Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 7.07 Quarantine
Previous episode here.
Once everybody is patched up, the first order of business is to question Andrew and Ethan (and to fill the previously-absent Quinn in on everything she missed, including the unpleasant fact that Angelo is now a bluehands). Since Nicolas doesn't trust himself not to scream his head off at both of him (and since he's unfamiliar with basic interrogation protocols, to put it delicately[1]), he decides to just let Elisa do the talking. It quickly becomes evident that neither Andrew nor Ethan has any clue of what is really inside the notes, or exactly what they have stumbled into. Both are very scared and keep telling Elisa about how they have families back on Ezra, and begging with her not to kill them. At first, Elisa has little effect on their panic - though admittedly, the fact that Black Cat is now going to Shadow and leaving Ezra far behind probably doesn't help assuage their concerns.[2] But through patient reassurance, Elisa convinces Andrew and Ethan that Black Cat is not planning to kill or enslave them, but that they do need to know the truth about the notes and their dealing with the Syndicate.[3] She learns that Andrew and Ethan were trying to acquire the notes for Blue Sun because they thought that doing so would get them a promotion within the company and allow them to relocate their families to a better location than a dangerous, crime-ridden backwater like Ezra. Ethan had a checkered past as a low-level tong enforcer before he decided to turn his life around, which is how he knew about Ramírez and the notes. When Ethan realized that Blue Sun wanted the notes via the Blue Sun R&D mission database, he came up with his plan brought Andrew, his most trusted friend within the company, for assistance in getting the capital required to buy the notes. Neither Andrew nor Ethan wants to part with the notes now that they have them; they still want to take them to Blue Sun and finish their plan, and seem initially unlikely to budge on that matter. Nevertheless, Elisa promises Andrew and Ethan that she will figure out some way to get the two of them to safety, no matter what happens.
This is the point at which Nicolas gets involved, after Elisa tracks him down and tells him what happened. (She does not tell him about how she has agreed to get them to safety, perhaps anticipating his inevitable objections.) Nicolas enters the kitchen and flatly tells Andrew and Ethan that it's pretty clear to him that their so-called reward from Blue Sun was always intended to be death. If they try to turn the notes over, Blue Sun will probably still kill them for their troubles - and the same could happen to their families if they try to get in touch with their wives or children, or really if they tell anybody about what has happened. According to Nicolas, Andrew and Ethan's lives as they knew them are over. For that reason, Nicolas believes that Andrew and Ethan don't owe anything to Blue Sun anymore, least of all turning over the notes, regardless of what any contract may state. Andrew asks Nicolas why the crew is interested in the notes, and he and Elisa tell the truth: that they're needed to find a cure for Mary-Lou. Both Andrew and Ethan are family men, and though they put up some further objections, Elisa and Nicolas know they've got the two men on their side. Ultimately, they hand the notes over, and Elisa reiterates her promise to get the two of them to safety.
Nicolas (who is still cranky in the aftermath of Birgitta's rule breakage) is clearly not happy about Elisa making promises to Andrew and Ethan without checking it out with him first, but he leaves that aside for now and goes to talk to Sekhmet while Elisa enlists the rest of the crew in figuring out a secure way for Andrew and Ethan to contact their families and get to a safer place. Nicolas ceremoniously hands over the notes and asks Sekhmet how long she thinks it will take to find out if they contain what she needs for Mary-Lou's cure. Sekhmet, who is very clearly in pain following her very recent fight with the bluehands, says that it will be several days at least. Moreover, she tells Nicolas that just as she had warned him before, the time is coming when she will be leaving Black Cat for a time. This is because she thinks she has figured out a way to retrieve the final set of notes from Ariel in a way that won't involve the crew or put them in danger, and also because she has some business of her own to conduct there. This will also allow the crew to focus on goals such as the search for Helen's Hope that don't really involve or interest her. Nicolas asks how Sekhmet's absence will impact the search for Mary-Lou's cure, and Sekhmet replies that she'll keep working while she travels, and also leave a six-week supply of Mary-Lou's temporary treatment which should more than cover the time she will be away. Also, she'll be leaving Angelo behind in his cryogenic suspension box, so that the crew will be assured that she'll be coming back.
After some brief discussion about Sekhmet's prior exposure to Angelo[4], tempers flare a bit between Nicolas and Sekhmet. Nicolas is unhappy that Sekhmet is leaving and not sure he trusts her to come back, and Sekhmet is injured and not too happy about Nicolas's role in that. Nicolas responds that the crew didn't know what was going to happen on Ezra, and as such they had no choice in what they did. Sekhmet tells Nicolas that while she realizes that she has no control over how Black Cat decides to solve problems (nor does she want to assume such), she does not appreciate having to "lose control" in the way she did because the crew is unable to plan for contingencies. Moreover, she points out that every time Nicolas puts her in immediate physical danger with a plan, he makes it harder for her to survive and create the cure for Mary-Lou that the crew so desperately desires. Nicolas says he can't promise that he'll never put her in harm's way again, but he'll consider what she said (though as always, all bets are off once Blue Sun has been defeated).
Not too long thereafter, Black Cat arrives at Shadow. They have decided to go there because Sekhmet's absence will indeed permit them to focus on the search for Helen's Hope, which requires picking up the transmitter signal from Louise Kang's cryopod. Shadow is the nearest planet to where Sub-Zero was presumed lost to Reavers, so that's where the crew will start. They find a large number of ships in orbit of the planet...and among them is the Alliance cruiser Renown. Black Cat is honestly considering turning tail and running when Renown hails them. A bored-sounding technician takes their information and accepts their claim of being on Shadow to pick up cargo at face value.[5] However, he also says that the Alliance is currently restricting landing on Shadow, by order of Admiral Rebecca Shole, to only people who have been confirmed to be free of a disease called Acquired Trans-Species Latent Immunodeficiency Disorder (ATS-LIDD for "short"). Black Cat's crew will have to submit to being boarded so that some Alliance medical personnel can administer blood tests for the disease before they are permitted to land. The tech says he'll put them in the screening queue, ends the transmission before anyone can argue with him. The crew later fills in some more details about this by getting in touch with a ship in orbit that they dealt with during their previous visit to Shadow, the captain of which tells them that this has been going on for a few months now and that the queue is several days long.
Upon hearing this, the first thing Nicolas does is to ask Osiris whether he's ever heard of ATS-LIDD. Osiris has not. In fact, the very name of the disease is contradictory. Osiris believes that it does not and cannot exist, and wonders if someone is putting them on.[6] However, Admiral Shole seems to take this imaginary disease quite seriously. This means that the crew needs to figure out some way to get around her screening program, since if they are boarded it would surely reveal Sekhmet's presence and have horrible consequences for everyone involved. Also, since this whole thing went through a grunt, Shole probably doesn't even know that Black Cat is at Shadow yet - but if she finds that out, she'll certainly remember their escape from Temerarious several months earlier, and there will definitely be consequences. Luckily for the crew, they realize they don't actually need to land on Shadow unless they pick up a signal from the cryopod in the area; all they need to do is get far enough into the atmosphere to let Jade's sensor program do its thing, and if they don't find anything, they can just leave if they want to. (Of course, not picking up the signal doesn't mean the pod is not there, but with so much ground to cover, they don't really have the time to spend looking in places that a signal isn't picked up right now.)
The crew considers all of these facts and ultimately decides that they don't want to let anybody aboard their ship to test their blood - not least of all because they're not sure what this imaginary disease actually is and they don't want to give Shole an opening to find it. But because there's no need for them to land unless they find something, all they need to do is distract her long enough to get into the atmosphere, then worry about what happens next if they find it. The crew discusses a few different potential distractions (such as Quinn's suggestion of "What of the pictures we have connectin' Blue Sun and crazy Reaverin's?") that get thrown aside as not interesting enough...until they realize that they have a prime distraction right there on the ship. What if the crew gets Sekhmet to buzz Renown in her very identifiable shuttle, then outrun the cruiser and meet up with Black Cat later on? Nicolas goes back to Sekhmet's shuttle again to run this idea past her.
Predictably, Sekhmet is less than thrilled by this plan, especially in light of how she told Nicolas only a few hours ago that she didn't appreciate being put in danger for his crackpot plans. She doesn't want Shole aboard the ship and running tests either[7], but she can't help feeling that Nicolas has not been listening to a word she's said. Finally she tells him, "If you think this is the only way to avoid getting boarded, go ahead and do it, but bear in mind that if they capture me, I won't be able to find a cure for your niece if I'm murdered." This moderates Nicolas's zeal a bit, and in consultation with the rest of the crew, he realizes that he can use Sekhmet as a distraction without putting her directly in harm's way. Black Cat's exterior security cameras recorded footage of her shuttle docked with the Blue Sun transport on Ezra. If Nicolas can get those photos to Shole through indirect means, it may distract her from Shadow long enough to give Black Cat the opening it needs. Once again, Nicolas calls upon his friend the captain whose ship is in orbit, and asks her to help him by disseminating a crazy story (with pictures of Sekhmet's shuttle attached) throughout the nearby ships, in the hopes that it will eventually get to Shole.
In the meantime, Elisa has come up with a way to get Andrew, Ethan, and their families reunited and then brought to safety. With help from Siqin, she's made contact with the trustworthy captain of a transport in orbit and convinced him to take Andrew and Ethan to St. Albans, where their families will meet them and they can begin the hard work of starting over. (Siqin also helped by setting up a secure channel for Andrew and Ethan to contact their wives and let them know what was going on.) Though neither Andrew nor Ethan is exactly happy with how things worked out, they recognize that what happened wasn't Black Cat's fault, and they thank Elisa for her help in getting them to safety. They board the transport and leave.
While waiting for the photos to have their desired effect, Nicolas takes Elisa aside for a long-delayed conversation. He is still angry about Birgitta breaking the "no disguises" rule, so Elisa's perceived insubordination has cut him to the quick, and he's not being very polite about it. He tells her that he's not happy with how she promised so many things to Andrew and Ethan and caused other members of the crew to go out of their way to help them. Nicolas says that Black Cat had absolutely no responsibility to either man after getting the notes from them. When Elisa protests that helping Andrew and Ethan didn't cost the crew anything and was the right thing to do besides, Nicolas responds rather rudely that Elisa doesn't know what she's talking about: "You guys didn't hear the whole plan. This is above your pay grade." They have a significant argument which boils down to Nicolas thinking that his crew has gotten too soft and compassionate and is wasting its resources helping people who aren't their responsibility, while Elisa believes that the whole point of life is to help the unfortunate and says that the crew does have a moral obligation to deal with the consequences that their actions might have on the people around them. The argument ends with Elisa apologizing but not really meaning it, and Nicolas stalking off and leaving Elisa feeling very hurt and upset.
However, some of these conflicts are forgotten when the crew sees their plan beginning to work. Several hours after sending out the incriminating photos of Sekhmet's ship, Renown breaks orbit and starts to depart, leaving behind a few smaller ships to maintain a cursory blockade. Nicolas's contact tells him that the other ships are maintaining the supposed quarantine as best they can, but that Black Cat should have no trouble getting past them. Indeed, Quinn's superior piloting skills allow her to slip past the remaining ships and enter the atmosphere without being detected. Jade and Siqin work together to run the scanning program, but find no trace of the signal. The results are quite conclusive, and both of them feel that it is unlikely that Louise's cryopod is anywhere close to Shadow. Nicolas tells the crew to move on. Their next stop will be nearby Regina, where they hope they'll find what they're looking for.
1 - Elisa: You do know what debrief means, don't you, Captain?
Nicolas: It doesn't have anything to do with their underwear, does it?
2 - Andrew: So, we're being kidnapped?
Elisa: No. Rescued...aggressively.
3 - dayzdark: We should hang the 'Not Slavers' certificate on the box with Angelo in it.
peloria: He isn't our slave. He's our medical experiment.
4 - Sekhmet: I know Angelo. I once picked up a person of interest from a Syndicate meeting concerning him.
Nicolas: Oh yeah, that's right. Whatever happened to Jennifer anyway?
Sekhmet: I don't think you really want to know, Captain.
Nicolas: You're probably right. Anyway...
5 - Bored Technician: Very good, Black Cat. Can I ask you what brings you to Shadow today?
dayzdark, OOC: Bad life choices.
6 - Nicolas: Doc, have you ever heard of ATS-LIDD?
Osiris: Why?
Nicolas: They're telling us they need to come aboard to test our blood for it.
Osiris: Did they also ask you if you were hauling any cargo of headlight fluid?
7 - Sekhmet: I want to be tested for an imaginary disease even less than you do.
Nicolas: I believe it. At least I know I don't have it.
Once everybody is patched up, the first order of business is to question Andrew and Ethan (and to fill the previously-absent Quinn in on everything she missed, including the unpleasant fact that Angelo is now a bluehands). Since Nicolas doesn't trust himself not to scream his head off at both of him (and since he's unfamiliar with basic interrogation protocols, to put it delicately[1]), he decides to just let Elisa do the talking. It quickly becomes evident that neither Andrew nor Ethan has any clue of what is really inside the notes, or exactly what they have stumbled into. Both are very scared and keep telling Elisa about how they have families back on Ezra, and begging with her not to kill them. At first, Elisa has little effect on their panic - though admittedly, the fact that Black Cat is now going to Shadow and leaving Ezra far behind probably doesn't help assuage their concerns.[2] But through patient reassurance, Elisa convinces Andrew and Ethan that Black Cat is not planning to kill or enslave them, but that they do need to know the truth about the notes and their dealing with the Syndicate.[3] She learns that Andrew and Ethan were trying to acquire the notes for Blue Sun because they thought that doing so would get them a promotion within the company and allow them to relocate their families to a better location than a dangerous, crime-ridden backwater like Ezra. Ethan had a checkered past as a low-level tong enforcer before he decided to turn his life around, which is how he knew about Ramírez and the notes. When Ethan realized that Blue Sun wanted the notes via the Blue Sun R&D mission database, he came up with his plan brought Andrew, his most trusted friend within the company, for assistance in getting the capital required to buy the notes. Neither Andrew nor Ethan wants to part with the notes now that they have them; they still want to take them to Blue Sun and finish their plan, and seem initially unlikely to budge on that matter. Nevertheless, Elisa promises Andrew and Ethan that she will figure out some way to get the two of them to safety, no matter what happens.
This is the point at which Nicolas gets involved, after Elisa tracks him down and tells him what happened. (She does not tell him about how she has agreed to get them to safety, perhaps anticipating his inevitable objections.) Nicolas enters the kitchen and flatly tells Andrew and Ethan that it's pretty clear to him that their so-called reward from Blue Sun was always intended to be death. If they try to turn the notes over, Blue Sun will probably still kill them for their troubles - and the same could happen to their families if they try to get in touch with their wives or children, or really if they tell anybody about what has happened. According to Nicolas, Andrew and Ethan's lives as they knew them are over. For that reason, Nicolas believes that Andrew and Ethan don't owe anything to Blue Sun anymore, least of all turning over the notes, regardless of what any contract may state. Andrew asks Nicolas why the crew is interested in the notes, and he and Elisa tell the truth: that they're needed to find a cure for Mary-Lou. Both Andrew and Ethan are family men, and though they put up some further objections, Elisa and Nicolas know they've got the two men on their side. Ultimately, they hand the notes over, and Elisa reiterates her promise to get the two of them to safety.
Nicolas (who is still cranky in the aftermath of Birgitta's rule breakage) is clearly not happy about Elisa making promises to Andrew and Ethan without checking it out with him first, but he leaves that aside for now and goes to talk to Sekhmet while Elisa enlists the rest of the crew in figuring out a secure way for Andrew and Ethan to contact their families and get to a safer place. Nicolas ceremoniously hands over the notes and asks Sekhmet how long she thinks it will take to find out if they contain what she needs for Mary-Lou's cure. Sekhmet, who is very clearly in pain following her very recent fight with the bluehands, says that it will be several days at least. Moreover, she tells Nicolas that just as she had warned him before, the time is coming when she will be leaving Black Cat for a time. This is because she thinks she has figured out a way to retrieve the final set of notes from Ariel in a way that won't involve the crew or put them in danger, and also because she has some business of her own to conduct there. This will also allow the crew to focus on goals such as the search for Helen's Hope that don't really involve or interest her. Nicolas asks how Sekhmet's absence will impact the search for Mary-Lou's cure, and Sekhmet replies that she'll keep working while she travels, and also leave a six-week supply of Mary-Lou's temporary treatment which should more than cover the time she will be away. Also, she'll be leaving Angelo behind in his cryogenic suspension box, so that the crew will be assured that she'll be coming back.
After some brief discussion about Sekhmet's prior exposure to Angelo[4], tempers flare a bit between Nicolas and Sekhmet. Nicolas is unhappy that Sekhmet is leaving and not sure he trusts her to come back, and Sekhmet is injured and not too happy about Nicolas's role in that. Nicolas responds that the crew didn't know what was going to happen on Ezra, and as such they had no choice in what they did. Sekhmet tells Nicolas that while she realizes that she has no control over how Black Cat decides to solve problems (nor does she want to assume such), she does not appreciate having to "lose control" in the way she did because the crew is unable to plan for contingencies. Moreover, she points out that every time Nicolas puts her in immediate physical danger with a plan, he makes it harder for her to survive and create the cure for Mary-Lou that the crew so desperately desires. Nicolas says he can't promise that he'll never put her in harm's way again, but he'll consider what she said (though as always, all bets are off once Blue Sun has been defeated).
Not too long thereafter, Black Cat arrives at Shadow. They have decided to go there because Sekhmet's absence will indeed permit them to focus on the search for Helen's Hope, which requires picking up the transmitter signal from Louise Kang's cryopod. Shadow is the nearest planet to where Sub-Zero was presumed lost to Reavers, so that's where the crew will start. They find a large number of ships in orbit of the planet...and among them is the Alliance cruiser Renown. Black Cat is honestly considering turning tail and running when Renown hails them. A bored-sounding technician takes their information and accepts their claim of being on Shadow to pick up cargo at face value.[5] However, he also says that the Alliance is currently restricting landing on Shadow, by order of Admiral Rebecca Shole, to only people who have been confirmed to be free of a disease called Acquired Trans-Species Latent Immunodeficiency Disorder (ATS-LIDD for "short"). Black Cat's crew will have to submit to being boarded so that some Alliance medical personnel can administer blood tests for the disease before they are permitted to land. The tech says he'll put them in the screening queue, ends the transmission before anyone can argue with him. The crew later fills in some more details about this by getting in touch with a ship in orbit that they dealt with during their previous visit to Shadow, the captain of which tells them that this has been going on for a few months now and that the queue is several days long.
Upon hearing this, the first thing Nicolas does is to ask Osiris whether he's ever heard of ATS-LIDD. Osiris has not. In fact, the very name of the disease is contradictory. Osiris believes that it does not and cannot exist, and wonders if someone is putting them on.[6] However, Admiral Shole seems to take this imaginary disease quite seriously. This means that the crew needs to figure out some way to get around her screening program, since if they are boarded it would surely reveal Sekhmet's presence and have horrible consequences for everyone involved. Also, since this whole thing went through a grunt, Shole probably doesn't even know that Black Cat is at Shadow yet - but if she finds that out, she'll certainly remember their escape from Temerarious several months earlier, and there will definitely be consequences. Luckily for the crew, they realize they don't actually need to land on Shadow unless they pick up a signal from the cryopod in the area; all they need to do is get far enough into the atmosphere to let Jade's sensor program do its thing, and if they don't find anything, they can just leave if they want to. (Of course, not picking up the signal doesn't mean the pod is not there, but with so much ground to cover, they don't really have the time to spend looking in places that a signal isn't picked up right now.)
The crew considers all of these facts and ultimately decides that they don't want to let anybody aboard their ship to test their blood - not least of all because they're not sure what this imaginary disease actually is and they don't want to give Shole an opening to find it. But because there's no need for them to land unless they find something, all they need to do is distract her long enough to get into the atmosphere, then worry about what happens next if they find it. The crew discusses a few different potential distractions (such as Quinn's suggestion of "What of the pictures we have connectin' Blue Sun and crazy Reaverin's?") that get thrown aside as not interesting enough...until they realize that they have a prime distraction right there on the ship. What if the crew gets Sekhmet to buzz Renown in her very identifiable shuttle, then outrun the cruiser and meet up with Black Cat later on? Nicolas goes back to Sekhmet's shuttle again to run this idea past her.
Predictably, Sekhmet is less than thrilled by this plan, especially in light of how she told Nicolas only a few hours ago that she didn't appreciate being put in danger for his crackpot plans. She doesn't want Shole aboard the ship and running tests either[7], but she can't help feeling that Nicolas has not been listening to a word she's said. Finally she tells him, "If you think this is the only way to avoid getting boarded, go ahead and do it, but bear in mind that if they capture me, I won't be able to find a cure for your niece if I'm murdered." This moderates Nicolas's zeal a bit, and in consultation with the rest of the crew, he realizes that he can use Sekhmet as a distraction without putting her directly in harm's way. Black Cat's exterior security cameras recorded footage of her shuttle docked with the Blue Sun transport on Ezra. If Nicolas can get those photos to Shole through indirect means, it may distract her from Shadow long enough to give Black Cat the opening it needs. Once again, Nicolas calls upon his friend the captain whose ship is in orbit, and asks her to help him by disseminating a crazy story (with pictures of Sekhmet's shuttle attached) throughout the nearby ships, in the hopes that it will eventually get to Shole.
In the meantime, Elisa has come up with a way to get Andrew, Ethan, and their families reunited and then brought to safety. With help from Siqin, she's made contact with the trustworthy captain of a transport in orbit and convinced him to take Andrew and Ethan to St. Albans, where their families will meet them and they can begin the hard work of starting over. (Siqin also helped by setting up a secure channel for Andrew and Ethan to contact their wives and let them know what was going on.) Though neither Andrew nor Ethan is exactly happy with how things worked out, they recognize that what happened wasn't Black Cat's fault, and they thank Elisa for her help in getting them to safety. They board the transport and leave.
While waiting for the photos to have their desired effect, Nicolas takes Elisa aside for a long-delayed conversation. He is still angry about Birgitta breaking the "no disguises" rule, so Elisa's perceived insubordination has cut him to the quick, and he's not being very polite about it. He tells her that he's not happy with how she promised so many things to Andrew and Ethan and caused other members of the crew to go out of their way to help them. Nicolas says that Black Cat had absolutely no responsibility to either man after getting the notes from them. When Elisa protests that helping Andrew and Ethan didn't cost the crew anything and was the right thing to do besides, Nicolas responds rather rudely that Elisa doesn't know what she's talking about: "You guys didn't hear the whole plan. This is above your pay grade." They have a significant argument which boils down to Nicolas thinking that his crew has gotten too soft and compassionate and is wasting its resources helping people who aren't their responsibility, while Elisa believes that the whole point of life is to help the unfortunate and says that the crew does have a moral obligation to deal with the consequences that their actions might have on the people around them. The argument ends with Elisa apologizing but not really meaning it, and Nicolas stalking off and leaving Elisa feeling very hurt and upset.
However, some of these conflicts are forgotten when the crew sees their plan beginning to work. Several hours after sending out the incriminating photos of Sekhmet's ship, Renown breaks orbit and starts to depart, leaving behind a few smaller ships to maintain a cursory blockade. Nicolas's contact tells him that the other ships are maintaining the supposed quarantine as best they can, but that Black Cat should have no trouble getting past them. Indeed, Quinn's superior piloting skills allow her to slip past the remaining ships and enter the atmosphere without being detected. Jade and Siqin work together to run the scanning program, but find no trace of the signal. The results are quite conclusive, and both of them feel that it is unlikely that Louise's cryopod is anywhere close to Shadow. Nicolas tells the crew to move on. Their next stop will be nearby Regina, where they hope they'll find what they're looking for.
1 - Elisa: You do know what debrief means, don't you, Captain?
Nicolas: It doesn't have anything to do with their underwear, does it?
2 - Andrew: So, we're being kidnapped?
Elisa: No. Rescued...aggressively.
3 - dayzdark: We should hang the 'Not Slavers' certificate on the box with Angelo in it.
peloria: He isn't our slave. He's our medical experiment.
4 - Sekhmet: I know Angelo. I once picked up a person of interest from a Syndicate meeting concerning him.
Nicolas: Oh yeah, that's right. Whatever happened to Jennifer anyway?
Sekhmet: I don't think you really want to know, Captain.
Nicolas: You're probably right. Anyway...
5 - Bored Technician: Very good, Black Cat. Can I ask you what brings you to Shadow today?
dayzdark, OOC: Bad life choices.
6 - Nicolas: Doc, have you ever heard of ATS-LIDD?
Osiris: Why?
Nicolas: They're telling us they need to come aboard to test our blood for it.
Osiris: Did they also ask you if you were hauling any cargo of headlight fluid?
7 - Sekhmet: I want to be tested for an imaginary disease even less than you do.
Nicolas: I believe it. At least I know I don't have it.