom: I reckon inna week or so.
Rick: Okay.
Howard: Yeah, well…. maybe we can do some trade’n such. You’re prob’ly hungry and we can bring you food’n such. You can trade for goods you have, cuz we don’t have a lottuv workin’ goods. An’ I gotta boat. If you wanna make for anuther town, I s’pose that’s possible. There are a few up’n down.
Rick: Okay, yeah. I take it you saw where our ship went down.
Howard: Yeah, well, roughly.
Rick gives Howard a description of where the Gift is at, then asks if there’s a direct route to get there. Would Howard and his folks be able to get through to trade?
Grissom: Yeah, that is one thing you’re gonna have’ta do. You gotta turn off the ship’s power.
Rick: Okay. Why?
Howard: It’s just the rules.
Rick: Okay…
Arden: Whose rules?
Howard: Them’s just the rules. You need rules to live by. The rule’s the law. An’ I reckon I’ll enforce those laws if I need to.
Nika is still trying to make sense of everything.
Nika: Is there a reason they were put into place? I’m just curious.
Howard: I reckon there is, yeah.
Rick: We’ll radio our ship when we get the chance and we’ll let them know.
Howard: (to Grissom) Didja hear that? They’ll ‘radio’ their ship. (to us) You got yerselves some hand radios? I might trade’ja summa those.
Nika: I might do that.
Howard: What’chu want for’em?
Arden hails the Gift with the hand comm.
Arden: (on the comm) We’ve encountered some people here. (pause) Is anyone there?
Rina: (picking up) Yes.
Arden: They have a small settlement here and they say we need to turn off the power.
Rina: Right.
Arden: I don’t know why, but they say that we do.
Rina: I’ve got an idea.
And she does, actually. She’s thinking of the ants that seem attracted to our electronics and wires. Maybe like the nocturnal bees and the giant catfish and so on, the fauna on Muir are just crazy-weird and ants that like chewing on electrical wires carrying current is just normal for these parts. If what she suspects is right, maybe we can get rid of the ants if we turn off the power. With no power to attract them, maybe they’ll shift their little insect butts somewhere else. Like off the ship.
Rina: All right. Is there anything you need to tell me before I turn everything off?
Arden: They want to trade with us. If you let Joshua know, maybe he can start looking through the ship.
Rina: (brusque) All right. All right. Anything else?
Arden: (to the others) Anything else?
Nika: Check back in an hour and a half. We might have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.
Rick: And what stuff we need.
Arden: We’ll call you in an hour and a half.
Rina: Okay. Going dark.
And she kill switches the ship. The power is off.
Back at Howard’s place, Nika and Rick ask the man what towns are in range of their boats. Can we make it to any of them by boat? Would any of them have radio contact with places that have what we need. At this point all we need is to be able to see—sensors wise—and we could lift off out of the mud ourselves, hie off to a starport and make repairs there.
Arden asks if Reverend Jim’s radio can reach the moon. He knows that Faria’s there, at the TSE mission.
Howard: Well…you mean, like, talk to people onna moon?
Arden: Mm-hm.
Howard: There ain’t nobody on’at moon, I don’t think.
Arden: There’s some preacher-like types.
Howard: I dunno ‘bout that, but….we ain’t had much call to be callin’ around’n we don’t have radios an’ Reverend Jim don’t share that much. But you c’n try’n convince him. We get every now’n then, they’ll be a boat comin’ down river. An’ I s’pect the boat comes from a bigger town, cuz they’ve got usually more gear’n such. Sometimes canned food’n such. They bring Reverend Jim packages on occasion. He sometimes gives’em messages. He’s a learned man, he c’n read’n’write. An’ so he’ll send messages for us, an’ on occasion he’ll give the kids gifts’n sorta stuff that he brings down that he gets’n such. So he’d prob’ly know more about this. He’s wunna the original settlers.
Nika: All right. Much obliged.
We make ready to leave. Arden has a question.
Arden: You have problems with catfish around here?
Howard: Well….you c’n tell when they’re about. You jus’ don’t wanna swim around’em.
Arden: How can you tell when they’re about?
Howard: (to Grissom) How d’you tell someone who don’t know about catfish how they gotta avoid the catfish?
Grissom: Lookit that patch’a watter over there. (points) You see those trickles from bugs’n such runnin’ cross them? If’n you don’t see that, prolly catfish. Then you wanna watch out.
Arden: Right. No bugs, you got catfish. Got it.
Nika sniggers. Really, it’s too funny. She looks at Howard and Grissom.
Nika: Yeah, he’s a city boy.
Arden: What?
Grissom: Yeah, it’s pretty clear you ain’t from the swamp.
Arden: No, I’m not from here—
Nika: He’s full-on city boy. (laughs some more)
Howard: We heard some stories ‘bout the city. I heard a guy was killt once in the city.
Rick: There is a fair bit’a that.
Nika drags us back on task.
Nika: Is the Reverend likely to be… unfriendly? You indicated he might not be up for visitors.
Howard: Well, he don’t like people messin’ aroun’ with his stuff. But I reckon he’ll receive you.
Arden: Is he live up in the ship? (points upslope)
Howard: Yeah, he’s up there. He’s always up there. He’s been a bit quieter since Queenie took up shop. She left the town. She might know—
At which point Grissom and Howard laugh.
Grissom: …But I won’t ask her….
Howard: But she’s not from here.
Rick: How long has Queenie been here?
Grissom: Oh, well….we’s told that she was born here on the planet, but not in our village, and then she went off. Which is why you must never leave if you’re born here. Is cuz it did somethin’ to her. An’ she’s got magic powers now.
Nika: Really?
Grissom: But she went off the world inna spaceship.
Oh.
Like….kinda what we got?
Grissom: An’ I gotta say, it did somethin’ to her to make her diff’rent.
Rick: Did she do all the crazy decorations and shit that we saw passing the island?
Grissom: Saw some crazy dekko-whats? Decorations? Y’mean, like, food rations?
Arden: No, the little dolls.
The fetishes we saw at the mill.
Grissom: Summa that’s her. Some’uv ’em people make for her so to make sure she don’t hex us’n such.
Nika: We didn’t touch anything when we came through that area.
Grissom: Eh, it won’ make a diff’rence. If she don’ like you,… You’re kinda in good shape. She’s got those ..zombies, too. You wanna watch out for ’em.
Nika: Excuse me?!
Grissom: If you see one, don’ try to fight it. Don’ bother shootin’ it, neither. Won’t do no good.
Rick: What kind of zombie? That walk. They say they live off human flesh.
Howard and Grissom trade another look.
Grissom: Yeah, I don’ know if that-all’s true. But she does have dead people workin’ for her.
Rick: All I’m going to say is: T. S. E.
Grissom: I hope yer listening.
Arden: Don’t mess with zombies. Got it. Don’t go near water that doesn’t have bugs on it. Got it.
Nika: Does Queenie keep the dead people with her? So we don’t have to worry about it?
Grissom: Well, we ain’t likely t’see the dead people, less’n somebody’s done somethin’ wrong.
Arden: Unless you’re really unlucky.
Nika: She’s got her own personal army of dead people?
Rick: How many dead people does she have? That you all have seen.
Arden: Does it really matter?!
Grissom: No one really knows. There was Clem. I don’ know if the rest of them…..
Arden: One is enough. We don’t need to see any more.
No argument there!
Grissom: They come out at night, mostly.
Rick: They come across the water, right? I’m just curious if that’s why your homes are elevated.
Arden: No, that’s vampires.
Grissom: Actually, theys often found in the water. Jus’ kinda….walkin’. That’s jes’ wrong. The catfish don’t bother’em none. I don’t think they can.
Arden: Catfish don’t eat dead things.
Grissom: No, that ain’t true. Catfish will eat jes’ about ever’thing.
Rick: Especially ones as big as a house.
Arden: ‘Dead things’ that can fight back, how about that?
Grissom: There you go. Well….I wouldn’t callit fightin’. More like…
Nika: Just not stoppin’?
Grissom: Ehh, I don’ know how to describe it.
Rick: I appreciate you telling us this.
Nika: Right, then!
So not wanting to hear more about zombies, thanks!
Grissom: Well, now, there’s no need to worry. If there is need to worry, there’s no need to worry, cuz it’s jes’ gonna happen, an’ there’s nothin’ you c’n do about it. Stay off her island, don’ go messin’ around in the old mill…
Rick: She controls the mill too?
Grissom: That’s her sacred ground.
Nika: Good thing we didn’t touch anything.
Rick: Yeah, we didn’t touch anything. Dude, we just walked through there.
Grissom: Oh. You walked through there?
Yup.
Grissom: (ehhhh….) You’re prob’ly okay.
Nika: We treated it with great respect.
Grissom: (to Howard) So, you wanna take’em back in yer boat?
Howard: Yeah, I’ll take’em. (to us) You want me to take you back to yer ship?
Nika: Actually we wanted to talk to the Reverend.
Howard: Oh, you wanna talk t’the Reverend. He’s right up there. Go’wan ahead.
Nika: If you don’t mind taking us back to our ship when we’re done.
Howard: Hell, yeah, sure.
Nika: And let us pick up our firearms and what have you.
Howard: You got firearms?
Grissom: Had firearms. They left’em back at the house.
Nika: That’s so they can be considered payment for services rendered, because you’ve been so kind as to take us around in your boat.
Grissom: Why lookit that. Right friendly folk.
Well, we did just sorta make this guy King of the Swamp with all that firepower, didn’t we? Sure. It’s all good.
Go to: Part 2 | Part 3
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