Episode 407: Brisbane Ghosts, Part Three

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Kiera’s excited at the prospect. After all, she wanted an excuse to use her big gun. Rina reminds her Captain that our shuttle doesn’t have any ordnance. Joshua points out that our ordnance might not need be anything else but hanging Kiera and her big gun out the window. We also have our gun turret cannon and light machine gun mounted to the Gift’s belly.

Nika: Quite frankly if the damn place is overrun, I say we raze it to the ground.
Joshua: (no) Oohhh….
Nika: But that’s just my thought. Whatever.
Arden: That’s not helping the people who are there.
Joshua: Let’s not raze anything to the ground.
Nika: (facetiously) Damn, Joshua. You ruin all my fun.
Joshua: I know. Except for that time …
Nika: Well even that wasn’t enough fun. Okay?
Arden: (eyes wide) Oh, man!
Joshua: I wasn’t directly involved in that fun.
Nika: I didn’t even get a whole 12 hours out of that. I just got one bar brawl out of it. And the damn PDF brought me back. Which was kinda fun, because you know, they were cute and one guy had a really—anyway.

Right. Anyway. Back on task.

Joshua: So what are we doing?
Nika: We’re taking the shuttle for a fly-by, first thing. Whatever comes after that? We’ll see.
Joshua: Okay.
Rina: Let’s hope whatever comes after that doesn’t come after you.
Nika: Yeah, well … you know.

And with that in mind, we’ll go armed for bear. Lock and load. We take stock of our weapons locker. Four pistols, four assault rifles, ten grenades.

Nika: I had a very beautiful sniper rifle once. And it went poof!

It went ‘missing’ after Lenore’s crew stole our ship and everything on her.

Nika: I haven’t been able to replace it yet.
Rina: I had a beautiful red dress and the bitch stole it. Probably stretched it out, too.
Kiera: Yeah?
Rina: Yeah.
Nika: When they stole our ship.
Rina: It was either Mary or that, that blonde that was with her. Prancin’ around in it.
Arden: She wasn’t wearing that dress long. How about that?
Rina: Great. And now it’s ripped too.
Joshua: (softly) Rina? Rina.
Nika: (grinning) Only at the crotch, okay?
Joshua: Rina.
Kiera: It’s probably just torn at the seam. It’ll be fine.

Nika starts laughing but Rina’s still incensed. She had plans for that dress, now never to be. And not just because it’s missing.

Joshua: (firm) Rina.
Rina: (ditto) Joshua.

Which sets Nika off again.

Joshua: Technically Paragraph Three, subparagraph 4 says, “No bitching about co-employees”.
Nika: What?
Joshua: I’m just making shit up.
Nika: Okay.
Joshua: And she would have bought it.
Kiera: (to Rina) We’ll get you a red dress.
Joshua: (ditto) How’s the engine?
Nika: (ditto) How’s the hull?
Arden: (ditto) How’s the whole ship?

Presented with a unified front, Rina lets the matter go and tells them. The engine’s going to need some work. The thrusters will need work. Luckily she believes she’s got everything she needs to repair it with the scrap and parts we have on hand. If not, we might be able to get them in Brisbane. Kiera says her container’s still attached. That also counts for something. Joshua says his was a perfectly fine landing. Apparently his pride is still smarting at the aspersions cast on it by Kiera. Nika tells him that it was a beautiful landing. He did great. He didn’t cause the lightning to hit us, after all.

Ruffled feathers smoothed all around, we get back to the job of planning that op. We’ll fly up in the dropship and do a visual reconnaissance. Our dropship’s sensor package isn’t complex enough to give us any heat signature readings, so we won’t be counting heads on the ground that way. Even so, having the dropship gives us speed, maneuverability, and the ability to land in small tight spaces—things that we’ll need for this job.

Joshua: Okay to be rude—
Nika: Are you really going to be rude to me.
Joshua: No, not really.
Nika: Really?
Joshua: No, not really. Before we take off at the speed of light, or close to it, you did want Rina and Arden to look at the radio transmission.
Nika: Yes. And being as it’s nighttime right now, we’re not going in the dead of night. We’re going to do that before we leave.
Arden: It needs to be cleaned up first.

And that can take hours to go through the signal.

Rina: Okay, I can stay up all night but I’ll be dogmeat tomorrow when we make our run.
Joshua: Hold on. We’ve got two weeks to secure it. I’m not saying we want to dilly dally around for a week and three-quarters and then decide it’s time to do it.
Nika: All we’re doing is aerial recon at the moment.
Kiera: That’s what I think would be a really brilliant idea.
Nika: That’s all I’m plannin’ on doin’. I’m not plannin’ on landin’. I’m not plannin’ on blowin’ anything up.
Rina: Okay.
Nika: I realize our plans never go according to plan but, you know!
Joshua: Thank you.
Rina: Okay Captain. I have a question for you. Do you need me to go with you tomorrow?
Nika: Uhn-nn.
Rina: Okay, I’ll stay here and fix the ship.
Kiera: Can I volunteer to go with you anyway so that way in case they shoot you down, it would be nice to have somebody there with a big gun?
Nika: Yeah.
Kiera: Then I volunteer to go with my new toy.
Arden: And you need someone who can fix you up if you get shot.
Nika: Okay.
Arden: So Arden’s volunteered too.

And that just sets off another round of one-upmanship between the redhead and Arden. It’s about who’s a doctor as opposed to a plastic surgeon and the relative merits of either when it comes to stitching up gunshot wounds. After all, they—

Nika sighs.

Nika: If everyone wants to go, everyone is allowed to go. I’m flying.

And she’s apparently taking the bickering Kiera and Arden along for the ride. And at the rate they’re going, those two are going to bitch at each other the entire way. God knows why. Foreplay. That’s it. It’s just foreplay. Nika wishes they’d just sleep together and get this whole unspoken thing between them over with. If she’s lucky, they’ll do that before they all take off tomorrow for that recon.


Friday, 11 Jul 2521
1200hrs, local time

Nika and Kiera make their initial recon flight over the camp at midday. It’s fairly overgrown. There are several more buildings since the last time we’d seen the camp, including a big central building with two smokestacks. The other elements remain the same. The river still runs past it, the stockade fence still barricades it from the rest of the world. The forest is still thick along the perimeter, rising up the wooded slope at the camp’s back. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around. A shipment of logs lies in several untidy ranks on the shallow beach at river’s edge. Log lifters are scattered amongst in haphazard fashion, as if abandoned the minute the logs were all pulled from the water. Nika does a quick sweep of the area with the sensors and gets back to the safety of the Gift.

They present their findings to the rest of us in the forward lounge, the sensor readouts printed and on the table. Joshua wants to know if there were any bodies.

Nika: Now, keep in mind, we’re trackin’ prion disease. There wouldn’t be dead bodies just sittin’ around.
Joshua: The point is there should be something.
Nika: There was something. (points to readouts) The smokestacks were still warm.

Somebody’s using the camp for something. But what?

Kiera: The stockade wasn’t breached. The road’s overgrown and disappears into the trees so we could see it appearing periodically. There shoulda had a silly thing up on the hill for a defensive position, but … (shrugs)
Nika: How long as it been since they’ve had contact again?

Pretty much a year. Since the last time we were here. February 18. In point of fact, they’d pretty much lost contact with the camp even before we were last there. Back then it had been in the hands of a quasi-military survivalist group and the place had been kept scrupulously clear of overgrowth and undergrowth for defensive reasons. The greenery taking over the camp now is a stark contrast. It also argues that whoever’s using the camp now isn’t likely the same people who had it then. So who’s using it?

Nika: The only thing we saw, number one: at least so far as we saw there were no remains. There’s no one now caring for the camp that we can tell.
Kiera: They did close the gate.
Nika: The gate was shut. The machinery is all sitting as if they walked away mid-shift, in a lot of cases.
Arden: Any sign of fire?
Nika: The smokestacks were warm when we passed over. So while they may not be running right then, they may have been running earlier today or yesterday. And the one thing I’m wondering with that is how far underground does that building go.
Kiera: I don’t know but it’s obvious they’re not burning the wood.
Nika: At least not what’s out front. And why in the hell would they be burning anything they brought in fresh? (points to logs on readouts) Because that stuff would be all dry. It doesn’t look like they’ve been dragging wood into here though.

For all we got sensor readings off the place, there’s not enough information to go on. We’re going to have to go back and land the dropship and put our boots on the ground. Thing is, where do we land? We examine the readouts. There is the beach. There is the open area behind the majority of the buildings where the water tank for the camp rises above the ground. There is the main yard that the buildings are arranged around. Rina likes this LZ the least, pointing out that they can be fired upon from three sides by snipers in the buildings. Further cover for hostiles is provided by beached logs on the fourth. However, since the majority of the buildings are sitting on that part of the camp, it argues it is the most stable piece of ground to land our dropship on. The last thing we want to do is land her in a swamp and get her sunk to her thrusters in the mud.

Kiera also dislikes the designated LZ, liking instead the area immediately around the water tank. It’s a little overgrown but surely the dropship can stomp on some baby trees without injury. We point out that those trees might be concealing machinery and other less forgiving stuff. While tactically speaking, the center of the camp might not be the best, it is unequivocally clear of debris.

If we’re going to do a more thorough search before it gets dark, we’ll have to leave now. Joshua, unsure if he’s even going, pulls Arden aside and begs for ten minutes observation on the signal recording. If he’s staying behind, he might as well be doing something useful while the others are away. Figuring out what that signal was would be something. The signal is undeniably odd. We find that it could either be a combination of static and storm interference or it could be that there is a second signal embedded in the first and that the second signal is encrypted. Heavily encrypted. It’s an old military encryption code and one that would take substantial computer time to brute force open.

That seems really odd for a deserted camp to do. Joshua asks Rina for a description of the crew’s last trip to the camp. She tells him it was manned by people originally Browncoat militia. Also, she wasn’t able to observe much very carefully, given she was busy acting as the distraction driving the Gator like a maniac through the camp, but it seemed to her that the camp had circled its wagons in paranoia against the TSE outbreak and had formed something like Apache raiding parties to clear out the area immediately around. Burning down miners’ cabins, killing people who resisted.

How well were they armed, Joshua asks next. She tells him they threatened us—verbally—with surface to air missiles. Otherwise, the men seemed to be armed with the usual rifles and small arms. They had guard towers at the usual spots with search lights. Barbed wire. That sort of thing. Basically all the hallmarks of a survivalist mentality.

And in keeping with that survivalist mentality, what if they truly went off the deep end of it, Joshua wants to know. Taking that paranoia to the extreme. Just went too far with the philosophy and dug themselves underground, killing people who come to investigate and then hiding the bodies. He doesn’t have any real evidence for it, mind, but their behavior from a year ago does argue for the possibility.

If you tie in the fact that the signal we’d run into has military encryption embedded beneath the top signal, that the last known residents of the camp had military experience and training, it does tend to point to a military operation might be dug into the mountain there. Maybe that odd signal is how they’re communicating with others like them.

Kiera wonders why the other logging camp further upslope was left alone in last year’s actions? Why did the camp downstream of them leave them alone? To be sure, the camp was convinced that there were TSE-infected zombies out to get them, hence the fortifications and the razing parties … but wouldn’t the fact that there was a potential enemy camp at their backs and on high ground make them attack that camp too? Yet there have been no reports of such a thing happening before or during our last visit here and we’ve already verified that people are still working that camp. Well, they’re working but not sharing what they’re working on. Namely, lumber.

Of course, prion disease causes a form of insanity. If the Thompson camp had been affected by the disease, it made sense that the camp denizens would start acting insane, doing things for insane or inexplicable reasons. It could be nothing more than that.

Joshua wondered briefly how much extra it costs the smaller upslope camp to have the ships come to them to take their lumber, as opposed to floating it down the river. We surmise it might not be all that much more. The money was made from getting a cut of the sale of the processed lumber, not from the receipt of the raw lumber floated downriver or flown downslope. Only after the raw lumber was processed at a mill, any mill, and sold did the secondary camp look to get paid. If they had to pay a little more to get the raw materials flown out, all they need do is raise the asking price by a similar amount for the airlift to be revenue neutral. If all they’re selling now is the raw lumber due to the Thompson mill being closed, they’ll stand to lose a little more money by selling the lumber raw, but they’d still be making money. Assuming that’s their reasoning, anyway. For all we know, the second camp doesn’t give a flying flip about the costs.

But that’s a digression from the matter at hand: what’s happening up at the camp?

Joshua’s main worry is that his ultra-paranoid survivalist scenario is the reality up at the camp and in his estimation, it would be worse than actual Reavers. After all, Reavers don’t act like tactically- trained former military units with lots of nasty things that go bang and boom, intent on fighting anyone who’s there.

Kiera: It’s called fightin’ a snake in its own little hole. Chasin’ a gopher down its hole and tryin’ to fight in its den or fightin’ a rattlesnake in its hole.
Joshua: You fight rattlesnakes?

He seems kind of awed by that.

Kiera: You don’t ever get off this spaceship much, do you?
Joshua: (rattlesnakes?) But there’s a story behind that.
Arden: Like many things on this ship.
Joshua: I’m not getting off the ship as much as I would like …

Who brings the food to the camp? What are they eating up there? Back when we were here last, there was no indication of farming going on up there or livestock. Who knows what the camp is surviving on now.

No, we just need to put our boots on the ground and find out. If only we can figure a way to get on the ground without getting shot. Joshua suggests using the abseiling vac suits of the dropship to dangle an observer as we approach. Joshua actually jumps on this idea and argues to be the one to do it. It would be fun, a blast, to fly on a wire underneath the drop ship at high speed, he says. In fact, the suit would give him more protection than wearing a ballistic vest alone would, and with the helmet of the vac suit he’d even have head protection and think of the view he’d get, the things he could see that the others might miss and—

Nika cuts into Joshua’s plans.

Nika: (flat) No.
Kiera: Just think. Everybody would be shooting at him and he wouldn’t notice and we could get off.
Joshua: But the abseiling part of it is the fun part.
Nika: No.
Kiera: We’d know exactly where they were.
Nika: You do realize that she’s just all hot and bothered over this idea and stuff?
Joshua: I was the one who suggested it.
Kiera: See? It was his idea.
Nika: I don’t like the fact that you being in danger apparently turns her on.

No. Absolutely not. Nika will not condone dangling Joshua like a piñata for the enemy to shoot at, no matter what protection he’s wearing. Joshua relents and tells her that the idea originally came about as a solution to finding out what’s on the ground at alternate LZs without committing the dropship. And it just got silly from there. He points out the possible alternates but Nika decides that ambush-prone or not, the original site chosen is the site we’ll land in.

Looking over the readouts, we recall that this building here was the mess hall. That building over there was the multi-level building that Rick and Johannes infiltrated, where Johann somehow took out a room full of guards silently and bloodily. Over here is the garage. Over there are work oriented buildings like workshops. And here is a cinderblock building and we don’t know what it is …

Squinting, Nika vaguely remembers there being catepillar tracks to one side, as if someone drove a tractor into the woods. Which is really odd … Nika’s not 100% sure how long ago the tracks were made. Possibly after the thunderstorm of yesterday…or maybe not.

Enough! The weather outside is getting cloudy and is threatening rain. Not the best of conditions for a ground recon. We reschedule the ground reconnaissance for the next day to give the weather time to clear, get a good night’s sleep, and hope for the best.


Saturday, 12 Jul 2521
1200hrs, local time.


The weather doesn’t clear as we’d hoped. In fact, it’s raining when we take off. It’s still raining on the heights when we approach the camp. Kiera and Joshua are wearing rain gear. Kiera’s is a rather snappy oiled duster and matching hat. Joshua’s more prosaic but no less waterproof. Rina’s got her leather jacket and cap, but the rain will win through those in the end and basically she and Nika and Arden are simply resigned to getting wet.

Thanks to the weather our landing isn’t as smooth as Nika’s usual and when we settle from the bump, Kiera looks over to Joshua:

Kiera: Rain messes up these ships, lemme tellya. Like student, like teacher, huh? Joshua, may I apologize. This is landing exactly the way you were taught to land.
Joshua: Hey. Don’t knock her. She’s a fantastic pilot.
Kiera: I know. I’m just messin’ with ya’. Tryin’ to loosen up the mood before we get killed.

Not all of us are wearing rain gear, either through lack or choice, and those of us who aren’t are going to be miserable wet and cold in a minute. However, bulky rain gear won’t hamper our movement or reaction times. It’s a trade off. Kiera’s got her oiled duster on and oiled hat—she’ll be dry. She can serve the rest of us chicken soup in our bunks.

We step off.

No one shoots at us from the buildings on three sides. Nothing comes at us from the water and the logs on the fourth. And in fact, as the dropship’s hull steams and cools in the rain and the spatter of water off the eaves marks the passing seconds, we begin to wonder if anyone is still here. The place as an even more creepified deserted look on the ground than from the air. The windows of what are obviously bunkhouses stare blankly into the gloom and the rain. The buildings stand silent, going slowly decrepit from neglect. The entire place has the feel of a ghost town.

Eerie. Quiet. Watching.

We fan out and check the perimeter.  A quick recon fixes the buildings from our remembered trip firmly on the map and establishes the identities of the newer ones that have been built since. At the water tower end of the camp, we have the building with the smokestacks and a machine shop, a tool shed stocked with tools and chain saws, and the generator building with the generator disconnected from the hydro. Closer to the dropship we have the dorms.

Joshua’s ears pick up something in the high grass beyond the buildings and taps Kiera on the arm. She’s heard it too. There’s something making a faint high-pitched sound in the grass, the blades parting and bending as something moves through it. It reaches the edge of the camp and they see it’s a dog.

But it’s not just any dog. It’s a … if Reavers could be made of dogs, then this one quite possibly could be one of them. Or it could be infected with the TSE. Either way, it’s dangerous. And more than that it’s hideous looking, its hide scabrous and patchy, its eyes not quite sane, its lips drawn back and drool dripping from its teeth. Bloody drool. It growls and barrels lightning fast toward Joshua and Kiera.

Joshua is unarmed. Kiera has her big-assed gun. He gets out of the way. She shoots.

BLAM!

Scratch one Reaverized dog. Add one greasy spot on the dirt. And kibbles and bits.

Joshua: By the god of Faria’s worship, that’s one helluva gun.
Kiera: Gotta kick to it. Damnnnn….

Nika whips around at the sound of fire, sees who it is and lowers her weapon in time.

Joshua: By the way, there was a dog over there.
Nika: There was?
Joshua: There was. There is no longer a dog there. I strongly suggest that no one go near that dog since it looked like it was a bloody mess before she actually turned it into a bloody mess.
Kiera: Salsa!
Arden: What are you trying to say?
Joshua: I’m trying to say it could have rabies or… Reaver disease.

Prion disease. Well, whatever it had, it don’t have it no more. How did it look, Arden asks. Kiera admits she didn’t bother with the details once she noticed the bloody slavering mouth. She just up and shot it at that point. Nika says she did the right thing.

Where did the dog come from? Over yonder. Kiera points to the tall grass behind the dorm buildings. Arden looks at the carcass briefly. It was a hound dog and against expectation, it’s not skin and bone, suggesting that it hasn’t been living wild since our last visit but had started doing so only recently. Even so, it was clearly a threat and had to be dealt with.

We can still hear the reverb of Kiera’s gun echoing off the hills. Rina suggests we get under cover before they come looking.

Joshua: Who is “they”?
Arden: Is someone going to come looking for their dog?

Who is they? Only the people who’ve taken over the camp and caused the trouble we’re investigating. Geez! Nika opines maybe we should shoot the rabid people instead. Starting with one twitchy engineer?

We resume our search of the camp.

We check out the building with the smoke stacks. There’s something painted on the side of the building in dark red paint. Or what could be dark red paint. Maybe it’s blood? The paint spells out a word: murderers The building is a combination of wood and masonry and the word has been painted on the softer surface of the wood. Rina goes closer to eyeball the word. She has the morbid idea that gouges would have been left behind by the bone ends of the severed limb used to paint the word on the building… and that just squicks everyone in the search party. But see? There are gouges. Right there. Rina points them out. More squick from everyone else.

Moving on!

We round the building and discover the doors are chained shut. Heavy iron chain, an electronic padlock—both not entirely new—and a harsh chemical smell emanating from behind the doors. Mixed with the chemical smell is the rich aroma of organic material rotting away… but looking through the window yields us nothing due to grime and age. We’ll have to get that lock off and open the doors to see what waits inside.

Joshua encourages us to look around first before we pop any locks off. For all we know, Nika says, Reavers could be on the other side of that door. We leave that building alone to do a more thorough investigation of the others. We retrace our steps to the machine shop and find evidence of someone making bullets. Gauging the condition of the room, we estimate that it’s been about a year since anything’s been touched. The tool shed is next in the lineup and we can see a collection of chainsaws and machetes on the walls and tables, perfectly in keeping with a lumber camp. We also see that some of the same are missing, leaving gaps in the ranks of tools. And the last major building is the generator room, it’s couplings to the underground hydro tanks completely gone. The interior is relatively clean when we poke our heads in, not spit-shined exactly, but not left to rack and ruin either. Before we can investigate further we hear an engine sputter and roar to life outside.

Engine running = people!

We listen and realize that one of the log movers is running, one of the movers near our dropship. Kiera starts hoofing it for Lagniappe, knowing if the mover hits and damages our dropship, we’re not getting out of here. We round the corner of the building in time to hear metal scream and squeal against metal. We have a clear view all the way down the center of the camp and the dropship and the crane. The metal noise is from the crane straining to lift a log from the bottom of a pile, and the weight is too much for it. The crane persists and the squeal gets louder and gear start to grind.

There is no one in the cab of the crane.


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