Episode 605: Devil's Compromise

Air Date: 09 Aug 2011
Present: Andy, Bobby, Kim, Maer, and Terri

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Thursday, 15 Oct 2522
Somewhere on Puck
Kalidasa (Xuan Wu) System

We’ve taken a retired Iskellian engineer by name of Basil Boston to Puck to search for his estranged wife and children. They’d gone to Puck years before with a terraforming expedition but we arrive too late to save them from the hostile environment. Except for two men (apparently murdered by parties unknown) the entire expedition seems to have died by asphyxiation or have disappeared. We find Boston’s family on one of the expedition ships and it’s clear they’ve been dead for some time. We find shallow graves on the site, but not enough account for the absence of the rest of the expedition. We also find out from the expedition logs that Puck suffers from explosive fluorine gas eruptions and that they’re responsible for much of the fire damage done to the site.

It’s one such fluorine fire flickering inside one of the abandoned ships that has lured Joshua and Rina over to investigate, only to trap them with a secondary gas explosion. Joshua and Rina are slammed to the deck. Joshua’s only lightly stunned, Rina’s stunned and wounded. They are too deep inside the ship for their comms to reach their crewmates outside. As the fire rages all around them, they hear a stentorian groan of tortured metal, the entire deck tilts under them and there is a tremendous crash. The ceiling falls on Rina and Joshua from above.

Read what happened to them, here…

The rest of the crew is two ships over. The blast knocks them down and they pick themselves up. Kiera looks out the nearest porthole and sees the ship next door on fire, blazing away like a Roman candle. The bulk of it has also warped and collapsed and crashed onto Equinox parked alongside. The ground underneath the burning ship is cracked like a broken mirror and is spouting gouts of fire. The flames change color as they burn and where they touch Equinox, they start crawling up her hull. Kiera turns from the porthole and helps Nika off the deck, cursing a blue streak as she goes.

Kiera: Gǒu shǐ, gǒu shǐ, gǒu shǐ, gǒu shǐ, gǒu shǐ, gǒu shǐ …. (over her suit comm) Beggar!! Get to the ship and get it away from here!

Once Nika’s upright, Kiera starts running for Beglan’s last known location the next ship over. Her suit slows her down, making her clumsy. She gets no response from Beglan on her comms. Arden tries to raise Rina and Joshua and gets no response either. He and Nika hustle for Equinox to move her out of danger. Uncertain of the stability of the container bridge, Nika and Arden run across the top of it on the outside. It affords them a way to see any danger coming for them as well an unobstructed view of the chaos and the damage around them. A mixed blessing. The container bridge gives out on the blank hull of the next ship. They take a risk and leap for the ground. They both manage to land without injury or ripping their suits, then start running over land.

The ruined Bumblebee lies collapsed across Equinox’s dorsal hull. Only the lower portion of the Bumblebee seems even halfway upright, tilted at a crazy angle from the weight of the twisted decks above. Nika knows that she cannot let the wreck burn unchecked on her ship. Neither can she let her friends die. Which should she try to save first?

Nika realizes an instant later that she cannot hope to crawl through the wreckage to save her friends—the fire is to widespread and fierce and she’d die trying, stranding the rest of her crew to a slow death by the hostile elements. She has to save the ship first. She grabs Arden’s arm.

Nika: C’mon. We gotta get on our ship. Our ship at least has some fire suppression gear on it.

As she runs, she tries again to raise her crewmates on her comms, but there’s nothing but static and distortion coming through. They have to run through a patch of flame blocking their path to Equinox, getting singed in the process. Their suits hold and they make it through, evading most of the flames with only a little bit of stun. They run under the belly of the ship for the port airlock and start climbing the ladder to it. The manual controls for it are still working and they get inside. All the alarms on the ship are blaring, announcing the fact that Equinox is on fire.

Nika: Grab all the fires suppression gear together just in case we have to go in after then and meanwhile I’m going to go to the bridge to see if I can’t get the ship’s comms to get through to them.

She’s also like to start our engines and move our ship out of harm’s way, but the Bumblebee has collapsed onto our thrusters. At the moment, she’s grounded. She gets on the comm and tries to get through to her crewmates. There’s no answer. She hails her other crewmates via their suit comms. If they’re going to be doing anything to save themselves and their friends, they’d better be able to talk to each other while they’re doing it. Arden comes up behind her.

Arden: Can we use the backblast from the shuttle’s engines to knock the fire out?
Nika: Maybe. Can we get the shuttle out?
Arden: It’s on top of the ship.
Nika: The shuttle’s engines might not be big enough for the job.
Arden: But the ship’s engines could.
Nika: Possibly.
Arden: Are the engines properly aligned to do it?
Nika: Uhn-un. And they’re burning.

If they could just get the ship free and reposition her, they could put out the fire, save Rina and Joshua.

Meanwhile, Kiera’s made it to the next ship over. She enters the main airlock off the container bridge and nearly stumbles over a body. It’s Boston’s little boy. Apparently Boston and Beglan are busy moving the family for burial. She hustles for the compartment where they originally found them. As she nears the space, she can hear a shuffling sound through her suit pick-up. It sounds like someone is dragging something. Instantly on alert, Kiera stops and holds her position, waiting to see what might be coming toward her. In a moment she sees it’s Boston. He’s removed his helmet and is carefully dragging his wife’s body toward the airlock. Assured that the atmosphere is apparently okay to breathe, Kiera cracks her helmet to talk to him.

Kiera: Where’s Beggar?

Boston turns and she sees the man is looking a bit … crazed.

Boston: On the ship.
Kiera: Why isn’t he answering my comms?
Boston: I don’t know. Maybe that earthquake knocked out his comms.
Kiera: Could have. Ship’s on fire.
Boston: This ship’s not on fire.
Kiera: Not yours. Ours.
Boston: You gonna put it out.
Kiera: I’m hoping you’ll go help. They’re not going anywhere.

She points to the body he’s dragging and the bodies of his two remaining children elsewhere on the ship.

Boston: Why don’t you go help them. I’ll go get him to help me.
Kiera: I’ll go get Begger and you go, cuz closer to where they are and see if you can put the fire out.
Boston: You’re closer to them.

She is, actually, but that’s not the point. Getting past him to get to Beggar is. She doesn’t like the look in Boston’s eye and she doesn’t like the fact that she can’t get Beggar to answer her on the comms. Has something happened to Beggar? She points back the way she came and to Equinox beyond.

Kiera: Go help them. I’ll get Beggar.
Boston: I’ve got to get my wife.
Kiera: She’s already dead. You will be too if we don’t get this fire out.
Boston: All right. Do what you want to do.

And he resolutely goes back to dragging his wife out of there. Seeing there’s no talking him out of it, Kiera tries to squeeze past him in the narrow passageway. Screw him. She’s going to find Beglan. And she’s not against using the fact Boston’s encumbered with the body of his wife against him, either. She pushes the woman’s dead weight against Boston and tries to squeeze past him.

Boston: Get your hands off her!

He moves to smack Kiera down. She dodges, regretting she doesn’t have a weapon, and keeps on going. She makes it past him. She yells for Beggar, listening for his reply. It doesn’t come. She gains the compartment where she’d last left him and finds him on the deck, lying on his side. His helmet is dented as if it had been struck by something and there’s a crack in his faceplate. It looks like someone clocked him with a wrench. She’s on the deck next to him in a flash, trying to remove his helmet to check his vitals. Her suit gloves make it difficult and she can’t get the helmet off. She examines him the best she can by eye and all she can determine is that he’s sustained a head injury and might have a concussion. Jostling him around trying to get the damned helmet off might, as with shaken baby syndrome, make his injury worse.

On Equinox, Nika and Arden go over the options for putting the fire out.

Arden: Is there a way of using the water from our waste reclamation system? Can we spray the wastewater at the fire?
Nika: If we do that, our water system will be potentially emptied and we’ll be out of water entirely. Our ship will be out of water.

Water we need to survive. So that’s a non-option. What else can they use to put that fire out? Nika tries to boost the signal on our comms, hoping to get through the interference blocking her from her crewmates. Nothing but static hisses from the bridge speakers.

Nika: I am never ever splitting the party again.

Kiera is unable to revive Beglan and she’s got a nutcase running loose somewhere behind her. Beglan she can do nothing about. The nutcase, however … She rises and finds a different route off the ship. She finds a path through the ship that to the bottom of it, where the heat shield is still attached. She has to wrestle the access hatch open to eels out between the hull and the shield. The wheel on the hatch is stiff, unused for God knows how long. She puts her back into it and it moves an inch.

On Equinox, Nika and Arden take stock of the fire extinguishers we have on board. They’re made for smaller scale fires—nothing like the huge one engulfing the Bumblebee outside and threatening Equinox. Even if they gathered up every single extinguisher to hand and trained it on the fire, they would be insufficient to put the fire out. The extinguishers are not an option.

They’ll have to figure out something else to use.

Kiera plants her feet and hauls on the hatch wheel again. Another inch. She spies a wrench lying under some rags in the corner. She grabs it and slams it like a club on the wheel hub, hoping to loosen the sonuvabitch up.

Clang!

It bounces off the metal and flies free of her grip, hitting her in the head. Since she’s lowered her faceplate, the wrench actually does her some damage, stunning her from the force of the blow.

Kiera: Ow!

She staggers back against the bulkhead. Straightening back up and blinking stars, she glimpses the figure of a man standing there with a wrench in his hand. It’s Boston. Kiera doesn’t stop to think but launches herself in a flying tackle at him. She plows into him and he fights back, delivering some momentary stun to her. She plows into him again in a grapple and she delivers a bit of stun to him—tit for tat. He recovers and gets a good punch in and she wobbles back. And so they continue, trading grabs and blows and shoves and punches, until he gets the upper hand and clocks her with a glancing blow on the head with the wrench. Dazed, she can’t resist him as he drags her back through the ship to Beglan’s side. Kiera knows she’s not going to win this fight with brute strength. She’s going to have to use guile. Kiera fakes a faint and lets herself go limp, slowing him down.

As a ploy, it’s partially successful. Boston lets go and she drops to the floor. Kiera lies still, eyes closed, as Boston stands over her with the wrench in hand.

Boston: Your crewmate is unconscious. If you want, you can be unconscious, too. (a beat) Make a move.

Kiera plays dead, remaining perfectly still. Not that it seems to fool Boston for a minute.

Boston: There’s always someone getting in the way, making things more complicated than it needs to.

Kiera thinks to herself: He is SO going out the airlock.

Boston: You made me do this.

He moves toward Beglan and Kiera listens intently, hoping for a moment she can make her move. She hears the rip of fabric and a juicy thud. Knowing the sound cannot possibly bode well, Kiera opens her eyes and scrambles up from the deck. Boston turns around and she sees blood spattered on his vac suit. There is a screwdriver sunk into Beglan’s leg.

Boston: It’s going to bleed.

And Boston turns away and drags one of his children to the airlock where his wife’s body waits, confident that he’s got Kiera too busy saving Beglan to interfere further in his plans. Kiera gets over to Beglan and whispers:

Kiera: I’m sorry, sweetie.

She starts pulling the screwdriver out, intending to take out Boston with it, when she realizes that if she does, Beglan will bleed out and die. She leaves the tool in his leg, using it to plug the hole it’s made in him, and looks for something to rig a pressure bandage or tourniquet with. Equinox has the equipment and supplies Beglan needs but Kiera cannot move him without killing him. The screwdriver’s pierced a vital blood vessel. Cursing, Kiera gets to work saving Beglan, using what little she’s got on hand. She takes her helmet completely off, needing the freedom to move and observe Beglan closely. She’s successful in that he doesn’t die, but he’s still leaking blood.

Back on Equinox, Nika and Arden manage to reroute the comms and boost the signal past the interference.

Nika: Rina, Joshua. Can you hear me? Kiera? Anybody?

Kiera hears it loud and clear off her suit collar.

Kiera: Kiera’s here. Beggar is dying. Where are the nitwits?
Nika: Oh my God! Arden’s on his way!
Kiera: Bring me a first aid kit now! And a gun.

Arden’s off the bridge like a shot to grab supplies.

Kiera: Tell Arden to bring a gun.
Nika: Why?
Kiera: That big fèifèi de pìgu's hit me in the head with a wrench and he’s gotten Beggar in the head with a wrench and stabbed him with a screwdriver. Bring a gun.

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