Last Voyage of Delilah, Episode 218: Blowback
More of the quick and dirty but the high points should be there. Sound file available on request.—Maer
Air Date: 10 Dec 2014
Present: Andy, Kim, Terri, Matt, and Maer
Friday, 19 Oct 2525
Geyser Flats, outside Lorngaard, Highgate
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
The crew has been captured by the drug lords at You Ge Memorial. Tied up and marched out to a waiting skiff, they find out that they're not the only ones given a ride. Dr. Cage, the nice doctor who walked in on them at the morgue, is also tied up in the skiff. Several unconscious men wearing PDF uniforms are in the skiff as well and the crew readily fills in the blanks.
It was an ambush from the start.
Two guards with guns climb into the skiff with the captives, obviously to keep the prisoners from getting creative. Mr. Green Tie climbs in after them. The skiff revs to life and the crew has no choice but to wait the ride out and see what happens next. Vikki cries and huddles up against the nearest fellow crew member (who happens to be Poco), hoping to figure out a way to work their bonds free under cover.
No dice. The guards tell her to shut up if she knows what's good for her. Vikki shuts up.
They're flown to a stretch of deserted land a thirty-minute flight beyond the city. It's a hot bed (literally) of geysers and steam vents. The guards motion everyone out at gunpoint.
Poco: Virgins, first.
Vikki: Hey!
Dark humor, perhaps, but it's all they have.
Everyone bails and starts trudging up a slope, at the top of which are three crosses, set up Golgotha style. The crosses have manacles, the ground beneath the crosses have steaming vents, and it becomes pretty clear what this site is used for.
They mean to cook us alive.
Sure enough, the goons hoist one of the PDF prisoners onto one of the crosses and clap him in irons. It's just a matter of time, now, Mr. Green Tie tells us. The steam coming out of the geyser vents is thousands of degrees centigrade, delivering hellacious second and third degree burns. Of course, the steam doesn't kill you all at once, no. You scream a bit, first. Assuming the steam doesn't cook your lungs inside your chest. Try not to breathe when the steam hits you, he says, and you'll have a voice left.
Now, we could all be stubborn mules and suffer the same fate the guy up there on the cross will—and that'll be any minute, as the geysers are due to vent—or we can tell them what we know and they'll kill us quick and clean. The gun toting goons back up his words with a threatening tilt of their rifles.
Um, as a point of incentive, offering to kill someone either slow or quick … ain't much of an incentive either way.
Not that Mr. Green Tie seems to care. In fact, if anything, he seems to be looking forward to the torture. Seems like the man just might have a taste for blood.
Speaking of blood … Rachel notices blood dripping from Tian. Everyone's hands have been tied at the back with synthetic rope and Tian's sawing her wrists bloody. Saw, saw, saw, twist. Saw, saw, saw, twist. The synthetic is harsh on the skin and Rachel knows this cannot be a painless procedure. Yet the doctor's expression is blank, almost serene. Tian gives nothing away as to what she's literally doing behind her back.
Rachel sidles up to Tian as Mr. Green Tie talks on about the coming grisly business and asks Tian if she can slip out of her ropes yet. Tian blinks, as if she didn't realize what she's been doing.
Oh God, she thinks. What the hell is wrong with her? She feels the pain now, but it's a distant thing. Disturbed deeply, Tian nevertheless tries to fake it that she's completely fine. Rachel has eyes. She knows what she sees. Tian is most definitely *not* fine, thankyouverymuch. Rachel suspects she sees a touch of Reaver behind Tian's eyes.
Not fine at all, nope.
For her part, Tian is now super-aware of her bloodied wrists and how each tiny movement hurts … and she welcomes it. It's an edge, she feels, tells her she's still alive.
It's an edge, but can she use it?
Poco, meanwhile, asks Mr. Green Tie for a last cigarette. It's what you do with the condemned, right? Mr. Green Tie asks one of the goons about it. The goon refuses to have any part of it. Apparently, the goons aren't looking forward to what's about to come. They may be goons and kill people for a living but even they have their limits.
Poco gets that cigarette. Mr. Green Tie holds it to Poco's lips. Poco gets one drag in and Mr. Green Tie pulls the cig and snuffs it out on Poco's face. The cigarette burns and hisses as Poco bites back a scream.
Of course, Poco had braced himself for something like this. The cigarette was an excuse to get Mr. Green Tie close enough to rush him. Poco bulls into the man, driving him backward into a shallow pool of steaming 60° C water.
More screaming.
Naturally.
The smell of burnt flesh triggesr a Reaver response in Tian. It's not a berserker rage. It's more of a detached analytical mode: how long can living flesh be submerged in that water? how much pain can a person stand? what would the insides look like once they've been cooked by the steam? It's the morbid and creepifyin' sort of Reaver response.
Tian's staring into the Abyss and the Abyss is staring right back.
Of course, it comes as a flashback. She's back on the Reaver ship with Mary Ann Valmont. They're both hanging like meat in a locker. There's a Reaver in the chamber with them and it's just finishing up ravaging a poor soul inches away beneath their feet. And that odd detachment grips Tian: how long can the victim stay alive and keep the Reaver occupied? How long before the poor man dies and the Reaver turns its attention to one of them? What if ….?
As the horrifying sounds continue just below them, understanding blooms in Tian's mind, fascinating and repulsive at once. She … groks … the Reaver mindset. She can grasp the shape of their internal landscape.
Mary Ann Valmont starts to whimper, starts to break. Tian hisses at her to stay quiet …
Blinking to the here and now, Tian strikes out, sweeping out the legs of the guard nearest to her. She's faced Reavers, learned to mimic them, think like them … She'll bite his face off if she can reach it. She strikes, he falls, and SPLASH! he lands into the vent fissure of a geyser.
He's toast.
Meanwhile, Vikki's been taking in the landscape and identifying everything she can from the geology class she took in college. She recognizes the crusted over bumps of several steam vents and as everyone turns at the hapless guard's screams, she runs to the covered vents and hauls off a mighty kick.
Her boots scrape the crust right off and steam jets forth like cannons—spectacularly taking out the last two guards.
Mr. Green Tie wasn't expecting the crew to turn the tables so quickly but he's not slow: he grabs Dr. Cage as a hostage. He puts his gun to the doctor's head and starts edging for the skiff.
Don't move, he warns us, or the good Doctor's head is coming clean off.
Valentine finally makes his move. This entire time, he's been engaging Mr. Green Tie in the conversation (what there was of it) and getting the man's measure. He now tells Mr. Green Tie to let Dr. Cage go … or he'll sic his crazy crew on him.
Mr. Green Tie actually considers it.
Rachel backs Valentine's play. Stand down, she says. We'll drop him off with the PDF where he can cut a deal. Or we can fly out and leave him with the 2 PDF dead guys still in the skiff. You know the PDF will come for his ass for that. Assuming he's still alive.
Valentine exudes the air of weighting a costly promise … will he renege on his offer and kill Mr. Green Tie anyway?
Mr. Green Tie lets Dr. Cage go, putting the doctor between him and the crew as a living shield. And from the cover of that shield, he shoots Valentine in the chest.
Blood flies and he goes down.
Tian is hanging onto her sanity by teeth and toenails, sees the blood, sees Valentine go down. she's thinking …. experimental subjects … vivisection … blood … life … pain ….
She stalks to Mr. Green Tie, eyes glittering, and tells him that shooting Valentine was a bad idea. He was the only thing holding her back, she says. Ohhh, she's going to have SO MUCH FUN with him.
How much pain can he take?
The look in her eye, the curl of her lips … Tian is freakin' SCARY. Blood from her wrists has made them slippery. With a mighty wrench, Tian rips free of her bonds and the blood flies again, slapping Mr. Green Tie in the face.
It's too much. He drops his gun.
Poco's dunking in the hot water has made the synthetic ropes more pliable, kinda stretchy. He pulls free of them, scrambles up, and grabs Cage out of the way of Tian. After that, everything wraps up fairly quickly. Once freed, Rachel grabs the guns from the guards—who are pretty weirded out by our pet Reaver—and Poco tells Cage to help the wounded.
Namely Valentine, who's still bleeding from the chest wound, thanks.
While Cage is busy with that, the crew ties up the bad guys. Vikki finds a way past the manacles and frees the PDF man strung up on the cross. And just in time, too, as the geyser nearly blows at her retreating heels.
Cage manages to save Valentine. The wound isn't as bad as it looks. The bullet bounced off a rib, sparing his internals. Cage bandages up Tian's wrists, next. As he does, he murmurs his thanks.
He's twigged we're the good guys, yeah?
We board the skiff and fly for the PDF base. It's a half-hour flight during which Tian gets a grip. The PDF guy from the cross is still awake, a bit shaken up, but he manages to pull himself together as well.
Once we land at the base, McClarin meets us. He's not happy. He's actually rather pissed that the sting didn't go smooth. He comes to the conclusion that there must be a mole inside the PDF … and oh, by the way, he's going to debrief us.
Joy.
Cooper is the PDF guy we rescued. But as McClarin voices his suspicions, the crew wonders if maybe Cooper's the mole? Vikki personally hates the thought: she saved the guy. Please don't make it a bad thing she did, yeah?
During the debriefing we tell him of Dr. Wesley, the deadly blonde from the Mogure. McClarin says she's very highly placed as a personal doctor of many powerful people on the planet.
How did Mr. Green Tie's men take out the PDF on the hospital grounds so as to get the drop on us? Weren't the security cameras working? Could the hospital's Chief of Security be the mole?
McClarin offers us protective custody to keep us safe from Mr. Green Tie and Dr. Wesley .. or he could let us go and have us take our chances. If we stay, he'll help us get the parts we need to fix our ship. If we leave the base, however, all bets are off and we'll be unable to fly out of here.
We get the strong impression that McClarin thinks we're dirty but he's willing to use us for his own ends and by agreeing with him, we'll get some amount of leniency.
Valentine discusses it in private with the crew. Take his deal? Or leave.
We choose to leave.
McClarin thanks us for our assistance and lets us go without charges. We take the skiff with us … we earned it, gorrammit. Rachel takes the wheel and we fly off the base. So we're free … but we don't have protection. Mr. Green Tie and Dr. Wesley know we're still alive.
It's now the wee hours of the 20th and Cage asks for a lift home. We give him one. Cage revises his initial take on us. Valentine isn't a drug user, as he'd originally thought the other night while patching up the crew. He promises not to tell anyone about us. Valentine assures him that everything's fine and we aren't gunning for him. So sorry he got caught up in our troubles.
Cage finally catches the clue that he might be in danger. He says that he doesn't want anything to do with us. No insult meant, you understand, but … None taken, Valentine assures him. Once we drop him off, we'll go our merry and that will be the last he sees of us. Of course, Cage would rather we drop him off a few blocks from his Brownstone., No need to lead the bad guys right to his door, yeah?
True enough, but Poco manages to convince the man to let him go the rest of the way with him on foot—as protection, if nothing else. Of course, Poco hasn't told the man that Veronica was his love in the past and he has a more personal reason for making sure the woman is safe.
So of course, once they're in sight of the Brownstone, he and Cage see the front door is ajar.
Oh, blessed Buddha, no …
Poco draws The Baron and tells Cage to get behind him. Cage doesn't hear him. He's too busy calling for his family as he runs for the door.
Veronica! Antonia!
Back at the skiff, Valentine notices Tian's watching everything unfold intently. What does she know, he asks her. Keeping her promise of confidentiality to Poco, Tian answers back with the classic "nothing" … but it's odd, isn't it, that Poco's been all altruistic and volunteering and solicitous?
Case in point: Cage rushes forward, Poco grabs him back, and the door jamb burst into shrapnel from the inside. The roar of a shotgun echoes into the night. Peering cautiously around the jamb, ignoring the pain of splinters in his face, Poco is pretty sure there's someone shooting at him from the Brownstone's dining room.
Poco sights down his gun. Aims. Shoots. Hits the guy in the dining room.
Rachel hears the gunshot and accidentally bumps into the horn on the skiff. The horn blares loud enough to wake the dead. Ooops. Now the entire neighborhood's waking up.
Poco hears someone call out from inside. Stand down or we'll shoot the hostages. He hears a scream and a yell from a feminine throat.
Veronica.
Poco throws down The Baron and holds his hands up. Two guys, each holding a hostage comes out. Everyone is ordered to sit down on the front parlor's couch. Poco bluffs, saying the PDF knows all about it and are coming any minutes.
The leader of the goons doesn't buy it.
As the skiff, the crew moves in to see what's going on. Valentine notices a balcony door on the house across the street with a clear line of sight to Cage's front door.
Sniper.
Sure as shootin'.
Valentine tells Rachel to stay with the skiff as he bails out. Rachel's no dummy. She knows she's the best getaway driver the crew's got and things are about to heat up any minute. Valentine tells Tian and Vikki to find a way to sneak into Cage's Brownstone from the back while he neutralizes the sniper across the way. They bail out and as Tian and Vikki backtrack to the service alley for the Brownstone, Valentine walks nonchalantly along as if taking in a very late evening stroll …. and pulls a fade into the yard of the house across the way, there to make his way into the house itself.
Of course, it's cost him ripping his pants on the fence and ripping the stitches open on his healing thigh wound … but it's nothing. The lives of a woman and her child are at stake.
Poco meanwhile is under the gun inside the Brownstone. He has eyes only for Veronica. His past is screaming on the inside, yelling at him that he'd failed to keep her safe. He'd left her all those years ago to keep the crap that followed him from touching her … and look at how well he's managed to do that: she's going to die tonight if he doesn't find a way to get her out of this.
Not in a good place, right now, no.
Despite, he can't help but notice that Veronica's aged rather well. Instead of the teen he remembers from back then, he sees a beautiful mature woman now. A woman who has a teen daughter of her own who's the same age as her mother had been back then. So … yeah, he has eyes only for her. The only saving grace is, Veronica still hasn't twigged who he is.
The leader of the goons tell his men to hold their position. Confident that they've everything in hand, the goons slip to the back of the Brownstone out of sight. While their leader thinks they're off checking the perimeter, they actually slip into the kitchen to make a sandwich. Taking hostages is hungry work.
They raid the fridge and the cabinets and complain at what they find. Just their luck. Their hostages must be health nuts or somthin', gorrammit.
Veronica notices Poco staring and staring back at him, she starts to think she might actually know him. Their eyes meet and Poco tells her that help is on the way. As he talks, she realizes who he is. You can see the puzzle piece click in her head.
She asks her husband, "Finn", about what's going on. He fills her in: drug sting for the law gone sour, he and the others just got caught up in it.
The leader comms his men. What's the word? he asks. I think they're vegetarians, is the answer. There's no meat in here.
Which puzzles the leader. Vegetarians? What?
Poco sees his moment. He yells and tackles the leader, trying to disarm the man and keep anyone from being shot. Putting himself between the gun and Cage's family, he jumps and yells at them to run for the skiff!
The leader wasn't expecting anyone to pull a Han Solo and of course, Poco gets the drop on him. They scuffle for the gun ….
At the rear of the townhouse, Vikki and Tian have made their way to the fence and can see the other goons through the kitchen windows making sandwiches. Before they can move, there's click and a high-pitched squeal as weapons hum to life behind Tian and Vikki. Apparently the bad guys had back-up.
Oh … crap … !
Across the street, Valentine's made it inside and is creeping up the stairs to the sniper's position. He is extremely stealthy despite his injury. He draws Black Rose and eases the door into the balcony room open.
The sniper turns with the rifle and fires. Valentine shoots and dodges quickly. His ripped thigh spurts blood … but unlike the sniper's, his shot doesn't go wild. Valentine's bullet flies true and kills the sniper.
Now Valentine has the rifle.
Cage grabs his family and runs for the skiff. Rachel sees him coming and drives the skiff closer. She manages to use the skiff as cover for Cage, shielding him and his family from the Brownstone. They pile in. She flies higher but hovers out of reach, waiting for the rest of the crew.
Poco's wrestling inside for the gun now. He manages to bat it out of the other man's way and remembering he's carrying a back-up piece, Poco pulls it and has the leader dead in his sights. This makes the other man pause and that's the opening Poco needs to blaze out of there. He runs, looking for the skiff.
From his position at the balcony, Valentine's seen everything that's going on outside. He sees Poco run out. Of course, given his Karma, Poco's being pursued by angry people shooting at him. Bullets are flying out there. Valentine shoots one of the bogies with the rifle. Why not? Valentine's pissed off and hurting and just damned tired of getting himself and his crew shot at all the time.
Enough blowback, thanks. Now it's time for payback.
Valentine's shot warns the remaining man off. Seeing his buddy goes down makes the other guy jump back into the Brownstone. Through the scope, Valentine can clearly see the man's confusion: why the hell is theirsniper shooting them?
Meanwhile, Rachel's got the skiff hovering overhead, too high for anyone on the ground to grab on or jump aboard. As such, the skiff rises over the rooftop of the Brownstone. Tiansees this and fakes the gun men in their own little stand-off. See that skiff? she says as she raises her hands. They're about 10 seconds from getting strafed by PDF bullets.
Tian's got her military game face and voice on. She's terribly convincing. They see the goons in the kitchen rush for the front of the townhouse, followed a second or so later by gunfire. The men with Tian and Vikki hesitate, see the skiff dip closer … and break for it.
They run. Not getting paid enough for this, nope!
Rachel spies movement below and sees Tian and Vikki in the alleyway. She brings the skiff in closer to the ground and the women jump aboard. She picks up Valentine in turn and he orders her to fly everyone to Delilah. We have Cage and his family. Nothing else really matters at this point.
Cage asks Valentine if he can give them a ride out.
Sure.
We're not spaceworthy. Not exactly. However, the shuttle on board is nice and tight. Valentine has Cage take his family into the shuttle and shuts it up after him. They'll be safe after we take off. He orders Poco to spin up the engines next—as soon as Tian patches his wounds up. Rachel will fly. Vikki will run and plug up anything that threatens to hole us.
Rachel speeds through preflight. Tian patches up Poco. Poco spins up the engines. Vikki stops gaps.
Vehicles race up to Delilah but she's already moving, lifting off the tarmac. Through the bridge windows, Valentine can see it's the local law enforcement and remembers that McClarin said they were dirty.
So of course, they hail us and demand to board us. Valentine ignores their hail and tells Rachel to fly.
She blows out of there and everything starts lighting up like Christmas. Delilah's not completely repairs. We're straining her systems something terrible. Alarms blare. Steam and sparks hiss and fly. Lights flash for attention.
One of them is our inbox.
We've got mail.
Valentine pulls up the screen and opens a message from Mary Ann Valmont. She's ready, she says. Pick her up on Yànwō .
It looks like she's found a buyer. We're sitting on a gold mine in surf records. That money is just what we need right now, to patch up our hurts and get our girl in order. Valentine tells Rachel to break atmo for Yànwō . Rachel flies Delilah away from Highgate and all the crap that mired us down. She flies for Fury. It's a two day flight but God and the Universe willing, we'll make it.
Epilogue:
We manage to get away without blowing up and once we're stable enough, we stop mid-flight for repairs. WE also make accommodations for Cage and his family. Luckily, we have enough cabins to go around. No one has to share a bunk … even if we have to share a ship. It makes for some uncomfortable moments between Poco and the Cages as he sorts out his present from his past but by the time Rachel gets us to Fury, Poco's still breathing.
It's something. Maybe not much, considering all the years and hurt feelings, but at least it's something.
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