Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 1.03 The Spice Of Life
Previous episode here.
Evening on Paquin arrives, and with it some further opportunities for Black Cat's crew to bond. Under the direction of Luke, Archer and Birgitta join him to shop for a basketball hoop and balls to hang in the cargo bay. After eating dinner together, Nicolas, Quinn, and Daisy decide to go to a nearby fair and ride the Ferris wheel, since Quinn has never ridden one before. They also partake in a number of rigged carnival games in which Nicolas wins a large number of crappy stuffed animals and gives the biggest one to Daisy. (Yes, it's becoming pretty obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that Nicolas has got a bit of a crush on Daisy.)
Another unusual event occurs when Luke invites Archer to dinner at an elegant restaurant near the Paquin spaceport. Luke orders lasagna and a nice bottle of red wine, and starts up a conversation with Archer about what she's been doing since "the last time we met". It seems that Luke was instrumental in facilitating Archer's desertion from the Alliance in some way, although he's keeping his reasons for doing so to himself. Archer tells him that she appreciates his help, and says that she's spent the past couple of months trying to track Daisy down on the Core before finally catching up to her on Beaumonde. She also tells Luke that she wishes she could talk to Daisy and feel as though she actually had a connection with her daughter instead of just traveling on the same ship with her, but that she hasn't quite figured out how to start the conversation. Luke has no advice for her, but if nothing else the two of them share a pleasant dinner together.[1]
Nicolas returns from his night on the town to a wave from his friend Tom on Carringbush, offering the crew its first real job. Tom is catering a number of important dinners for some high-ranking Alliance bureaucrats in about a week, and is preparing some dishes that could strongly benefit from a native Paquinian herb called springpepper. Apparently it's very common on Paquin, but is nearly impossible to find out on the Rim. What's more, it goes bad and becomes completely unusable after seven days, and trying to freeze or refrigerate it only accelerates its deterioration. Tom wants the crew to buy him some springpepper in one of the markets on Paquin and deliver it to him in time for the dinner. He's willing to pay them 550 credits for their trouble. Given that Carringbush is a six-day trip from Paquin, that leaves Black Cat just enough time to do the job. Nicolas accepts the job and says he'll inform the rest of the crew and get things started in the morning.
When morning comes, the rest of Black Cat's crew is happy to hear that they're about to come into some real money if all goes well. In addition, Luke suggests that they might want to supplement their current job by purchasing some goods in bulk on Paquin and attempting to sell them for a profit on Ezra. Reasoning that every Rim planet always needs building supplies, they decide to focus on basic hand tools this time around, and Nicolas gives Luke 200 credits to put towards the purchase. Nicolas, Birgitta, and Quinn get in the hovermule and head to the market that Tom mentioned to purchase the springpepper, while Luke works out the tool-purchasing business (spending Nicolas's 200 credits as well as 400 of his own) and Osiris and Jaya try to get some passengers or additional cargo. Eventually, Osiris and Jaya track down a passenger, a crazy, dirty old man who seems kind of drugged-out and goes by the name of Slim Willie. He says he's going to Carringbush because he wants to convince the Alliance that they need to focus on the giant spider menace that's threatening the entire 'Verse, and hands a bunch of pamphlets about giant spiders out to the crew to prove it. Nevertheless, he's able to pay, so the crew lets him aboard.[2]
Nicolas, Birgitta, and Quinn pull up in front of the market and track down some springpepper from the vendor Tom recommended. However, when they pick it up, it falls apart and turns into a greyish sludge in their hands. Upon seeing this, the shopowner swears and says that the batch must have come down with springpepper blight, which has been absolutely debilitating this season to the point of making springpepper essentially unavailable anywhere on the planet. Tom obviously couldn't have known about this, but the crew is pretty appalled to learn that their so-called easy job just got a lot harder. They ask the shopkeeper what to do, and he says they could always try picking some wild springpepper; the taste is somewhat more bitter than domesticated springpepper, but a person with an undeveloped palate probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. After a bit of prodding and bribery, the shopkeeper also tells the crew that Paula Chang, a wealthy biogeneticist, makes her home on Paquin and uses her own garden to cultivate various experimental plants before introducing them to the world at large - and that among these plants is a blight-resistant strain of springpepper. Disappointed, Nicolas, Birgitta, and Quinn return to Black Cat to consider their options.
Back at Black Cat, the crew decides to try Paula Chang's house first. Luke, Birgitta, Nicolas, and Osiris go to case the joint, and Quinn and Jaya stay behind to keep an eye on Slim Willie. They walk over to the house, and Birgitta notes that it has a security system around the garden, though it could probably be defeated by someone with the right knowledge. But instead of breaking in, Luke knocks on the door and asks Dr. Chang for a tour of her garden, since he's heard that it's quite amazing. Though she rarely gets visitors like this, Dr. Chang soon warms up to the idea and gladly shows Luke and the others the various experimental plants she cultivates.[3] When the tour is over, Luke casually asks if he might be able to buy some of the springpepper to help out a friend, but Dr. Chang vehemently refuses. She says that she considers her plants to be a work of art, and that it would be no more appropriate for her to sell an unfinished work than it would be for an artist to sell a painting when he'd only half finished painting it. She suggests picking wild springpepper, or checking with Paquin's moon of Harlequin to see if they have anything up there that the blight hasn't touched. Cowed, they thank Dr. Chang for her time even though she didn't give them what they were after.
However, as they return to the ship, Luke points out that Dr. Chang did suggest something they hadn't considered - checking on Harlequin, which has a similar climate to Paquin but might not have been as affected by the springpepper blight. He suggests that Birgitta, Nicolas, and Quinn try to track down some wild springpepper, while he tries to work some contacts on Harlequin. Luke sends a wave up to Harlequin, and after some legwork discovers that there is indeed a small farmer on Harlequin who will sell them the two pounds of springpepper they need (and mostly just seems glad to have customers). Luke tells him they'll be on their way soon, and puts out a call to the rest of the crew to let them know what he's discovered.
While Luke is sending waves, Birgitta, Nicolas, and Quinn are fighting against the elements trying to pick wild springpepper from the banks of a nearby river on which it grows. It's slow going, but the three of them are slowly making headway until Birgitta loses her footing on the slippery rocks and falls directly into the river. Birgitta can swim, but not especially well, and she chokes out a call for help to Nicolas and Quinn. By this time, the current has swept Birgitta too far away from the shore for Nicolas or Quinn to be able to reach her with their hands, so they tell Birgitta to hang on and run back to the hovermule. While Birgitta is trying to tread water, she feels something brush up against her and start nipping at her fingers. It's a large, apparently carnivorous fish! Birgitta starts screaming and smacking blindly at the water with her fists, but the fish definitely has an advantage here and soon latches onto her neck, chewing off a large chunk of her flesh. Quinn has overshot the river in the first pass with the hovermule and needs to turn around and come back, hoping she won't be too late. But just as she pulls up over the water, she sees Birgitta wrap both hands around the fish's body and toss it all the way across the river to the other side, where it flops around pathetically for a while and then expires. Nicolas does some quick first aid on Birgitta, who is now demanding that the dead fish be recovered so that she can eat it for dinner that night. Quinn obliges, and is all too glad when Luke's message comes telling them that a new source of springpepper has been found.
Back on the ship, Osiris patches up Birgitta, the crew makes a quick stop on Harlequin to grab the springpepper, and the six-day journey to Carringbush begins. The first two days of the trip to Carringbush are fairly uneventful. During the journey, playing basketball is a major pastime. The crew divides into two teams - one captained by Nicolas and consisting of Archer, Daisy, and Jaya, the other captained by Quinn and consiting of Birgitta, Luke, and Osiris - and play several games, all of which are won decisively by Quinn's team. Osiris also tries to con all the passengers on the ship into submitting to various medical procedures so that he can make a little extra cash, but this plan only works on Slim Willie. Apart from his drug addiction, his delusional beliefs about giant spiders, and a bad case of lice, there's nothing really wrong with Slim Willie - but he authorizes Osiris to do whatever is necessary to delouse him when Osiris cleverly tells him that "you know, lice are basically just little spiders." During this time, Nicolas also discovers that his cat Lucky has been eating the springpepper, because it apparently acts the same as catnip would; this problem is solved by locking up the springpepper in the vacant second shuttle.
The real trouble begins halfway through the third day of the journey. While lounging around in the cockpit, Quinn hears the proximity alarm goes off and is shocked to see an Alliance patrol boat coming up behind Black Cat. A wave comes through the communications system, ordering the crew to prepare for boarding for a routine investigation. Quinn informs the others, and there's a bit of blind panic while everyone realizes that they're breaking the law by having Archer (a deserter) and Daisy (who is presumably still a wanted criminal) on board their ship. They solve this problem as quickly as possible by wrapping Daisy up in a bunch of bandages and braces and telling her to stay in the infirmary and pretend she's a lot more injured than she actually is (by now she's almost completely recovered from the exploding box), and having Luke hide Archer in his shuttle.
Finally, everything is in order and a small Alliance security detail, consisting of an officer and a number of grunts, boards Black Cat. The commanding officer explains to Nicolas that recently, a number of independent trading vessels have been discovered to be smuggling stolen Alliance medical and military supplies from outposts on Paquin to various places on the Rim. The problem has been so pervasive as of late that this particular patrol boat has been ordered to intercept any independent cargo ships leaving Paquin and heading for the Rim, and perform surprise investigations on them to make sure they're not smuggling Alliance goods. Nicolas is still nervous about all of this, but submits to the investigation without complaint knowing that the Alliance isn't going to find the incriminating cargo they're looking for.
The Alliance grunts break out scanners and start searching Black Cat from top to bottom, while the crew sweats and wonders how long this is going to take. At first, things seem to be going well. Daisy's presence in the infirmary raises no eyebrows, and even though the officer searches Luke's shuttle, Archer avoids detection by hiding under Luke's bed. But just when the crew thinks they're out of the woods, one of the scanners starts beeping alarmingly in the vicinity of the hovermule. Upon investigation, the commanding officer finds a hidden compartment concealing a large supply of a dangerous street drug! The crew insists that they don't know anything about this and that they just bought the mule a few weeks ago (and it's the truth), but the Alliance is having none of it. Everybody, with the exception of the still-hidden Archer, gets handcuffed and frog-marched into a holding cell on the patrol vessel, where they will await questioning - and all the while the springpepper is continuing to degrade.
After an hour or so spent cooling their heels in the holding cell, the questioning begins.[4] Luke volunteers to go first, and after it becomes clear to the officer doing the questioning that he's nothing more than a minor Alliance functionary doing his job, he manages to talk the officer into getting to sit in on the remaining interrogations, because "I need to know what I'm getting myself into with this ship, don't I?" As it turns out, Luke is about to discover that he might be in over his head. Out of the crew members who are called in one by one, only Birgitta and Quinn have anything even remotely resembling a clean record. With Quinn, this is hardly surprising because she comes from a backwater planet and had never left before she and Nicolas decided to buy Black Cat, but it's rather strange that Birgitta would have no record worth remarking on given that she's proud of her war service fighting for the Browncoats. Osiris's medical credentials (or lack thereof) are called into question when it turns out that essentially the only information available about him on the entire Cortex is a document warning everyone that he is mentally unstable and not competent to practice medicine in any system. Jaya's record is clean, but the officer tells her that they have reason to believe that her ID is fake and she's traveling under a false identity - a claim that Jaya resoundingly denies. Perhaps strangest of all, when Nicolas is called in for questioning, the officer produces a huge folder of police reports about crimes that a person fitting Nicolas's description exactly has supposedly committed. For some of them, he would have had a reasonable alibi, but for many others he could have been the one to commit them. What it all adds up to is that the Alliance is very suspicious of Black Cat - and possibly for a very good reason.
When everyone who's able to speak has been questioned, and the Alliance hasn't learned much, the officer in charge decides to check out Siqin and Daisy's backgrounds, much to everyone's horror. Siqin is no problem - surprisingly enough, there's even less information about her on the Cortex than there is about Osiris. But when it comes Daisy's turn, everyone holds their breath as the officer reaches for her ID card and, despite the best resistance she can offer, scans it through the Cortex. Everyone is even more shocked when the guards announce that there is nothing suspicious to be found on her record, and given her condition they can probably forgo the questioning. With that, the crew is left in the holding cell to try to make some sense of what happened.
An hour or two later, the officer returns, with several guards in tow - but this time, he opens up the cell and lets everyone out. In full view of everyone, the officer apologizes to Luke, saying, "I'm sorry, sir, we didn't realize who you were at first. It's clear that whatever you're doing with this bunch, it's already been taken care of, so we'll send you on your way." Everyone gets returned to Black Cat (minus the drugs, of course) in short order, and the Alliance patrol boat leaves as quickly as it showed up.
Nobody has time to ask Luke what all of that might have meant, however, because they've lost a good 12 hours from being detained and need to focus on getting to Carringbush as quickly as possible. Quinn considers trying to push the ship to hard burn, which would cut their trip time in half, but Birgitta is concerned about the engine holding up for that sort of speed. Ultimately, they decide that because they'll still be on time as long as they don't encounter any more delays, they won't push for the hard burn right now and will focus on doing things as quickly as possible once they get to Carringbush. The crew is in luck, and the remaining three days of the journey to Carringbush pass without incident.
Finally, Black Cat lands at the Carringbush spaceport, and waits through seemingly interminable delays while a particularly officious customs official checks out their paperwork. After several hours of waiting, and after paying the trade tariffs on the tools they're importing, they're finally cleared to go meet Tom. Nicolas, Quinn, and Luke take the springpepper (which is beginning to visibly wilt), get in the hovermule, and head for Tom's restaurant. On the way their, however, they encounter a rather serious traffic jam which is boxing them in on all sides. Quinn is forced to resort to some fairly dangerous flying maneuvers to get them to their destination, but she manages to reach the restaurant just before the springpepper hits its expiration date. Tom grabs the springpepper and pays them, and tells him that he needs to focus on cooking for his guests for the remainder of the weekend, but that if they stick around Carringbush for the next couple of days he can probably find another job for them. The crew is pleased by this turn of events, and returns to Black Cat to begin to celebrate their first successful job.
1 - BTW, if anyone is wondering about my policy with regards to "private" conversations such as this one - it happened in full view of the rest of the group, so I see anything that occurs in that context as fair game to be recapped. I trust my players to keep IC and OOC separate and not metagame, and including stuff like this makes things a hell of a lot more interesting for the rest of you!
2 - Before you ask, yes, I had this in the back of my mind while making up this NPC on the fly.
3 - And Beth was glad to apply her practical knowledge of plant pathology to gaming!
4 - I was already halfway into this scene before I realized that it was essentially a giant ripoff of the Firefly episode "Bushwhacked." Oh well - if you're going to steal, steal from the best!
Evening on Paquin arrives, and with it some further opportunities for Black Cat's crew to bond. Under the direction of Luke, Archer and Birgitta join him to shop for a basketball hoop and balls to hang in the cargo bay. After eating dinner together, Nicolas, Quinn, and Daisy decide to go to a nearby fair and ride the Ferris wheel, since Quinn has never ridden one before. They also partake in a number of rigged carnival games in which Nicolas wins a large number of crappy stuffed animals and gives the biggest one to Daisy. (Yes, it's becoming pretty obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that Nicolas has got a bit of a crush on Daisy.)
Another unusual event occurs when Luke invites Archer to dinner at an elegant restaurant near the Paquin spaceport. Luke orders lasagna and a nice bottle of red wine, and starts up a conversation with Archer about what she's been doing since "the last time we met". It seems that Luke was instrumental in facilitating Archer's desertion from the Alliance in some way, although he's keeping his reasons for doing so to himself. Archer tells him that she appreciates his help, and says that she's spent the past couple of months trying to track Daisy down on the Core before finally catching up to her on Beaumonde. She also tells Luke that she wishes she could talk to Daisy and feel as though she actually had a connection with her daughter instead of just traveling on the same ship with her, but that she hasn't quite figured out how to start the conversation. Luke has no advice for her, but if nothing else the two of them share a pleasant dinner together.[1]
Nicolas returns from his night on the town to a wave from his friend Tom on Carringbush, offering the crew its first real job. Tom is catering a number of important dinners for some high-ranking Alliance bureaucrats in about a week, and is preparing some dishes that could strongly benefit from a native Paquinian herb called springpepper. Apparently it's very common on Paquin, but is nearly impossible to find out on the Rim. What's more, it goes bad and becomes completely unusable after seven days, and trying to freeze or refrigerate it only accelerates its deterioration. Tom wants the crew to buy him some springpepper in one of the markets on Paquin and deliver it to him in time for the dinner. He's willing to pay them 550 credits for their trouble. Given that Carringbush is a six-day trip from Paquin, that leaves Black Cat just enough time to do the job. Nicolas accepts the job and says he'll inform the rest of the crew and get things started in the morning.
When morning comes, the rest of Black Cat's crew is happy to hear that they're about to come into some real money if all goes well. In addition, Luke suggests that they might want to supplement their current job by purchasing some goods in bulk on Paquin and attempting to sell them for a profit on Ezra. Reasoning that every Rim planet always needs building supplies, they decide to focus on basic hand tools this time around, and Nicolas gives Luke 200 credits to put towards the purchase. Nicolas, Birgitta, and Quinn get in the hovermule and head to the market that Tom mentioned to purchase the springpepper, while Luke works out the tool-purchasing business (spending Nicolas's 200 credits as well as 400 of his own) and Osiris and Jaya try to get some passengers or additional cargo. Eventually, Osiris and Jaya track down a passenger, a crazy, dirty old man who seems kind of drugged-out and goes by the name of Slim Willie. He says he's going to Carringbush because he wants to convince the Alliance that they need to focus on the giant spider menace that's threatening the entire 'Verse, and hands a bunch of pamphlets about giant spiders out to the crew to prove it. Nevertheless, he's able to pay, so the crew lets him aboard.[2]
Nicolas, Birgitta, and Quinn pull up in front of the market and track down some springpepper from the vendor Tom recommended. However, when they pick it up, it falls apart and turns into a greyish sludge in their hands. Upon seeing this, the shopowner swears and says that the batch must have come down with springpepper blight, which has been absolutely debilitating this season to the point of making springpepper essentially unavailable anywhere on the planet. Tom obviously couldn't have known about this, but the crew is pretty appalled to learn that their so-called easy job just got a lot harder. They ask the shopkeeper what to do, and he says they could always try picking some wild springpepper; the taste is somewhat more bitter than domesticated springpepper, but a person with an undeveloped palate probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. After a bit of prodding and bribery, the shopkeeper also tells the crew that Paula Chang, a wealthy biogeneticist, makes her home on Paquin and uses her own garden to cultivate various experimental plants before introducing them to the world at large - and that among these plants is a blight-resistant strain of springpepper. Disappointed, Nicolas, Birgitta, and Quinn return to Black Cat to consider their options.
Back at Black Cat, the crew decides to try Paula Chang's house first. Luke, Birgitta, Nicolas, and Osiris go to case the joint, and Quinn and Jaya stay behind to keep an eye on Slim Willie. They walk over to the house, and Birgitta notes that it has a security system around the garden, though it could probably be defeated by someone with the right knowledge. But instead of breaking in, Luke knocks on the door and asks Dr. Chang for a tour of her garden, since he's heard that it's quite amazing. Though she rarely gets visitors like this, Dr. Chang soon warms up to the idea and gladly shows Luke and the others the various experimental plants she cultivates.[3] When the tour is over, Luke casually asks if he might be able to buy some of the springpepper to help out a friend, but Dr. Chang vehemently refuses. She says that she considers her plants to be a work of art, and that it would be no more appropriate for her to sell an unfinished work than it would be for an artist to sell a painting when he'd only half finished painting it. She suggests picking wild springpepper, or checking with Paquin's moon of Harlequin to see if they have anything up there that the blight hasn't touched. Cowed, they thank Dr. Chang for her time even though she didn't give them what they were after.
However, as they return to the ship, Luke points out that Dr. Chang did suggest something they hadn't considered - checking on Harlequin, which has a similar climate to Paquin but might not have been as affected by the springpepper blight. He suggests that Birgitta, Nicolas, and Quinn try to track down some wild springpepper, while he tries to work some contacts on Harlequin. Luke sends a wave up to Harlequin, and after some legwork discovers that there is indeed a small farmer on Harlequin who will sell them the two pounds of springpepper they need (and mostly just seems glad to have customers). Luke tells him they'll be on their way soon, and puts out a call to the rest of the crew to let them know what he's discovered.
While Luke is sending waves, Birgitta, Nicolas, and Quinn are fighting against the elements trying to pick wild springpepper from the banks of a nearby river on which it grows. It's slow going, but the three of them are slowly making headway until Birgitta loses her footing on the slippery rocks and falls directly into the river. Birgitta can swim, but not especially well, and she chokes out a call for help to Nicolas and Quinn. By this time, the current has swept Birgitta too far away from the shore for Nicolas or Quinn to be able to reach her with their hands, so they tell Birgitta to hang on and run back to the hovermule. While Birgitta is trying to tread water, she feels something brush up against her and start nipping at her fingers. It's a large, apparently carnivorous fish! Birgitta starts screaming and smacking blindly at the water with her fists, but the fish definitely has an advantage here and soon latches onto her neck, chewing off a large chunk of her flesh. Quinn has overshot the river in the first pass with the hovermule and needs to turn around and come back, hoping she won't be too late. But just as she pulls up over the water, she sees Birgitta wrap both hands around the fish's body and toss it all the way across the river to the other side, where it flops around pathetically for a while and then expires. Nicolas does some quick first aid on Birgitta, who is now demanding that the dead fish be recovered so that she can eat it for dinner that night. Quinn obliges, and is all too glad when Luke's message comes telling them that a new source of springpepper has been found.
Back on the ship, Osiris patches up Birgitta, the crew makes a quick stop on Harlequin to grab the springpepper, and the six-day journey to Carringbush begins. The first two days of the trip to Carringbush are fairly uneventful. During the journey, playing basketball is a major pastime. The crew divides into two teams - one captained by Nicolas and consisting of Archer, Daisy, and Jaya, the other captained by Quinn and consiting of Birgitta, Luke, and Osiris - and play several games, all of which are won decisively by Quinn's team. Osiris also tries to con all the passengers on the ship into submitting to various medical procedures so that he can make a little extra cash, but this plan only works on Slim Willie. Apart from his drug addiction, his delusional beliefs about giant spiders, and a bad case of lice, there's nothing really wrong with Slim Willie - but he authorizes Osiris to do whatever is necessary to delouse him when Osiris cleverly tells him that "you know, lice are basically just little spiders." During this time, Nicolas also discovers that his cat Lucky has been eating the springpepper, because it apparently acts the same as catnip would; this problem is solved by locking up the springpepper in the vacant second shuttle.
The real trouble begins halfway through the third day of the journey. While lounging around in the cockpit, Quinn hears the proximity alarm goes off and is shocked to see an Alliance patrol boat coming up behind Black Cat. A wave comes through the communications system, ordering the crew to prepare for boarding for a routine investigation. Quinn informs the others, and there's a bit of blind panic while everyone realizes that they're breaking the law by having Archer (a deserter) and Daisy (who is presumably still a wanted criminal) on board their ship. They solve this problem as quickly as possible by wrapping Daisy up in a bunch of bandages and braces and telling her to stay in the infirmary and pretend she's a lot more injured than she actually is (by now she's almost completely recovered from the exploding box), and having Luke hide Archer in his shuttle.
Finally, everything is in order and a small Alliance security detail, consisting of an officer and a number of grunts, boards Black Cat. The commanding officer explains to Nicolas that recently, a number of independent trading vessels have been discovered to be smuggling stolen Alliance medical and military supplies from outposts on Paquin to various places on the Rim. The problem has been so pervasive as of late that this particular patrol boat has been ordered to intercept any independent cargo ships leaving Paquin and heading for the Rim, and perform surprise investigations on them to make sure they're not smuggling Alliance goods. Nicolas is still nervous about all of this, but submits to the investigation without complaint knowing that the Alliance isn't going to find the incriminating cargo they're looking for.
The Alliance grunts break out scanners and start searching Black Cat from top to bottom, while the crew sweats and wonders how long this is going to take. At first, things seem to be going well. Daisy's presence in the infirmary raises no eyebrows, and even though the officer searches Luke's shuttle, Archer avoids detection by hiding under Luke's bed. But just when the crew thinks they're out of the woods, one of the scanners starts beeping alarmingly in the vicinity of the hovermule. Upon investigation, the commanding officer finds a hidden compartment concealing a large supply of a dangerous street drug! The crew insists that they don't know anything about this and that they just bought the mule a few weeks ago (and it's the truth), but the Alliance is having none of it. Everybody, with the exception of the still-hidden Archer, gets handcuffed and frog-marched into a holding cell on the patrol vessel, where they will await questioning - and all the while the springpepper is continuing to degrade.
After an hour or so spent cooling their heels in the holding cell, the questioning begins.[4] Luke volunteers to go first, and after it becomes clear to the officer doing the questioning that he's nothing more than a minor Alliance functionary doing his job, he manages to talk the officer into getting to sit in on the remaining interrogations, because "I need to know what I'm getting myself into with this ship, don't I?" As it turns out, Luke is about to discover that he might be in over his head. Out of the crew members who are called in one by one, only Birgitta and Quinn have anything even remotely resembling a clean record. With Quinn, this is hardly surprising because she comes from a backwater planet and had never left before she and Nicolas decided to buy Black Cat, but it's rather strange that Birgitta would have no record worth remarking on given that she's proud of her war service fighting for the Browncoats. Osiris's medical credentials (or lack thereof) are called into question when it turns out that essentially the only information available about him on the entire Cortex is a document warning everyone that he is mentally unstable and not competent to practice medicine in any system. Jaya's record is clean, but the officer tells her that they have reason to believe that her ID is fake and she's traveling under a false identity - a claim that Jaya resoundingly denies. Perhaps strangest of all, when Nicolas is called in for questioning, the officer produces a huge folder of police reports about crimes that a person fitting Nicolas's description exactly has supposedly committed. For some of them, he would have had a reasonable alibi, but for many others he could have been the one to commit them. What it all adds up to is that the Alliance is very suspicious of Black Cat - and possibly for a very good reason.
When everyone who's able to speak has been questioned, and the Alliance hasn't learned much, the officer in charge decides to check out Siqin and Daisy's backgrounds, much to everyone's horror. Siqin is no problem - surprisingly enough, there's even less information about her on the Cortex than there is about Osiris. But when it comes Daisy's turn, everyone holds their breath as the officer reaches for her ID card and, despite the best resistance she can offer, scans it through the Cortex. Everyone is even more shocked when the guards announce that there is nothing suspicious to be found on her record, and given her condition they can probably forgo the questioning. With that, the crew is left in the holding cell to try to make some sense of what happened.
An hour or two later, the officer returns, with several guards in tow - but this time, he opens up the cell and lets everyone out. In full view of everyone, the officer apologizes to Luke, saying, "I'm sorry, sir, we didn't realize who you were at first. It's clear that whatever you're doing with this bunch, it's already been taken care of, so we'll send you on your way." Everyone gets returned to Black Cat (minus the drugs, of course) in short order, and the Alliance patrol boat leaves as quickly as it showed up.
Nobody has time to ask Luke what all of that might have meant, however, because they've lost a good 12 hours from being detained and need to focus on getting to Carringbush as quickly as possible. Quinn considers trying to push the ship to hard burn, which would cut their trip time in half, but Birgitta is concerned about the engine holding up for that sort of speed. Ultimately, they decide that because they'll still be on time as long as they don't encounter any more delays, they won't push for the hard burn right now and will focus on doing things as quickly as possible once they get to Carringbush. The crew is in luck, and the remaining three days of the journey to Carringbush pass without incident.
Finally, Black Cat lands at the Carringbush spaceport, and waits through seemingly interminable delays while a particularly officious customs official checks out their paperwork. After several hours of waiting, and after paying the trade tariffs on the tools they're importing, they're finally cleared to go meet Tom. Nicolas, Quinn, and Luke take the springpepper (which is beginning to visibly wilt), get in the hovermule, and head for Tom's restaurant. On the way their, however, they encounter a rather serious traffic jam which is boxing them in on all sides. Quinn is forced to resort to some fairly dangerous flying maneuvers to get them to their destination, but she manages to reach the restaurant just before the springpepper hits its expiration date. Tom grabs the springpepper and pays them, and tells him that he needs to focus on cooking for his guests for the remainder of the weekend, but that if they stick around Carringbush for the next couple of days he can probably find another job for them. The crew is pleased by this turn of events, and returns to Black Cat to begin to celebrate their first successful job.
1 - BTW, if anyone is wondering about my policy with regards to "private" conversations such as this one - it happened in full view of the rest of the group, so I see anything that occurs in that context as fair game to be recapped. I trust my players to keep IC and OOC separate and not metagame, and including stuff like this makes things a hell of a lot more interesting for the rest of you!
2 - Before you ask, yes, I had this in the back of my mind while making up this NPC on the fly.
3 - And Beth was glad to apply her practical knowledge of plant pathology to gaming!
4 - I was already halfway into this scene before I realized that it was essentially a giant ripoff of the Firefly episode "Bushwhacked." Oh well - if you're going to steal, steal from the best!