Episode 503: Old Secrets, New Chances, Special Features

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

1. How did Patience get wind of our cargo? Does she have land-sats trained on the moon or soemthing?
2. Was the posse who extorted us even there on Patience's orders? Or were they there on their own initiative to make money unbeknownst their boss--not quite skimming the take, since she didn't send them out the collect the take, but something like.
3. The fact that the cargo and the beef experts were even ON Whitefall suggests that there's business to be had outside of Patience's territory, if not her reach. What other ventures are operating on that moon that she doesn't own or can't directly touch?
4. And if she's so grabby, why hasn't anyone stomped on her for obstruction/interferance of trade already?
5. Nika's eyesight is restored and returning to normal, albeit slowly. Chu mentioned that there were special helmets that transplantees could wear to retrain their eyes/brains to work properly, but he did not mention where we could get or buy one. Is it too late to get one for Nika? Is there a narrow window of opportunity before that intervention will no longer work? How much of a risk are we taking by not getting ther that helmet?
6. Joshua wakes in the middle of the night thinking he's heard our cat meowing. Following the sound leads him to our female passenger's cabin where he hears her screaming behind her door. When he busts in to help her, she's alone and she insists she was not screaming at all but sound asleep. So if she was sound asleep and not screaming in a nightmare... where did the sound come from? Was it the cat in the air ducts and did some trick of acoustics make it sound like a human woman screaming?
7. Joshua didn't hear inarticulate screaming either--there were words to the effect: No! Don’t hurt me! Nooooo! If our passenger did not say these words, who or what did? And why does it seem that only Joshua heard them?
8. Questions 6 and 7 suggest that Joshua might have heard the screams with his mind and not with his ears. He is a Reader and sensitive to psychic residues. He has constantly said that the passenger deck makes him uncomfortable. Is this a symptom of his discomfort? Or is this the cause?
9. Or is Question 8 too much like science fiction?
10. In our continued search for the ship's cat, we find him stuck in a crawlspace sandwiched between the deck bulkheads, under the bridge off the passenger deck. In that space we find stuff boxed up for storage by at least two previous owners of the ship: we find receipts and bills--papers and paychecks stuff--from the Ion, and we find a green records book in handwritten Chinese that belonged to Jing Jing Bei. Why was this stuff squirrelled away on the ship? Why didn't the previous owners take this stuff with them?
11. Also found in the crawlspace were trunks of discarded clothing, mostly in the style of the Rim and of mixed genders and sizes. Where did they come from and why were they kept here?
12. Kiera has Rina take the records book and a shirt from the trunks to Joshua to get a psychometric reading off them. He gets nothing off the shirt. Does this mean psychometry is not one of th talents he has? Or does this mean the shirt doesn't have a psychic residue on it to detect?
13. Joshua takes the records book to translate it and it turns into an obsessive project. He finds a pattern of names linked to planets and cities/towns on the planet. What do they mean?
14. Rina takes the box of records from the Ion and organizes everything in it on the wall of the machine shop, crime-board/A Beautiful Mind style. What does she hope to find?
15. Beglan fixes the personal robot that Rina shot in a fit of twitchiness. Though in working order, the robot is not in returnable condition and therefore Joshua is still on the hook for payments. Is Joshua sending the payements in? What happens if he misses one or two or three? Can we expect repo men chasing us across the Verse or the law throwing Joshua into Debtor's Prison?
16. Doing business in the Core is more difficult. Ships that do not fly a registration with the Core--going flagless, as it were--are forced to wait in a queue and are subject to boarding 'for inspection'. Fines are levied and must be paid. Would it be worth registering for a flag? It requires a special transponder. Can that transponder be used to track a ship without its knowledge or consent? Or does that transponder simply ping out a signal saying the ship is one registered for expedited/favored access?
17. By requiring the flags in order to avoid faintly disguised harrassment, are the Feds trying to 'reverse-engineer' everyone back into the Alliance fold? If one year they require a flag transponder to allow unobstructed travel, what will they demand next?
18. We deliver our cargo on Osiris and get a line on another cargo job. The client is a touch shady and we definitely suspect underworld connections. But the cargo is going to Red Sun--New Melbourne--and it turns out that it's Naval Medical supplies. How did the client get the supplies?
19. The destination of the supplies is not with the Alliance Navy, but to some other party? Who?
20. There's tons of medical supplies. Enough for an army. Whose army?
21. And since it's going to Red Sun, does it mean the 'army' is in Red Sun, too?
22. In the last year, two things happened in Red Sun to get the Alliance's attention, even though Red Sun is supposed to be independent from Alliance jurisdiction:
    1. November 16th 2521: Terrorists exploded a chemical explosive in the First Allied Union Bank on Paquin. The Blast killed 32 people instantly, and over 100 died in the release of poison gas. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, but attention has been focused on the independents of New Kalmar.
    2. December 24th 2521: Shipworks on Aesir were subject to orbital bombing from the IAV Repulse. The site was obliterated and scores were killed. The UAW claimed that the shipworks were constructing missile carriers designed to attack the Allied fleet, and that they abetted the terrorists who bombed the bank on Paquin.

                    Therefore: The Alliance reconfigured and redeployed the Navy in September to include a fleet to control the White Sun--Red Sun corridor, could the November incident be an                     action made in protest to the Alliance presence? Could the December bombing of Aesir have stepped up the efforts of the New Kalmar to organize resistance to the                     Alliance? Perhaps by slowly gathering forces for an army or a military ... and hence, an agenda of systematic caching of supplies for that army? Did we just deliver one of                     those supply caches?
   23. What happens to us if we're found carrying these supplies en route to delivery?

Go back to: Old Secrets, New Chances | Go Foward to Ghosts of Jing Jing Bei
Back to: Season Five Special Features.
Back to Season Five: Realignment
Back to EPISODES or TIMELINE