Episode 502: Reacquisitions, Part Five

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Reacquisitions, Special Features

In 12-C, Nika hears a knock on the door. Nika gets over to it.

Nika: What’s the password?
Kiera: Open the gorram door.
Nika: Yeah, that’s her.

Nika opens the door wide enough to let Kiera in and shuts it quick. Kiera takes a quick scan of the room and sees Nika, with her eyes bandaged, and a very attractive young woman. She groks it immediately.

Kiera: Darlin’ we gotta make you old. Okay … They don’t know what you look like, do they? All right.

Up goes her suitcase on the bed and back goes the lid, revealing Kiera’s disguise kit and the extra clothes.

Jeanne-Christienne: I think that they know what I look like.
Kiera: Not after I’m done with you. Let’s see what we can get done.
Nika: So what’s the thought here? Oh, by the way: Kiera, this is Jeanne-Christienne.
Jeanne-Christienne: How long do we have?
Kiera: Like, moments. They’re here.
Jeanne-Christienne: How much can you do while they are here?
Kiera: It’s all going to be make-up and wigs and clothes, honey.
Jeanne-Christienne: Okay. If only we had some way of increasing our odds…
Nika: You do that. I’m taking the bandages off.
Kiera: Absolutely. (pulls out her comm) How quickly can you guys get here?

Back at Equinox, Arden picks up.

Arden: We’re preflighting now.
Kiera: Come on.
Joshua: It should be another half hour.

The line goes dead and Joshua signs off. Back at the hotel room:

Nika: They’re going to bring the whole ship in?
Kiera: Yeah.
Nika: That’s not going to go well.

Kiera leans in and starts applying age make-up to her face. Hmm…a few lines and wrinkles, a grey wig, hands … they’ll be a problem. You really can’t do much with hands to hide their age, up or down. Gloves should hide them for the duration. While Kiera is busy with Jeanne-Christienne, Nika peels off her bandages.

Jeanne-Christienne: (continuing) One time my … ex-fiancé wanted to see me but he did not want people to know. He actually had a body double. It would be nice to have something like that now.

Hmmm. Kiera eyeballs Jeanne-Christienne. How easy would it be to look like her? Height? Weight? If she dressed appropriately, she could probably pull it off. Jeanne-Christienne’s hair is a reddish brown and the blonde in Kiera’s hair is strictly temporary—she can wash it right out.

Nika: What does your fiancé look like?
Jeanne-Christienne: He is …
Nika: Do you have a holo? A picture of any kind?
Jeanne-Christienne: I left all that behind. He is … about perhaps five-foot ten. Slender. He has a tattoo.
Nika: Is he in the papers?
Jeanne-Christienne: Perhaps back in Persephone.

Kiera comms Equinox and tells the crew the unit number Nika’s in.

Joshua: Tell me what your plan is Kiera. You’re going to disguise yourself as her?
Kiera: What I can do is fake being her, and feeling my out and feeling my way down in a very obvious way like I’m blind. And they’re going to try to nab me while everybody else has a chance to come.

Very well. Kiera signs out. Nika thinks a bit and then:

Nika: Make both of you look like her. You stay with her and I’m going out.
Kiera: Come again?
Nika: Well, they know you took me to the square and dropped me, right? They know exactly what I look like and they’re going to expect that I know exactly where she is. So if they’re chasing me and they’re bugging me, you—who can see—can get her to the shuttle.
Kiera: How are you going—you can’t see to get away.
Nika: That don’t mean I can’t fight.
Kiera: Okay, I’m still not following why this is a better plan than me being her.
Nika: What are you gonna do? You gonna be here and let them grab her and you’re gonna leave two blind women to try to get to the shuttle?
Kiera: I’m hoping I can hold them off finding your room long enough cuz they’re going to be chasing me, thinking that I am her. Where you guys sit tight here, cuz right now they don’t know what room y’all’re in.

Silence.

Nika: It depends on what they know about the surgery she’s doing. Probably nothing, would be my best guess.
Kiera: They know it’s eyes. All I gotta do is feel along the wall like I’m trying to get out. Then you all stay here cuz everybody knows what room you’re in. They’re coming.

Meaning the crew. More silence as Nika considers it.

Nika: All right.
Kiera: Lock the door. I’ll give you the pistol.
Nika: (dryly) Seriously?
Kiera: I’ll rotate you to the door.
Nika: (drier still) I know where the door is, thank you.
Kiera: Well there you go.

Back on Equinox, Arden and the others try to figure out how to speed things along.

Arden: We can fly the ship off the coast, then take the flatbed in across the water.
Nika: (answering him) No.
Arden: Why not?
Nika: You can’t take the truck across the water. (a beat) Can you?
Joshua: That I don’t know. It’s a hover.

Probably could, in that case. It would be kinda choppy.

Arden: So we’ll take the flatbed in across the water and straight up to your balcony at your hotel.
Rina: Yeah, because it’s a hovercraft it can at least hover up to her balcony. It’s how we got Nika off our ship.

On Novaya Rodina, on Meadow, when we lost the Gift.

Arden: So that sounds like a plan to me.
Rina: So go. Go! We got a plan. Go.
Joshua: Okay, we’re gone.

Back at the room, Kiera gets to work making herself look like Jeanne-Christienne. She notices the other woman’s eyes are brown and they don’t entirely look right on her, as if brown is not her natural color. Which is entirely possible—she did have her eyes replaced.

Kiera: What color eyes did you have, darlin’?
Jeanne-Christienne: They were a … a blue.*
Kiera: Wonderful. Close to what mine are. Good.

Kiera slips on some tinted contacts over her green eyes and rubs them to irritate the mess out of them. What the contacts fail to hide, the resulting redness will. Finished with her disguise, Kiera makes ready to leave.

Kiera: (to Nika) Lock the door.
Jeanne-Christienne: Wait. I think I have some sunglasses …

Kiera takes them and puts them on and tells Nika how to find the landing area with Lagniappe: down the stairs and left 90 degrees. Go straight. Nika tells Kiera she’ll give her a 500-count head start. Then Kiera slips out of the room. She ghosts down to the ground level and starts her charade, blindly patting the walls as she hobbles away. She keeps an eye on her surroundings through the sunglasses, hoping to lead the mercs away from Nika’s position. After Nika counts to 500, she takes Jeanne-Christienne in hand and they leave their room for Lagniappe.

Meanwhile, Equinox has flown to a good staging point and Arden, Joshua, and Rina are riding the flatbed mule over the water for the resort. Arden’s at the wheel and Rina’s riding shotgun. And she’s not empty handed. In addition to her usual suspects she’s brought party favors—grenades. Arden comms Kiera to tell them they’re coming, fills her in on their flatbed-to-balcony plan.

Kiera pulls her comm from her pocket, feeling her way along a wall in the guise of a blind woman. What do you mean you’re coming in? We were going to fly out to you. Nika’s running for Lagniappe and Kiera’s playing decoy. What are you doing?

And so our cunning plans collide.

From the corner of her eye, Kiera spies one of the Garretson’s crew coming for her, his duster flaring as he walks over. Kiera cuts off the comm, wonders why nothing can ever be simple, and heads for the cliff. On her way there, Kiera fakes a stumble and slips her boot knife from her boot, and rises with it palmed against her inside arm. Nika and Jeanne-Christienne meanwhile are off the stairs and going left. Jeanne-Christienne pulls Nika close and whispers:

Jeanne-Christienne: I think I can start to see something. I can see lights. Do you see anything?

Nika tries but nothing comes to her. Jeanne-Christienne must be farther along the healing curve than Nika is. They get closer to the shuttle lot. Nika has Jeanne-Christienne in hand, walking arm and arm with head held high as if she can actually see. The weeks she’s spent learning to move normally in the dark, turning her head toward sound as if responding normally, they all stand her in good stead. Jeanne-Christienne leans in toward Nika’s ear.

Jeanne-Christienne: Which one is yours? What does your ship look like?

Nika describes Lagniappe … fat lot of good it will do for two women who are blind. Jeanne-Christienne slows down.

Jeanne-Christienne: (whispering) I think I see some people. I can’t tell. I’m afraid ….
Nika: Can you tell the outline of the shuttle we need to be near?
Jeanne-Christienne: They all look the same.
Nika: Okay, hang in there. We’re almost free.

Kiera continues her charade and nearly makes it to the cliff’s wall when she hears a click and a whine of something charging up. She thinks it sounds like a stun gun. A man’s voice calls out softly.

Merc: Whyn’t’cha stop right there.
Kiera: (in bad French accent) Why?
Merc: Why don’t you just come with me? Raise your hands up on your head.
Kiera: The hotel is arresting me?
Merc: I don’t have time to play games. I can just stun you if you prefer.
Kiera: Well, I will have some advice. It would be very awkward for you to be marching someone frog-style back. I will come without my hands on my head. And it will not be so obvious you are a bad man, no?
Merc: I don’t know what you’re up to … All right.

He approaches with the stunner. Kiera fakes not being able to see him.

Kiera: Can you touch my arm so I will know you are beside me?
Merc: All right.

He grabs her roughly by the arm and starts pulling her toward the landing pad.

Kiera: I appreciate your help. I cannot see.

Through her sunglasses, Kiera sees another merc approaching and she plays it cool, like a blind woman being led.

Approaching quickly from the ocean, the flatbed is speeding toward the shore. It’s not really designed for water travel and it’s buffeted by the ocean winds and the occasional comber. It’s a bumpy ride and a somewhat wet one from the spray. Joshua, Arden and Rina persist nonetheless. Arden is at the wheel and he scans the shore as he comes up on the resort. He spies a female figure being held by someone wearing a duster. There is another figure approaching them. Arden points them out to the others with him. Rina and Joshua quickly divvy up their targets, with Rina the one on the left. Arden zooms up onto land and clips the merc approaching Kiera with the flatbed. Rina jumps off the flatbed in a flying tackle—Bliaaaaaaaadddddz!—and takes out the other one.

Back toward the landing area, Jeanne-Christienne clutches Nika’s arm.

Jeanne-Christienne: I think it’s clear. Can you it? … Can you see anything?
Nika: No. Nothing.
Jeanne-Christienne: (dryly) Well, that worked out pretty well.

At the oceanfront, Rina and Joshua and Arden tidy up the mess with the mercs. Arden looks Kiera up and down.

Arden:' Where’s Nika?
Kiera: They should be in the room. Although I do admit I told her where to find it. There’s a 50-50 chance that for some odd reason they would have walked that way.
Joshua: No, no.
Arden:' (grimly) No. There’s more than a 50 percent chance they would have walked that way.
Kiera: Aw, hell …

We all jump into the mule and take off for the shuttle. At the landing pad, Jeanne-Christienne says:

Jeanne-Christienne: (breathily) I don’t know how to thank you enough ….

Nika gets kissed on both cheeks in the French manner—kiss, kiss!—and Nika immediately starts feeling woozy. Awwww, crap! As her head spins, Nika hears Jeanne-Christienne say in quite a different voice:

Jeanne-Christienne: I really do appreciate that.

And Jeanne-Christienne lets go of Nika and moves off. Nika staggers, reeling from the drug. Nika raises her gun to shoot but hearing others approaching, she stays her hand … and falls as everything goes black.

We scream up in the flatbed just seconds after she falls and Arden jumps out with the engines still running, his medical bag in hand.

Rina: Let’s get her and go. Let’s go, let’s go!

The other shuttle takes off.

Kiera: Dammit!

Arden checks Nika over quickly and revives her with a stim. Arden sees her eyes are unbandaged and grabs his gauze. Kiera jumps out, boards Lagniappe and starts warming her up. She yells as she goes:

Kiera: Help me get her on the shuttle.

Henner walks up to our group and glares at us.

Arden: Sir?
Henner: So … what happened here?
Arden: Our companion fainted and we’re taking her back to our ship. See ya.
Henner: Can I get a lift?
Arden: Really?

No, seriously? You want us to give you a lift? Under Arden’s hands, Nika stirs and sits up, blinking blindly. But there’s nothing wrong with her ears.

Nika: Joshua, who’s this?
Henner: You helped somebody steal my shuttle. You can’t even give me a ride back to my ship?
Joshua: Well … That whole kidnapping the love of my life thing, that did kinda—
Henner: Who kidnapped whose—Oh, her. That’s the love of your life? We let her go.

Rina glares.

Nika: Kiera. Do I want to know what’s going on?
Kiera: I—
Arden: No.
Joshua: Not particularly.
Kiera: No, actually.

Stalemate. We all stare at each other. Then:

Rina: (to Henner.) Get in.
Joshua: Okay.
Arden: Fine, get in. We’ll drive around and pick up your two unconscious boys.
Nika: Two unconscious? Good job.
Kiera: Give me a pistol. Somebody put a gun on him and we can take him back. (to Nika) Honey, you still have a gun.
Rina: (grinning) Good for you, Captain.

Nika pulls her pistol from her waistband and hands the pistol to Kiera. Kiera points it at Henner and gestures him aboard Lagniappe.

Kiera: All right, somebody fly. (to Henner) Get on the ship. I figure I can still shoot you about four times before you can do anything. Get on.
Joshua: (to Nika as they board) Actually, giving the blind woman a gun was an excellent idea.
Nika: Hey, I probably could’a shot better’n you blind.
Henner: Oh, this is going to be a long trip.
Joshua: (to Henner) Yeah. You aren’t kiddin’.

Our kinda-sorta truce declared, we clean up the loose ends, gather up our mule and the two unconscious mercs. One of the crew drives them back over the water to the waiting Equinox as the rest of us fly Lagniappe back to our ship. Once everyone’s in the air (or driving back) Henner tells us about his quarry.

Henner: We been chasin’ her for a while.
Nika: Okay. Who is she? Cuz she gave me a song and bull and I fell for it. Cuz I’m a sucker.
Henner: Well my employer knew her as Consuela Dumas, a maid on his Londinium estate. He fell in love with her, whereupon she stole a very expensive set of code.
Kiera: Well, doesn’t your shuttle have a tracker on it?
Henner: Upon my research, she apparently has other pseudonyms.
Nika: (disgusted) Jeanne-Christienne. You can add that to your list.
Henner: (continuing) Yolanda Hamer. Saffron ...
Joshua: (dryly) Uh-huh. Well, you can get yourself another shuttle and go chasing after her again. Also, good luck to you on that.

Henner glances at him and then looks at Rina.

Henner: Well, we’re sorry about holdin’ ya there. We were just … you know. We were only doin’ it until we could find out some information.
Rina: What did you ask me?
Henner: Eh, you didn’t know anything. We figured as much.
Arden: If you had shared, we might have been able to help.
Henner: (dry) Yeah. You don’t really know about the bounty hunting business too much, do you?
Arden: Obviously that it’s not very good.
Rina: (low) Shut up, Arden.
Kiera: (to Henner) He’s the one with the emotional problems …
Nika: Arden. (to Henner) He’s got diarrhea of the mouth.
Kiera: Yeah …
Arden: What—? (points to Henner) If he had shared, he would have had her in custody by now!
Nika: Well, I’m right sorry I lost ’ya your bounty.
Henner: There’s a bounty on her that’s a bit bigger’n I feel comfortable sharin’ information with people. If you had let slip this to someone else, other people might be on her. This is the closest anyone’s gotten to her in a while.
Arden: Okay.
Nika: Well, at least she was nice about it and didn’t steal my shuttle.
Kiera: So … your shuttle can’t go space-wise, can it?
Henner: She can go into space. She could probably get to a moon or possibly one of the nearby planets. It’s got a short range.
Nika: I’m sure she has an exit strategy.
Kiera: There’s gotta be a way to track it.
Joshua: They’re bounty hunters. I’m sure they can find ways to track her down without our help or assistance.
Arden: That has been my experience, in fact.

Nika cuts through the chatter with a query.

Nika: Somebody tell me we got a cargo.
Kiera and Rina together: Yes.
Arden: Sorta.
Joshua: We’ll discuss that in a little bit.

We drop Henner off at his berth, along with his two men.

Arden: We apologize for clipping you.
Henner: (to Rina)We apologize for kidnapping you.
Kiera: We apologize for getting in your way.
Arden: Wanna give him your c-mail address so you can finish your chess game?
Rina: Well … I do owe him a game. (to Joshua) Do we … have to go immediately?
Joshua: No. We’ve got a half a day.
Rina: It won’t take me that long to finish the game.
Kiera: (to Arden) Joshua’s gonna wake up and find her hunched over the box, going “Queen to Knight 11…Check.”
Arden: (low) That’s how cortex romances start up …
Nika: I’ve seen worse ways.
Kiera: Yeah.
Joshua: I play chess.
Nika: Too late.
Rina: (to crew) Oh, shut up, you.

As everyone watches on, Rina finishes that game with Reich. She trounces him.

Kiera: That was the most competitive game of chess, ever. (to Joshua) She just had to have satisfaction.
Rina: Yeah. I did. (shakes Reich’s hand) Thanks.
Reich: All righty.

We take our leave of each other and return to our respective ships; Henner and his men to Garretson, ostensibly to follow Jeanne-Christienne’s trail, and we to Equinox, where Arden thoroughly examines Nika’s eyes for progress and/or damage. In the months since the accident that blinded her, Arden’s been reading up on the latest rehabilitation methods and he knows that there is a helmet he could purchase that would actually train her to use her new eyes. It involves projecting images on a faceplate screen, involving dots to target onto and such. It’s expensive, a couple hundred credits, but it’s not entirely out of our reach. It should aid her recovery process.

Joshua: Are you going to ask me?
Arden: No.
Joshua: Why not?
Arden: Because I don’t think we have it.
Kiera: Actually, we would have it after this coming run.

Arden reconsiders it. It's a long process but with the helmet, it would take weeks instead of months for the rehab, and it would get Nika eyes up to their old level.

Arden: Then I will ask.
Joshua: We can do it. I’m not counting the money until after the run, but we can do it.

So we get along with setting things up for our run. Rina actually goes out to purchase a couple of necessary items she’d missed acquiring on Boros. Meanwhile, Nika seeks Kiera out. She finds the steward fuming in her quarters, unpacking her suitcase and putting her things away.

Kiera: Dammit, the woman ran off with some of my clothes. The bitch.
Nika: Kiera. (a beat) What color are they?*

If there were any lingering doubts in Kiera’s mind of here she stood with Nika Earhart, there are none now. Kiera takes a deep breath and tells her.

From the Ret-Con Department:
 * Originally the GM said “green”, which caused a few moments of understandable confusion, since it is entirely not the correct color for the actress he had in mind to play her. “Blue” has been ret-conned in and Kiera’s responses slightly altered to fit.—Maer

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Reacquisitions, Special Features

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