Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 7.08 Sleeping Beauty, Part 1
Previous episode here.
Black Cat flies through the night and arrives at Regina the next morning, ready to continue the search for Louise's downed cryopod. But as they approach Regina, they once again see that they are not alone. The ship's sensors have revealed that a large number of ships, both Alliance and independently registered, are currently in orbit of Regina - and when Black Cat gets close enough for a visual, they can see that there is a space battle going on. Nicolas's first instinct is to find Sekhmet and ask her if she knows about why the Alliance might be fighting independent ships around Regina, but when he goes to her shuttle he finds that she has departed in the night, leaving behind only Angelo in the box and a six-week supply of treatment for Mary-Lou, just as she promised.
Quinn brings Black Cat into a synchronous orbit with one of Regina's moons that will allow the ship to hide from the battle while they figure out what is going on. The crew suspects that this fight might be one of the skirmishes between the Alliance and a supposed group of Browncoats that they have been hearing about over the past few months. However, the crew always assumed that the Browncoats in those stories were actually Blue Sun or a Blue-Sun-sponsored fighting force, and none of the independent ships have any markings on them that would denote an allegiance to Blue Sun. Although the Alliance's numbers are greater than the independent forces, the captains on the independent side seem to be fighting very intelligently, so it looks as though this battle could go on for some time before the Alliance inevitable wears the independents down. The longer the crew waits around, the more likely it is that they will be detected and somehow drawn into the fighting, so they decide to just try to sneak past the fighting and into the atmosphere to perform the needed scan.
Quinn's piloting skills are top-notch as always, and she deftly maneuvers Black Cat into the atmosphere while Jade and Siqin begin the scan. Right away, their efforts pay off when they pick up a signal on the expected frequency. It's faint and fragmented, but it's there. Jade and Siqin do their best to pinpoint its origin, but can only get as specific as a particular area of the planet called Vermilion Province. Jade suspects that the magnetic properties of the mountains in that area might be diffusing the signal - which means that the crew needs to land and search for this thing on foot. Quinn prepares the ship for a landing, but hears the proximity alarm going off as she does. Someone is chasing them - and not only chasing, but firing a missile! Quinn dodges the worst of the missile hit, though the ship does sustain some moderate damage to the hull, and yells for Birgitta to prepare for a hard burn, which allows them to leave the pursuing ship behind as it gets tangled up in a fight with an Alliance ship. As Black Cat makes its descent, Nicolas and Siqin look up and notice an unusual marking on the bottom of the pursuing ship - a huge and elaborate coat of arms, with a lion and a unicorn prominently featured within it. Siqin thinks that she remembers coats of arms like that having something to do with the Unification War, but she can't put her finger on exactly what their meaning would be.
While Black Cat is landing, an automated message from the Alliance comes over the intercom, warning the ship that Vermilion Province is a restricted movement area due to the lingering aftereffects of radioactive contamination, and that all visiting ships need to check in at the town of New Prosperity. The whole crew is kind of taken aback by this and decides that with so many strange things happening, they need to talk about what their next move is. The first order of business is to figure out exactly why an independent ship would attack them while they were going out of their way to stay out of the battle. Nobody can figure this out until Siqin mentions the coat of arms she saw to Birgitta. Right away, Birgitta recalls that many important Browncoat leaders adopted medieval-style coats of arms to adorn their ships and apparel, and the lion and the unicorn were the arms of a well-known commander named Wilson Davis. This name is familiar to the whole crew - he's the guy they blamed several months earlier for trying to purchase illegal Dionysus Project military surplus in an attempt to draw out Alliance Internal Affairs. Davis certainly has a reason to be angry at the crew, but Nicolas thinks that his presence here and his attack on the crew were only a coincidence (or he tells himself that, anyway).
Even more troublesome than Wilson Davis's presence is the fact that although Black Cat has escaped the battle raging above, they aren't clear of its effects. The crew realizes that when the battle is over, the Alliance will undoubtedly be scouring the planet below for both their own escape pods and those of other ships, since they'll definitely want to apprehend and question the enemy combatants. This means that the crew had better move fast lest the Alliance get to Louise's cryopod before they do. Vermilion Province is a very big place, so in order to narrow things down, Nicolas proposes taking the sensors completely out of Black Cat and reinstalling them in the shuttle, so that the search can begin before the ship is repaired. Of course, this means that Black Cat will be completely without any form of sensors until they are reinstalled, but Nicolas thinks this is an acceptable risk. Birgitta takes charge of the ship repairs, while Jade works on moving the sensors. (It should also be noted that these two projects completely use up Black Cat's supply of spare parts, meaning that the ship had better not sustain any further damage anytime soon...)
While this is going on, Nicolas and a few other crew members decide to head to New Prosperity and make their presence legally known. Although there is no spaceport proper in New Prosperity, the entrance to the town has a watchtower that is overseen by a friendly but somewhat deformed man who has, among other things, a grand total of 15 fingers.[1] He takes the crew's assertion that they have come to New Prosperity to make a delivery nearby at face value, but warns them that "the wastes" outside the town are off-limits without permission from the Alliance. Apparently, this area of Regina was used by the Alliance for weapons testing about 50 years ago, and although the resulting radiation can be managed with anti-radiation medication (though the crew isn't so sure they believe that, to look at this fellow and other inhabitants), some areas of the desert are still heavily contaminated and thus restricted without permission from the Alliance. (Nicolas makes a mental note of this with the intention of summarily ignoring it, of course.) The gatekeeper seems friendly enough, as do the other locals, but the crew is a little bit put off by the wide prevalence of inherited, radiation-induced deformities they see around them - as well as the gatekeeper's credulous attitude, characteristic of the whole town, surrounding legends and myths.
Nicolas and company return to Black Cat, where Jade has finished installing the sensors in the shuttle. Jade, Quinn, and Siqin go up in the shuttle and use its sensors to narrow the search area even further, to an area about twenty miles in diameter and centered on an area of the wastes just outside New Prosperity. Thus, the crew decides to split up into two teams. One team consisting of Birgitta, Daisy, Elisa, and Siqin will head into town and chat up the locals (Daisy joining in because she knows that the chance to interview the residents of such an unusual community is an anthropological opportunity not to be missed). The other team consisting of Jade, Nicolas, Osiris, and Quinn will head to the edge of the search area in the mule and begin setting up a search pattern, hoping to at least rule some quadrants out.
The New Prosperity team takes off in the shuttle, lands, and heads to the town marketplace. They're hoping both to learn whether anyone has seen the cryopod entering the atmosphere, and possibly to figure out some way of making money while they're here.[2] While they don't have a whole lot of luck on either count (it seems that with the sun so bright, people here don't make a habit of looking at the sun very often), Daisy has a great time talking to the locals and getting a few of them to tell her about their lives in New Prosperity, and (rather surprisingly) Birgitta makes a genuine connection with a number of them. Birgitta's newfound friends tell her that because tonight is the last day of New Prosperity's work week, the town traditionally has an evening bonfire and general celebration. Birgitta is invited, and encouraged to bring any of her other friends as well. Because the crew hasn't managed to learn very much yet, she thinks it would be a good idea to attend and try to learn more then.
In the meantime, Jade, Nicolas, Osiris, and Quinn get in the mule and start searching for Louise's cryopod on the ground. They don't get very far, though, before a shot rings out and catches Quinn in the shoulder. Through the bright sun and the waves of heat coming off the ground they can see a few figures, clad in white robes, shooting at them. The crew returns fire, with Osiris wounding one and Jade then finishing him off, and Nicolas getting shot rather badly.[3] Quinn decides to end this fight before things get any worse, and yells at the others to get Nicolas into the mule so they can get out of there. The enemies take a couple ineffective potshots as the mule flies off, but the message could still not be more clear: the crew is not welcome in the wastes. Quinn gets everybody back to Black Cat safely, where Osiris patches up Nicolas. The crew decides not to return to the wastes until they have a better idea of exactly where to look, since they don't want to risk the anger of its inhabitants again.
Everyone eventually reunites at Black Cat and discusses what they saw. Nicolas is less than thrilled to learn that the locals didn't see the cryopod land ("They never look at the sky. They said nothing comes from the sky." "Yeah, except for everything"), and the non-wastes group is frightened and worried when they hear about the violent encounter in the wastes. Still, the invitation that was extended to Birgitta sounds promising enough, so when night falls most of the crew returns to New Prosperity to take part in the celebration. Most of the small town (population a few hundred people) has turned out for the event; a goat is being roasted over a coal fire, a group of people are drumming while others dance, and the locals are passing around skins full of alcohol and communal food which is freely offered to the crew. (However, nobody but Birgitta is bold enough to partake of this possibly radioactive food, despite the anti-radiation medication left over from Newhall which Osiris has liberally administered to everyone.) Daisy is continuing to interview those locals who will talk to her, and she seems completely thrilled to have happened across this situation, despite the trepidation of the rest of the crew.
As the evening wears on, a number of children and their parents gather around an elderly woman who is telling stories around the fire. The crew is only idly listening to what she says when a particular tale perks up their ears. The old woman tells a story about a star (stars being rather personified in this culture) who was betrayed by her sisters and forced out of the sky and into the physical world, where she took the form of a beautiful woman. The star was so badly injured by being deposed that she fell into a deep sleep and collapsed in the middle of the desert. Although the other stars wanted to descend and finish the job, the animals of the desert took pity upon the star and protected her. The insects and scorpions carried her to a safe hiding place under the tallest mountain in the land, where the spiders wrapped her in their silk so that she would be protected from the elements while she slept. When the other stars sent their allies, the desert cats and the snakes defended her, and fought so valiantly that the sands all around her resting place became stained red with her enemies' lifeblood. Now, she lies under the spiders' cocoon somewhere in the wastes, waiting to be awakened by true love's kiss so she can regain her rightful place and seek vengeance upon those who deposed her until she can shine brightly in the night sky once again.
The crew is pretty sure they've just been told Louise's resting place in the form of a legend. Although nobody can get any more specific about this story (and they clearly think it's weird that the crew would take a legend so seriously), it's got enough detail to give them a start. They track down Nicolas, who is fending off the advances of a small swarm of nubile mutant girls[4], and tell him what they've learned. It's late now, but as the crew returns to Black Cat, their next steps are clear. In the morning, they're going to hunt for a fallen star.
1 - gamerchick: You notice he has 7 fingers on his right hand and 8 fingers on his left, for a total of 15 fingers.
Noel: I'm suddenly very thirsty for some anti-radiation drugs.
2 - Nicolas: Maybe we should see if they have anything extra that they don't need.
Quinn: Like extra fingers?
3 - Nicolas: I've been shot with a radioactive bullet.
eustacio, OOC: And now he'll be Spider-Man.
gamerchick, OOC: Actually, he'll be Bullet Bill.
4 - Birgitta: We just heard a mighty interesting story, Captain.
Nicolas: Nothing happened.
Black Cat flies through the night and arrives at Regina the next morning, ready to continue the search for Louise's downed cryopod. But as they approach Regina, they once again see that they are not alone. The ship's sensors have revealed that a large number of ships, both Alliance and independently registered, are currently in orbit of Regina - and when Black Cat gets close enough for a visual, they can see that there is a space battle going on. Nicolas's first instinct is to find Sekhmet and ask her if she knows about why the Alliance might be fighting independent ships around Regina, but when he goes to her shuttle he finds that she has departed in the night, leaving behind only Angelo in the box and a six-week supply of treatment for Mary-Lou, just as she promised.
Quinn brings Black Cat into a synchronous orbit with one of Regina's moons that will allow the ship to hide from the battle while they figure out what is going on. The crew suspects that this fight might be one of the skirmishes between the Alliance and a supposed group of Browncoats that they have been hearing about over the past few months. However, the crew always assumed that the Browncoats in those stories were actually Blue Sun or a Blue-Sun-sponsored fighting force, and none of the independent ships have any markings on them that would denote an allegiance to Blue Sun. Although the Alliance's numbers are greater than the independent forces, the captains on the independent side seem to be fighting very intelligently, so it looks as though this battle could go on for some time before the Alliance inevitable wears the independents down. The longer the crew waits around, the more likely it is that they will be detected and somehow drawn into the fighting, so they decide to just try to sneak past the fighting and into the atmosphere to perform the needed scan.
Quinn's piloting skills are top-notch as always, and she deftly maneuvers Black Cat into the atmosphere while Jade and Siqin begin the scan. Right away, their efforts pay off when they pick up a signal on the expected frequency. It's faint and fragmented, but it's there. Jade and Siqin do their best to pinpoint its origin, but can only get as specific as a particular area of the planet called Vermilion Province. Jade suspects that the magnetic properties of the mountains in that area might be diffusing the signal - which means that the crew needs to land and search for this thing on foot. Quinn prepares the ship for a landing, but hears the proximity alarm going off as she does. Someone is chasing them - and not only chasing, but firing a missile! Quinn dodges the worst of the missile hit, though the ship does sustain some moderate damage to the hull, and yells for Birgitta to prepare for a hard burn, which allows them to leave the pursuing ship behind as it gets tangled up in a fight with an Alliance ship. As Black Cat makes its descent, Nicolas and Siqin look up and notice an unusual marking on the bottom of the pursuing ship - a huge and elaborate coat of arms, with a lion and a unicorn prominently featured within it. Siqin thinks that she remembers coats of arms like that having something to do with the Unification War, but she can't put her finger on exactly what their meaning would be.
While Black Cat is landing, an automated message from the Alliance comes over the intercom, warning the ship that Vermilion Province is a restricted movement area due to the lingering aftereffects of radioactive contamination, and that all visiting ships need to check in at the town of New Prosperity. The whole crew is kind of taken aback by this and decides that with so many strange things happening, they need to talk about what their next move is. The first order of business is to figure out exactly why an independent ship would attack them while they were going out of their way to stay out of the battle. Nobody can figure this out until Siqin mentions the coat of arms she saw to Birgitta. Right away, Birgitta recalls that many important Browncoat leaders adopted medieval-style coats of arms to adorn their ships and apparel, and the lion and the unicorn were the arms of a well-known commander named Wilson Davis. This name is familiar to the whole crew - he's the guy they blamed several months earlier for trying to purchase illegal Dionysus Project military surplus in an attempt to draw out Alliance Internal Affairs. Davis certainly has a reason to be angry at the crew, but Nicolas thinks that his presence here and his attack on the crew were only a coincidence (or he tells himself that, anyway).
Even more troublesome than Wilson Davis's presence is the fact that although Black Cat has escaped the battle raging above, they aren't clear of its effects. The crew realizes that when the battle is over, the Alliance will undoubtedly be scouring the planet below for both their own escape pods and those of other ships, since they'll definitely want to apprehend and question the enemy combatants. This means that the crew had better move fast lest the Alliance get to Louise's cryopod before they do. Vermilion Province is a very big place, so in order to narrow things down, Nicolas proposes taking the sensors completely out of Black Cat and reinstalling them in the shuttle, so that the search can begin before the ship is repaired. Of course, this means that Black Cat will be completely without any form of sensors until they are reinstalled, but Nicolas thinks this is an acceptable risk. Birgitta takes charge of the ship repairs, while Jade works on moving the sensors. (It should also be noted that these two projects completely use up Black Cat's supply of spare parts, meaning that the ship had better not sustain any further damage anytime soon...)
While this is going on, Nicolas and a few other crew members decide to head to New Prosperity and make their presence legally known. Although there is no spaceport proper in New Prosperity, the entrance to the town has a watchtower that is overseen by a friendly but somewhat deformed man who has, among other things, a grand total of 15 fingers.[1] He takes the crew's assertion that they have come to New Prosperity to make a delivery nearby at face value, but warns them that "the wastes" outside the town are off-limits without permission from the Alliance. Apparently, this area of Regina was used by the Alliance for weapons testing about 50 years ago, and although the resulting radiation can be managed with anti-radiation medication (though the crew isn't so sure they believe that, to look at this fellow and other inhabitants), some areas of the desert are still heavily contaminated and thus restricted without permission from the Alliance. (Nicolas makes a mental note of this with the intention of summarily ignoring it, of course.) The gatekeeper seems friendly enough, as do the other locals, but the crew is a little bit put off by the wide prevalence of inherited, radiation-induced deformities they see around them - as well as the gatekeeper's credulous attitude, characteristic of the whole town, surrounding legends and myths.
Nicolas and company return to Black Cat, where Jade has finished installing the sensors in the shuttle. Jade, Quinn, and Siqin go up in the shuttle and use its sensors to narrow the search area even further, to an area about twenty miles in diameter and centered on an area of the wastes just outside New Prosperity. Thus, the crew decides to split up into two teams. One team consisting of Birgitta, Daisy, Elisa, and Siqin will head into town and chat up the locals (Daisy joining in because she knows that the chance to interview the residents of such an unusual community is an anthropological opportunity not to be missed). The other team consisting of Jade, Nicolas, Osiris, and Quinn will head to the edge of the search area in the mule and begin setting up a search pattern, hoping to at least rule some quadrants out.
The New Prosperity team takes off in the shuttle, lands, and heads to the town marketplace. They're hoping both to learn whether anyone has seen the cryopod entering the atmosphere, and possibly to figure out some way of making money while they're here.[2] While they don't have a whole lot of luck on either count (it seems that with the sun so bright, people here don't make a habit of looking at the sun very often), Daisy has a great time talking to the locals and getting a few of them to tell her about their lives in New Prosperity, and (rather surprisingly) Birgitta makes a genuine connection with a number of them. Birgitta's newfound friends tell her that because tonight is the last day of New Prosperity's work week, the town traditionally has an evening bonfire and general celebration. Birgitta is invited, and encouraged to bring any of her other friends as well. Because the crew hasn't managed to learn very much yet, she thinks it would be a good idea to attend and try to learn more then.
In the meantime, Jade, Nicolas, Osiris, and Quinn get in the mule and start searching for Louise's cryopod on the ground. They don't get very far, though, before a shot rings out and catches Quinn in the shoulder. Through the bright sun and the waves of heat coming off the ground they can see a few figures, clad in white robes, shooting at them. The crew returns fire, with Osiris wounding one and Jade then finishing him off, and Nicolas getting shot rather badly.[3] Quinn decides to end this fight before things get any worse, and yells at the others to get Nicolas into the mule so they can get out of there. The enemies take a couple ineffective potshots as the mule flies off, but the message could still not be more clear: the crew is not welcome in the wastes. Quinn gets everybody back to Black Cat safely, where Osiris patches up Nicolas. The crew decides not to return to the wastes until they have a better idea of exactly where to look, since they don't want to risk the anger of its inhabitants again.
Everyone eventually reunites at Black Cat and discusses what they saw. Nicolas is less than thrilled to learn that the locals didn't see the cryopod land ("They never look at the sky. They said nothing comes from the sky." "Yeah, except for everything"), and the non-wastes group is frightened and worried when they hear about the violent encounter in the wastes. Still, the invitation that was extended to Birgitta sounds promising enough, so when night falls most of the crew returns to New Prosperity to take part in the celebration. Most of the small town (population a few hundred people) has turned out for the event; a goat is being roasted over a coal fire, a group of people are drumming while others dance, and the locals are passing around skins full of alcohol and communal food which is freely offered to the crew. (However, nobody but Birgitta is bold enough to partake of this possibly radioactive food, despite the anti-radiation medication left over from Newhall which Osiris has liberally administered to everyone.) Daisy is continuing to interview those locals who will talk to her, and she seems completely thrilled to have happened across this situation, despite the trepidation of the rest of the crew.
As the evening wears on, a number of children and their parents gather around an elderly woman who is telling stories around the fire. The crew is only idly listening to what she says when a particular tale perks up their ears. The old woman tells a story about a star (stars being rather personified in this culture) who was betrayed by her sisters and forced out of the sky and into the physical world, where she took the form of a beautiful woman. The star was so badly injured by being deposed that she fell into a deep sleep and collapsed in the middle of the desert. Although the other stars wanted to descend and finish the job, the animals of the desert took pity upon the star and protected her. The insects and scorpions carried her to a safe hiding place under the tallest mountain in the land, where the spiders wrapped her in their silk so that she would be protected from the elements while she slept. When the other stars sent their allies, the desert cats and the snakes defended her, and fought so valiantly that the sands all around her resting place became stained red with her enemies' lifeblood. Now, she lies under the spiders' cocoon somewhere in the wastes, waiting to be awakened by true love's kiss so she can regain her rightful place and seek vengeance upon those who deposed her until she can shine brightly in the night sky once again.
The crew is pretty sure they've just been told Louise's resting place in the form of a legend. Although nobody can get any more specific about this story (and they clearly think it's weird that the crew would take a legend so seriously), it's got enough detail to give them a start. They track down Nicolas, who is fending off the advances of a small swarm of nubile mutant girls[4], and tell him what they've learned. It's late now, but as the crew returns to Black Cat, their next steps are clear. In the morning, they're going to hunt for a fallen star.
1 - gamerchick: You notice he has 7 fingers on his right hand and 8 fingers on his left, for a total of 15 fingers.
Noel: I'm suddenly very thirsty for some anti-radiation drugs.
2 - Nicolas: Maybe we should see if they have anything extra that they don't need.
Quinn: Like extra fingers?
3 - Nicolas: I've been shot with a radioactive bullet.
eustacio, OOC: And now he'll be Spider-Man.
gamerchick, OOC: Actually, he'll be Bullet Bill.
4 - Birgitta: We just heard a mighty interesting story, Captain.
Nicolas: Nothing happened.