Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 7.06 Re-Entry
Previous episode here.
Now that Siqin is back with them, the crew of Black Cat turns around and returns to Ezra to finish what they started. Though Nicolas feels much better about the crew's chances of purchasing the notebook pages from Juan Diego Ramírez in a relatively sedate and fair fashion now that their Syndicate contact is back, he's continuing to worry about the crew's finances. All of this running around the 'Verse without doing traditional jobs means that the ship has made virtually no money this month, and the coffers are starting to run dry to the point that Nicolas is starting to wonder where the next tank of gas will come from. But he knows they can't quit now, not while Mary-Lou's life is still on the line, so he decides not to tell the rest of the crew about the ship's financial troubles right now.
Nicolas also notices that Jade has seemed rather nervous ever since Ezra was announced as Black Cat's next destination, and decides to ask her about it. Jade tells him that she doesn't want to go to Ezra because she doesn't want to run into any tongs there, seeing as how they're the reason she had to spend more than a year hiding out in a cave on St. Albans. It seems that after she left Sub-Zero, Jade was employed by some tong bosses who tried to get her to install highly illegal mass driver weapons on their ship. Jade refused, knowing that the mere possession of such weapons was a war crime, and the tong bosses told her they would make her pay. She had no reason to disbelieve that threat, so she hid, and she's afraid these bosses might still be looking for her. Nicolas tells her that she is safe on the ship, and that she doesn't need to go anywhere or do anything on Ezra unless she wants to, for which Jade is very grateful. (Nicolas, for his part, decides to say nothing about Siqin's own tong and Syndicate connections and further frighten Jade.)
Things only get worse when Siqin hears from Heewon. She grimly reports to the rest of the crew that although Ramírez is a mid-level tong boss in the Mendoza family just as she suspected, and thus bound by the new Syndicate council's rules, it seems as though a sale of the notebook pages is already pending. The sale was set in motion just recently and is moving quickly toward completion; the deal with probably be done within the next few days. The asking price is ridiculously high, somewhere in the six figures of credits, and nobody seems inclined to want to go back on the deal. Heewon doesn't know who the pages are being sold to, except that it's somebody from outside the Syndicate, and because they have so much money to throw around, they must be a really major player (which makes the crew think Alliance or Blue Sun). Siqin isn't even going to be able to help Nicolas sort this out, because she realizes she's pushing herself too hard and fast both mentally and physically, and needs to go lie down and seclude herself lest she have another breakdown.[1] So when the crew arrives at Ezra, they have no other choice but to keep moving forward and try to make this work.
The biggest question in everyone's mind is who Ramírez is selling the pages to, so the crew decides to send a small scouting party over to his home (the address of which was conveniently located by Siqin) to see if they can speak to him or at least spy on him a little. They soon see that getting inside will be a challenge because of the house's extensive security system, but as luck would have it, the crew sees something interesting happening at the house's gate. A nondescript car is idling there, and the two men inside are talking to several other men who are gathered around it, apparently saying goodbye after some sort of meeting. Nobody recognizes anybody present there until one of the men on the outside straightens up and reveals his face. Everyone is surprised to see that it is Angelo. Angelo remains inside Juan Diego Ramírez's house as the car pulls away and the gate closes behind it.
Everyone is very confused about what Angelo's role is in all of this seeing as how he is the head of the Bernotte family and normally in no way involved directly with the doings of a mid-level Mendoza family member. But for now, their highest priority is following the car on the other end of the deal and figuring out who the men inside it represent. The crew peels out in the mule after them, but the men in the car quickly get wise and start trying to lose the crew. A bit of quick and clever trickery with a taxi allows them to continue the pursuit, and the crew follows the car to a subterranean garage connected to an office tower, in which a Blue Sun office is one of several businesses. Although the crew can't see where the men from the car end up going, they get its license number and go back to the ship, where Siqin confirms that the car is registered as a Blue Sun company car.
If anything, this revelation only makes the crew more confused - but they know they need to keep moving forward. The crew is beginning to fear that the transaction has already taken place; if so, the notebook pages will probably be somewhere inside the Blue Sun offices. It is decided that once people begin to leave for the night, Birgitta and Nicolas will break into the office and look around for the pages, and steal them if they are present. The first part of this plan (breaking in) goes successfully, with Birgitta and Nicolas entering the building an hour or so before quitting time and hiding out in the restrooms until most of the employees have left. (Nicolas goes the extra mile with his disguise, bringing a tube of protein paste and squeezing chunks of it off into the toilet bowl while grunting and groaning anytime anybody enters the restroom.)
Finally, Birgitta and Nicolas feel comfortable starting their invasion. Birgitta defeats the electronic lock on the office door and they sneak inside. Sure enough, most people are gone and most lights are off, with the exception of one office (belonging to Ethan Smith, Sales and Marketing Representative) that is open and with a light on but nobody inside. Birgitta and Nicolas have a look around, but Ethan's computer is locked down and the pages are nowhere to be seen among his personal effects. Since there doesn't seem to be anything else too interesting on this floor, they decide to go upstairs...and up there, they do indeed hit some sort of pay dirt, in the form of something Nicolas overhears while hiding in a hallway behind a potted plant. In the office of Andrew McCarthy, Vice-President of Procurement, two men are having a conversation - one of whom appears to be Ethan. The two men are talking about meeting later that night at a restaurant to "finish the transaction" and finally put all of this behind them. Ethan seems particularly nervous about this, referring to "those people who followed us back from Ramírez's house this morning" and saying that he's starting to wonder whether this is worth the risk. Andrew assures him that it is (though he doesn't sound fully convinced himself) and that it will all be over soon. Then Ethan leaves to go to the gym while Andrew remains behind in his office.
Nicolas tells Birgitta what he heard, and suggests that she might want to get into Andrew's office to see if he has the pages there, since they've definitely found the right people now. Birgitta says that will be difficult with Andrew sitting at his desk and showing no signs of leaving. Nicolas says that he can handle the distraction if Birgitta can handle tossing the room. He goes into the break room, which is across the hall, spills water and soap all over the floor, and then puts the remainder of his tube of protein paste in the microwave for 20 minutes on high temperature. This soon has the desired effect of sending clouds of noxious smoke billowing out into the hall, which of course send Andrew running to see what's going on...whereupon he promptly slips and falls on the soapy floor. While Andrew is engaged in picking himself up and cleaning up, Birgitta enters his office and looks around for the notes, but does not see them anywhere. Birgitta and Nicolas quickly leave before Andrew can return.
Birgitta and Nicolas return to the ship to decide their next move. Though Nicolas was expecting to find the notes in the Blue Sun office and does not know what to think now that they weren't there, Quinn realizes that this must mean that the exchange has not yet been made, and that Andrew and Ethan will be collecting the notes from the Syndicate when they meet Ramírez at a restaurant that night, as they were discussing. Though they never said what restaurant, the crew knows the time of the meeting, as well as the fact that Andrew and Ethan will be leaving from the Blue Sun offices to go there. The crew hatches a plan that involves waiting outside the restaurant for the exchange to be made, and then somehow getting the notes off Andrew and Ethan when they come out, since the assumption is that they will be less formidable foes than the Syndicate members. But Nicolas still wants somebody inside the restaurant, listening and watching in case anything changes...and this is going to be very complicated if Angelo sees any of the crew members. But Elisa points out that Angelo has never seen her before...and that he's never seen Jade, either. The two of them could easily enter the restaurant and keep an eye on things without being recognized. Nicolas regrets have to go back on his agreement with Jade about her not needing to do anything on Ezra, but she accepts the job without fuss, saying that she wants to be a real crew member and that this may occasionally mean having to do things she doesn't want to do.
Most members of the crew go to the Blue Sun building in the mule; the rest stay behind on Black Cat as backup. The mule follows Andrew and Ethan to the restaurant, and Elisa and Jade enter after them, sitting at the bar after dropping one of Elisa's eavesdrops in the flower vase on the table where they sit. At the bar, they are thus able to overhear Andrew and Ethan's continued nervousness - and the conversation that begins when four other men show up - Ramírez, Angelo, and two unfamiliar men in suits. The discussion between them is fairly bland and uninteresting for most of the night as dinner and drinks are served (though Elisa and Jade do learn from it that Angelo is serving as a liaison for the Syndicate while one of the other unfamiliar men is serving as a liaison for Blue Sun), but finally Andrew speaks up and says, "Shouldn't we take care of what we all came here to do?"
After some final signing of documents and hammering out of details, an exchange is made - one briefcase for another - and things seem acceptable to all parties. But then, Ramírez says that there has been a change in plans. Instead of Andrew and Ethan taking the notes back to the Blue Sun offices themselves, Ramírez wants to make sure that they get safely to Blue Sun, so that no other organized crime group can steal the notes and then deflect blame (which, of course, was Nicolas's exact plan!). Ramírez says that the deal has been in the works for too long to be allowed to fail now, so he insists that Angelo and the Blue Sun liaison keep watch over Andrew and Ethan while they take the notes to their superiors in Blue Sun's high command. Angelo and the other liaison will take Andrew and Ethan to a transport at a nearby spaceport, where they will meet up with a Blue Sun representative who will take possession of the notes and give Andrew and Ethan their agreed-upon reward. Neither Andrew nor Ethan is very happy with this, but they can see that they have no choice in the matter.
When Elisa and Jade learn this, they quickly rejoin the crew to tell them everything. The crew figures that Andrew and Ethan are going to be killed by Blue Sun, which is just an additional reason for the crew to make sure that the transfer doesn't take place. The trouble is that the crew's chances of sneaking aboard a Blue Sun transport on foot are fairly low, and Quinn and every other good pilot are with the crew and thus away from Black Cat. That's when Elisa realizes that there is a skilled pilot aboard Black Cat - Sekhmet! With approval from Nicolas, Elisa calls up Sekhmet, explains the situation, and says that Blue Sun is going to get the notes unless Sekhmet finds some way to stop that transport from leaving the planet. Grimly, Sekhmet agrees that this cannot be allowed to happen, and says that she will hold the transport off until the crew can get there to retrieve the notes.
The crew hurries back to Black Cat and hurries to a set of coordinates being broadcast to the ship from Sekhmet's shuttle. What they see when they arrive shocks them - Sekhmet's shuttle docked with the Blue Sun ship, which appears to have had its engines and electrical systems totally disabled and is in a rapidly decaying orbit. The ship isn't responding to hails, so the crew has no choice but to dock with it as well and board, despite the danger. Nicolas assembles a small fighting force, docks with the upper hatch, and enters...into the middle of a wild and chaotic scene in the transport's cabin. An unfamiliar person, probably the ship's pilot, lies bleeding and unmoving in the aisle. Toward the back of the cabin, Sekhmet is engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Blue Sun liaison, apparently in full Reaver mode. She's keeping him distracted, but is badly injured and appears to have been shot several times. Ethan is nowhere to be seen, nor is the briefcase containing the notes...but Andrew is being held down on a seat by none other than Angelo, who is trying to shove some sort of metal implement down Andrew's throat. And that's when everyone realizes the true horror of the scene - both Angelo and the Blue Sun liaison have blue gloves on their hands!
The crew panics a little but mostly keeps their head. Osiris turns his attention to Angelo, using his excellent gun skills to shoot the metal implement out of Angelo's hands, and then shoot him in the kneecaps to slow him down. Angelo then pulls out one of those small tubes which made everyone's ears and eyes bleed before at Blue Sun R&D, and everyone gets hurt by that as well until Osiris can shoot it away as well. Elisa orders Goliath to get Andrew out of danger and onto Black Cat, and the dog bravely obliges. In the meantime, Birgitta has noticed Ethan peeking up above a seat, where he was hiding with the briefcase of notes! She rushes over to him, grabs the briefcase, and starts dragging him out of the transport. Nicolas realizes that with how badly the transport's orbit is decaying, they don't have much time before it crashes, so he starts yelling for everyone to get out now that they have the notes. Archer grabs a syringe off Sekhmet's belt and uses it to calm Sekhmet down so she won't end up fighting the bluehands to both of their deaths. Sekhmet snaps out of it, sees Angelo dragging himself after Osiris, and shouts to Elisa, "This is your best chance! Take him with us!" Elisa knows she has to obey, even over Nicolas's confusion and the rest of the crew's protests. Everybody moves as fast as they can to the upper hatch, with the bluehands in hot pursuit...until Osiris gets to the hatch ahead of him and literally slams it on his hand, severing it at the wrist. With Andrew, Ethan, and the crew safely aboard Black Cat (and Angelo there as well!), all that remains is for Nicolas and Quinn to guide the disabled transport into a re-entry where it will land harmlessly in one of Ezra's oceans, meaning that no one else has to die today.
Osiris immediately shifts focus to patching up the wounded (which encompasses pretty much the whole crew). Sekhmet is the worst hurt of all, but she refuses Osiris's medical attention, requesting help from Archer instead. While Osiris is tending to everyone's wounds, Nicolas confronts Elisa and asks her what she intends to do with Angelo. Elisa tries to explain herself and says she just wants a cure for Matt as well as Angelo, but Nicolas is rather unsympathetic - not only because he's just realized that Birgitta had chosen earlier to disguise herself before the stake-out at the restaurant, and didn't bother to take off her disguise before re-entering the ship, thus breaking a rule! In the short term, Osiris has sedated Angelo, but everyone knows that's not a long-term solution. Elisa is left grasping at straws until Quinn (who doesn't want to see Angelo dead or bluehandsed either) remembers that the crew is still holding onto those cryostasis boxes that once held the Syndicate's kidnapped children. Birgitta and Jade will be able to modify and combine two of them to hold an adult, which will allow Angelo to remain in stasis for weeks or months at a time and give Sekhmet more time to find a cure. Nicolas is too hurt and annoyed to argue about this, but he tells Elisa that from this day forward, Angelo is her problem. Then he goes to the infirmary to get some much-needed medical treatment.
1 - Siqin's player unfortunately could not make it to this session, which complicated things greatly and led to the following exchange:
gamerchick: Siqin is drinking tea. She's not coming with you.
Noel: Siqin can fuck herself.
Now that Siqin is back with them, the crew of Black Cat turns around and returns to Ezra to finish what they started. Though Nicolas feels much better about the crew's chances of purchasing the notebook pages from Juan Diego Ramírez in a relatively sedate and fair fashion now that their Syndicate contact is back, he's continuing to worry about the crew's finances. All of this running around the 'Verse without doing traditional jobs means that the ship has made virtually no money this month, and the coffers are starting to run dry to the point that Nicolas is starting to wonder where the next tank of gas will come from. But he knows they can't quit now, not while Mary-Lou's life is still on the line, so he decides not to tell the rest of the crew about the ship's financial troubles right now.
Nicolas also notices that Jade has seemed rather nervous ever since Ezra was announced as Black Cat's next destination, and decides to ask her about it. Jade tells him that she doesn't want to go to Ezra because she doesn't want to run into any tongs there, seeing as how they're the reason she had to spend more than a year hiding out in a cave on St. Albans. It seems that after she left Sub-Zero, Jade was employed by some tong bosses who tried to get her to install highly illegal mass driver weapons on their ship. Jade refused, knowing that the mere possession of such weapons was a war crime, and the tong bosses told her they would make her pay. She had no reason to disbelieve that threat, so she hid, and she's afraid these bosses might still be looking for her. Nicolas tells her that she is safe on the ship, and that she doesn't need to go anywhere or do anything on Ezra unless she wants to, for which Jade is very grateful. (Nicolas, for his part, decides to say nothing about Siqin's own tong and Syndicate connections and further frighten Jade.)
Things only get worse when Siqin hears from Heewon. She grimly reports to the rest of the crew that although Ramírez is a mid-level tong boss in the Mendoza family just as she suspected, and thus bound by the new Syndicate council's rules, it seems as though a sale of the notebook pages is already pending. The sale was set in motion just recently and is moving quickly toward completion; the deal with probably be done within the next few days. The asking price is ridiculously high, somewhere in the six figures of credits, and nobody seems inclined to want to go back on the deal. Heewon doesn't know who the pages are being sold to, except that it's somebody from outside the Syndicate, and because they have so much money to throw around, they must be a really major player (which makes the crew think Alliance or Blue Sun). Siqin isn't even going to be able to help Nicolas sort this out, because she realizes she's pushing herself too hard and fast both mentally and physically, and needs to go lie down and seclude herself lest she have another breakdown.[1] So when the crew arrives at Ezra, they have no other choice but to keep moving forward and try to make this work.
The biggest question in everyone's mind is who Ramírez is selling the pages to, so the crew decides to send a small scouting party over to his home (the address of which was conveniently located by Siqin) to see if they can speak to him or at least spy on him a little. They soon see that getting inside will be a challenge because of the house's extensive security system, but as luck would have it, the crew sees something interesting happening at the house's gate. A nondescript car is idling there, and the two men inside are talking to several other men who are gathered around it, apparently saying goodbye after some sort of meeting. Nobody recognizes anybody present there until one of the men on the outside straightens up and reveals his face. Everyone is surprised to see that it is Angelo. Angelo remains inside Juan Diego Ramírez's house as the car pulls away and the gate closes behind it.
Everyone is very confused about what Angelo's role is in all of this seeing as how he is the head of the Bernotte family and normally in no way involved directly with the doings of a mid-level Mendoza family member. But for now, their highest priority is following the car on the other end of the deal and figuring out who the men inside it represent. The crew peels out in the mule after them, but the men in the car quickly get wise and start trying to lose the crew. A bit of quick and clever trickery with a taxi allows them to continue the pursuit, and the crew follows the car to a subterranean garage connected to an office tower, in which a Blue Sun office is one of several businesses. Although the crew can't see where the men from the car end up going, they get its license number and go back to the ship, where Siqin confirms that the car is registered as a Blue Sun company car.
If anything, this revelation only makes the crew more confused - but they know they need to keep moving forward. The crew is beginning to fear that the transaction has already taken place; if so, the notebook pages will probably be somewhere inside the Blue Sun offices. It is decided that once people begin to leave for the night, Birgitta and Nicolas will break into the office and look around for the pages, and steal them if they are present. The first part of this plan (breaking in) goes successfully, with Birgitta and Nicolas entering the building an hour or so before quitting time and hiding out in the restrooms until most of the employees have left. (Nicolas goes the extra mile with his disguise, bringing a tube of protein paste and squeezing chunks of it off into the toilet bowl while grunting and groaning anytime anybody enters the restroom.)
Finally, Birgitta and Nicolas feel comfortable starting their invasion. Birgitta defeats the electronic lock on the office door and they sneak inside. Sure enough, most people are gone and most lights are off, with the exception of one office (belonging to Ethan Smith, Sales and Marketing Representative) that is open and with a light on but nobody inside. Birgitta and Nicolas have a look around, but Ethan's computer is locked down and the pages are nowhere to be seen among his personal effects. Since there doesn't seem to be anything else too interesting on this floor, they decide to go upstairs...and up there, they do indeed hit some sort of pay dirt, in the form of something Nicolas overhears while hiding in a hallway behind a potted plant. In the office of Andrew McCarthy, Vice-President of Procurement, two men are having a conversation - one of whom appears to be Ethan. The two men are talking about meeting later that night at a restaurant to "finish the transaction" and finally put all of this behind them. Ethan seems particularly nervous about this, referring to "those people who followed us back from Ramírez's house this morning" and saying that he's starting to wonder whether this is worth the risk. Andrew assures him that it is (though he doesn't sound fully convinced himself) and that it will all be over soon. Then Ethan leaves to go to the gym while Andrew remains behind in his office.
Nicolas tells Birgitta what he heard, and suggests that she might want to get into Andrew's office to see if he has the pages there, since they've definitely found the right people now. Birgitta says that will be difficult with Andrew sitting at his desk and showing no signs of leaving. Nicolas says that he can handle the distraction if Birgitta can handle tossing the room. He goes into the break room, which is across the hall, spills water and soap all over the floor, and then puts the remainder of his tube of protein paste in the microwave for 20 minutes on high temperature. This soon has the desired effect of sending clouds of noxious smoke billowing out into the hall, which of course send Andrew running to see what's going on...whereupon he promptly slips and falls on the soapy floor. While Andrew is engaged in picking himself up and cleaning up, Birgitta enters his office and looks around for the notes, but does not see them anywhere. Birgitta and Nicolas quickly leave before Andrew can return.
Birgitta and Nicolas return to the ship to decide their next move. Though Nicolas was expecting to find the notes in the Blue Sun office and does not know what to think now that they weren't there, Quinn realizes that this must mean that the exchange has not yet been made, and that Andrew and Ethan will be collecting the notes from the Syndicate when they meet Ramírez at a restaurant that night, as they were discussing. Though they never said what restaurant, the crew knows the time of the meeting, as well as the fact that Andrew and Ethan will be leaving from the Blue Sun offices to go there. The crew hatches a plan that involves waiting outside the restaurant for the exchange to be made, and then somehow getting the notes off Andrew and Ethan when they come out, since the assumption is that they will be less formidable foes than the Syndicate members. But Nicolas still wants somebody inside the restaurant, listening and watching in case anything changes...and this is going to be very complicated if Angelo sees any of the crew members. But Elisa points out that Angelo has never seen her before...and that he's never seen Jade, either. The two of them could easily enter the restaurant and keep an eye on things without being recognized. Nicolas regrets have to go back on his agreement with Jade about her not needing to do anything on Ezra, but she accepts the job without fuss, saying that she wants to be a real crew member and that this may occasionally mean having to do things she doesn't want to do.
Most members of the crew go to the Blue Sun building in the mule; the rest stay behind on Black Cat as backup. The mule follows Andrew and Ethan to the restaurant, and Elisa and Jade enter after them, sitting at the bar after dropping one of Elisa's eavesdrops in the flower vase on the table where they sit. At the bar, they are thus able to overhear Andrew and Ethan's continued nervousness - and the conversation that begins when four other men show up - Ramírez, Angelo, and two unfamiliar men in suits. The discussion between them is fairly bland and uninteresting for most of the night as dinner and drinks are served (though Elisa and Jade do learn from it that Angelo is serving as a liaison for the Syndicate while one of the other unfamiliar men is serving as a liaison for Blue Sun), but finally Andrew speaks up and says, "Shouldn't we take care of what we all came here to do?"
After some final signing of documents and hammering out of details, an exchange is made - one briefcase for another - and things seem acceptable to all parties. But then, Ramírez says that there has been a change in plans. Instead of Andrew and Ethan taking the notes back to the Blue Sun offices themselves, Ramírez wants to make sure that they get safely to Blue Sun, so that no other organized crime group can steal the notes and then deflect blame (which, of course, was Nicolas's exact plan!). Ramírez says that the deal has been in the works for too long to be allowed to fail now, so he insists that Angelo and the Blue Sun liaison keep watch over Andrew and Ethan while they take the notes to their superiors in Blue Sun's high command. Angelo and the other liaison will take Andrew and Ethan to a transport at a nearby spaceport, where they will meet up with a Blue Sun representative who will take possession of the notes and give Andrew and Ethan their agreed-upon reward. Neither Andrew nor Ethan is very happy with this, but they can see that they have no choice in the matter.
When Elisa and Jade learn this, they quickly rejoin the crew to tell them everything. The crew figures that Andrew and Ethan are going to be killed by Blue Sun, which is just an additional reason for the crew to make sure that the transfer doesn't take place. The trouble is that the crew's chances of sneaking aboard a Blue Sun transport on foot are fairly low, and Quinn and every other good pilot are with the crew and thus away from Black Cat. That's when Elisa realizes that there is a skilled pilot aboard Black Cat - Sekhmet! With approval from Nicolas, Elisa calls up Sekhmet, explains the situation, and says that Blue Sun is going to get the notes unless Sekhmet finds some way to stop that transport from leaving the planet. Grimly, Sekhmet agrees that this cannot be allowed to happen, and says that she will hold the transport off until the crew can get there to retrieve the notes.
The crew hurries back to Black Cat and hurries to a set of coordinates being broadcast to the ship from Sekhmet's shuttle. What they see when they arrive shocks them - Sekhmet's shuttle docked with the Blue Sun ship, which appears to have had its engines and electrical systems totally disabled and is in a rapidly decaying orbit. The ship isn't responding to hails, so the crew has no choice but to dock with it as well and board, despite the danger. Nicolas assembles a small fighting force, docks with the upper hatch, and enters...into the middle of a wild and chaotic scene in the transport's cabin. An unfamiliar person, probably the ship's pilot, lies bleeding and unmoving in the aisle. Toward the back of the cabin, Sekhmet is engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Blue Sun liaison, apparently in full Reaver mode. She's keeping him distracted, but is badly injured and appears to have been shot several times. Ethan is nowhere to be seen, nor is the briefcase containing the notes...but Andrew is being held down on a seat by none other than Angelo, who is trying to shove some sort of metal implement down Andrew's throat. And that's when everyone realizes the true horror of the scene - both Angelo and the Blue Sun liaison have blue gloves on their hands!
The crew panics a little but mostly keeps their head. Osiris turns his attention to Angelo, using his excellent gun skills to shoot the metal implement out of Angelo's hands, and then shoot him in the kneecaps to slow him down. Angelo then pulls out one of those small tubes which made everyone's ears and eyes bleed before at Blue Sun R&D, and everyone gets hurt by that as well until Osiris can shoot it away as well. Elisa orders Goliath to get Andrew out of danger and onto Black Cat, and the dog bravely obliges. In the meantime, Birgitta has noticed Ethan peeking up above a seat, where he was hiding with the briefcase of notes! She rushes over to him, grabs the briefcase, and starts dragging him out of the transport. Nicolas realizes that with how badly the transport's orbit is decaying, they don't have much time before it crashes, so he starts yelling for everyone to get out now that they have the notes. Archer grabs a syringe off Sekhmet's belt and uses it to calm Sekhmet down so she won't end up fighting the bluehands to both of their deaths. Sekhmet snaps out of it, sees Angelo dragging himself after Osiris, and shouts to Elisa, "This is your best chance! Take him with us!" Elisa knows she has to obey, even over Nicolas's confusion and the rest of the crew's protests. Everybody moves as fast as they can to the upper hatch, with the bluehands in hot pursuit...until Osiris gets to the hatch ahead of him and literally slams it on his hand, severing it at the wrist. With Andrew, Ethan, and the crew safely aboard Black Cat (and Angelo there as well!), all that remains is for Nicolas and Quinn to guide the disabled transport into a re-entry where it will land harmlessly in one of Ezra's oceans, meaning that no one else has to die today.
Osiris immediately shifts focus to patching up the wounded (which encompasses pretty much the whole crew). Sekhmet is the worst hurt of all, but she refuses Osiris's medical attention, requesting help from Archer instead. While Osiris is tending to everyone's wounds, Nicolas confronts Elisa and asks her what she intends to do with Angelo. Elisa tries to explain herself and says she just wants a cure for Matt as well as Angelo, but Nicolas is rather unsympathetic - not only because he's just realized that Birgitta had chosen earlier to disguise herself before the stake-out at the restaurant, and didn't bother to take off her disguise before re-entering the ship, thus breaking a rule! In the short term, Osiris has sedated Angelo, but everyone knows that's not a long-term solution. Elisa is left grasping at straws until Quinn (who doesn't want to see Angelo dead or bluehandsed either) remembers that the crew is still holding onto those cryostasis boxes that once held the Syndicate's kidnapped children. Birgitta and Jade will be able to modify and combine two of them to hold an adult, which will allow Angelo to remain in stasis for weeks or months at a time and give Sekhmet more time to find a cure. Nicolas is too hurt and annoyed to argue about this, but he tells Elisa that from this day forward, Angelo is her problem. Then he goes to the infirmary to get some much-needed medical treatment.
1 - Siqin's player unfortunately could not make it to this session, which complicated things greatly and led to the following exchange:
gamerchick: Siqin is drinking tea. She's not coming with you.
Noel: Siqin can fuck herself.