Episode 416: Miranda Calling, Part Four
Joshua: All of them.
Nika: (tapping screen) I’d say those three.
Rina: Those three? And that will leave us this one and this one…
Nika: Both of those are passenger compartments so yeah, we have those as well.
Rina: But we don’t have passengers in them.
Nika: No. They’re empty.
Rina: Then I say they’re fair game.
Nika: You’re gonna chuck all five of them? If you want all five of them, take’em.
Rina: (to self) This one and this one and … this one…we’ve got … (thinks)
Force equals Mass times Acceleration. More is More.
Rina: I say we jettison the one ton of scrap we’re hauling around. We can always buy more. We have the money. So. (taps the schematic) This is Kiera’s container, this is the half container. We’re not jettisoning that. (taps gun turret) So this section and that section are off-limits. (taps both) We still have this, this, this, and this. And we have our Botany Bay…
Joshua: Don’t touch that one.
Rina: (continuing) … here. But we have this one and this one and this one. Those are the empty passenger ones.
She taps the 2nd class containers and Dean’s passenger container aft of Botany Bay. Joshua starts taking notes. As Steward, he has to track our resources.
Joshua: Four cargo containers. Three 2nd class passenger containers.
Rina: Any supplies that were left behind from the settlers we’ve dropped off on Miranda?
Joshua: No, there’s still a small chunk of supplies in one of the cargo containers.
Rina: Then I say we move them because we might need them.
Joshua: Why?
Joshua pulls up his manifest. The cargo in question is made up of seeds, rakes, and saws. Things of that ilk.
Joshua: Leave them in the cargo container. Give’em extra weight.
Rina: Nothing that we need. Why didn’t they take it with them?
Dean’s people had to be ruthless in their choices. They had reduced numbers and less capacity to carry their supplies with them, so they took what they could immediately use. They took vegetable seeds over seed wheat, hand tools over heavy machinery. And while the seed wheat and the machinery are valuable commodities in the goods-starved Rim, our need to survive trumps whatever profit we might make holding them to sell. Joshua spares a second’s thought to the possibility of salvageable seed stock for his Botany Bay but dispenses with the idea. Likewise the non-food stock they’d left behind is pretty much expendable.
We have a day, maybe a day and a half before we get to our jettison point. We quit the bridge and get to work. The explosive bolts will require using all of our heavy weapons ordnance. That would mean we’d have nothing to throw at the Reavers should our make-shift trap fail. There is also potential damage to Lagniappe as the containers jettison. Rina will shape the charges as best she can for lateral displacement, but there are no guarantees Lagniappe will escape harm. For the rest of the flight to Fury Rina slaves over the bolts while the rest of the crew shifts the scrap.
It’s backbreaking work. Several times we open channels to call for help and get nothing but Reaver screaming over the comms. Every channel is filled with it. We’re not getting any help from that quarter. We’re also not getting very much sleep—too much work needs to be done in too short a time. Joshua and Arden comment on it as they shift the scrap.
Arden: I think we all need more Pax.
Joshua: It was a really incredible restful sleep, I must say that.
Well, if comatose is more to your liking then sure, it was restful. Arden shakes his head and they work on.
Tuesday, 23 Sept 2521
Fury, Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
1735hrs, ship’s time
The work is done. The cargo containers are loaded with what we can shift into them and they’re rigged to blow at the press of a button. Rina’s holed up in the engine room, simultaneously watching the status of our girl’s engines and keeping her finger near the trip switch she’s made for the bolts. It’s a simple affair, a single button on a quick and dirty board with wires leading from it. The wires trail over the side of her console and crawl over the deck and out the engine room door, running to each container we’ve rigged to blow. Rina sits in her chair, running her eye over the gauges and drumming her fingers, waiting for the signal from Nika.
Nika is in the pilot’s seat and Joshua’s riding shotgun. Both of them have eyes and hands busy on the controls and the scopes. It’s quiet on the bridge save for the hum of the engines and the occasional squeak of Nika’s leather gloves on the yoke.
In the passenger lounge, Arden’s keeping company with Kiera. Kiera is sitting at the table with a bottle of the good stuff in front of her, thinking if she’s gonna die, it’s gonna be with a good drink in hand—if she can arrange it, with some good stiff drinks already inside her. She pours a shot and downs it. She tries not to stare at the clock. It messes up her aim pouring the booze into the little bitty glasses.
There’s more than just nerves making the job of pouring dicey. Installing the explosive bolts has subtly altered the way the containers fit on the frame of our girl, making the ride feel a little … rickety, like a train on rails. Getting the bolts to fire cleanly is going to be tricky, too. Rina does what she can to ensure that and unable to do more, she leaves the rest of it in Nika’s hands.
Nika has her hands full skimming the Gift along the surface of Fury. It’s a pity we don’t have a hydrogen scoop, we’d have free fuel for the taking. As it is, fire crawls across our bridge windows and makes it hard to see the stars. Nika’s plan is to hit the brakes and have Rina release the containers at the same time.
The clock keeps ticking as the distance to our brake point dwindles. The containers rattle and clank. Rina drums her fingers, Kiera drinks, Arden sits, and Joshua scans the sensors. Nika spares a glance at the readouts, catches the speed of the numbers scrolling down, and internally follows through in her head. 100, 000 kilometers, 90,000 … 80, 000 … She taps her headset live with a gloved fingertip and hails Rina in engineering.
Nika: Here we go. On three. Not one, two, and then three, but one, two, three and then go.
Rina: On your mark.
Three.
Two.
One.
Mark.
Rina presses the button to release the containers just as Nika drops us out of pulse. The pitch of the engines abruptly changes even as we hear the loud crump! of the bolts exploding via the hull. And a split second later, our sensors spike with a massive energy pulse as the Reaver ship drops out of pulse and slams right into the containers. Debris from the impact screams past our ship, streaking outward in all directions. Some of the pieces fly past the bridge windows and Joshua catches sight of the lettering on the side of one of the flaming pieces.
Joshua: I had money on cargo container number two.
Nika: (sweetly waving) Bye-bye … !
Nika waggles her fingers at the debris outside and then cuts loose a triumphant yell that carries clearly to the rear of our ship and back again.
Joshua: That was totally freaking cool!
Score: Reavers 0, Summer’s Gift 1.
Nika steers us clear of Fury’s surface and brings us down to a more sedate pace. The lanes ahead of us are clear and she engages the autopilot and quits her chair. The adrenaline is zooming through her and by God if she doesn’t let some of it loose, there’s no telling what crazy thing she’ll get up to. Best she’s not in the chair when she does. Joshua follows her off the bridge.
Back in the lounge, Kiera downs her shot as Nika and Joshua walk in.
Arden: You know, we really oughta buy barrels full of barbarians.
Kiera: Screw the jigger. (grabs the bottle for a slug)
Nika: Barbarians?
Kiera: (to Nika) Here’s the bottle.
Joshua: We have the most fun on this ship.
Nika: (to Joshua) You are gorram psychotic.
Joshua: What’s your point? Who can say that they’ve done that? (sketches a wild wave off the bow) And you’ve done it twice.
Kiera: Rock and roll woman! Rock and roll. (to Joshua) Hey, ain’t you ever gonna drink anything?
Joshua: Hell, yeah.
Kiera: Here. Take a drink. C’mon, y’all. This is a celebration. Come on up.
She passes the bottle over. The bottle makes a round and Nika notices someone’s missing. Nika cranes her head aft, fills her lungs, and calls out.
Nika: Rina!
Rina: (over comms) Da.
Nika: Nice shot.
In the engine room, with the sounds of celebration coming over the comms, Rina smiles a quiet little smile and runs an appreciative hand over the Gift’s engine. Nice, indeed. Kiera’s call cuts in from the speakers.
Kiera: Come on. Drink a toast. We’re having whiskey up here. Mighty fine. Mighty fine.
Rina gives Summer’s Gift a parting pat and joins the crew. Kiera pours her a glass. Arden asks:
Arden: What just happened?
Nika: We’re still alive. (laughs) It’s all good.
Joshua: (slams his drink back) And we’ve destroyed cargo container number two!
Kiera: (toasts) Five!
Arden: (toasts) Two and Five.
Actually, when the Reaver ship blew up, it pretty much took all the containers with it.
Arden: You know, the next planet we land on had better have a warm tropical beach.
Nika: The next place we land had better have a warm tropical beach and naked men.
Arden: Ahh …. (wags eyebrows and laughs)
Rina: Is Lagniappe still there?
Joshua: Gee, my psychic abilities tell me that … (eyes shut, fingers to temple) … it’s still there.
Kiera frowns at Rina. Leave it to the Russian to insert worry into a drinking party. She turns to Joshua and passes the bottle over.
Kiera: Here. Drink more.
Joshua: I don’t know if you want to do that. I haven’t taken my drugs yet. They’re the ones that keep me from just randomly reading people.
Kiera: Fine, you can piddle-paddle through the cobwebs of my brain. I don’t care. Gimme that. (grabs the bottle)
Rina drapes her arm across Joshua’s shoulders, raises her glass, and gives him a sly smile.
Rina: So—
Rina doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Nika might be riding high on the adrenaline right now but she still had the presence of mind to patch the bridge comms over the PA. The PA crackles to life and a male voice comes through it.
Voice: This is Yan Wo Airspace calling unidentified freighter.
Rina: (muttering) Oh, darn. So much the celebratory sex …
Arden: (spit take!) What?!
Rina: I was gonna snag him and drag him back, but not enough time. (kisses Joshua’s cheek)
Joshua: (smiles) Thank you.
And just like that, we’re back to business. Nika hustles back to the bridge and synchs her headset with Yan Wo, every inch the professional pilot she is.
Nika: Yan Wo, this is the freighter Summer’s Gift.
Yan Wo: Our sensors indicates some sort of explosion. Are you in any danger?
Nika: No, sir. Not anymore. We’d like permission to land, though.
Yan Wo: We’re giving you a vector to approach.
Arden looks up at the PA in the lounge and calls out to it.
Arden: You have warm tropical beaches there, right?
Kiera passes Arden the bottle to shut him up and Nika cuts the PA to the lounge to prevent further kibitzing. She adjusts her headset mike, continuing:
Nika: Could use a refuel though.
Yup. Back to business. Back in the lounge, the rest of the crew starts wrapping things up.
Arden: What do you think our chances of running into telepathic penguins are? Pretty damn good, probably.
Joshua: (brightening) They have telepathic penguins here?
Arden: There could be.
Joshua: Ohhh ... Telepathic penguins …
Kiera: Here. (gives bottle over ) Take it all to everybody and let’em all celebrate.
Arden: I’ll pass.
Joshua: Really?
Arden: Yeah.
Kiera: It’s part’a my fine stores. You’re passin’ on some of the highest grade stuff you’re ever gonna see.
Joshua: I’ll get it. (snags it) Thank you. Understood.
Arden: I’d rather have my feet on land before drinking something so hard.
Rina finally knocks back her drink. It goes down smooth, with a nice fiery bite to it. Her eyes widen and she grins.
Rina: (hoarsely) Oh, that’s good stuff. (sucks down a breath) Ahh...!
She sketches a toast. Here’s to successfully going to Miranda and back.
Rina: Again.
Joshua: Not for me. It’s my first time.
Kiera: Mine too. We were Miranda virgins. (pats Joshua’s cheek) Awww….
Joshua: Yes, you were.
Arden: (Ew!) Uh, hahhhh … Okay. I can handle that.
Joshua: It’s awesome. I got a dead man’s finger.
Kiera: To do what with? Wait a minute, I don’t want to think about it.
Rina slaps a hand to her rear pocket, fishes out her handkerchief and holds it up.
Nika: Ew!
The Captain’s back in the room, her business with Yan Wo concluded.
Rina: It’s been in my pocket the entire time.
Joshua: No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
Kiera: So why do you have a dead man’s finger?
Joshua: (b’Duh!) It’s a dead man’s finger!
Kiera: Why?! (on second thought…) Whatever.
Arden: Does it really matter? (waves hands: no!) Don’t ask. Don’t tell.
Rina: (to Arden) No, it’s for you.
Arden: Thaa-aaaannnnnnks!
You shouldn’t have. Really.
Joshua: I can get him show me how to do the tests.
Arden: (to Rina) So why do you have a dead man’s finger?
Rina: I’ll let him explain. (points to Joshua)
Arden: Someone, please.
Three pairs of eyes swing his way. Joshua, the floor is yours.
Joshua: Okay, so…
Kiera: I—You’re letting my mind keep going and I’m having to fight—
Joshua: You want the too-long, did-not-read version or do you want the longer version.
Kiera: No, I want the version where you explain it me.
Joshua does his best.
Joshua: We found it in a subway tunnel on Miranda.
Arden: Yes, you were down in the subways of Miranda. Because you have a death wish.
Joshua: Yeah. And … uh … There was a guy. In the back. That I was pretty sure was—
Arden: How fresh is this dead finger?
Joshua: Not very.
Arden: So what kind of tests do you want to run on it?
Joshua: I don’t know. I’ll run them. You don’t have t—
Arden: You don’t know what you’re looking for.
Joshua: Yeah, no. I don’t know either.
Arden: I’ll run a standard tissue test on it, but …
He looks down at the finger. Huh. Kiera asks Joshua the obvious.
Kiera: Why did you take it?
Arden: CDC. Toxic chemicals. Poisons.
Kiera: Well, no. What was your purpose on takin’ it?
Nika: Hell, we know what killed it.
Arden: No we don’t. We assume we know what killed it.
Kiera: You keep askin’ if do-I-want? Just start. You’re tryin’ to make this an interestin’ story and it ain’t. So just tell me why the hell you took it.
Joshua: Okay. I’m taking the finger back.
Arden hangs on to it.
Arden: Actually, to tell you the truth, any test I can run on that thing will probably be invalid because the tissue’s so old.
Joshua: Okay. Then I’ll just take it. Thank you.
Joshua takes it back.
Joshua: Yup. Thank you.
Kiera: But that still didn’t tell me why you took it.
Joshua: (miffed) You don’t want to know.
Kiera: I do.
Arden: I can dispose of it for you if you like.
Joshua: Nope. I don’t want you to dispose of it.
Kiera: Well, but—!
Kiera says the words to Joshua’s retreating back as he leaves the lounge. She turns to Rina, who’s been standing there with arms crossed watching this entire exchange.
Kiera: Is he always this sensitive?
Arden: You sleep with this person?
Rina: (wryly) I’m reconsidering that.
Arden: I would be very afraid if I felt this finger on me during the night.
Rina: And hopefully it doesn’t get any closer to me than this fight.
Kiera: Find out what the hell he took it for. Cuz that’s just wrong. Why’d he take it?
Rina: (waving hands: stop!) Okay, okay, okay!
It’s too late to tell the others why Joshua felt it was necessary to take a sample back to the Gift or that the choice of the finger wasn’t his but hers. As usual, Rina’s innate inability to deal with people ties her tongue and ruins the opportunity to explain.
So she does what she always does in situations like this: she buries herself in her work. And there’s work to be done. Success of our gambit is measured in surviving the execution of it and in those terms, we’ve succeeded well. However, it wasn’t without cost. We’ve suffered damage, both to the Gift and Lagniappe. Rina duly tallies it as Nika flies down to a landing on Yan Wo. Yan Wo lets us land—they don’t get a lot of traffic and since we’re not on their Do Not Land list, touching down goes without any unpleasantness.
As the engines spin down, Arden asks a question on everyone’s mind.
Arden: Can we do a nice normal transport job soon?
Nika: Really?
Arden: Yeah.
Kiera: We can go back and take up that toys job.
Arden: That’s fine. I can do that.
Nika: Whatever you want.
Arden: As long as it’s not bees, telepathic apes, or religious fanatics who want to live in the middle of nowhere.
Joshua: (air snaps his fingers) Dammit.
Nika gives him The Look.
Nika: We just killed about 80% of our frikkin’ cargo.
Arden: I know.
Joshua: I want to go to Lourdes.
It’s where he has a solid clue as to his birth parents. Kiera looks puzzled.
Kiera: What’s wrong with bees?
Arden: They got into the environmental system, the last time we had bees. (a beat) And we might still have ants, too.
Nika: That eat electrical wires.
Kiera: (Joyous!) Uh, huh.
Joshua: So where are we going next?
Yan Wo is a well-terraformed moon, with a lovely climate. It’s most recent claim to fame is being the place where You Ge died. Yan Wo was, after all, You Ge’s personal moon. It’s the Headquarters of You Go Enterprises. Rina takes a good look at the moon where Mike signed his life and freedom away with a gunshot. Hardly seems fair. To cover her hurt, she snarks:
Rina: Okay. How much you wanna bet they’ve turned the site where he was assassinated into a tourist trap?
That whole You’re-standing-where-he-got-killed-take-a-picture-to-send-home-to-the-kids! kind of trap. And of course, since we’re dealing with the macabre …
Arden: I want to know why you didn’t catch a Reaver alive last time.
Joshua: Why I didn’t?
Arden: Yeah.
Joshua: Well, we—
Arden: That was one of the main things I needed.
Rina: We had a chance back there but we blew it.
Nika: Joshua thought it would be funny to just jump in there.
Joshua: I got told to not do that anymore.
Arden: Jump right in where?
Joshua: With Reavers.
Nika: In the middle of a brawl. With Reavers.
You know, back at Mr. Universe’s moon.
Nika: There wasn’t no keepin’em alive at that point.
Kiera: Nope.
Joshua: So. Where do we wanna go?
Rina: Well, we’ve already been to Hell and back. So we can cross that off our list.
Nika: I’m gonna assume that we’re not gonna be able to pick up much in the way of cargo off of this run.
Arden: Why?
Rina: We’d have to buy the cargo containers first.
Nika: I don’t know that we’re looking for anything in particular.
Joshua: That’s the question.
Arden: Toys!
Joshua: That’s the question, I think.
Nika: Do we want to stay in Blue Sun? Do you guys want to head back to the Core? Is it time to start following up leads on Joshua’s life?
Joshua: I think the question is more, are we letting the jobs lead us where they go or are we looking for something to go someplace and seeing if there’re jobs there. It’s just a difference in—
Nika: It is. But at this moment I don’t really have any place in particular I need to be.
Nika spreads her hands, palms up.
Nika: Anybody else?
Arden: I need to catch a Reaver.
Joshua: I think the finger is something you might want to use. It’s from one that tried to resist it.
Kiera: I’d like to cash out my paper scrip.
Nika: So you need to go to the Core.
Kiera: Always.
Rina: We need to wire Byshek his money.
Nika: Yes, we do need to wire Byshek his money. But there’s no Cortex to do that.
Rina: Then we need to bring it to him. It’s on the way. He’s in Georgia. On New Hope. It’s on the way.
Nika: Let’s head for Georgia then.
Joshua: So we’re going there and then …?
Well, there’s Boros a few worlds over. It’s an Alliance-allied world and as such it has the electronic banking and currency conversion that we need. We could convert our scrip there.
Nika: All right. Let’s do that then. We’ll head to Georgia and …
Joshua: We’ll get to see your family?
Nika: I wouldn’t mind that a bit.
There is the trifling matter of making it all the way over there. We could make the trip if we had some fuel pods to strap on. And look! We’re in the capital of the biggest fuel company in the Blue Sun system. Why not see if we can’t take advantage of that? For all we know, it’s the cheapest place in the Verse to buy that sort of thing.
Rina: Could I make a suggestion?
Nika: I don’t know. Can you?
Rina: (eyeroll!) I would like to make a suggestion. Since we’re not in a screaming hurry to get out of here and this is a relatively nice world where the atmo isn’t going to kill us or make us go all Lotus-eaters, why don’t we just take a couple of days off? Shore leave.
Nika: All right. That’s fine.
The ship still needs repairs, first. And thanks to Rina’s reputation with dock workers, we might need to take a vacation away from our girl before they’ll repair her. Or at least, Rina will have to make herself scarce. This produces another eyeroll when the crew points this out to her.
Rina: All right, all right. So Joshua will have to drag me off somewhere and hump me blind.
Nika: (grinning) That’ll work.
Thanks to our recent payment from Dean—and did anyone realize that he paid us half of 5000 up front but less than half the balance upon leaving our ship? No?— we have some money to spare to restock our supplies. Arden could stand to replace the medical units we’ve used and also he wants to replace his med comp. And of course, Rina has a parts list as long as her arm. And having done this little trick with explosive bolts at least once, she starts thinking on a way to make it a standard feature on our ship. It’ll cost a pretty penny, but that’s just part of the challenge. Ultimately, it’s a decision for her captain to make.
And that’s just part of what’s involved with running a cargo ship. We have payment that needs to go down on the books, salary to distribute and accounts to credit and settle. He tallies up our credits and comes up with a whopping 4,819 in the general operating account. We have another 500 credits in the repair account. Our monthly upkeep and maintenance is currently covered by Kiera’s trust fund. We have another 1000 in another account, though 400 of it is earmarked for Byshek. In other words, we’re not hurting for money and with money, we have options.
Kiera’s in a position to make money with her beautician/cosmetologist skills, offering manicures, pedicures and so on. The populace here doesn’t see a lot of space traffic and traffic like Kiera’s is rarer still.
There are repairs that need doing. Food to buy. Fuel to take on. And so it goes. With our immediate future mapped out, we settle for a stay on Yan Wo and get back to the business of earning a living.
DVD Special Feature -- Scene outtakes:
Steve did a mid-scene ret con and changed Coldstone to Yan Wo. Dang it. Here’s the scene as we’d originally played it.
***
Rina drapes her arm across Joshua’s shoulders, raises her glass, and gives him a sly smile.
Rina: So—
Rina doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Nika might be riding high on the adrenaline right now but she still had the presence of mind to patch the bridge comms over the PA. The PA crackles to life and a male voice comes through it.
Voice: This is Coldstone Airspace calling unidentified freighter.
Rina: (muttering) Oh, darn. So much the celebratory sex …
Arden: (spit take!) What?!
Rina: I was gonna snag him and drag him back, but not enough time. (kisses Joshua’s cheek)
Joshua: Thank you.
And just like that, we’re back to business. Nika hustles back to the bridge and synchs her headset with Coldstone, every inch the professional pilot she is.
Nika: Coldstone, this is the freighter Summer’s Gift.
Coldstone: Oour sensors indicates some sort of explosion. Are you in any danger?
Nika: No, sir. Not anymore. We’d like permission to land, though.
Coldstone: We’re giving you a vector to approach.
Arden looks up at the PA in the lounge and calls out to it.
Arden: You have warm tropical beaches there, right?
Coldstone: (dryly) This is Coldstone. Our warm tropical area is—
Arden: About five degrees above freezing.
Kiera passes Arden the bottle to shut him up and Nika cuts the PA to the lounge to prevent further kibitzing. She adjusts her headset mike, continuing:
Nika: Could use a refuel though.
Yup. Back to business. Back in the lounge, the rest of the crew starts wrapping things up.
***
Go back to: Entanglements | Go Foward to Siege
Back to Season Four: Trials and Errors
