Episode 405: Precipitate, Part Two
Kiera’s getting an earful while standing in line. People have a lot to say in the wake of Winfield’s stirring speech. Aside from the usual griping at the exorbitant cost of concessions items like beer and pretzels and such, and the exhortations of vendors to buy this or that commemorative item (in at least four different collector’s editions with portraits of the accused, the victim and the advocates—get them all!), the impression she gets is the people want this trial to write in cement that Blue Sun system isn’t just a bunch of radicals but people with the rule of law. What did they think of that part of the speech where they remembered when they were all Independents, she asks. Yeah, we were in the War and all but we didn’t blow up no factories when the War is over. They got handed their amnesty papers and they went on with their lives. Kiera also gets the sense from the crowd that Winfield wasn’t necessarily addressing the common man but other people who were more powerful. But how did the speech affect them? Kiera asks. Did it move them or alienate them? Yes and no. Some people are thinking that maybe a death sentence isn’t the only option. Others are thinking that this trial only underscores the fact that in order to get past this, you can’t say that if you’re in a war, whatever you do in a war is okay. Some people are here because they want to see a hanging!
Joshua’s been very quiet throughout the entire trial. Because he’d been tranqued, Arden advised him not to take his daily Flomoxipan and now that he’s sitting in a crowd of 20,000 people, with their emotions running high … ? He’s keeping it together but crowds are never Joshua’s favorite scene and today is no exception. He takes care not to sit next to Rina, knowing her emotions will be especially hard to take.
He’s managed not to get overwhelmed by the psychic atmosphere but right now something is getting through his filters … He’s getting a sick sensation, a feeling of motion sickness. It’s very similar to being hung over, but not quite, and then all of a sudden there’s a feeling of vertigo, a sensation of falling while he’s sitting still. He grabs Nika’s hand.
Nika: (concerned) What?
Down below, the guards are leading Mike Carter off the platform. In the stands, people are taking to the stairs and exits and making their way out. The rest of the crew notices something’s really wrong with Joshua and gather around him to lend him their support.
Nika: Joshua. You all right?
Joshua: (thickly) Think I’m gonna throw up … I’m gonna throw up. Please get me out of here …
Nika: Come on.
She gently takes his arm and eases him up to his feet. Rina and the others clear a path for them through the crowd, aiming for the shade thrown by the concessions stands. Rina’s bringing up the rear and her ear picks up the sound of … distant gunfire?
Rina: Did you hear that?
Nika: No. What?
No one else did. Rina runs back into the stands to lean over the railing, trying to catch the source of that sound, see where it’s coming from. Carter is nowhere in sight. The stadium guards are pacing in the stands and on the ground, their assault rifles at ease, just keeping the crowds moving in calm and orderly fashion. None of the guards seem alarmed or intent on investigating anything strange. Nothing meets the eye but your typical post-event withdrawal.
But Rina is convinced something isn’t right. She searches her ear’s memory, triangulates…and looks again, this time toward the tunnel where Mike had made his entrance. Kiera comes up behind Rina at the rail as Nika and Arden take Joshua off into the shade.
Kiera: What are we looking for?
Rina doesn’t answer but starts making her way to the tunnel. Arden and Nika guide Joshua into the shade of the concessions stand and find a crate for him to sit on. Joshua’s still trying to pull himself together against that sudden wave of nausea.
Joshua: I don’t know what that was …
Nika: (concerned) Are you okay?
Joshua: It’s … really weird.
Nika: You mean it’s too hot?
Joshua: No. (shakes head) I know hot. This is not hot. But … it’s, it’s like … motion sick …
Nika: Why are you motion sick?
Joshua: (still sick) I don’t, I don’t know. If I knew, I’d—
Nika: Okay, let’s get you back to the ship. C’mon.
Joshua: Where did Rina go?
Nika looks up and notices Kiera and Rina are no longer with the party.
Nika: I … (sighs) … don’t know.
Joshua: (not a question) You don’t know.
Arden: We left her in the stands.
Nika: Oh, shii.
Joshua: I know she’s not armed. Such as it is.
Nika: (resigned) I’ll go back and see if I can—
Joshua: Please do.
Arden: I’ll take you back to the ship.
Joshua: (relieved) Thank you, Arden.
Arden lends Joshua a hand up and starts getting the both of them to the Gift while Nika retraces her steps into the stands, hoping to find Rina. And Kiera, now that she’s thought about it. Luckily, Kiera’s a bright redhead and the slanting light of late afternoon will blaze like fire off her hair. Visible from a fair distance, Nika wagers. She makes the rail and leans over it, scanning the stadium.
It’s several miles from the stadium to the spaceport where our ship lies waiting. Arden starts hailing a taxi and Joshua’s insides starts to settle. Or rather, the unsettling feeling is starting to feel familiar—like the vertiginous effects from Reading someone. Only he’s not Reading. Rather it’s like he’s a radio unintentionally picking up someone else’s emotional wavelength. This is a very odd feeling, he’s picking up information from someone but it’s from no one immediately around him. Joshua tries latching onto the emotion and narrowing his focus, trying to find the emotion’s source and location. He gets three nonsense words echoing in his head: Pandora. Deimos. Firefly. Accompanying the three words is a visual of the door to a women’s restroom room.
Joshua digs in his heels.
Joshua: We can’t take a taxi.
Arden: (exasperated) Why?
Joshua: Someone here knows what’s going on. It’s too hard to explain but I think I, I think I’ve picked up something that I wasn’t supposed to picked up. And I don’t mean that in a—
Arden: Like a secret secret sleeper agent has got his instructions and you picked up on it?
Joshua: Maybe. I don’t know. But if I pick up something on a Reader wavelength, it’s got a certain feeling going on. But this is like I’m Reading somebody that is not ... but this, it’s like …
Arden: People don’t normally broadcast?
Joshua: Not on this. Not on this.
Arden: So how can we figure out what’s going to happen?
In the stands, Nika spots Kiera’s red head and Rina’s brunette one near one of the tunnel entrances. Nika picks up her pace, keeping an eye on her feet and another on the two women as they approach the guard at the tunnel. Rina’s in front and Kiera’s following in clutch formation. Nika finds the stairs leading down to the field and takes them as fast as she can.
On the field, Rina runs for the tunnel entrance. She calls out to the guard as he pulls the chainlink gate closed and locks it.
Rina: Could you, could you—could you hold off for a minute?! Please?
She skids to a stop in the sidelines and approaches the guard. She looks a touch desperate and stutters as she makes it to the gate.
Rina: I just, just … (breathily) Can I just, like … walk where he walked?
From across the field, Nika sees Rina approach and takes in the line of her and nearly falls down the stairs. What the hell is going on? She slows to better watch what’s happening.
For her part, Kiera’s already recognized Rina’s not acting like her normal self. The redhead has never seen the engineer get starstruck and sexually charged over a celebrity. Kiera’s not entirely sure if she should yank Rina back from the brink of doing something truly stupid, or facilitate Rina’s scheme by ripping open the woman’s shirt. She settles for looking like a fellow trial-groupie and hopes she’s on the right track. Rina steps closer to the guard. She’s definitely got his attention.
Rina: (glances coyly down, then up) Well … it’s just that … could I just….? Okay, I’ll …. God, he’s just so … (licks lower lip) … I mean, you could come with me and … and … I just … oh, dammit, I’ll just tell you. I—
She gets right up in his space and croons.
Rina: Trials make me hot. (moves closer) And he walked through here and he’s killed I don’t know how many people ….
Guard: Well, I guess if you come with me, it’ll be all safe. I’ll just let ya ….
Rina draws her hands up her throat and over her face and practically shimmies with anticipation. Did she just suck her finger seductively? Yes. Yes, she did. The guard does what any man would do in his position. He pulls the gate open and lets Rina slip inside. He starts locking up behind him when she pulls on his arm.
Rina: Don’t be shy.
Kiera takes that as her cue, flanks the guard, and does a little grind against him. She leans around him and asks Rina the obvious.
Kiera: Can I come, too? I thought we were together.
Rina: (slow grin) Ohhh, you wanna do a three-way?
Kiera: Always.
From afar Nika’s about to lose both eyes, they’re bugging out.
Nika: What the hell? Oh my God, she got in!
Back at the tunnel, the guard leads the two hot babes farther inside.
Kiera: (suggestively) Ooh, we’re in a hallway.
Rina: Ohh, I know. It’s a tunnel.
Rina hangs onto the guard and leans into him but she’s also looking at everything—the floor, the walls, the access panels and hatches, the few doors leading off to the maintenance areas. She’s looking for signs of passage, a scuff mark, a bullet hole, a scrape, a spatter. Vantage points, sniper sight lines—EVERYTHING.
For his part, the guard is rapidly casing the place for another reason—there must be some place he can get a quick hump in without being exposed …
Rina sees the surface underfoot is hard and there are no convenient footprints or impressions to tell her what might have happened in the tunnel once Carter was out of sight of the stadium. However, her nose is telling her something. She smells … not gunpowder, but something very like … sulfur. Now that could mean quite a few interesting things. She disguises her deep investigatory sniff by pressing into the guard.
Rina: (throatily) Ahhh, something smells … good. It’s not you now, is it? (rubs on guard, looks at Kiera) D’you smell that?
She does. Kiera skips forward into the tunnel, walking backward and waving them forward.
Kiera: C’mon. You’re taking too long.
Rina: (miffed) Uh! Woman—! Foreplay is everything.
The tunnel dips, cutting off sight of the far end, then rises again and since she’s a little ahead of the others, Kiera is the first to see what’s waiting in the daylight on the other side. She sees a big-assed hovertruck, something like a giant ambulance, riding a little low. There are three men in PDF uniforms bodily lifting another man who Kiera can only believe to be Mike Carter. His hands are manacled and locked to his backside. He appears to be unconscious. One of the men’s uniforms isn’t fitting too well.
Looks like Kiera’s found her mystery shoppers.
In the tunnel, Rina’s practically pinning the guard to the wall, playing horny for all she’s got. Kiera slides a sedative patch from her pocket and comes up behind him in time for her to hear Rina say:
Rina: Omigod, this is getting me wet—
Kiera: So do I get to go first or do you?
Kiera grabs the guard by the chin and plants a big sloppy kiss on his mouth, the palmed patch aimed for back of his neck.
Rina: Hey, I was supposed to go first—!
Slap! goes the patch. Out! goes the guard. Up! goes Rina’s zipper.
Rina: (sober now) Good deal. Thank you.
We now have one unconscious PDF guard to drag and stash somewhere. Kiera warns Rina of the other men and then fakes getting groped by the guard.
Kiera: There are three guys over there whose suits don’t fit. (to the guard) Wait, not now.
Rina: Aww, sweetie—!
Kiera: Oh, baby, not … too … hard.
Rina pulls the guard’s gun from its holster, chambers a round, and tucks it into her rear waistband. Together she and Kiera drag the guard down a secondary corridor that leads … hell, they’re not sure where it leads, only that it takes them out of sight of the other guys. A quick frisk of the unconscious guard turns up pepper spray and a walkie talkie.
Rina: You take the walkie. You’re the faster talker. I’ll take the pepper spray.
Rina finds zip ties on the man next and the women divvy them up. Kiera quickly finds the channel the other guards are on and sets it so she can keep apprised of developments. She helps Rina drag the guard into the mens room. As they do that, Kiera tells Rina what she saw: three men, PDF suits that don’t fit, Mike hauled into the van. She and Rina get out there just in time to see the van peeling out across the scrub outside the stadium, leaving a plume of dust from its exhaust.
Kiera looks around for a vehicle to steal and finds one. It’s a hover mule, with room for two people behind the open cab and a flatbed stretching out in front mounted with a crane arm. She tags Rina and they run for it. Rina’s got it running in seconds and Kiera takes the wheel.
Rina: Get on the comm. Tell Nika what we’re doing.
Kiera: Capt’n? Capt’n?
Nika lost sight of them when they went into the tunnel with the guard and missed everything that happened afterward. She yanks her comm off her belt and thumbs it.
Nika: Where are you guys?
Kiera shouts down her comm, the wind of the ride whipping through her hair as she follows the van.
Kiera: We’re on a flatbed truck, following where Mike has gone with guys with ill-fitting uniforms.
Nika: Aw, SHIIII!
On the pavement out front, Joshua refuses to move.
Joshua: I need Nika.
Arden: Why?
Nika comes into view, cursing a blue streak in sotto voce. She joins them and yells down her comm, looking around to pinpoint her location.
Nika: Shi! Dang it! Concessions. Southeast corner. (to the men, pointing) We’re going that way.
They go that way. Kiera pulls up.
Rina: Jump in!
They jump onto the open flat bed in front of the cab. They speed off. Arden leans with Kiera’s sharp turn and looks over at Joshua.
Arden: How’s your motion sickness now?
Joshua: It’s fine.
Nika: (to the men) Tell me what’s going on.
Arden: We have to find a ladies’ restroom.
Nika: What?!
Joshua: I can’t really describe it, but I picked up code signal. I—
Joshua explains how his motion sickness is tied to his vision of someone or something waiting in a ladies room on the property. Not that it’s going to help us now that we’re pulling away from the property as fast as Kiera can drive without getting pulled over by the law or spotted by the van she’s following.
Joshua: It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.
Kiera leans out of the cab window and yells forward.
Kiera: Hey, Joshua! You owe me a tranq patch. It’s part of a vision. How do I file?
Joshua: (for the love of Pete!) “Care of: I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass”.
Because, really, we have other things to worry about. Like the fact that the van has a more powerful engine and is steadily pulling away from us. Nika climbs in through the cab window and takes over at the wheel. Rina finds the engine access and grabs the tools onboard and starts jiggering for more output. She manages to reroute the power reserved for lifting loads and diverts it into lateral thrust and the mule rockets forward. The wind is really whipping by now and the people outside the cab are finding the exposure a mite uncomfortable. Actually, make that harrowing. There are no seats in the forward bed, just the crane and assorted tools and chain, and the rest of the crew are hanging on for dear life.
The van notices us finally and veers off onto a side road—or what passes for one on the near-trackless salt flats we’re both barreling over. Nika hauls on the wheel and follows them. Rina yells in her ear.
Rina: I wonder when they’re going to start shooting at us.
Nika: (for the love of Pete!) Rina!
Rina shuts up, the hover mule guns forward, and physics takes over. We’re lighter, we’re faster, ergo: we’re gaining on the van. And now we have to decide what to do once we catch up to it. Do we pull up alongside? Do we overtake it? Do we stay behind it? With Rina’s modifications, we might even manage to hover over it and launch an assault from above.
Arden eyes the crane arm on the flatbed and notices that it’s outfitted with a hook. Is there a way to hook it to the rear of the van? Say, to the handles of the doors at the back of the van? One good stomp on the brakes by Nika should rip those puppies right off. Now, if we can just get the hook around the handles …. Rina takes some tools, grabs one of the chains on the bed and shimmies up the arm of the crane. Nika puts on a little more speed to bridge the distance between the mule and the van and centers the crane on the van’s rear doors. Rina hopes to run the chain through the door handles and hook them to the crane, giving us what we need to rip the doors off the van.
Of course, it’s easier said than done. The mule and the van are both hovercraft and therefore not much affected by the roughness of the terrain surface, but still there are vagaries in driving styles and natural obstacles that must be driven around. The mule dips and weaves in the slipstream of the van, wind makes it hard to see. And once we’re hooked to the van, we’ll be pulled along behind it like we’re waterskiing.
Rina’s at a disadvantage. She has to hang onto the crane, extend past the end of it and work the chain. She’s doing this one handed, her other hand grabs the crane to keep from falling. After several tries and near-falls, she inches back to the cab and the others. If there’s a way to hook the doors, she’s not the one able to do it.
Grabbing Mike out the back of the van isn’t an option. We’ll need to either enter it from another angle or find a way to stop the van. Nika increases the throttle and pulls up alongside and flies us higher off the ground, coming even with the roof of the van. From there we can try going through the roof or taking out the driver in the van’s cab.
Kiera jumps on first. She lands like a cat. Rina jumps and nearly misses, managing to kick herself up onto the van after some effort (and a flashback to an incident in the war). They are joined by an occupant from the van—it’s Johannes Volker III. Rina asks if he’s part of the rescue mission.
Volker: Oh, wait. You look familiar.
Rina: My boyfriend’s in the truck. (points through the roof of the van) That’s my guy.
Volker: Sorry.
Rina: Well, what are you doing with him?
Volker: I don’t know. But you’re gonna have to get off. Or I’ll just take you off.
Rina: Don’t make me hurt you, man.
Volker has something like a flashlight in his hand and he pushes a button on it with his thumb. It extends a retractable blade about two feet long. Obviously it’s no flashlight. Rina’s gun is in her rear waistband but the van is weaving too much for her to draw it—she needs both hands on the van to avoid falling off. Volker is a little better at the balancing act and actually has a hand free. That’s all the advantage he needs to skewer Rina and Kiera and send them over the side.
On the mule, Joshua takes in the situation on top of the van and remembers something from his days at the Academy. He remembers several times before when he’d been hit with nausea out of the blue, coinciding with things happening at the Academy. At the time he wasn’t sure why and no one at the Academy seemed able to explain it. After all, in theory the Academy telepaths were supposed to be passive receptors instead of active broadcasters.
Nice little bit of intel, but it doesn’t do a thing to keep Volker from using his sword. Joshua takes a deep breath and before Volker can use it, Joshua jumps for and grabs Volker’s ankle, dragging them both off the vehicles to the ground. They lie there wounded and panting for breath.
This unexpected move by Joshua causes Nika to swerve in surprise… and the flatbed slams into the undercarriage of the van. Both vehicles grind to a halt.
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