Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 4.16 Gone Fishing
Those were some pretty good Olympics. Nevertheless I am extremely glad that my normal life (i.e. a life not spent on my ass in front of the TV) can now resume - until winter 2010 that is!
Previous episode here.
Black Cat arrives on Newhall at the edge of the irradiated zone in which they hope to find the Newhall leviathan that will give them an excuse to enter Blue Sun R&D. Right away, Luke excuses himself to go speak to the Alliance authorities and arrange for the necessary permissions; he's also volunteered to serve as the wheelman for Black Cat's foray into the R&D building. (In reality, Sekhmet has ordered Luke not to be anywhere near whatever is happening inside R&D headquarters, for reasons he can't even begin to guess at.) Also on the island where the crew has landed is a passenger transport containing Siqin, who received Nicolas's message and did not require much convincing to leave her boring job with the Companions and rejoin her friends back on Black Cat. Upon her return, Nicolas enjoys telling her about all of the craziness she has missed in the approximately three months she's been away, and witnessing her typically appalled reactions at all of the trouble that the crew has gotten themselves into in her absence.
After Luke returns with the permits, Birgitta, Nicolas, Osiris, and Siqin set out into the open ocean in the small boat that Nicolas purchased on Osiris, hoping to make fast work of locating the Newhall leviathan. But Nicolas is perhaps overconfident in his estimation of his own skills as a boat captain and navigator, and he takes the small craft much too far out into the open ocean, very far from the sight of land. So it's much worse than it would have been otherwise when a large wave comes over the boat, swamping it and knocking both Birgitta and Osiris into the water.[1] Both are rescued without delay by Nicolas and Siqin, but their problems are just beginning. Although Birgitta manages to repair the boat's motor, which cut out after being submerged in the wave, everyone's communications devices were completely destroyed by the sea water and cannot be repaired without a dry place to work in. Along with that, night has fallen and the crew has drifted so far from their planned course and any sight of land that they literally have no idea where they are - and they're in the middle of the ocean on a planet that is more than 95% covered by water.
It's very fortunate for the crew, then, that Quinn is so frightened of the water, and thus worried about her brother, that she decides to take the ship out and look for the boat when they haven't returned after an hour and a half. She takes off and, with a little help from Daisy (who operates the ship's newly updated sensors with relative skill), soon locates her crewmates huddled together in the boat and rescues them from certain death. Nicolas is very grateful for Quinn's help, since he knows they would never have made it back to shore without her. Quinn strictly tells Nicolas that he needs to be more careful next time, and offers to help out by following behind the boat in Black Cat during the next day's search. Nicolas agrees that this is probably a good idea.
The following morning at sunrise, Quinn's assistance pays off as it enables Nicolas and the others in the boat to range farther away from land than would have been safe otherwise. They don't find anything that morning, but when they go out again in the evening, it doesn't take them long using the sonar to find a large shape that can only be a leviathan. Trouble is, the leviathan is staying at the bottom of the ocean, hundreds of feet down from the surface. So the crew's work isn't close to done; even though they have found the leviathan, they now need to figure out how to lure it to the surface. Black Cat returns to the central island, where Nicolas gives everybody orders ranging from buying huge amounts of bait to lure the leviathan, having Siqin repair and waterproof the crew's communications equipment, and even having Birgitta purchase a mannequin and rig it up to move independently to add to the allure of it all.
The next evening, Inheritance shows up bearing Dr. Pratt, her assistant scientists, and a large amount of leviathan capture and care equipment including an enormous tank. The crew of Black Cat meets with the scientists to show them where they found the leviathan and figure out a plan of action. Dr. Pratt's gear is much more technologically advanced than what Black Cat has, and includes things like stunners and harpoon guns; she says that if the crew can lure the leviathan to the surface, the scientists can probably handle the capture from there. Nicolas shows her the chum and the mechanized mannequin, and says that he thinks the crew can handle that. Plans are made to attempt the capture the following morning, around sunrise.
When morning rolls around, Black Cat's plan for luring the leviathan goes off without a hitch. They wait until the leviathan is in a relatively shallow area of the ocean, then toss the mannequin and the chum out and wait, making sure that Inheritance stays far away enough that its engines won't frighten the leviathan away. Sure enough, the leviathan rises to the surface to eat the chum, then moves on to the mannequin - only to be stymied by the fact that Birgitta reinforced it with thick steel "bones" that make it very difficult for the leviathan to bite down. While the leviathan is trying to eat the mannequin, Inheritance swoops in, shocks and nets the leviathan, and reels it into the giant tank with harpoon guns. Blue Sun has done the impossible with the help of the crew and captured conclusive proof of alien life!
With the leviathan in the tank, an excited Dr. Pratt tells the crews that she wants to get back to R&D as quickly as possible to begin studying it, and Black Cat has no desire to argue with her. The two ships take off quickly and begin the three-day return trip to Osiris. While en route, the crews start planning out how they are going to get their equipment through the scanners at R&D, and keep returning to the original plan of feeding the equipment to the leviathan and then blowing it up once they're inside the building. Since Archer admits to having purchased a few chemplast charges not too long ago, it seems as though this is going to be the way things go. The crew loads their equipment into a spare beer keg (and tells the crew of Inheritance to do the same) and gathers up enough sedatives to knock out the leviathan long enough to actually undertake the work of getting this gear down the leviathan's throat without getting eaten in the process.
Then, on the night before the ships are due to arrive at Osiris, the crews make their move. Inheritance reports that there has been a scientist keeping an eye on the leviathan at all times since there is so much data to gather, but they manage to lure all the scientists away for long enough to allow Blue Sun to feed the two chemplast charges and two beer kegs full of gear to it. Archer shoots it with several sedative darts and knocks it out, while Birgitta takes on the unpleasant task of literally crawling down the leviathan's gullet in order to locate the charges and kegs in the correct place to maximize damage to the leviathan while protecting the equipment from damage. The crew quickly succeeds and returns to Black Cat, with the detonator for the explosives safely in Archer's pocket.
Finally, Black Cat and Inheritance reach Osiris. Per Blue Sun instructions, Quinn drops Black Cat off at a landing facility conveniently near the air conditioning plant so that the crew can be shuttled over to R&D, while Inheritance stops at the R&D docking area just long enough to offload the tank containing the leviathan and all of the scientists' equipment before it, too, puts in at the landing facility. The crew of Black Cat waits around in the loading area, trying to look useful, until the crew of Inheritance arrives and Michael gives Nicolas a nod indicating that he's ready. Nicolas gives Archer a signal as well, and she reaches into her pocket and detonates the charges. Immediately, the tank (and the leviathan within it!) blows apart, flooding the entire room with salt water and causing the exact sort of mass panic that both crews wanted. Everyone retrieves their equipment in the middle of the chaos and then splits up into two prearranged groups - one (consisting mainly of Inheritance crew) to stay behind and maintain the distraction, and a second (consisting of Archer, Birgitta, Nicolas, Osiris, Quinn, Siqin, Michael, and one other Inheritance crew member) to get to the vault and retrieve the notes.
The group of infiltrators leaves the chaos in the loading dock behind and rushes to the vault that contains the notes, dodging Blue Sun security guards all the way. When they arrive, Nicolas produces the Red Box and tells Siqin to apply it to the door - which she does, though she warns Nicolas that the nature of the vault door is such that a silent alarm will undoubtedly be tripped when it is disintegrated. Nicolas then touches the door and watches it crumble, and the crew enters the vault. The vault itself is actually a fairly large suite of rooms that also contain various science lab equipment, but luckily no one else is inside at the moment and the crew finds it easy to locate the notes (six pages in all, plus the single crumpled page they originally gave to Dora) in one of the small, humidity- and temperature-controlled closets that line the walls of the vault. They help Michael put the notes in the small container attached to the parachute, and watch in relief as it floats away safely toward the air conditioning plant.
Once the notes are securely away and everyone is standing around the , Michael says, "Well, guess we'd better be going then." He and his fellow Inheritance crew member pull out small gas masks from their pockets, don them, and toss down a gas grenade before anyone has a chance to react. Michael and his crewman flee the enclosed space of the vault as it fills with gas while the rest of the crew, in shock at this unexpected betrayal, can only cough and try to get away from the caustic gas as quickly as possible. Archer, Nicolas, and Quinn duck into the storage area that they just retrieved the notes from and close the door to keep the gas out, while Birgitta, Osiris, and Siqin decide to run after Michael and take a nasty, caustic faceful of gas in the process, which weakens all three of them substantially.
Out in the hall, Birgitta, Osiris, and Siqin quickly see that their escape from the gas has not put them in as good of a position as they would have liked. Michael was far enough ahead of them to close and seal an emergency blast door between the vault and where he's running; Siqin accesses a nearby security terminal and tries to override it, but she soon sees that Michael has shot the door controls from the other side and there's no getting through it. Then, things go from bad to worse. The video screen on the security terminal, as well as the screens that are visible inside the vault and presumable all others throughout the complex, begin to display an "emergency security message" showing Michael's face. He explains that as a faithful and loyal employee of Blue Sun, it falls to him to tell everyone that the crew of Black Cat is trying to rob Blue Sun's vaults, and that they must be stopped before they get away with all kinds of proprietary Blue Sun secrets. The video screens then display the ID badge photos and names of all of Black Cat's crew members, along with orders to capture them by any means necessary.
Right away, everyone can see that a couple of things aren't quite right about this message. Everyone just saw Michael running down the hall, and this message was clearly broadcast with Inheritance as a backdrop - they conclude it must be pre-recorded because there's no way he could have moved that quickly. Even stranger, Nicolas is in the background of the shot, saying nothing and looking quite scruffy. Quinn is very confused by this and asks Nicolas what's going on; his only response is, "Our daddy done stabbed us in the back, Quinn. We need Sekhmet's help. We got no other choice if we want to live."
Because there is no communications terminal in the storage closet, Quinn is forced to dash through the gas with the encrypted message chip and plug it into the terminal outside. She's expecting a lot more than what she gets - which is just a screen displaying the Alliance logo, and a clip of a soothing female voice saying, "Thank you. Help is on the way." But as frustrated as Quinn is right now, she couldn't possibly be more upset than Nicolas, who is basically throwing a tantrum inside the storage closet and cursing his father's name...until he feels an arm around his neck and a strong person lifting him up off the floor. As Nicolas continues to struggle and gasp, Archer's voice says, "All right now. The first thing I'm gonna ask you is who you are and what the hell you've done with my captain."
TO BE CONTINUED...
1 - First Nicolas botched his boat navigation roll, and then Birgitta and Osiris botched their rolls to hang on to the boat when the wave came over it. For serious and for true.
Previous episode here.
Black Cat arrives on Newhall at the edge of the irradiated zone in which they hope to find the Newhall leviathan that will give them an excuse to enter Blue Sun R&D. Right away, Luke excuses himself to go speak to the Alliance authorities and arrange for the necessary permissions; he's also volunteered to serve as the wheelman for Black Cat's foray into the R&D building. (In reality, Sekhmet has ordered Luke not to be anywhere near whatever is happening inside R&D headquarters, for reasons he can't even begin to guess at.) Also on the island where the crew has landed is a passenger transport containing Siqin, who received Nicolas's message and did not require much convincing to leave her boring job with the Companions and rejoin her friends back on Black Cat. Upon her return, Nicolas enjoys telling her about all of the craziness she has missed in the approximately three months she's been away, and witnessing her typically appalled reactions at all of the trouble that the crew has gotten themselves into in her absence.
After Luke returns with the permits, Birgitta, Nicolas, Osiris, and Siqin set out into the open ocean in the small boat that Nicolas purchased on Osiris, hoping to make fast work of locating the Newhall leviathan. But Nicolas is perhaps overconfident in his estimation of his own skills as a boat captain and navigator, and he takes the small craft much too far out into the open ocean, very far from the sight of land. So it's much worse than it would have been otherwise when a large wave comes over the boat, swamping it and knocking both Birgitta and Osiris into the water.[1] Both are rescued without delay by Nicolas and Siqin, but their problems are just beginning. Although Birgitta manages to repair the boat's motor, which cut out after being submerged in the wave, everyone's communications devices were completely destroyed by the sea water and cannot be repaired without a dry place to work in. Along with that, night has fallen and the crew has drifted so far from their planned course and any sight of land that they literally have no idea where they are - and they're in the middle of the ocean on a planet that is more than 95% covered by water.
It's very fortunate for the crew, then, that Quinn is so frightened of the water, and thus worried about her brother, that she decides to take the ship out and look for the boat when they haven't returned after an hour and a half. She takes off and, with a little help from Daisy (who operates the ship's newly updated sensors with relative skill), soon locates her crewmates huddled together in the boat and rescues them from certain death. Nicolas is very grateful for Quinn's help, since he knows they would never have made it back to shore without her. Quinn strictly tells Nicolas that he needs to be more careful next time, and offers to help out by following behind the boat in Black Cat during the next day's search. Nicolas agrees that this is probably a good idea.
The following morning at sunrise, Quinn's assistance pays off as it enables Nicolas and the others in the boat to range farther away from land than would have been safe otherwise. They don't find anything that morning, but when they go out again in the evening, it doesn't take them long using the sonar to find a large shape that can only be a leviathan. Trouble is, the leviathan is staying at the bottom of the ocean, hundreds of feet down from the surface. So the crew's work isn't close to done; even though they have found the leviathan, they now need to figure out how to lure it to the surface. Black Cat returns to the central island, where Nicolas gives everybody orders ranging from buying huge amounts of bait to lure the leviathan, having Siqin repair and waterproof the crew's communications equipment, and even having Birgitta purchase a mannequin and rig it up to move independently to add to the allure of it all.
The next evening, Inheritance shows up bearing Dr. Pratt, her assistant scientists, and a large amount of leviathan capture and care equipment including an enormous tank. The crew of Black Cat meets with the scientists to show them where they found the leviathan and figure out a plan of action. Dr. Pratt's gear is much more technologically advanced than what Black Cat has, and includes things like stunners and harpoon guns; she says that if the crew can lure the leviathan to the surface, the scientists can probably handle the capture from there. Nicolas shows her the chum and the mechanized mannequin, and says that he thinks the crew can handle that. Plans are made to attempt the capture the following morning, around sunrise.
When morning rolls around, Black Cat's plan for luring the leviathan goes off without a hitch. They wait until the leviathan is in a relatively shallow area of the ocean, then toss the mannequin and the chum out and wait, making sure that Inheritance stays far away enough that its engines won't frighten the leviathan away. Sure enough, the leviathan rises to the surface to eat the chum, then moves on to the mannequin - only to be stymied by the fact that Birgitta reinforced it with thick steel "bones" that make it very difficult for the leviathan to bite down. While the leviathan is trying to eat the mannequin, Inheritance swoops in, shocks and nets the leviathan, and reels it into the giant tank with harpoon guns. Blue Sun has done the impossible with the help of the crew and captured conclusive proof of alien life!
With the leviathan in the tank, an excited Dr. Pratt tells the crews that she wants to get back to R&D as quickly as possible to begin studying it, and Black Cat has no desire to argue with her. The two ships take off quickly and begin the three-day return trip to Osiris. While en route, the crews start planning out how they are going to get their equipment through the scanners at R&D, and keep returning to the original plan of feeding the equipment to the leviathan and then blowing it up once they're inside the building. Since Archer admits to having purchased a few chemplast charges not too long ago, it seems as though this is going to be the way things go. The crew loads their equipment into a spare beer keg (and tells the crew of Inheritance to do the same) and gathers up enough sedatives to knock out the leviathan long enough to actually undertake the work of getting this gear down the leviathan's throat without getting eaten in the process.
Then, on the night before the ships are due to arrive at Osiris, the crews make their move. Inheritance reports that there has been a scientist keeping an eye on the leviathan at all times since there is so much data to gather, but they manage to lure all the scientists away for long enough to allow Blue Sun to feed the two chemplast charges and two beer kegs full of gear to it. Archer shoots it with several sedative darts and knocks it out, while Birgitta takes on the unpleasant task of literally crawling down the leviathan's gullet in order to locate the charges and kegs in the correct place to maximize damage to the leviathan while protecting the equipment from damage. The crew quickly succeeds and returns to Black Cat, with the detonator for the explosives safely in Archer's pocket.
Finally, Black Cat and Inheritance reach Osiris. Per Blue Sun instructions, Quinn drops Black Cat off at a landing facility conveniently near the air conditioning plant so that the crew can be shuttled over to R&D, while Inheritance stops at the R&D docking area just long enough to offload the tank containing the leviathan and all of the scientists' equipment before it, too, puts in at the landing facility. The crew of Black Cat waits around in the loading area, trying to look useful, until the crew of Inheritance arrives and Michael gives Nicolas a nod indicating that he's ready. Nicolas gives Archer a signal as well, and she reaches into her pocket and detonates the charges. Immediately, the tank (and the leviathan within it!) blows apart, flooding the entire room with salt water and causing the exact sort of mass panic that both crews wanted. Everyone retrieves their equipment in the middle of the chaos and then splits up into two prearranged groups - one (consisting mainly of Inheritance crew) to stay behind and maintain the distraction, and a second (consisting of Archer, Birgitta, Nicolas, Osiris, Quinn, Siqin, Michael, and one other Inheritance crew member) to get to the vault and retrieve the notes.
The group of infiltrators leaves the chaos in the loading dock behind and rushes to the vault that contains the notes, dodging Blue Sun security guards all the way. When they arrive, Nicolas produces the Red Box and tells Siqin to apply it to the door - which she does, though she warns Nicolas that the nature of the vault door is such that a silent alarm will undoubtedly be tripped when it is disintegrated. Nicolas then touches the door and watches it crumble, and the crew enters the vault. The vault itself is actually a fairly large suite of rooms that also contain various science lab equipment, but luckily no one else is inside at the moment and the crew finds it easy to locate the notes (six pages in all, plus the single crumpled page they originally gave to Dora) in one of the small, humidity- and temperature-controlled closets that line the walls of the vault. They help Michael put the notes in the small container attached to the parachute, and watch in relief as it floats away safely toward the air conditioning plant.
Once the notes are securely away and everyone is standing around the , Michael says, "Well, guess we'd better be going then." He and his fellow Inheritance crew member pull out small gas masks from their pockets, don them, and toss down a gas grenade before anyone has a chance to react. Michael and his crewman flee the enclosed space of the vault as it fills with gas while the rest of the crew, in shock at this unexpected betrayal, can only cough and try to get away from the caustic gas as quickly as possible. Archer, Nicolas, and Quinn duck into the storage area that they just retrieved the notes from and close the door to keep the gas out, while Birgitta, Osiris, and Siqin decide to run after Michael and take a nasty, caustic faceful of gas in the process, which weakens all three of them substantially.
Out in the hall, Birgitta, Osiris, and Siqin quickly see that their escape from the gas has not put them in as good of a position as they would have liked. Michael was far enough ahead of them to close and seal an emergency blast door between the vault and where he's running; Siqin accesses a nearby security terminal and tries to override it, but she soon sees that Michael has shot the door controls from the other side and there's no getting through it. Then, things go from bad to worse. The video screen on the security terminal, as well as the screens that are visible inside the vault and presumable all others throughout the complex, begin to display an "emergency security message" showing Michael's face. He explains that as a faithful and loyal employee of Blue Sun, it falls to him to tell everyone that the crew of Black Cat is trying to rob Blue Sun's vaults, and that they must be stopped before they get away with all kinds of proprietary Blue Sun secrets. The video screens then display the ID badge photos and names of all of Black Cat's crew members, along with orders to capture them by any means necessary.
Right away, everyone can see that a couple of things aren't quite right about this message. Everyone just saw Michael running down the hall, and this message was clearly broadcast with Inheritance as a backdrop - they conclude it must be pre-recorded because there's no way he could have moved that quickly. Even stranger, Nicolas is in the background of the shot, saying nothing and looking quite scruffy. Quinn is very confused by this and asks Nicolas what's going on; his only response is, "Our daddy done stabbed us in the back, Quinn. We need Sekhmet's help. We got no other choice if we want to live."
Because there is no communications terminal in the storage closet, Quinn is forced to dash through the gas with the encrypted message chip and plug it into the terminal outside. She's expecting a lot more than what she gets - which is just a screen displaying the Alliance logo, and a clip of a soothing female voice saying, "Thank you. Help is on the way." But as frustrated as Quinn is right now, she couldn't possibly be more upset than Nicolas, who is basically throwing a tantrum inside the storage closet and cursing his father's name...until he feels an arm around his neck and a strong person lifting him up off the floor. As Nicolas continues to struggle and gasp, Archer's voice says, "All right now. The first thing I'm gonna ask you is who you are and what the hell you've done with my captain."
TO BE CONTINUED...
1 - First Nicolas botched his boat navigation roll, and then Birgitta and Osiris botched their rolls to hang on to the boat when the wave came over it. For serious and for true.