Episode 0: To Steal A Pirate Ship

[Holger Heyerdahl]

Melody appeared and spoke some Chinese and then left. Her comments did not bother Holger much. He knew that they were friends and that she was only expressing frustration. He would do as she requested, he owed her that at least.

Izak's comments, on the other hand, rose the hackles on the back of Holger's neck something fierce. He clearly knew nothing of war, sitting and pressing buttons to kill men. It was a similar issue that Holger had had when he met Melody, though the pilot had convinced him of her mettle and tenacity quickly and without prejudice, something Izak had yet to do. There was still time for that, though as far as Holger was concerned, not much of it left. He unceremoniously dumped Mustache into the airlock. "So killing browncoats is dull for you? With your missiles and artillery, sitting safely up in the black while men die on with their feet on the ground." The Marine fell on top of the other two bodies. "These men worked with the Alliance. I do not like people who work with the Alliance."

As Izak turned to leave, Holger called after him. "And I do not like you, skinny man." He suddenly wished that the other man would fight him. It would be a good way to get the measure of him. But Melody would not like that.

So, that left Holger with what remained of the cleanup. He didn't mind that so much. He was good at this sort of work, and even liked it a bit. And doing it alone afforded him a bit of quiet, which was welcome after all of this excitement. The big man turned to grab the Marine and a brief wave of lightheadedness came and went, and Holger began to wonder if he might need some medical attention. He wiped at the blood pouring from his head on his already ruined sleeve, smearing the blood with a mixture of whatever it was they had been rolling in. "Hrm." He murmured to himself, examining the amount of blood on his sleeve. It was decided. He would go to the Medical Bay. If he could find it.

It took a little doing, and just when Holger thought he was lost, he realized there were signs on the wall telling him where to to go, and he was able to follow those directions. Once inside the sterile room, he began rifling through draws and cabinets looking for something to stop the bleeding. As he looked, his vision went fuzzy for just a moment and the room spun. "Uh..." He groaned, grabbing at his head which began to throb. In all of his life, Holger had been stabbed, shot, punched, wrestled, kicked, thrown, smashed, crashed, thrashed,  nearly exploded twice and.... he was just realizing, he had never been hit in the head. Not like this. And as he began wondering whether or not it was normal, the spinning got worse and he crashed to the floor.

[Missy Etheridge]

Missy watched with equal parts apprehension and irritation as the mountain of a human being staggered through her pristine medical bay, leaving drawers open and smearing blood all over the place. His back was to her, so she wasn't overly concerned about being discovered yet, but others were sure to join him soon, and his obviously injured presence put a bit of a cramp in her clever "do nothing and wait it out" plan.

Her ethical obligations were about as firm as her loyalty to the Alliance, but when they found her -- and she was quite sure at this point that they would -- even the most backwards of border-moon shānqū rén could figure out that she'd have seen him go down and elected to stay put. Somehow, Missy had a feeling that would weaken any argument to the usefulness of her ongoing access to oxygen.

She hesitated just a moment more, then darted out to the unconscious figure to check his vital signs and investigate his injuries, muttering under her breath the whole while. "Oh, cào nǐ zǔ zōng shí bā dài, you son of a reaver and a fatherless egg, you could have picked any place on the gorram ship to keel over and bleed to death, and you pick my medbay?? I ought to leave you to it, but no, you just managed to pass out in front of the one person who's life depends on yours, and who actually knows how to fix you, you xìngyùn wáng bā dàn. Probably get a pistol shoved up my nose for the gorram trouble, too, and never mind so much as a 'thank you' for saving your life, no..."

Actually, considering that the others' execution orders had come with a "please and thank you" earlier, it was entirely possible that she would be thanked before being brutally murdered, but Missy was hardly inclined to be charitable just then.

[Izak Archer]

Izak rounded the corner and found the armory, door unlocked, on the right side of the storage room. His boots clunked along the floor at a tense pace. He needed time and space to cool off. He poked his head in the armory. The weapons were the standard equipment for an alliance vessel – nothing spectacular, but effective all the same, and a fair amount of ammunition. The weapons were locked in their cages, stored properly on their racks.

Just behind that, the crown jewel.

The ships safe...locked up tight behind a cell door.

"Well, well, well...Mel will love this," he said rubbing his chin. "I wonder if our tech wizard can crack safes too. Lock looks electronic from out here." Turning to leave, he saw a grease applicator on the table with several cans of gun oil still in the box. That gave him an idea. He may not get along with their Red Reaver – there was a name for him that skipped the politics – but no bladesman should be without his blade.

"He should be happy I have a bloody conscience," he said to himself as he swiped the item from the workbench. Coming back out to the hall, he saw Melody still in a standoff with a closet, and the knife stuck in the wall. He was hoping the blade did not wedge itself into a structural support.

That aside, Izak was impressed. Not only had Holger wedged the blade into the interior wall of a starship, but the metal tore slightly as he tried to remove it.

"And despite his strength, he's probably still surprised I didn't take a swing at him," he said. He was about to find a way to grease the knife to remove it when he heard a dull thwump from the medical bay.

[Rashy Pete]

Inside the pantry closet, Olo struggled with the furry grip of the beast on his shoulder. Never in his wildest, most chemical engine degreaser-fueled dreams did he imagine he'd actually die like this. "Nooo! It's just like that fortune teller on Iscariot Station said!" As Olo twisted this way and that in the iron grip of the cryptozoological nightmare, he tripped over the length of his own pants leg and fell backward against the door. With a hiss, Rasputin disengaged and fell to the floor.

"Come out," came the voice outside the door. A female voice. A strong female voice, like the one Olo heard over the PA system. He shrank back toward the corner, stepping over the cat's tail. "RRRR-OOOWL!!!" Olo jumped with a yelp at the familiar and disapproving sound. "Ras! Where have you been? How'd you get in here? Did you see the chupacabra!"

As Olo awaited the answer, the closet door came open behind him. "Ha! I was ready for you this time, goatsucker!" Olo unleashed a viscous stream of compressed liquefied cheese product in the direction of the humanoid shape before him, realizing with a look of abject horror that the monster's appearance was even more horrifying than he ever expected: a well-armed, angry-looking, but otherwise fairly attractive blonde woman. "I... Uh. Well. Heh. Uuuhm. Yams." Olo dropped the cheese spray slowly, sank to the floor, and assumed the fetal position. Rasputin greeted Melody with a soft meow and curled around her ankle before licking idly at the liquid cheese on her boot.

[Missy Etheridge]

Gradually, the swearing and the grumbling ebbed as Missy grew more focused on her work. After confirming that the only significant source of trauma was the concussive injury to his head, she managed -- with no little effort -- to haul the pirate over onto his back and get his feet elevated on a nearby stool.

Keeping one ear out for any further approaching footsteps, she noted absently that the 'screaming idiot' was still at it -- something about... sucking goats? No, that couldn't be right. Sound traveled weirdly through the metallic space sometimes, which was probably also why it sounded like there was an angry cat somewhere off in the same direction.

Not that it particularly mattered. Like it or not, Missy had a job to do, so she tuned out the madness and, kneeling on the floor by the giant's head, starting cleaning up the injury site to figure out just what she was dealing with.

[Melody]

Mel heard someone walk past the galley door and begin fiddling with something at the wall a bit down the corridor, but she had absolutely no bit of attention to spare for that. Instead, the pilot stood stock still staring through narrowed blue eyes at the man crumpled on the bottom of the storage closet. Compressed cheese dripped slowly off her chin and onto her chest, the fake yellow staining her sweater and sticking in her hair. Index finger twitched against the side of the gun instead of pulling the trigger. Had she not noticed at the last moment that the item in the strange man's hand wasn't a weapon (in the traditional sense) she would have blasted him with holes. Instead, Mel shoved her gun into its holster and looked down at herself.

"What the hell?" she asked again, having no other response to everything that had happened in the last five minutes. Mel allowed herself a couple seconds to pluck in horrified confusion at the cheese on her sweater before she looked down at the cat and frowned. "You have something to do with this?" she asked it under her breath, almost feeling betrayed. The pilot shook her head and bent down to scoop up the cat with one arm, grabbing the back of the man's shirt with the other hand and yanking him into some kind of upright position. Pulling him a bit to bring his face back into view, Mel glowered at him and repeated, "What. The. Hell?"

Hauling him up and out, Mel grunted grumpily, "Up. Out. Move," she ordered, still holding the cat against her side, although she seemed to either have forgotten or was so relaxed with the cat that holding it while trying to work didn't seem to bother her much. She heard a dull thud down in the ship but figured it was Holger putting the bodies into nice neat piles in the airlock like she'd asked.

[Joakim Soong]

At Melody's request, Joakim dug out his cortex pad to check up on their captain. He had barely gotten to work when the sound of gunfire rang out below them, making him look up in alarm. Whatever it is, the others will take care of it, he reminded himself. It's not your job. Melody got up from her chair to go check it out, and he turned his attention back to the cortex, stifling a grunt when she kicked him on her way out. He really didn't understand what was going through that woman's head.

Joakim checked out the official channels he'd tapped into when he'd been keeping the tabs on the ship and the officials handling it. What he discovered made his stomach lurch: a warrant of arrest for Isa Romero, the woman who was supposed to act as the captain of The Revenge, the woman behind this whole damn operation. They've caught onto us. They know what we're up to. They'll capture her, and squeeze information out of her, and every last one of us will be screwed... He caught his mind slipping into panic mode and hit the brakes. This wasn't the end of the world. It was just a warrant, not a guarantee they had her, or would have her.

As if on cue, an incoming message notification popped up on the device in his hands. There was no sender specified, and based on the IP number, he wagered it had been sent from a public terminal. The message itself was a garbled mess of cryptic words, clearly written in code, and not the kind he was familiar with. Surely it couldn't be a coincidence. Maybe...

His train of thought was interrupted by a beep from the ship's computer, and he turned his attention to the monitor. It was done. He'd gotten through. A few button presses later the red light indicating a landlock turned green, and the rest of the ship's control board lit up, ready for someone to take the helm.

Jo's ship-wide announcement opened with shuffling sounds as he momentarily fumbled with the microphone.

"Uh, pilot to the bridge, please? All systems are go. And, oh, I've got something to show you. Um... Over?"

[Rashy Pete]

"What the hell?"

Olo continued to lay in the floor of the pantry, seconds away from caving in and sucking his thumb.

"You have something to do with this?"

"Mrowl."

"Don't hurt him. He's my only friend." Olo meant to plead for Rasputin's life, but the words came out as incomprehensible muttering verging on the edge of open sobs. He released a frightened squawk as Melody's hand snatched his collar and pulled his face toward her own.

"What. The. Hell?"

Olo couldn't stand to look the young woman in her eye. He found her attractive and intimidating and generally horrifying all around, the cord of cheese doing little to lessen any of those attributes. "I just want to go home! I'm late for my stories!"

"Up. Out. Move,"

Olo's head hung between his shoulders as he exited the closet and stepped back into the galley, careful not to slip in the results of his own unwitting sabotage. "What happened? I heard someone screaming about their hand getting chewed off - oh god! Are you... Reavers?"

[Melody]

"What happened? I heard someone screaming about their hand getting chewed off - oh god! Are you... Reavers?" the strange little man asked.

Mel rolled her eyes and guided him out of the galley the way she'd come in, narrowly avoiding the mess and blood on the floor on the way out. "Yes, we're Reavers," she answered in a flat, unamused tone, her grip on the back of his shirt tight. Leaning forward, the pilot snapped her teeth shut near his ear for a moment as though she were going to bite him, only getting air between her teeth. With a shake of her head, she moved to the doorway and carefully pushed him through the threshold, still holding the cat against her chest.

"Uh, pilot to the bridge, please? All systems are go. And, oh, I've got something to show you. Um... Over?"

Mel looked up toward the voice, then turned her head and spotted Izak, her brows raised when she noticed what she was doing. "Where's Holger?" she asked, pushing the screaming idiot toward him and turning back to press the comm buttons in the galley's doorway, sending a message to the bridge, "I'm on my way," she assured Jo, her tone just as clipped as always. With the message sent, Mel returned to where she'd left Izak holding the crazy person, "You finish sweeping the ship? I don't want any more of these hiding in any more cupboards," she asked, reaching out to take the nut back.

She shook her head, sighing a little, "You and Holger join me up in the bridge when you're both done doing what you're doing." With that, the pilot turned and walked past him down the corridor and further into the ship, stomping up the stairs and dragging Pete along with her, not really expecting any fight from him, what with the can of cheese spray being empty and discarded. "It's me," she called out again before rounding the entrance to the bridge and pushing Pete toward a corner. With a stern glower and a finger pointed at him, she dared him to move. "Stay."

Mel took a deep breath and sat back down in the pilot's chair, pointing back toward the idiot, looking at Jo as she did, "If he tries to run out of the room, shoot him," she requested, shooting one more glare in the Cheese Man's direction. With him in his place, Mel set the cat down and took a deep breath, looking at the console and seeming pleasantly surprised that it looked to be good to go, "Nice work," she praised, grinning a little and running her fingers over the controls, starting the ignition sequence, warming the bird up, "Any word from Isa?" she asked.

[Holger Heyerdahl]

Holger was running through a snowy field. Or at least, it seemed like he was, but when he looked down his feet weren't moving at all. When he looked up, the snow covered scenery around him was moving by with surprising speed. Holger wasn't sure how he knew exactly, but he was on St. Albans even though he had never seen this particular place before. But it felt like the planet of his birth, and not just because he was cold. And sticky. He felt sticky. Back at the store, Holger put a model ship on the counter. It was an exact replica of the Cornwall, though it really didn't look anything like the ship he and Melody and the rest of the crew were stealing. Holger paid the shopkeeper, who looked like Izak, for the toy with a few scattered coins, and then jumped up onto the roof to give the ship to his mother, who also looked like Izak. "Melody, am I dreaming?" He asked, turning to his friend in the shuttle. It was strange because she, too, looked like Izak.

"No." She said, and then she shot him.

Holger's eyes fluttered open and he locked his gaze on the pretty blond woman kneeling over him. He blinked a few times, processing what he was seeing. He didn't know where she had come from or how he had gotten so close to her or what she was doing or... He was confused. "I am confused." She was far too small and nice looking to be a threat to him. And Holger remembered finding the MedBay. She must be a doctor. He decided to relax and let her help him. "You are a doctor and you are helping me. Thank you. If you do a good job we will not kill you. This ship is ours now."

[Missy Etheridge]

"You are a doctor and you are helping me."

No, I am a fish and I am playing the piano.

Missy bit back the sarcastic reply and smiled comfortingly at him instead. She could probably convince him he'd been dreaming, if he even remembered the remark, but why risk it? He was clearly coherent enough to assert hostile takeovers and overt death threats.

"Shh, just rest," she told him gently. "You have a cerebral contusion, but it doesn't look like you're at significant risk of subdural hemorrhage. I'm just sanitizing the wound before I apply a cryothermic gel to reduce the swelling." Big words were ever so useful, in Missy's opinion -- no faster way to get someone to pipe down and let her do her gorram job, especially when they were already disoriented.

The comms crackled again with another transmission, but it was a new voice this time, male and a little awkward.

"Uh, pilot to the bridge, please? All systems are go. And, oh, I've got something to show you. Um... Over?"

So that made at least three pirates, counting the woman who'd broadcast earlier and the semi-conscious giant. Missy supposed she had better start gathering more information about them, knowledge being power and all.

"I just need to ask you a few questions, to ascertain your mental clarity," she said in a calmly authoritative voice, making sure he could still see how sweet and soothing her smile was as she carefully wiped the injury clean. "Can you tell me your name, please?"

[Holger Heyerdahl]

Contusion?
Hemorage?
Cryothermic?
Sanitizing?

Nothing the woman was saying made any sense to Holger. He had grown up poor in the icy mines of St Albans and what little they had in the way of medical care had been very straightforward and to the point. This doctor spouted incomprehensible, and clearly very Core specific, medical gibberish that left Holger's already injured brain throbbing.

Until, that is, she asked his name. That was an easy one, though he was surprised that it took him a moment to think of it. He knew this. After all, he had only been called one thing his entire life, aside from the occasional non-flattering nickname that usually didn't linger past the first attempt. He knew had been named for a great-uncle on his mother's side. 

Asbjørn? No. Mother never liked him. Oh! He knew. "My name is Holger."

[Joakim Soong]

Jo was half-sitting on the edge of the console, but got up as soon as Melody announced her entrance. His brow furrowed when he saw she was accompanied by a man who was neither Holger nor Izak. No, 'accompanied' was the wrong word. Melody had taken a hostage.

"If he tries to run out of the room, shoot him."

He opened his mouth to ask her who the hell he was, then closed it again. That could wait. It's not like the newcomer seemed to pose much of a threat. His pathetic demeanor and the way Melody was jerking him around almost made Joakim feel sorry for the guy. He didn't look like an Alliance officer.

"Any word from Isa?"

"Yeah, about that..." Joakim had the apologetic air of a doctor about to tell someone their family member had perished on the operating table. "The Feds have issued a warrant for her arrest. They must have caught a whiff of the operation somehow... But this just came in."

He handed her his cortex pad, still displaying the coded message.

"Does it say anything to you?"

While Melody inspected the device, Joakim pulled out the pistol she'd handed him, gripping it in his hand and shooting a warning look at the hostage. He wasn't sure he had the guts to shoot the man if he tried to make a run for it... But then again, he wasn't sure the man had the guts to try to make a run for it, so they were pretty even.

[Missy Etheridge]

"Holger! What a nice name." Missy beamed down at her patient and tried to think fast. The usual questions about his home planet or the current date wouldn't do her much good, while asking him directly how many friends he had and what  they were planning to do with the ship was too risky -- she couldn't rely on him being disoriented enough not to notice how nosy and specific the questions were.

Best to keep it high-level, she decided, and see what he came up with from a more vague prompt. She wasn't sure how much time she'd have to play Twenty Questions before someone else showed up, and wanted to make the most of whatever chance she got.

"This is going to feel cold and a little tingly," she warned him, then immediately spread the icy gel around the knot on his head before he'd have a chance to process the warning. Hopefully, the startling sensation would keep him distracted while he answered. "Now, Holger," Missy continued, making sure her tone stayed even and relaxed, as though she were just running down a standard checklist. "Can you tell me as much as you remember about the last twenty-four hours?"

[Holger Heyerdahl]

The cold was nice. It reminded him of the snow on St Albans.

The tingly was nice. It reminded him of... other things.

Beneath his bushy beard of embers, a smile formed and Holger found he rather enjoyed this strange, tiny woman's nursing. He still had no idea who she was or what she was doing here but it didn't really concern him much. She certainly could do him no harm. Not only could she fit in his pocket, but Holger knew that doctors swore to not hurt people.

But why did she want to know what they were up to? Another spy? Women could certainly be spies, though Holger didn't think he had ever met one. But could doctors be spies? Not on their patients, that would violate their oaths, Holger was certain of it.

He decided this little woman doctor was not a spy.

"The entire twenty-four hours is not very interesting. Melody and I were following this ship and then landed when it landed." Holger cocked his head, as if on the verge of realizing something. "We were following you." He's almost got it. "This is an Alliance Ship." Nearly there. "And we are stealing it for the glory of the Independent Cause and to be a thorn in the Purple Sides of the Alliance. I hate the Alliance very much. Every purple one of them." He paused.

Holger smiled. He had figured it out. "Ah yes! And then we met the bird man and that skinny bastard and the other one and I killed the Marine and then my knife got stuck in the wall when the floor was slippery, so I killed the two policemen. One of them hit me in the head." He had remembered what had happened. His brain was fine.

[Rashy Pete]

"Yes, we're Reavers,"

The woman leaned in toward Olo, her mouth widening to the point he feared another, smaller mouth might strike out at him from within like in a holovid remake of an old Earth-that-was moving picture he saw once. He heard something about the original being made before proper capture technology existed but he wasn't sure he believed it. Of course, he never believed in Reavers either until whatever made those growling noises and chewed that poor guy's hand off showed up. The blonde finally brought her teeth closed with an audible "KLAK" near enough to his throat to give Olo shivers. She shook her head like she was disappointed in him, clutching Rasputin to her chest as she shoved Olo out into the galley. "Are you gonna eat my cat?" Before she could answer, the woman's head looked up as a voice called out over the PA system.

"Uh, pilot to the bridge, please? All systems are go. And, oh, I've got something to show you. Um... Over?"

The woman led Olo through the galley, leaving him to wonder what manner of monster created such a mess and left the ruin of humanity laying strewn along the much and slop covering the floor. Olo stepped lightly, shaking all the while.

"Where's Holger?" the woman asked as she shoved Olo toward a man he didn't see lurking about. "W-w-what's a holger?" he stammered, watching the man closely and visibly recoiling. The Reavers spoke among themselves, speaking in a coded language Olo didn't understand. Finally, his captor took him back within her iron grasp. She seemed to be walking him toward the bridge. "It's okay if you all just want to drop me off on Beylix or something..." She pushed him into a corner of the bridge, pointing a finger at him with eyes that looked as if they might fire lasers any moment. "Stay." "B-b-b-b'okay." Olo made a timid, half-hearted reach for Rasputin as the woman turned away from him. The matte-furred feline only hissed in response.

"If he tries to run out of the room, shoot him," Olo tried to laugh as if this were all some kind of practical joke that he was in on, but it came out as a whimper instead. He melted and slid down the wall in despair. Perspiration dripped off his nose and dribbled across his lip, which he licked clean. "Nice work," The maligned mechanic's merciless mistress sat the cat down almost gently in stark comparison to her personality before she sat herself down in a pilot's chair and set about firing up the engines. "Any word from Isa?"

"Yeah, about that..." Olo might've recognized the voice of the new man in the room, whose deferral to the blonde woman only made her even more intimidating in his own pea-sized mind, as the same that called over the PA earlier if not for the clattering of his own teeth. "The Feds have issued a warrant for her arrest. They must have caught a whiff of the operation somehow... But this just came in. Does it say anything to you?"

The man handed what Olo thought to be a cortex device over to the woman, then leveled a pistol on him. Olo frowned deeply, turning his head from the man momentarily before looking back and making prolonged, awkward eye contact. "I'm scared!" Olo broke the silence with a loud whine. "...And I need to pee..."

[Missy Etheridge]

"The entire twenty-four hours is not very interesting." Missy listened closely as the giant told his tale, staring intently at the already-much-reduced knot as if she were examining it with all her concentration, though really she was trying to get as much as she could out of every detail he mentioned.

"Melody and I were following this ship and then landed when it landed." So this 'Melody' must have been the first voice over the coms, or at least Missy hoped so. She still wasn't sure just what their numbers were, but if the pirates were on first-name basis with each other, it was probably a pretty small group.

"We were following you."

Right. Covered that.

"This is an Alliance ship."

No duh, you concussed buhn dahn. Did the Alliance flag on every gorram surface give it away?

"And we are stealing it for the glory of the Independent Cause and to be a thorn in the Purple Sides of the Alliance." Oh, lovely. Political pirates; that was just what Missy needed. "I hate the Alliance very much. Every purple one of them."

She was sure he was winding up for an anti-Alliance tirade and she'd get nothing else of sense out of him, but then Holger switched tack suddenly and mentioned the 'bird man' and 'that skinny bastard' and 'the other one.' The Bird Man and the Screaming Idiot must be one and the same, Missy decided. His shrieks had sounded somewhat... avian. Which left the second voice on the coms as either That Skinny Bastard or The Other One. The 'um's and 'oh's hadn't given Missy much sense of "bastard," so he was probably The Other One, which left just one unknown in the equation.

Holger, however, was still rattling off his memories. "...and I killed the Marine and then my knife got stuck in the wall when the floor was slippery, so I killed the two policemen. One of them hit me in the head."

Gulp. Three murders, itemized as casually as a shopping list, and not an ounce of remorse to be seen. Not that Missy could really point fingers as far as remorse was concerned, but it was not a comfortable attitude to encounter while desperately trying to avoid becoming Number Four.

Nothing she could do, though, but try and put herself in the 'friend' category as quickly and firmly as possible, so she fixated on the last sentence and beamed at him while she folded up a square of gauze for his head. "Probably how you got that nasty bump, but not to worry. We'll have you right as rain in a jiffy! Would you like a lollipop?" Missy might have been leaning a little too hard into the old-world aphorisms, but he seemed like the type to be comforted by them. She stood to get a roll of bandage tape and added casually over her shoulder, "Tell me about your friend Melody. She seems nice."

[Izak Archer]

Izak finished getting the knife ready to be removed from the wall as things proceeded around him. Not that he was really paying a lot of attention, but things in the kitchen sounded as if they had gotten out of hand – again – and Melody was on the receiving end this time.  Something about that made him want laugh, but he was certain that would come back to bite him. He grabbed onto the odd man's collar as she starting asking about Holger when he heard their tech gurus' summons for Melody.

"Ships clear on my end," he said. "I'll find him and see you shortly."

"Now let's see," he said. Izak started by jiggling the knife a little, but it did not budge. So he tried something a little more direct. Wrapping the sling of his shotgun around the handle, he twisted it a couple of times to make sure it held. Then grabbing on to both ends of the weapon, he pulled the knife out of the wall with a sound that was halfway between a scrape and a thud. As he took a moment of pride in his achievement, he turned for the bridge, but remembered he had to find Holger first.

The medical bay was the first place to look.

Izak walked in to the medical bay to see the big bearded veteran talking with their...well, she did not come on with them, so who was she exactly?

He held out the knife handle up as he spoke. "Alright, so I'm here to return this, but I've got one favor to ask. No more talking politics and no more criticizing how we each deal with threats to the crew. Deal?"

[Melody]

"Yeah, about that..." Jo began and Mel whipped her head around to stare at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes. No sentence that started like that ever turned out to be something good. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in the seat, pausing the ignition sequence, the ship thrumming beneath their feet as it warmed up.

"The Feds have issued a warrant for her arrest. They must have caught a whiff of the operation somehow... But this just came in," he began, handing her the cortex pad. She uncrossed one arm and reached out for it, holding it at the bottom and looking over the message. "Does it say anything to you?" he asked. She glanced at him, frowning, and looked back toward the message, trusting him to keep the screamer in place.

"Qing wa cao de liu mang, ni ta ma de, tian xia suo you de ren dou gai si. Wo pi gu cao," she cursed, setting the data pad down on the console and rubbing her face with both hands. The movement of her hands started slow, then quickly increased in speed until she growled in frustration and slapped her hands down onto her lap.

"I'm scared!" Olo broke the silence with a loud whine. "...And I need to pee..."

Mel turned to stare at him, blue gaze sliding down over his clothing, all the way to his feet, before she stared hard at his face. She was willing to bet he'd stay there and shut up if she asked nicely enough, but she wasn't willing to say that he wouldn't just pee himself while he did so. She snorted and shook her head, reaching up for the mic again and pulling it down, her fingers finishing the ignition sequence as she did so.

"We're taking off. Hold onto something. I want someone positioned at the airlock. Open it before we break Atmo. Let 'em burn up on their way back down. Then join me up here. We need to talk."

Her voice was a little more clipped than it had been before, but she had a lot on her mind. She sighed, hanging the mic back up and pointing to a little door adjacent to the bridge's exit, "That's a bathroom. Do not pee on the floor," she told the messy man, glancing at him once more as the ship rumbled to life, the sound of it disengaging from the dock echoing through the ship. "You can run if you want, but don't forget. Ship's locked up tight and there's Reavers about. Might be safer if you stay up here with me," she reminded him, grinning dangerously to herself as she diverted her attention toward the front window and the controls. "Buckle up," she directed toward Jo, not wanting him to be knocked about. With that, Melody pulled back on the yoke and they began their ascent, leaving Isa, the Gooseman, and their Stalker behind.

[Holger Heyerdahl]

Slowly and with a bit more pain and trouble than he was accustomed to, Holger lifted himself from the ground and, fighting the wave of dizziness, stood. Holger looked at Missy with a smile. She had clearly not met Melody. Anyone who had would know that, while she was loyal to her friends and had a streak of kindness that she hid well, to call Melody "nice" was grossly untrue. Even so, Holger could see what Missy was doing. This is what doctors did. Bed manners, it was called, though Holger was not in a bed so he was confused by the expression. And to be truthful, when he thought of "bed manners" an entirely different thought crossed his mind. "Melody is not nice. But I like her."

Before he could go on, Izak appeared in the doorway holding Holger's knife and making demands of him. Holger, before the purple belly could change his mind, roughly grabbed his knife back and examined the blade for damage. Nothing noticeable luckily. There may have been a question as to whether Holger would be impressed or grateful for the gesture. The answer was, "No." He said, a piercing grin underneath his bushy beard. This also referred to Izak's offer of a truce. There was something admirable about the gunner's temerity, though it was lost almost entirely on Holger. The knife went home into its sheath, the metal meeting leather in a satisfying way. The second most satisfying place to put a knife, to Holger's thinking. He had to admit that he was glad to have his knife back.

Melody's voice appeared over the intercom again and Holger's gaze drifted to the speaker on the ceiling as if it were speaking to him. He looked at Izak. "You will do the airlock. Your tiny fingers are better for all of those buttons." He looked at Missy. "You will come with me. You should meet Melody." He didn't wait for arguments or counter-offers or a response of any kind, but instead walked out of the MedBay and turned in the direction opposite of the bridge, stopped, righted himself, and led the way back up to the Bridge as best as his readings of the signs would allow.