Episode 301: Hard Places
Air Date: 05 Jan 2010
Present: Maer, Terri, Andy, and Tony
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Thursday, 19 Sep 2520
Kuiper II Class, Summer’s Gift,
Rockport Way Station, Halo
White Sun (Bai Hu) system
08:30hrs, local time
After a week en route with no Cortex, the lack of information starts to pall. Peace and quiet is all well and good, but it’s too quiet. Two hours out from Rockport, our internal lights flicker and go off. Our Inverse EM Power converter has just gone down and everything that ran on AC current is now offline. All our essential systems like life support, grav, engines—they’re on DC power and they are unaffected. However, the heating unit was on AC and it’s getting steadily colder. If we stay aboard, we will slowly freeze to death.
Best we make Rockhaven Wayport before that happens.
It’s tricky navigating between ports of call without the Cortex and the Halo is made of a bazillion spinning chunks of asteroids, a virtual meat grinder. Flying the Gift through them would be hard even without the Cortex being offline. Nika does her best but she still ends up scraping some paint off our hull.
As we draw closer to our destination, more and more comms signals get through to us. We get hailed by Rockhaven Waypoint and Nika answers it.
Rockhaven: Follow this trajectory. Keep in mind you are now locked on with our missile system. Attempt no hostile actions.
Nika: Acknowledged.
Missile lock? Hostile Actions? What the hell has been going on here?
When the station comes into view, we can see that it’s a group of asteroids linked together the largest of which is home to a rather sizeable radio telescope. An asteroid field is hardly an ideal location for radio telemetry. Assuming that’s what it’s being used for. There is no easy way to determine what the dish is pointed toward.
Rockhaven has ships docked at her, ranging from 100 tons to maybe 10,000 tons. Small and midsized transport vessels. Looking over the ships, we see that none of them are fancy yachts and there are no military vessels at all. We are given a docking ring number and it takes alongside another Kuiper Class ship. It’s a Class I, with the name Borderland Express blazoned proudly on her hull. It appears to be tricked out for passenger service, fitted with passenger containers rather than cargo units.
Once we’re docked, we’re advised of the station rules.
Rockhaven: No firearms are allowed on the station.
Nika: (to Rina) Stay on board.
Rina: (eyeroll) All right.
Nika: If you wanna make a face about it, just stay on board.
Rockhaven: In the event of a fight, whoever starts the fight is responsible for all the consequences of the fight. If you throw the first punch, if you draw the first blade, everything that happens is your fault. That’s the law.
Rina: Does that hold true of the station personnel as well?
Rockhaven: Station personnel would never start a fight.
Rina: Okay. That’s it. I am definitely staying on board this fuckin’ ship.
Nika: (laughing) That sounds like a good plan, thanks.
The ship is in need of some serious repair. Rina knows she’s going to have to stay aboard to fix them. And even though we’re theoretically able to hook up to the station’s systems, we have no ability to convert the incoming DC current to AC. Not as long as our power converter’s fritzed. To bring in some life-saving warmth onto the Gift, we have to literally leave the door open and pray enough atmo pressure from the station will force some of it throughout our decks.
Rina: Not without posting a guard on the door I’m not.
Dream on, little girl. It’s keep the door open or freeze.
Rina: Can I at least rig up a motion sensor?
Nika: You can put a line of tin cans across the door.
Rina: But they’ll see those.
Joshua: You realize that death from the cold of space and opening the door is a 50/50 choice for Rina.
Nika: You’re getting to know Rina very well.
The idea of having our backs exposed like this causes Rina no end of consternation but she gives in to necessity and does what she does so well—repair the ship and bitch a lot. In the meantime, the rest of the crew makes ready to go aboard the station to find a place suitably warm where they can make plans for our next action.
Rina: A bar is warm. You could order hot toddies. Bring me back one.
Arden: I’ve rigged the onboard computer to sound an alarm and buzz my com once the temperature drops below a certain level. At that point, I’m going to insist you evacuate off the Gift. You are not staying aboard. The safety of the crew is my responsibility.
Mary asks if we had the crew drag out the vacc suits, perhaps we can get someone to don them and inspect the hull of the ship and effect repairs? Nika replies it might be possible…if we had the funds. Mary backpedals, citing it was understood that she and the Lenore crew would be parting company with us at this station and any money she might have wouldn’t really be available to bankroll those repairs. Rina cuts in, saying she’ll see what she can do first. She makes sure everyone on the crew is hooked up via ear comms so we can communicate with each other.
The prospect of working in the cold environs of the ship while the others make plans somewhere warm is too much for Rina to deal with—she gives in and joins the rest of the crew. Gunlesss. Knifeless. But she goes.
And she’s stopped a moment by the station crew. They can’t hook up their sewer lines to our sewer tanks. The coupling port appears to be damaged. It doesn’t look like it’s leaking, but it should be looked at. No telling what it’ll do if it sits in the sunlight….
Oh, yay!
What else?
The power coupling got banged up a bit too.
Yay. Again!
We thank the crew, tell them we’ll get on it and get back to them later and leave for the nearest bar before any more yayness finds us.
We find a bulletin board set up at the bar, something thrown together from other ship’s reports and the whatever radio/news broadcasts have made it out this far, peruse the posts—such as there are—and look for anything like approaching a job. We get some news on the Verse while we’re at it.
It looks like the military has taken control of most of the Core planets. They’ve nationalized the guard as it were. For instance, the Federal Marshals are under military control. There is talk of parliaments, but there is no Parliament—the military is in control. There are negotiations between Parliamentarians but they cannot agree amongst themselves the terms and conditions under which they’ll come to the table. Factional rivalries are getting in the way. It’s like seating acrimonious relatives at a wedding, for cryin’ out loud.
Reports of occasional conflicts on the ground have gotten through. News of bombings in cities, on the level of Beirut on Old Earth, have reached us here. And we have news of two political parties, called the Wu Bah and the MT (the Mandarin-Tories) by the locals.
The MT platform is a call to restore the Alliance to the old ways of government—and by that they mean restoring those who are suited to rule to their positions in Parliament: the aristocrats. However, they are deeply entrenched in the military-industrial infrastructure, so the true old aristocratic loathing for dirtying their hands with common money seems to have been overcome.
The Wu Bah, their name taken from the historical Five Hegemons, a pre-Exodus term for the five separate countries inside the border of pre-Imperial China, refers to a collection of five current-day entities, including: Blue Sun, Tong, H2 Enterprises (fuel manufacturer larger than Yu-Go), UBS (banking), and Weyland-Kutani (manufacturing). They present themselves as being for the populace, the real working man. They’re democrats and capitalists interested in a liberal business environment, a free system much like before.
Both parties accuse the other of destroying the Cortex.
Which brings us to an interesting question: What about the Cortex? Any news?
Some kind of computer virus was used to set off a chain reaction to destroy the Qupie Doll connectors. (See Season Two, Avalanche ) It’s not irreparable; it’s just going to take a LOT of time. And there is the chance of further delay, since the only source for the critical QP isotope suffered terrorist attacks on St. Albans.
Wonderful.
We go back to covering the political news.
As far as representation goes, both the Wu Bah and the MT are present on just about all the worlds, with some leaning heavier toward one or the other’s support. Sihnon mostly supports the Wu Bah; Londinium, the MT. Both parties are made up of a mix of Anglos and Chinese. There is little information how the parties are faring on the Rim and the Border—the Cortex failure has retarded reports from those areas. So far the news consensus is this is mostly a Core conflict.
Still some news from the Rim and the Border is getting through. From Kalidasa, there’s word of apparently some of the local powers using this opportunity to exert greater control over their jurisdictions. there have been tightband broadwaves sent out to ships announcing they are open for business, they have their own security, don’t be afraid of civil war here. Of the two powers that doing this in Kalidasa are located primarily in the orbit of Heaven, a gas giant, by a group called the Barat (ethnically Hindu) and a group calling themselves the Califate, a collection of mostly Arab controlled interests based out of Jibril on Angel.
There are rumors that there is some dissent inside the ranks of the Alliance Navy. Some ships that have been assigned have been refusing to leave their patrol areas, undesirous of being ordered to fire upon their fellow navy ships in any coming conflict, wishing instead to stay where they’ve been previously assigned to protect the assets and populace there…and hope the Alliance will still supply them with food and fuel to do so.
There’s also talk of some Navy ships ‘going rogue’, engaging in activities that are quasi-pirate-like.
The Verse has been quite effectively Balkanized.
Given the Verse-wide state of things, what are we going to do?
Mary states she still wants to go to Blue Sun, although she confesses that the likelihood of it being successful has gone down considerably. She knows in general where the parties she’s pursuing will be going and there’s a chance she might be able to intercept them. Nika counters she’s not going to risk our ship openly intercepting them and Mary says she’s open to suggestions. Nika states the obvious: they are faster than we are, they know where they’re going, they have people with them that can get them there by the shortest route. Oh, and they have guns, interjects Rina. The Alabama is an armed vessel.
Mary is uncertain that the Alabama is going to have an easy time of it, given the news we’ve seen so far. It is a Naval vessel and it might be suspicious if as a Naval vessel it chose to run a military blockade. And given the people running it, it’s not like they can use military ID to slip through the perimeter. So….their odds of getting through might be worse than ours.
Still, the payoff is in paper cash—not electronic funds which, given the Cortex being down, is more valuable in the absence of electronic banking.
We need to decide: are we going or aren’t we?
Andy wants to know who gets what out of this if we do.
Annie states she wants to kill Jack. Nobody else gets to do it, just her. Annie admits if we get the money without killing him, she could go with that, but killing him would be a big plus.
Mary states that if we take her crew to Blue Sun, she’s willing to cut our crew in for equal shares. Cooper and Annie don’t look happy at it, but they don’t gainsay her.
Andy points out that’s all well and good but we’re financially strapped and lack the resources to even attempt to grab the treasure for ourselves. We have no food. We have maybe 100 credits amongst our crew and Mary’s crew has maybe a little more than that. Enough to fuel the ship, but not enough to feed us. We need more cash.
Nika also points out that, financials aside, we are going up against a gunship. We have no way of fighting it or defending ourselves against it even if we made it that far. Rina states she was there ten minutes ago and furthermore, she’s not willing to die for anyone’s treasure.
And that there is the crux of the matter.
Who’s willing to die?
Nika isn’t willing to pit our ship against the Alabama for the treasure. She knows we’ll lose in a ship-to-ship engagement. Hand-to-hand? She’s willing to risk it, but not a ship-versus-gunship fight. If it comes to ship-to-ship combat, she’s pulling us out.
Unless someone can come up with a better idea?
So…Joshua posits it could go one of three ways: we get there before Jack, find the treasure and pull out, or we get there, find Jack’s preceded us and we turn around and don’t even bother with the treasure, or we get there and be forced to drop the treasure and run when they show up. Did he miss anything?
Mary says she can’t see Jack being willing to share that treasure with the Quan Fu crew. She expects Jack to jump ship and go somewhere and we could follow him. That being the case, it’s no longer an us vs. the Quan Fu situation.
Nika says that she doesn’t expect Jack to jump ship until he gets to about where he’s going. Rina backs her up, saying that he’d also take Tom with him because Tom is the only one who knows exactly where the treasure is. Nika counters it’s not even considering the prospect of being denied taking a shuttle out to the treasure—in short, no one is likely to trust Jack not to abscond with the treasure.
Cooper speaks up.
Cooper: Honestly? I’m not sure there’s enough money out there to spend another month on the ship with you.
Rina: Oh hell no.
Cooper: So. I’ll be leaving you here. Y’all have a happy trip out to Blue Sun.
Joshua: I’m sorry to hear that.
Cooper: May the Reavers leave you alone—no wait. You all’ve killed Reavers with your mind.
Nika: (wryly) I thought that was the telepathic gorillas.
Joshua: Good luck to you, sir.
Rina: (more wryly) Drink well.
Cooper: Yeah and if you find my share, I’ll be around.
And Cooper gets up from the table and leaves.
Joshua: Minus one. Well. The thing is, I guess, is “what’s the alternative?”
Nika: I don’t think there is one.
Jump to: Part 2
Forward to: Turning on a Dime
Back to Season One: Foundations
Back to Season Two: Hitting Our Stride
Back to Season Three: Things Fall Apart
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