Those Who Stare In The Black, Game 16: Diminishing Capacity
Wednesday, 25 Oct 2519
New Edinburgh Spaceport, New Edinburgh
Aberdeen, Kalidasa (Xuan Wu) system
Midafternoon
With our meeting with Ebenezer Scrooge drawn to a hasty close, we scramble to get our ship prepped for departure as soon as possible.
Thursday, 26 Oct 2519
0530, local time
Stone files a plan with New Edinburgh's Port Authority. Our purpose as stated: testing our engines as a condition of employment.
Ebenezer Scrooge quietly lets it be known through channels that we're testing our engines as a requirement of a pending transportation job we'll be doing for him.
We take off early in the morning and Verity makes it smooth as silk. She's got our course plotted for our rendezvous point with Mal. In fact, her plot is so efficient, we'll make it there using 25% less fuel. We're only a day away from the RP, so we're expecting it to be an easy flight for us.
We should know better by now never to expect it to be easy.
Case in point: though we promised Mal we would fuel him mid-flight, we don't actually have the proper equipment to do so. We have a in-flight fueling port on our ship, but Otter lacks an in-flight fueling line. Xiu will have to jerry-rig a line to transfer fuel to Mal's ship during our flight.
Not to fret. Xiu does a superlative job in making one. In addition to the fabrication job, she works with Verity to optimize the engines and steering to allow the best arrival trajectory, fuel consumption, and ETA.
Meanwhile, Stone uses the time to research Ebenezer Scrooge's business via passive info mining on the Cortex. His findings back up what the man's given us: his company is concerned with shipping, terraforming, and farming—basically anything and everything homesteaders need. Stone also discovers that Scrooge had a finger in the job we did with Mal out of Greenleaf.
Rendezvous – 5.0 hrs
We're five hours out when Serenity sends us a wave. It's River.
River: Space Otter, Space Otter, this is Serenity. Do you copy? Please respond.
Verity: Serenity, copy. This is Space Otter, Verity speaking.
River: (happily) Hey, Verity. This is River. We have some weird things happening over here. Captain's acting weird. I can't get a read on him. Captain's actin' weird. They all are. Can you speed up our meeting by … (pause)…4 hours, 43 minutes, and 32 seconds? No … speed it up another 18 minutes, 43 seconds?
Verity: We can try.
River: Good. Hopefully we'll still be in one piece.
River cuts the call.
What the hell? What did River mean? Captain's acting weird? Can't get a read on him? Mal? Acting weird? River, not reading him? What the hell is going on over there? There is no telling but one thing we can be sure of: If River claims something is weird, it's got to be really messed up.
Verity and Xiu coax more speed out of Otter's engines while Stone warns Oksana we might need tranks prepped. Given River's cryptic description, Oksana concocts tranquilizers that won't adversely affect the crew's minds.
Rendezvous -1.0 hr
We have Serenity on our scanners … and she's surrounded by scatter. What is it? Debris? Another ship? Something else? Stone orders Verity to clean up the readings if possible and warns us on all-ship we're to put on our mesh head to toe. In med bay, Oksana looks up at the announcement.
Oksana: (muttering) Here we go again.
She finishes up her task and goes to the bridge to get a more detailed sit-rep. She arrives just as the cleaned-up scan results come in:
Some of the scatter is from debris of undetermined composition, but some of it is moving as if controlled or propelled. Some of the debris is big enough to possibly be space craft, most of it is smaller. They are hard to see and as we watch, some of it actually disappears.
Well, now, that just makes no sense. What the hell is out there?
Rendezvous – 0 hrs, 42 mins
Stone, Verity, and Oksana are still on the bridge. Stone opens a channel to engineering.
Stone: Xiu, man the Gat. We might be coming in hot. (cuts channel) Verity, keep an eye on the scans and wave Serenity when we're 20 minutes out. Meanwhile, we'll continue to scan Serenity and watch for any change in signs.
We train our optics onto the debris, trying to find out more about it.
Rendezvous – 0 hrs, 20 mins
We can see the debris is still shifting. It might be caught in Serenity's grav field. None of it is big enough to hold a person … that we can see, anyway. The stuff is hard to keep a bead on.
Oksana stares at the feed for a moment more and goes aft to prep med bay for casualties. Whatever that stuff is, she doesn't expect it to be wholesome for man or beast.
Xiu, meanwhile, announces the fuel line is ready and she's going to man the Gat. Stone delays her with an order to run scans of the debris from engineering. Can she detect anything that we can't from the bridge? Xiu examines the results and says that the moving debris isn't moving at random. It's moving in a pattern … albeit a pattern that jinks around and varies its speed in a seemingly-random pattern. But it is moving in a pattern, that much is certain.
Again with the weirdness. What the hell is going on out there? Stone opens a channel and hails Mal's ship.
Stone: Serenity, Serenity, this is Space Otter. Do you copy? Please respond.
No response.
Stone: Xiu, you at the Gat?
Xiu: (via internal comms) Yup!
Stone: Load her up. Fire on one of the debris pieces that's moving when it's clear of Serenity's hull.
Xiu: You got it. (pats the Gat) Hi, baby. You miss me?
Xiu does a safety check on the Gat and starts loading the ammunition. Oksana returns to the bridge to get another look at the debris. The scans aren't picking up any out-gassing signatures. There aren't any fuel trails. How is that debris moving?
Rendezvous – 0 hrs, 10 mins
As we draw closer to Mal's ship, we can see that we'll have to EVA to board her. Thanks to the debris and our respective hull configurations, we aren't compatible enough to soft-seal our airlocks together.
Oksana: (to Stone) I'll prep our suits.
Stone: Copy that. (via comm) Xiu, fire on one of the movers.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Three shots. Three misses. The movers jink clear at the last possible second. However, that last shot passes close enough to make the mover slow down as it avoids the bullet.
Xiu: Dammit!
Rendezvous – 0 hrs, 05 mins
Xiu fires another three shots off at Stone's order. The first shot comes close, slowing the target down just as before, with the same result. Her other two shots are clean misses. Stone orders Xiu to fire at the inert debris once it's clear. She shoots and misses again.
Verity scans Serenity for damage from the missed shots. She discovers that Serenity's main radio transmitter has been blown off into little pieces, accounting for some of the debris hovering around the ship.
Stone fires up a laser transmission to Mal's ship, pinging it and bypassing the radio entirely. No response. Suspecting interference from a third party, Stone fires up our Jabberwocky next, hoping to frag any radio comms that might be interfering.
As we watch, some of the debris changes pattern. Is it from the Jabberwocky? Are they being remote controlled? Or is it just more of their frustrating randomness?
Oksana returns from prepping the suits and frowns at the view through the bridge windows. Can we use a grapple and tow Serenity clear? It doesn't seem too likely. There's too much crap floating around out there. Stone orders Verity to move us closer. It's time we boarded and figured out just what's going on with the crew.
Rendezvous – 0 hrs, 0 mins
Verity lines us up belly to belly along three vectors, balancing thrusters and brakes in a beautiful seamless move. When we're done, we're only about thirty feet away from Serenity's main cargo ramp. Verity rocks!
And when we come to a stop, we find that two of the movers have changed course and are now circling us.
Oksana scans our new friends but doesn't get much. Stone suites up and hangs out our airlock with a sniper sniper rifle, using its scope to eyeball the movers directly. He sees propulsion jets and sensor arrays on the gorram things … strongly suggesting that they aren't debris at all but something more deliberate in nature and purpose.
He fires off a shot and misses. The damned thing's jinking course makes it extremely hard to hit.
Stone: (curses)
Xiu: Now you know how I feel.
Verity scans the movers from the bridge. There are no life signs on it—again lending credence that they aren't manned craft—but there are biological readings on them. Stone squeezes off three more shots and hits on the third try.
PING!
The shot has no effect. Stone's shooting armor-piercing rounds and there's no discernable effect whatsoever. He closes up the airlock and hauls back to the bridge.
Stone: Fly us so our movers will crash into Serenity's movers or at least some of that inert debris.
Verity tries but no luck. Stone orders her to try again. Still no luck. Again. Nope. We actually drift further apart though Verity still matches Serenity's speed and heading.
We've still no luck hailing Serenity on the comms, too. Oksana suggests aligning our bridge windows in line-of-sight with Serenity's so we can use a flashlight to signal in Morse code.
It takes us 15 minutes but we manage the maneuver.
Thinking on how the movers slowed down in response to the near misses and how they have bio signs on them, Stone orders Oksana to check our bio signs. Are they affected by the movers? She runs that scan and determines that the movers are affecting our ship's environmental systems. There are odd power fluxes and scanning herself, she finds there's been a change in her body's neurotransmitters. She analyzes the data in medbay to pinpoint the what, why, and how.
Meanwhile Stone and Verity see River on the bridge as we line our windows up. River waves as Mal enters the bridge behind her. River wasn't kidding—the man is acting weird. For one, he's prancing around in a frilly pink and white flounced ball gown and seems to be … dancing? Jayne enters the bridge behind Mal and the gunhand is dressed normally. The idea that Jayne might be the most normal person on Serenity is disturbing in its own right. As we watch, he tries hauling River out of the pilot seat.
Stone signals with the flashlight. Jayne signals back with the running lights.
Jayne: Everyone's stupid here. Help.
Stone: Noticed that.
Stone fills Jayne in on our findings. It's a bit over Jayne's head.
Jayne: What?
Stone: Evil drones.
Jayne: Won't blow up when hit.
Stone: More firepower?
Jayne: Vera failed.
Vera failed? Damned buggers are impossible.
Xiu chimes in from the Gat turret that she might be able to rig up a tazer device on a pole, maybe we could short the things out with a manually applied shock. At least it's something we can use to defend ourselves when we EVA out to Serenity. Stone vetoes the idea in favor of moving the ships closer. Move them as close as we can to Serenity's cargo ramp airlock.
Stone signals our plan to Jayne. Jayne says Serenity's airlock doesn't seal well. Stone tells him we're do what we can. In the end, we're left with a 30 foot gap.
Oksana finishes her analysis. The GABA neurotransmitters regulating transmission speed and thought processes are affected, acting as if they are being blocked. As a result, the GABA levels are dropping … and this will lead in a diminished ability to think and a commensurate drop in intelligence.
Looks like Jayne was right on the money when he said everyone on his ship was acting stupid.
Oksana checks her levels and knows her thoughts are slowing. She tries reverse engineering the GABA blockers to make a GABA booster, using the ship's computer resources to bolster her own declining abilities. She comms the Captain with her findings and her plan of action and gets it approved.
Rendezvous – 1 hrs, 0 mins
Verity sees Jayne push everyone off the bridge and bodily hold the door shut against their attempts to reenter. Looks like things are getting desperate over there. We have to do something. Jayne manages to signal us.
Jayne: Ship full of moonbrains.
Stone: Is the front hatch unlocked?
Jayne: Yes.
Oksana manages a pharmaceutical hack-around. It's taken an hour to process but she's got four doses. She tells Stone to go ahead to Serenity and gathers up her med kit. She has to go carefully, thinking out each step deliberately so as not to miss anything in her induced debility.
By now, everyone on our ship is affected. Xiu is still manning the Gat and now she's making pew-pew noises over the comms. Her altered GABA levels has wonked her brain chemistry and has her convinced that shooting the debris on Serenity is a good idea. She starts shooting … and starts having a flashback.
Ohhhhh, shǐ.
Stone hears Xiu's deterioration over the comms and realizing what's happening, he barks out the trigger phrase to put her to sleep.
Stone: Sha-SHOO!
Xiu goes limp in the Gat turret—out like a light.
As Stone scans Serenity to assess the damage, Jayne goes crazy with the lights:
Jayne: What the gorram hell're you doin' shootin' us for? Stop it!
Stone: Done. (a beat) Our Doc's working on a medical fix for the stupid. Fuel now?
Jayne: Smart first. Fuel later.
Stone: Copy that.
Stone tries using the Jabberwocky to see what it messes with. By concentrating on the narrow bands, maybe he can disrupt the movers' effect on our life support systems, thereby blocking them from affecting our neurotransmitters. It's a long shot but what else can we do?
By the end of the hour Stone can feel his brain power slowing down and Oksana's medical abilities are starting to suffer. Xiu is out cold in the Gat turret and Verity is feeling the effects as well. Luckily for all of us she can fly our girl on body memory alone, bypassing conscious thought completely.
Oksana shows Stone the pharmaceutical fix she's concocted. She's managed to make up four doses, she explains, so they need to prioritize who gets injected. Stone tells her to inject herself first. Thanks to her impaired state, she accidentally injects herself with a double dose. Too late, Oksana realizes what she's done.
Her diagnosis: After an hour for her body to disperse the drug and normalize her functions, she'll have about an hour and a half of normal capacity before her nervous system starts to fry. Once that happens, she'll suffer extreme hyperactivity as the drug overcompensates and she'll start losing focus … and start gaining permanent damage.
We'd better hustle.
Stone checks the amount of doses left and discovers that in addition to Oksana's flubbed dose, she'd also misjudged how much was left. There are actually six doses left, not two. Oksana promptly hands the injector to Stone. She's not chancing another mistake. Stone injects Verity, then goes to the Gat turret and injects Xiu.
Two down. Four to go.
Stone and Oksana suit up and EVA to Serenity. Before stepping off into space, Stone tosses a warmed can of asparagus off our ship to see if its organic matter or temperature attracts the movers. Last thing we want is to get mobbed by the damned things when we clear the ship. Nope. The movers take no notice at all. Jayne sees them from Serenity's bridge, shakes his head, and signals to Verity.
Jayne: Hot pilot only one not dumb.
Stone tethers Oksana to him and fires a grapple gun at Serenity's airlock. He fastens on the first shot and he reels them in. There's a keypad for the cargo airlock and it works. Stone and Oksana get inside, close the hatch up, and intercom the bridge.
Jayne: You aboard?
Stone: Yes. Your pilot and doc on board?
Jayne: Hadda knock out the doc. Made me uncomfortable. Just had that look of … He made me uncomfortable.
Stone: (grokking it) He wanted you and Kaylee.
Jayne: Just sayin' he made me uncomfortable. He and Kaylee are in the infirmary. Watch out for the Capt' … t'aint right. Moonbrain seems all right….
Before we can go two steps, someone drops down on Stone, wraps arms around his helmeted head and knocks on the faceplate. It's River. It's hard to tell in that instant if her intent is to hail Stone or harm him.
River: (sing song) Knock knock. Hello in there.
Stone: Oksana.
Oksana doses River. Three down, three doses left. The injector hisses on the girl's bare arm and River yelps.
River: Hey, that hurts!
River moves to kill Oksana but Stone grabs River and talks her down off the ledge.
Stone: That sting will make you smarter.
River: (thinks, nods) Can't read Jayne. Capt'n's a pink frilly gopher. The monkey hit my brother.
Meaning Simon Tam. Speaking of whom … Stone and Oksana investigate the infirmary and find River's brother naked as a jaybird with Kaylee likewise underneath him on the floor. Simon's out cold and Kaylee is … well, she's awake and enjoying herself immensely, bumping and grinding to a finish.
Erk! Um, yeah.
Oksana shoots both of them with a dose. It doesn't even slow Kaylee down as she climaxes. Oksana wordlessly drags a blanket over the pair to stave off shock.
One dose left. Who gets it? Oksana looks at Stone. Stone shakes his head.
Stone: I've dealt with enough stupid people that I can deal with myself when I'm stupid. Let's get going.
Oksana checks the time. She's past one hour into her dose and she can feel her head leveling out, her thoughts stabilizing. She's got less than an hour and a half left before she starts suffering permanent damage. Best make good use of the time she's got left.
We need to get Serenity up and running. Kaylee can handle the engineering part of the equation, River can do the flying.
Oksana: Kaylee, where is Zoe?
Kaylee: Book. Library books. She likes to read to the baby. She's reading to the baby. Books. Book's.
Shepherd Book's old quarters, aft and port. Sure enough, when Stone slides the door back, he and Oksana find her reading to her baby girl. The baby's sleeping and Zoe's reading on. Mal is with her, still in that frilly dress, serving up an imaginary tea party. Zoe gets the last dose.
Oksana examines the baby. By everything she can determine, the baby seems all right. Oksana is nearly at the end the one and half hour mark when she finishes the exam and she's getting jittery. Permanent damage will ensue if she can't flush the drug from her system.
Meanwhile, Stone explains to Zoe the effects of Oksana's meds on the crew and tells her of our plan to get everyone out of here. Once Zoe's up to speed, Stone EVAs with Oksana back to Space Otter and hustles the doctor to med bay. With her help and no small amount of luck, he manages to hook her up to the detox equipment and starts a full system flush. When Oksana's secured in med bay, Stone gets right back outside and wrangles Xiu's fueling hose over to Serenity.
Xiu's hose couples up cleanly, Stone locks it in place, and signals Verity to start pumping the gas.
Halfway through the fuel transfer, the movers shoot off a quick propulsive burst in unison … and fly off on a trajectory away from the conjoined ships.
What the hell?!
Working quickly, Verity gets a bead on their trajectory and sees something edge onto the outer limits of our sensors.
We have incoming.
HOW TO SPEAK CHINESE[edit]
shǐ= 屎 = shee = feces, shit Sound clip
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