Editing Beggars & Choosers

<span style="color:#800000"> '''''RPing with Steve is always packed with surprises and I enjoyed this one immensely.  Thanks, Steve!--Maer''''' </span> <br> <br>

'''Sunday, 26 Oct 2521'''<br>
'''Village, Novaya Rodina'''<br>
'''Georgia (Huang Long) system'''<br>
'''Well after dark.'''<br><br>


Rian had spent the entirety of her shared watch with Kiera telling her everything that had happened to them on the ''Gift''.  She held nothing back.  At the end of it, they simply made their circuit in silence as the account sank in.  Nowhere did Rina offer an opinion as to Kiera's part in it.  They weren't there for that.  When they reached camp again, they turned in, Kiera to her bed, Rina to hers.  They'd made the village church their bunkhouse and following Kiera inside Rina could see by the fire they’d lit in the vestry’s stove the rest of the crew had dossed down in a comingled heap on the floor for warmth and comfort. <br><br>

''Safety in numbers ...''<br><br> 

It was Beglan and Nika's turn on watch and as Rina moved to shake her Captain awake, a thought stayed her hand and she tapped Beglan on the shoulder instead.  At least she thought it was his shoulder. It was hard to tell past the blankets.<br><br>

"Beglan," she whispered, giving him gentle shake. "Your turn."<br><br>

---

Beglan stirs a bit, then rises silently. He looks sadly at the embers in the hearth and struggles to warm himself up. "Ya see anything?"<br><br>

---

Rina joined him at the hearth and kneeling, stoked it and fed it until it could catch without further tending. She talked as she worked, keeping her voice low for the sake of the others.<br><br>

"Not so far," she said, brushing her palms off and pulling on her gloves. "But I did find a nifty point up high to surveil from. You wouldn't think it to look at it now, but this church has a tower."<br><br>

It was only a floor above ground level but it was the tallest thing going and any little advantage they could gain was welcome.<br><br>

"Wanna check it out?"<br><br>

---

Beglan looks up at the rickety stairs leading up to the bell tower. "Alright, closer to God we go."<br><br>

---

Rina led the way, testing the treads carefully before putting her full weight on them. She carried a taper from the hearth to see by and the rich grain of the wood gleamed back at her. She ran an appreciative eye over the paneled stairway walls, noting the joinery, and for a searing moment wished her father were here to see this. She shoved the feeling down and got back to business. A dogleg turn and three steps further put them at a ladder going up. Rina eyed it, grabbed a rung and gave it a hard pull.<br><br>

"Seems safe enough. Hold this." She passed the taper to Beglan and scaled the ladder to the hatch overhead. With a groan and an icy ''crack!'' the hatch opened and a dusting of snow and bitter cold flooded in. She put her eye to the gap. "Looks clear. Come on up."<br><br>

---

Beglan pulled himself up into the cold tower, the bell either long since removed, or never installed. He was thankful the cold has frozen the pigeon droppings leaving them without scent, despite all he had been though, he still felt uneasy walking upon the refuse. He peered through some broken slats and saw the village down below. A glance up to the black sky revealed the weather at least was past. Staring serenely into the sky he could make out something large orbiting the planet, a space station? He didn't know enough about this planet to hazard a guess, he supposed it unlikely to be an Alliance Cruiser here to rescue them. "Well Rina, thanks for the tour, I'll yell down as soon as I see anything. You must be needing sleep yourself."<br><br>

---

"In a minute." Rina took a turn around the tower, looking out on all sides. ''Nothing's moving. Should be safe.'' She tipped her face to the stars above and watched them twinkle in the clear night air. Memory stirred. <br><br>

''Cold air. Black night. Blue white stars. Everything gone ...''<br><br>

Shaking herself free of it, she turned back to Beglan.<br><br>

"I wanted to pick your brain, see if you had any ideas, any at all, as to what's coming tomorrow. You say you're a junior engineer but you've got more on the ball than you're telling. I don't know what your story is and I'm not asking for it. I just want to get through the next 48, get the hell out from under Potemkin, and get the hell off this rock for somewhere warm and where no one’s gunning for us." She paused and gusted a sigh. Clouds wreathed her next words. "Well, okay, that last might not exist and even though Hell's damned warm, I'd rather to put off going there a mite longer. You got anything squirreled away in that head of yours, now's the time to speak up."<br><br>

---

Beglan looks a bit sullen. "I'm not much of a warrior Rina. The thought of killing people, even bad people. and I know that Potemkin is a right bastard, even bad people… the thought just sends me into a bit of a spiral." He stares off into the stars. "I was in the war, and well, it didn't go well for me. I know it didn't go well for a lot of people. And by most accounts, I got out pretty well. No lasting injuries, nothing to pin the law against me. But, I lost something out there, and I don't know if I'll be much good in this fight that's a comin. I'll do what I can, but…." he looks ashamed. "I don't think you want to count on me with a gun, or even a club."<br><br>

---

Rina had suspected as much, given his handling of the Headquarters siege, but didn't call him on it. ''Of course, there's little doubt now, is there?''<br><br>

"That's okay. Not everyone got out of the War the same way. I get that. So, aside from killing anyone directly, what do you think you're willing and able to do? Tricks? Traps? Anything of that nature?"<br><br>

---

"I want to survive this as much as ye. Dinna worry about that." Beggar tried to look brave. He tried to think of this abstractly, don't think about the bodies, or the souls, just think of it as a machine. They had tools, they had knowledge, what did they have that was dangerous? "We've got the waste in those barrels, we might be able to use that to slow them down. Cut off passages we don't want 'em taking. I think we'd want to limit their access, maybe let a few in, then seal them inside. If you can handle them, then you'd have their weapons as well. It's ironic, Potemkin sealing off the hatches may very well have helped us. They can only get in from the airlock." Beglan paused for a moment. "Of course, that being the case, we can’t get out unless we take them all, or change that."<br><br>

---

"We've got some power left in our girl. Enough to make walking aboard her interesting if we want to. Run a couple of power lines to a couple of deck plates. That should be good for a jolt or two. What do you think?"<br><br>

---

Beggar rubs his hands to get warm: "Deckplates might work, but if they are wearing snow gear, they might be insulated. And best you could hope for would be one or two, 'less you can lure 'em someplace special." His mind begins to work the numbers. "You know when we were out in space, Potemkin got us good with that hydrogen trick. One flick of fire, and we were lit up. I wonder if we can do something like that to them. Render their guns useless. Or at least potentially explosive. Course, I don't want to be in there when that happens, but we might be able to even the odds a little. "<br><br>

---

Rina regarded the soles of her boots and nodded at Beglan's caveat. ''Not if they're knee deep in water'', she thought but listened on. "That's a good idea, provided we have enough hydro to make it work. We'll need to do that trick at the choke points ... "<br><br>

Rina knelt and sketched a rough deck plan the snow with her gloved fingers.<br><br>

"Say ... here." ''Top of the airlock stairs on the upper deck.'' "Here..." ''Lower deck landing, outside the gun locker.'' "Hmm...anywhere else?"<br><br>

---

He tried not to imagine the people writhing in pain as electricity coursed through their bodies. He focused on the physics of it all. There ain't no friendly way to kill. And they hadn't anything friendly in mind for them. "I think for the H2 you are going to want a larger area, instead of using it in a few points, plan a 'safe room' or two, engineering, maybe a container, that we can seal off, or at least shut the door. Then they'll likely have more people in there." Beglan froze for a moment, as an image struck his mind. ''The Indies had lured his unit into a factory. There were snipers up in the upper parts, and the brass didn't authorize an air strike because of anti-spacecraft weaponry. So they went in on foot. He remembered the sergeant thrusting the M43 into his hands, it still had Jarvis's blood on it. It was a trap, the unit was deep in the building when he smelled it, H2, well the chemical they add to H2 to give it a distinctive scent. The sergeant ordered them to lock their weapons, something was thankful for, then the rain of bottles came down on them. Molotov cocktails they called them. The resulting blaze killed three of his comrades. They were able to get out alive only because of the quick thinking of the sergeant who shot into a tank of CO2 extinguishing the blaze, and giving them cover.'' He took a breather and looked about.<br><br>

No sign of movement. Just their breath in the cool air. "I think we can lure them into a maze on the lower levels using those barrels to channel them aft. When they get back to the fore of the ship, we can use the gym for cover and set the ship ablaze."<br><br>

---

"That idea's got some bugs in it. One: Unless we have a way of containing the hydro in a specific area of the deck, having it go off on the lower decks means we'll get trapped in it too. So, Two: we need to be contained in our safe room before we let the H2 flood the compartment, which means Three: the spark has to be triggered either remotely or by the goons themselves."<br><br>

---

"Maybe we could use the lock or comm system. That door probably has some electronics in it, to detect vacuum or air right? Well we can pull those wires, prime them, and when we duck in, just hit the button on the other side."<br><br>

---

"If there's hydro in the safe room with us when we jump in, what's to keep it from flashing on us when we open her up again?"<br><br>

Rina had a few ideas as to that, but she wanted to hear what Beglan thought of it. The man was on a roll, now that she got him thinking on it as a puzzle rather than killing people. ''Keep it objective. Make it an engineering problem, not a people problem. Make him focus on the details.''<br><br>

---

"If we limit the quantity of H2, it should all go simultaneously, or nearly. If anything else is ablaze, what little H2 we bring with us won't be enough to do much damage. Especially if we prepare with some wet towels and the like. We can set up that room ahead of time. We'll also need to know where we go after that. I can't imagine it will take them all out. But it ought to be a surprise, enough for us to take charge."<br><br>

---

"Pity we don't have working comms. We could lure them to that section of the deck with our voices by remote, then blow everything. Wait a minute ...," Rina frowned. ''Are we sure about that?'' Thinking back, she realized they'd only been interested in checking the comms system to call out from the ''Gift'', not hail individual compartments inside her. "We might be able to do that. What if we weren't even on the same deck, but were able to lure them down there with the wall comms? If nothing else, it would reduce the risk to us by letting us seal ourselves up in the safe room before they even got down there. More wiggle room."<br><br>

---

"You think these men will fooled by radios?" He shakes his head. "No they will need live targets to go rushing into the unknown. They'd probably send people in both directions, unless they've already got a fight on their hands. I think we will have to make it look like we are easy targets, or they will get suspicious."<br><br>

---

"Good point." Rina turned to frown at the landscape. "I don't know. Look at the deck plan, Beglan. Say we have them chase us aft, then we double back. There's nothing keeping the bastards from having a few hang back and blocking our way when we come back forward. Or even sending part of their squad down the parallel corridor ahead of us. Either way, we're going to be trapped between them." She turned back with a sigh. "Can you think of a way around that? We could block off the parallel corridor with debris at the forward end, but that keeps us from doubling back to the safe room too."<br><br>

She scrubbed her face and blinked against her fatigue. ''Beglan's right. Gonna need sleep soon. But not til we finish this. Don't know how much time we've got tomorrow to set this up. Best we're on the same page before that happens''.<br><br>

---

"We could move debris into the area amidships with the doorway to the gym clear. Then they could follow us or not, but they wouldn't be able to head us off."<br><br>

---

"See? I knew if we got you going you'd come up with something." Rina squatted over the deck plan. "What say we block it here," and she put her finger on the forward transverse corridor between the door to the stairs and the gym. "We'll stack barrels or something. And we block things up here," and she poked the snow midway down the starboard parallel. "Only leave a gap we can get through and shove a barrel across. That'll make them either double back or move debris, but it will give us the extra time we need to get into the safe room and throw the switch. Make sense?"<br><br>

---

"Sounds good." That was one trick. He didn't know how many they'd need. "Rina, I think you are right about being somewhere else if we can. Is there any way off the ship that Potemkin might not know about, something we can use when they are in there? How do you get out of a ship with the airlock and hatches covered by snipers?"<br><br>

---

"Best case scenario is not to be on the ship once the snipers are in place, but be somewhere else." She held up her hand in a placating gesture. "Not shooting your idea down, just thinking aloud. Huh ... How do we get off our girl without being seen and without using the ins and outs they'll be watching?"<br><br>

''There was that time you crawled out the engine of that prison ship ... but there's no doing that here''.<br><br>

---

"We could rig a hatch to seem welded shut, then smash it open, but that is risky. I'd rather control those hatches, seal em off entirely. The containers might work. They'd still likely be able to watch'em pretty easily, obvious point of egress. But maybe with a diversion or smoke screen."<br><br>

---

"We can set a couple of those toxic barrels ablaze beforehand--that crap burns with clouds and clouds of black smoke. Remember, some of it caught fire when we were aboard. We position the barrels right, they'd give us the cover we need when we crawl out of here." Rina stared at the plan for a beat. "Do we actually have to be on the lower deck for the ambush, Beglan? Work with me a minute. There was a time on Meridian when the crew and I were scavving parts off a barge some goons had. Seems they weren't the original owners and they ...," she paused. ''Shit. Potemkin was behind that fiasco too. Christ.'' "They thought to keep us aboard when we were ready to leave. We barricaded ourselves in the engine compartment and found a way out through the engine chambers. Mind, the ship was huge. A prison barge, actually, and the engines were big enough to stand up in. Point being, we could probably still crawl through our girl's combustion chambers and make it out. If we set some of those barrels burning off our stern, the smoke should keep them from seeing us slipping out through the afterburners."<br><br>

Rina stared at the plan some more.<br><br>

"What if we split up?" she said softly, thinking aloud. "Half of us lure them belowdecks, half to the crew deck? Ambush them the same way, just have two methods of escaping? The gym and the engines? Do we have enough people to pull that off? Of course, that doesn't mean squat if we're only going to get picked off by the snipers or the stitches once we make it off board anyway."<br><br>

Rina growled and straightened and paced the perimeter of the bell tower floor.<br><br>

"There's got to be something here I'm missing, dammit. Something I'm not seeing."<br><br>

---

Beglan could see Rina was starting to see the situation for what it was, and it wasn't good. But he'd seen them muster through a fair share of tough situations. "Rina, take heart. We've beaten everything he's thrown at us so far. You more times than I." He gave her a gentle tap. "I know you could beat him in a fair fight, the trick is making this fair." He started to lay down the facts for himself. "We know he has half a dozen mercenaries, and about the same of those wretched bastards, what did Kiera call them 'Stitches'?  He'll probably send them in first, just like at the Gulag."<br><br>

---

"The Stitches ... A while back, we found out that Gordon favors turning Navy special forces into Stitches. For their combat savvy. If they're still able to think, ''that's'' what we're up against. At least until he blows the whistle on them and they frenzy. There's half a dozen of Potemkin's henchmen. We can't discount the possibility that they'll have combat training too, rather than just being gun-toting goombahs. Still, divide and conquer. Potemkin does favor throwing the Stitches into the fire first. Break them up, then. Turn eight into four and four. Ideally, take out a few before we break up what's left. How do we do that?<br><br>

"There's the path leading to the airlock stairs. There's the airlock. There's the internal stairs--hell, that whole stair well. It's narrow and can be sealed off at both ends between decks. Can we use that? There's the landing on the lower deck where the gun locker is--again, completely compartmentalizeable. There's the landing on the upper deck: ditto. And then there's the decks themselves. We've already discussed where we'd isolate them on the decks proper. If we can take out one in the airlock, maybe one or two more on the stairs, that would reduce their number to six, maybe five by the time they set foot on the lower deck. That would make the hydro more able to take them all out when we set it off. ''Gribanyi Iesus Kristos'', I can't ''believe'' I'm having this conversation."<br><br>

---

Beglan rubs his arms a bit as a cold wind blows through the bell tower. He looks out the window again, and stares into the winter sky. "You know this Potemkin better than I, he isn't a fool, our survival wasn't because he couldn't kill us, or even that he thought our deaths would be more painful, he specifically made it possible for us to survive, even though he put so much effort into this plot, why? What kind of man does that?"<br><br>

---

"Pride." Rina crossed her arms and ankles and leaned against a corner post, gazing out over the frozen village. "It's a long story but trying to look at it from his position, we thwarted him not once but twice. Perhaps three. We took his ship when we found out he'd stolen it. We tried to give it back to the person he'd stolen it from only to find him over a year dead, murdered by Potemkin and his brother. We'd bested his crew in taking the ship back and his brother died on the way. He'd stumbled onto a trap we'd set for another and killed himself on it, but Potemkin isn't one to split hairs over something like that. And then we had the gall to survive a biological attack he'd sprung on us, after which we'd exposed him for human trafficking to the authorities, and then eluded his attempt to kill us when we stumbled on him once he'd escaped from prison. All inside a run of less than two years. It's like we kept rubbing his nose in it, gallivanting around the Verse in a ship he feels we stole from him, running free while he had to deal with getting hauled up to justice and suffer prison. Seriously, Beglan, I don't know anyone whose pride wouldn't be wounded after a string of come-uppances like that. And lucky for him--or unlucky for us--he's angry enough, determined enough, ''sick'' enough to want payback with interest." She sighed and shook her head. "There's a reason pride is considered one of the seven deadly sins. Look at what it's made him do."<br><br>

---

"I suppose so Rina. Now tell me, what does it take to make that pride cometh before the fall?" Beglan giggled a little. "I mean, can we push him enough that he will go too far, push himself? Can we push him that far without risking it all?"<br><br>

---

"That might be a ... Huh." Rina nibbled her bottom lip as the idea started taking shape. "You mean like push him past the edge of sanity and make him lose control, kill himself that way?"<br><br>

---

"I dinna think he'll do that. But in a rage, he might over extend himself, go all in, throw everything at us in a way that opens a door for us, cause otherwise, it's just shootin fish in a barrel, ain't it?"<br><br>

---

"You mean like committing his forces all at once instead of holding them back? Can we take on that kind of assault?" Rina frowned at the night. "What if we convinced him there was nothing to lose by going forward all at once. We'd have to force him to go all-in ... Fire." She looked back at Beglan. "We've got plenty of wood at the crash site. We've got toxic shit that burns. We set a perimeter on fire, make a whole damn wall of it he can't jump through, he's cut off. It'll just be him and us. If we're lucky, the fire will take out a couple of his men when it goes up. Even the odds a little."<br><br>

Rina pushed off the post and squatted at the deck plan again, drawing short hatching lines in ragged rows in concentric circles outward from the ''Gift''.<br><br>

"You think there's a way for us to lure him to about twenty yards from our hull before we set the trees ablaze? Conifers burn with nasty dark smoke, hard to see through. It would give us cover from the shooters. The stuff also burns fast and hot from the resin--that would make the fire more intimidating, keep Potemkin on our side of it. But how would we set the trap ... Got any ideas?"<br><br>

---

Beglan gets up and brushes the imagined frost off his clothes as he works through his idea. He shakes his head as though discounting his own ideas. "Here's a man who is full of pride and wrath, and yet he is still scheming. I don't see a man running in recklessly, or jumping through a ring, fiery or not, without thinking. He'd see a trap, or even if he didn't, this wouldn't rob him of his wits. We need something that will push him over the edge. If we can make him question himself, a man so full of himself might not be able to do that, and that might take him down." Beglan looks a little saddened as he speaks.<br><br>

---

"I'm not a philosopher or a psychiatrist, Beglan. I'm an engineer and once, I was a soldier. If I can't shoot it, fix it, or jigger it, I'm pretty much out of ideas. What about you?"<br><br>

---

He laughed "I was supposed to be a philosopher and a counselor, but then I fancied I could be a soldier, botched that up good, now I am a sorry ass of an engineer. My mates at YouGo said I'd rather psychoanalyze the machines than take a wrench to 'em. I think Mr. Potemkin is probably beyond any of either our tinkering." He kicks the frozen bird shit away from a space next to Rina. He plops down with a sort of drunken smile on his face. "Maybe he'll let something slip, show us his hand before he plays it, we'll just need to be prepared for anything. Easy enough."<br><br>

---

"Always thought you had more on the ball than you let on." Rina slid a look at the Irishman and breathed a laugh. "Philsopher and counselor, huh? You and Joshua would never run out of things to talk about."<br><br>

She traced the hash marks she'd made and spoke to the snowy floorboards.<br><br>

"I don't doubt the fire will only make him mad instead of making him crazy. But as a means to force him to go where we want when we want, I think it's still a valid tactic. It provides a fair amount of defense as well. What if we paired that with the gas traps aboard our girl? I doubt we'd have time to do more than lay a trail of the toxic crap through the trees, hide it with a little brush maybe, and set up the trigger spark. Likewise with the traps on-board. Quick and dirty. But here's something to consider."<br><br>

She looked up again.<br><br>

"If Potemkin falls into our hands, maimed, maybe dying, what do we do with him? That's assuming, of course, that Roskov is either driven off or doesn't care what happens one way or the other. While I seriously dislike the wisdom of leaving an enemy like him alive behind us ... I don't know, Beglan. I know there are plenty of us who'd want a piece of him. But kill him when he's down? As much as I hate what he's done to us and our girl, I don't think I could actually pull the trigger on him. Not like that. Combat? Sure. But when he's at our mercy and can't fight back?"<br><br>

She gazed back out over the landscape a moment before looking back again.<br><br>

"I don't know. Maybe Joshua's finally rubbing off on me. What would you do?"<br><br>

---

Beglan looks a bit more serious now. "I don't think it’s right to kill a man, in cold blood or hot. Would I pull the trigger if I had him dead to rights? I'm a human being and weak, and if I could fly away right now so I won't ever have to face that. Can I imagine a situation where I would pull the trigger, course I can. But, I'd rather he meet his fate… elsewhere. Honestly, I'd like to get in ''Summer's Gift'', fire up that comm system and get the good people of Novaya Rodina to give him justice. Do you think the crew would let that happen?" He reaching into the layers of clothing and pulls out a gold chain and cross. "I am a believer in second chances, I'm a believer in redemption, so I've got to try for that don't I?"<br><br>

---

"You do. If you throw that away, he wins." She sighed. "I guess you could say it comes down to this: do we spend the little time we've got fixing a radio to ask for help that might not come? Or do we use that time to make our defenses and our traps against a force that we know '''will''' come to do us harm? What is the best use of our time and resources toward our survival, Beglan?"<br><br>

---

"We haven't even pulled the panel on the radio, I think we need to see that before we do anything else. If nothing else, we can build ourselves a good geiger counter. But, I won't begrudge you a good defense. Believe it or not Rina, I want to live!" He puts his crucifix back under his clothes. "''Wuh de ma!!'' That is really cold!"<br><br>

---

"Just be glad it didn't stick. Otherwise, we'd be peeling skin prying it off. All right," Rina added. "Why don't we try doing all the tricks we've discussed '''''and''''' fix the radio? After everything's done and we've won, we're gonna need help getting out of here anyway. I agree with Nika's assessment, there's no way our girl's breakin' atmo out of here."<br><br>

---

"Fair enough. Now, Rina, have you run all those restive thoughts out of your pretty head now? Go to your man for some snuggles and sleep, we've a war tomorrow." He makes a shooing motion with this hands, wraps his arms around himself to ward off the cold.<br><br>

---

Touched, Rina reached over and hugged him. "All that and a romantic, too." She gave him a crushing hug and let him go. "God, yes, and when we wrap things up here, let's see if we can't find you someone to lavish your heart on. You're too good to waste on the likes of us."<br><br>

She rose and hauled the hatch open.<br><br>

"Stay warm. I'll send Nika up." And putting foot to ladder, Rina went below to make good on it.<br><br>

---





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