Episode 212: Packages and Pop Stars, Part 2
Well, that explains what the men are after. They must know what Peale is carrying and they don’t want the word getting out. Or rather, whoever hired them to catch Peale doesn’t want the word getting out. And they’re doing it on the sly, to avoid rousing suspicion and giving the Independent movement any ammunition to use against the Alliance. But does that have to do with the Angel Sisters?
Peale admits that due to their song, “Miranda Calling”, the Sisters have credibility that he lacks. He hoped that they could put it on the Cortex. What exactly does he hope to accomplish by doing that, Nika wants to know.
Peale may be from the Core and an MP’s right hand man, but he does have a conscience nonetheless.
'Peale: I’ve seen a lot of things. Things that have gone through that I just chalked up…but….(gathers his thoughts) I know they’re people that live out there. Not just…They can’t be that expendable. Something… People need to know that this is what’s happening. This quarantine is unfair.
Nika: She told you to go find out if you could find any support for this stance. Did you?
Peale: Well, has the Quarantine been lifted?
Arden: You’re not answering the question.
Peale: Yes, there are plenty of people in Parliament who think this is the right response: Let the people of Blue Sun die.
Nika: Are they actually arguing about it? Or did you find a nearly unanimous support? What exactly did you find?
Christian: Is this why the Sihnon Faction walked?
Peale: No. This is not why they walked. They are probably…well, it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been working with Parliament. It’s not as—some of what we do is meet in session but those sessions are mostly done deals. They’re theatre. I’ve talked to other chiefs of staff and aides and liaisons to feel them out. A ‘Here’s what the crazy base is saying, what do you think should be the response to this…’ sort of thing. It’s a little more subtle than—
Nika: Yes. But what I need from you is the bottom line. What did you find in terms of actual support for this versus people who might argue against it.
Peale: I think that…there are few in Parliament who would stand up against Falkan.
'Christian: Not for one system of farmers.
Nika: A small system of farmers.
Peale:' Well, Blue Sun is not a favorite amongst the Parliament to begin with.
'Nika: Why?
Arden:’It’s all so far far away’.
'Peale: She had a good point. It’s a lot of energy for not a lot of return.
Nika:' Yet. But that’s because they haven’t actually done anything out there.
Christian: They’re very short-sighted.
Peale: Those are long term projects and those don’t get you reelected.
Christian: Besides which, it doesn’t help that it has Miranda. Which is something they don’t want to remind people of.
Peale: There are more people in a major city on Londinium than all of Blue Sun.
Nika: Yeah, I know…we’re just—
Peale: I know. You’re from Boros. You have a lot of different attitudes.
Zing!
Arden: Whoa! And how do you know she’s from Boros?
Peale: From her accent.
Arden: (to Nika) You have an accent?
Christian: (admiringly) You’re good.
Peale: I said I’m not a completely incompetent person.
Arden: Except in air ducts.
Nika: (to Peale, drawling) Well, darlin’, that’s highly offensive.
Peale: I’m not a spy. (to Arden) I’m not a thief.
Christian: (to Nika) You do have an accent.
Arden: (to Nika) I never noticed.
Christian: Just a small one.
Peale: Boros is a perfectly good planet. But it’s a Rim planet—a Border planet, practically Rim.
Arden: (to Peale) What planet am I from?
Peale: You’re a little more challenging. It sounds like you’ve spent time in the Core but you’re not native. I don’t know where you’re from.
Christian: Okay, we’re done playing ‘Guess Your Weight’. Jake? What do you think? This is your baileywick.
Jake: Why mine?
Nika: Why his?
Because…um….he’s a professional cameraman? With, you know, experience? Just as a guess.
Peale: I don’t think we can broadcast this unless we can guarantee a big enough audience. If you broadcast it now, you’re just putting a bull’s eye on your ship.
Christian: That depends on the kind of audience you’re trying to get.
Nika: And that brings us to the other question: What do you hope to get out of this? What exactly do you want?
Peale looks at the Wu sisters:
Peale: You said you were going to go on that show. It’s a live feed. There’s over a hundred million people who watch that live.
He’s referring to Voices of the Verse, the wildly popular and most-watched Cortex music show. Peale is going to pull a Neal Patrick Harris at the Emmys.
Nika: What exactly do you think you’re going to accomplish with this broadcast?
Peale: The true thing? Well, it’ll….
Arden: The truth will set you free.
Nika: You should probably bear in mind that, by your own words, there are probably more people in a city in Londinium than there are in Blue Sun altogether and the vast majority of them who live in White Sun couldn’t care feakin’ less what happens to the people out in Blue Sun.
Peale: I don’t believe that.
Christian: Are you hoping to incite another rebellion?
Peale: (fervently) I’m hoping to prevent a rebellion. I think that if we can get Parliament behind doing something right, then we won’t have this—
Christian: Which would require the return of the Sihnon Faction to return to the Parliament.
Peale: I think this might bring them back in if they know that there’s enough of the other planets that want a call for an action, they might come to Parliament.
Nika: So what you’re hoping is this broadcast will inspire enough people who have an awful amount of inertia on the matter to rise up and holler at their representatives so as to send them back to Parliament?
Peale: More like to embarrass the Parliamentarians enough to do what’s right.
Nika: The Miranda Wave didn’t t do it and really, that should have been the biggest trigger.
Peale: The problem with the Miranda Wave was it was deniable. It was one person nobody knows…but everybody knows Falkan.
Christian: What does Gibbons say? He represents Blue Sun.
Peale: Oh, the MP? In general, he’s hard to pin down I would have to say. He’s ambitious but I think he would probably be one of the leaders that would call for an investigation. But of course, that’s kind of what he does.
Christian: Why did the Sihnon Faction leave?
Peale: Mostly because of the insult to have their—
Christian: Is it cultural?
Peale: I don’t think it’s unique to them. I think that if the Navy had landed in Londinium and set up martial law, and then as they had in Lian Jinn—
Christian: Massacring cows…
Nika: Destroying people’s livelihood.
Peale: Without consulting, but just kinda swept in like, “Ha, ha! Caught you in the act!” sort of thing…
Christian: Who gave the order for that?
Peale: It was done by the Defense Council and Falkan is a member of that.
Christian: Which doesn’t have a Sihnon majority. Or didn’t at the time.
Peale: There aren’t parties. There are just , you know, leanings….
Christian: It honestly amazes me that we have a system of government that won’t account for a mass walk-out.
Peale: Well….it’s never happened before.
Nika: And no one’s asking.
No debate there.
Nika: If you want to just put out the broadcast, that certainly can be done.
Arden: But he wants a major audience.
Christian: He wants to put it on the most-watched program in the Verse.
Rick: Let’s do it.
We all speculate the chances of the broadcast being suppressed, if it being a live wave would work against that tactic or for it. Christian asks the Sisters why they are hiding—why are they going under a different name? One of the Sisters tells us that they were blacklisted as Wu Wei—they had to rebrand themselves in order to continue their career. Which would explain their reluctance to have anything to do with Peale earlier—he kept calling them by their old name. If the word ever got out that The Angel Sisters were Wu Wei…well. When Arden asks why they were blacklisted, Peale says it’s because they were an embarrassment. People were humming their tunes, they were protesting at Blue Sun Headquarters…haven’t we been watching the news? The Miranda Wave caused a big stir and then to have people keep reminding others by showing footage of it on their vid screens and all that?
Major embarrassment.
Arden questions Peale on his apparent double-face. After all, wasn’t he the one who’s brought us the chip? What does he mean with all this talk of embarrassment being a bad thing?
Peale: This is a little out of character for me. I served my MP as best I could, until I couldn’t anymore.
Christian: People do have changes of heart.
Peale: I thought she ….I mean….
Arden: He’s acting like I would.
Nika: What? A retard?
Arden: Pretty much.
Christian: No, he’s genuine in what he did.
Arden: That’s what I’m saying. He’s just like me.
Rick wants to know more about the show Peale intends to hijack for his chip—Voices of the Verse. Will they be able to cut away from whatever feed we manage to hijack? Not if we manage to take over the production booth, says Christian.
Do what, now?
Take over the production booth. That’s now we’ll take over the signal. The signal passes through the production booth. Whoever controls that controls the signal.
At which point, we all look to Jake again. And before he can say anything, Rick comes in with a question: are the guest judge positions already filled? If not, could Rick get a position as one. As such, he could be our man on the inside. Peale says Rick could probably play the celebrity card to get tickets to get us in but at this stage of the game, getting a spot on the show as a judge is out of the picture. On the plus side, the show’s being held on Paquin, in Red Sun. And lo, we’re already headed that way anyhow.
It’s decided. We’ll do it.
Christian orders Peale to the showers because, really, that bad dye job is torqueing Christian’s delicate sensibilities something awful. Christian turns to the Sisters and offers them the option to leave on their own recognizance, though it might not be safe to do so, or they can avail themselves of our guest facilities for the next little bit while we assess the situation. Their choice. They choose to stay and offer to pay for their passage to Paquin with their winnings from the show—because, of course, they are confident they’ll win the 500 credit prize. Christian declines to take any promises of money for the nonce and escorts them down to the Crew lounge where the big screen tv is. When the Sisters are settled and Peale is safe out of earshot in the shower, Christian draws Jake into the discussion.
After all, Christian says, up until now Jake’s entire purpose on our ship was this sort of thing. Showing the Core back home what life was like out here, right? After all, he spent months on Miranda in order to get the word out. Jake reluctantly agrees, but…weren’t we all trying to move away from this sort of thing? You know, the politics and the activism? Nika seconds that statement.
Christian agrees, yes, it is. We can off-load the Sisters here and now and leave. We’re not committed just yet. Arden can’t see his way clear of turning our backs on something like this. Nika just can’t see how broadcasting the chip would actually accomplish anything. Christian counters it would make the people in Blue Sun angrier. It may do more damage than good. Then again, Nika speculates that perhaps the guys who were tracking Peale might not be from the Parliament but from Blue Sun and they wanted Peals so that they could broadcast that chip. Christian says it’s a really long shot. Arden says it’s more likely that the bounty hunters are pawns being pushed around in a greater game. Christian then quips he expects Arden’s Operative brother to show up….any minute now…really.
Nika repeats her earlier doubts: how will something like this incite anyone to rise up for political action? She’s not sure that this broadcast will convince the Browncoats of the Core to stand up and declare they’re going to jump back into the fight. Christian points to both Jake and Nika and says they both have the biggest horse in this race.
How so?
Nika has family running a capitol ship in Blue Sun’s Navy—Planetary Defense Force, his ass—it’s a NAVY. Jake is all about journalistic truth and has been the entire time aboard our ship. As such, Christian asserts, their opinions weigh more than the rest of ours. And Rina, too, due to Mike. Rina snorts and says she’s just shoveling the shit out of the stables, don’t look at her.
We all agree that a lot of bad things have happened that the government had caused, and that there have been conspiracies to cover up those things and that people have been killed to keep things covered up, but Peal’s chip doesn’t have evidence of anything on that scale. It’s more an expose of Parliamentary maneuvering.
Christian calls for a vote.
Jake thinks that people should make their own decisions. If they decide to go to war over this, he thinks they should have that choice. However, he can see trying to protect people from themselves as a motivation to suppress the information on that chip.
Nika asserts she knows what her family would want—they’d want that info out there. Broadcast the chip. As for what she herself wants? She doesn’t know for certain. She’s torn between the realistic outcome versus the idealistic one.
Speaking strictly for herself, Rina says we should run that sucker at six.
Arden’s in favor of it.
Nika cautions us the minute we try for this, we’re screwed. We’ll have crossed a political line there is no going back over. We’d be committed, for better or worse, on the side of the opposition. Christian counters we could pass the chip along to our friends in Blue Sun and let them do what they thing best with it. Rina suggests we pass it along to….somebody we’re on the way to see, anyway. Arden says he knows a pop star, intimating that might be a way to secure a back way into the show. Christian brightens and says he knows one, too. Well, not a pop star but a figure of the Opera world:Stuart Volenci
Jake warns us that the longer we sit on the chip, the less credibility it will have. We have to do something with it soon to get the most effective use out of it. When is the Voices of the Verse show being broadcast? A week from now. Where? Paquin. Paquin’s three days away. That’s soon enough for our purpose.
Rick: Let’s do it. It’ll be awesome.
We all agree to take Peale to Paquin and we assure him that we’re willing to help him make this happen. Christian cautions that hijacking the signal might not be as great a worry as the vigilance of the show staff against any hijacking, and once hijacked, where their sympathies lie. However, Peale is quick to mention that there are sympathetic leanings to the Rim’s plight in the Core, that it’s not Everyone vs. The Rim.
Our course decided, we take steps to fly it. We need to deliver our cargo first. Nika suggests to Peale and the Sisters to stay aboard the Gift. Christian asks them if there is anything they’ve left behind on the station that they absolutely must have? The Sisters need their costumes for their act and various other sundries. Some of the crew are dispatched to their quarters to find and bring those things back. The bounty hunters already know what we all look like, so there’s no point in disguises or skulking in the air ducts. Rina, Nika and Rick are the three best capable of handling themselves if it came to fistfight, so they are the logical choice to go. Christian will deliver the cargo and see what he can pick up for our trip out and meet us at the station again.
Being twitchy, Rina’s the first out the door. Outside our airlock is a longish pressurized corridor that leads back to the main hub of the station, where lies the elevator and the ring corridor connecting all the airlock corridors to it. The airlock corridors have shorter corridors on the perimeter connecting them to each other as well, making the network look like a giant cartwheel, with the ships docked on the wheel rim at the perimeter, the airlock corridors making the wheel’s spokes and the elevator shaft making up the wheel’s hub and axle. The airlock corridors are rigid structures fitted with viewports and through them one can see the other airlock corridors and the ships hooked up to them. It’s quite a nice view, if one’s into that sort of thing and being that she is, Rina’s looking. And she spies in the spoke corridor to the left one of the bounty hunters looking out. Their eyes meet and the bounty hunter hides behind the corridor bulkhead.
They’re hunting us. They’ve found us. And bucks to bao they don’t wish us well.
Dierma.
Rina: Guys, check our left. We’ve got company.
Nika and Rick keep walking. Nika comms Christian on the bridge to lock the Gift up. Arden comms back he’ll be standing by to let us in quickly if we need to. Nika thanks him.
Arden: What’s going on out there?
Nika: (sighing) I don’t know. Rina says she thinks she saw one of the guys out there.
Rina: I don’t think I saw. I know I saw.
Rick: I think I saw some random flasher chick, man….just streakin’…
Christian: (over the comm to Rick) We need to get you laid. We really do.
We continue on. We call the elevator and wait for it. Christian keeps the engines warmed and coordinates a cargo dock. Arden stands by the airlock doors to let us in on our return.
The elevator doors open and one of the bounty hunters is standing inside. Standing inside pointing a gun. Pointing a gun right into our faces.
Surprise!
Bounty Hunter: (into his comm) I think I found them.
The bounty hunter sees Nika and gestures with his gun.
Bounty Hunter: Back into the tube, Blondie. (to Rina) You, too.
Okay….Nika raises her hands and steps back and Rina stands her ground. Rick is off to the side and hasn’t been seen by the bounty hunter yet. Rick pulls two of his knives and readies to throw…. Nika is behind Rina now and surreptitiously keys her headset to talk to the Gift.
Nika: Rina, don’t step back on me because I’d really rather not have that guy shoot me.
Rina: (looking right at the bounty hunter) You got it.
Arden and Christian hear Nika’s tip-off and Arden readies the door. Christian hits all-ship and orders everyone who is not crew—including you, Lem!—to go lock themselves down.
In the elevator bay, the bounty hunter emerges from the elevator and Rick makes his move with is knives, going for the man’s neck. Rick connects and the man goes down. But he doesn’t go quietly. He’s screaming. Blood goes everywhere.
So much for not alerting his partner.
Rina runs forward, helps Rick drag the body into the elevator and takes the man’s gun—now she’s armed and ready. Rick pats him down for his wallet, looking for ID. Nika is still outside and eases her head around the door to check the elevator bay. Just in time for the bounty hunter’s partner to gain a position BEHIND her via the perimeter corridor and see her.
He shoots. She ducks. The bullet hits her. She staggers.
Nika: Oh, shit! RINA!
And the fight is on.
Nika goes through the airlock corridor door into the elevator bay and drops to a knee, takes aim at the remaining bounty hunter. Rina leaves the cover of the elevator and stands behind her and aims over her head. Back in the elevator, Rick finds a billfold and amongst the credit notes is a picture ID/pass card for the Parliament building of a major capitol city. The man at Rick’s feet is allegedly a Parliamentary page. Meanwhile Arden has cycled through the Gift’s airlock, intending to join the fight. He steps out and the bounty hunter grabs him and shoves them both back into the Gift’s airlock.
Shots are fired, both sides take damage. The crew in the corridor is hampered by the Gift’s airlock frame—it’s blocking our shots. Arden is hampered by the close quarters of the airlock, restricting his ability to fight back. We advance toward the airlock, making shots where we can without hitting Arden, the bounty hunter is fighting Arden off and shooting back. The bounty hunter gets the drop on Arden and grabs him, using him as a shield. We comm our sitrep to Christian and he revs the Gift’s engines, making the ship and the whole superstructure of the station shake.
Klaxons blare, metal creaks, the floor jumps.
Arden drops his gun and it misfires, hitting Rina square in the gut. She’s wearing her mesh, twitchy woman that she is, and the impact is nasty, but not lethal. On all the interconnecting quarters of the docking assembly, lights start to flash and shield doors start descending. Compartmentalization against decompression has begun and there’s no telling when we’ll get free if we’re caught on the wrong side of those doors.
Rina gathers herself together and runs for the Gift’s airlock. Nika throws herself on the bounty hunter, brawling for all she’s worth. Rick has been holding our rear and now he moves forward. There are three people dogpiled in the airlock, the bounty hunter drops his gun, and Rina dives for it. She misses it in the general chaos. At least the bounty hunter hasn’t got it to use against us. And we’re just going to town on the guy. Nika’s punching, Arden’s getting his licks in. Rick arrives and curb stomps him…and hits Rina’s hand. Ow. Rina pulls out of the dog pile and hits the controls for the airlock. If she can close the outer doors, she can open the inner doors…and get to the weapons locker. She gets the door closed and the inner door opens.
Jake is standing there fully armed and jumps in to help sort out the mess. The bounty hunter is unconscious—Rick’s quite an effective stomper—and Arden, on the bottom of the pile is in rocky shape. We get Arden to med bay and the bounty hunter gets searched by Rick. All the goon has on him is a Parliamentary Building ID, with nothing else on it. There’s no telling what his rank or position is.
Nika gets Arden to the med bay and realizes he’s hurt beyond her skill to help him…at least, beyond her ability to help him without substantial risk. Rick argues against taking him to the medical facility on the station. Nika wants to know why not, we’ve just been attacked. Yeah, Rick says—by the partner of a Parliamentary page that he’s killed and whose cooling corpse is still holding up the station’s elevator. Nika tells him that the station is outfitted with cameras and the powers that be have probably already seen everything.
Nika takes Arden to the station medical facility, Rina goes with. When they arrive, they find it’s little better than what we’ve got on the Gift. Nika warns Arden not to say a word. About. Anything. The medic on duty has a sawbones look about him, someone who’s seen a lot of gunshot wounds. Which is what Arden’s suffering from. Two of them. Watching the medic working, Rina and Nika can tell the man has wartime experience at this sort of thing and their apprehension recedes a little.
Rick secures the body in a tarp and drags it aboard our ship, then cleans up the blood as best he can. The surviving goon is restrained in a cabin and locked inside. We’ll decide what to do with him later.
Meanwhile, Station Control is screaming in Christian’s ear about the stunt he pulled, revving the engines while still attached to the station. Christian uses his considerable charm and diplomacy to smooth things over and we don’t get arrested for the stunt. After that’s done, he goes to deal with our prisoner. Rick has put the body of the man he’s killed in the cabin with the goon, a nasty bit of psychological warfare, and Christian brings Peale over to look at the body to see if he can identify it.
Peale readily identifies the man as a page and says that there are many people in Parliament that serve more than one job. He knows for a fact that the dead guy has done other duties that are less…savory. Christian remarks that today Peale was the man’s “other duty”. Peale sighs and says he’s not surprised. You get a job, you think this sort of thing wouldn’t happen and yet… He trails off and there’s nothing more to say, really.
Christian announces we aren’t going anywhere for the next little bit—Arden’s in surgery and we aren’t leaving without him. Before Arden and the others come back, the surviving goon revives and starts thumping the walls of the cabin, still tied up, and generally making a ruckus demanding to be let out.
Christian: Do you want me to go in and talk to him diplomatically first? Or do you just want to go in and start questioning him?
Rick goes in to deal with him. Christian follows. It’s going to be Good Cop/Bad Cop.
Page: Are you going to kill me?
Rick: That is up to you.
Page: What do you want?
Rick: What did you guys want? Why did you come after us with guns right out of the gate?
Page: We figured you knew something about Peale based on the way you were behaving at the bar.
Christian: Arden, you mean.
Page: We weren’t one hundred percent sure but we were able to find out that there were some emergency doors opened down here at this level. We were scoping out this level for you to show up again.
Rick: Well it looks like you guys screwed up because here you are tied up and your buddy’s dead, so….
Page: So you want ransom or something?
Rick: No. I don’t care about money.
Christian: Who are you working for?
Page: I work for important people.
Christian: We already know you’re working for someone in Parliament. We just want to confirm it. Who are you working for?
Page: Someone in Parliament. That’s right.
Christian: (to Rick) Do you still have those little snakes, the ones that don’t kill you but put you in agonizing pain for hours?
Rick: Yeah, of course. (to Page) But more importantly, you don’t have the Prion disease, right? Because it’s pretty hard to get fresh meat out here. Why do you think we brought your buddy on board? (looks at the body on the floor) We coulda just left him. There’s no cameras out there.
All righty! Now the prisoner is looking a mite uncomfortable being in the same room as Rick. Best to placate the crazy guy…
Page: I was sent by Falkan.
Christian: There you go. Was that so hard?
Page: It’s not going to do you any good to know that. You probably guessed it anyway.
Christian: Hm.
Page: Yes, we want the chip. She wants the chip. I don’t frankly care about the chip.
Rick: I assume neither of you had any idea what was on there.
Page: I’m guessing secrets.
Christian: And I’m guessing it wouldn’t matter if you did.
Page: Yeah. It’s probably her playing around with some Companion or something. Who knows?
Christian: No. I’m pretty sure it’s not. How’d you get here? Passenger ship or your own ship?
Page: Passenger ship.
The Page shrugs, supremely uninterested.
Christian: Let’s see. What we’re going to do is close the door and let you think about what you’ve done for a while.
Page: (whatever!) Okay. I should’ve probably gone to University instead of being on that tour group.
Christian: Sleep well.
Page: (nods to the floor) Hey, this guy’s dead, I think.
Rick: Let us know if you want a fresh piece of meat.
Page: You guys are some sickos. It confirms everything I’ve ever heard.
Christian: I just want to ask you one thing. We lock you in here five, six days? How long do you think it’s gonna be… before you’re like us?
And on that ominous note, Christian and Rick leave and lock the door behind them.
Christian: We should keep a guard on the door in case he tries to escape.
Rick: I’ll stand by the door for now.
And a few hours pass in this fashion. Christian gets that cargo we’ve delivered transferred off our ship and receives our 50 credits for it. Arden, Nika and Rina still haven’t come back from the station’s med bay. The Sisters are getting antsy, asking if we’re going to leave now or what?
Rick and Christian discuss what to do with the prisoner. Should we show the man the contents of the chip? Do we kill him and space him? Do we let him go?
At the station med bay, the surgeon finishes up on Arden and informs us that while it’s not a good idea to move him, it can be done. Nika says that’s what she’s going to do and the surgeon tells her it’ll be 150 credits for his services. Nika calls in to Christian and tells him we need to transfer 150 from the ship’s funds. Arden speaks up and says he’s got 432 saved up, take it from his funds.
Arden: I just want to get off this fuckin’ station!
Rina: Wow. He really means it. He swore.
Arden: Please.
We pay the doc. We take Arden back to the Gift. Everybody goes away happy. Nika installs Arden aboard, sees he’s comfortable and goes to Christian to tell him the bill’s been taken care of. We all gather in the wardroom of the med bay where Arden is laying up and we have a meeting as to what we’re going to do next.
Christian recaps what he and Rick found out: the goons were sent by Falkan to recover the chip, the goons don’t care what’s on it and the surviving goon thinks we’re cannibals. Rina rolls her eyes and says whatever works. And Nika asks what we’re going to do with the prisoner. Christian says we should first ascertain what and how much the prisoner has broadcast to his superior. Christian confirms to Arden that the good doesn’t know for certain that Peale is aboard our ship, though he suspects. More importantly, the goon doesn’t know the Sisters are aboard our ship, and that’s something to our advantage. but to do about the goon? Lie to the goon, saying that Peale took off on a freighter for parts unknown? That might get the goon off our backs, but it might also put the innocent freighter crew we say Peale took off with in danger. There are no places between here and Paquin we can drop the goon off on. Going back to St. Albans might work, and we could do what we did with Mifuni on Miranda—drop him off 500 miles on the ground from civilization. Rina suggests we drop him off 500 miles above the ground. She makes no bones about it—she’s all for killing him. Just shoot him now. We can’t afford to waste the fuel to go all the way back to St. Albans anyway.
Jake suggests an alternative. The passenger ship Hogarth is slated to leave. We can drug him, get him aboard and when he wakes up, he’ll be in transit to who-knows-where. And Rina counters that with the fact that once he’s awake, the goon will tell everyone about us and what we did to him. Christian backs her up, stating that he could jump on the Cortex the minute he comes to and tell his superiors. Jake says it’s not likely a Cortex terminal won’t be available.—the Hogarth is like a spacefaring bus, all seats and little else in the way of amenities. Rina has an idea: drug him, bundle him up with orders to transport him to the closest insane asylum, and on no account should anyone take what he says seriously. Christian improves on it—drug the page with Rick’s psychedelic mushrooms, strip him down naked, throw him in the elevator, and make it look like he’d lost his mind, and push the button for the nearest concourse floor. The authorities will detain him for questioning and by the time everything gets sorted out, we’ll be long gone. The body of the other page we can dump in transit. No body, no crime, and it’s just the surviving page’s word against ours.
Good enough. Christian goes to the makeshift brig to speak to our prisoner.
Christian: I’ve got some good news for you. We’re going to let you go.
Page: Good.
Christian: Take your clothes off.
Page: Uhhhhh….’kay…You aren’t going to make me eat someone, are you?
No, we have him strip, eat some mushrooms and when he’s looped, throw him naked in the elevator with a little baggie of the things and send him on his way. And we leave the station. Once we’re out far enough we dump the body and continue on to Paquin.
Paquin, the world of carnivals and stage shows and—if our luck is with us—what will turn out to be the most unexpectedly sensational talent contest ever.
Back to: Part 1 | Foward to: Part 3
Jump to: Show Stoppers
Back to Season Two: Hitting Our Stride
Back to EPISODES
Back to Mutineers Homepage
