Episode 5: Between the Anvil and the Hammer

[Melody]

"Ready, Cap'n," Ick said. "The safe word is Fisher-Price."

"On my way, Captain!"

"YAHHARRRR!!!" "YAHHARRRR!!!"

"But I should be able to patch you through. I hope you don't mind your message being accompanied by... advertisements."

"Can ---- read?! We need ------ Reavers!! One vessel cap----- I repeat. We are un------"

Mel's attention constantly shifted between the Hellscape of the radar screen, the view ports, and countless other readouts flashing across the pilot's console.

"What are they... Mi Tian Gohn," she cursed, gripping the yoke tightly with one hand and bumping the intercom with the back of her fist. "Hold onto something," she warned the crew still on board. "Jo, go ahead and establish communication with that ship, see if you can't convince them to surrender?" she snapped, although clearly the terseness wasn't directed at him, she simply had her attention on far too many things.

Seeing the other ship trying to lose them by slowing down so quickly, she slammed the controls forward to jerk them to their own deceleration, the sudden change in speed being near enough to make anyone a little queasy and maybe a little off balance if they hadn't held onto something in time.

"You're not getting away that easily," she muttered to the Middle Ship, her gaze locked on its position on her radar. She wanted to get to the Excelsior and the Lead Ship that had boarded it, but she couldn't be greedy. Not if she wanted them to way away with some kind of win. She'd leave the Lead Ship/Excelsior to Holger and Breene. For now. Of course...they were spinning away and in danger of being jettisoned from the Highway.

Another slam against the comms button. "Breene, make whoever is piloting that Fey Wu push the starboard thrusters to max to cancel out the spin, but be quick about it! Reorient and get back onto the Lead Ship! Dock like a person, don't just slam into it this time!" she barked, frustrated that she wasn't there to do it herself.

"Izak, get down to the cargo bay with the doctor, I want her to have an armed escort just in case this surrender doesn't go smooth," she ordered, a light sweat shimmering across her forehead at the work and concentration needed to keep the ship under control under these conditions.

She hadn't heard the safe word from her man in the engines, so she had to assume it was going alright so far. But she didn't have a doubt in her mind that they'd need to land somewhere after this to get this ship sorted. Even as strong as she was, she wagered that The Revenge was mighty annoyed by all of this and would need some maintenance in the end. Hopefully that was all she'd need...

[Ick Rosewater]

She hadn't heard the safe word from her man in the engines, so she had to assume it was going alright so far.

So far, there had been a few times her man in the engines had gone so far as to stop frantically playing with his toy stethoscope tomotion towards the squawk box with the "fff" sound in the safe word already on his lips. Then he remembered that he was Ick Rosewater and vented whatever needed to be vented or diverted whatever needed to be diverted. It bought time, but not a lot of it, even though it did help that the grav forces pulling them forward meant that fewer resources were needed for propulsion, leaving plenty for maneuvering.

It was that thought which made him grimace at his own stupidity. Revenge didn't NEED maneuverability right now. She needed to MOVE...FAST. Ick still had things configured for his forward-is-down idea. No wonder the attitudinal adjusters were screaming like their grandma just died. They were pulling duty as propulsion. Which, granted, they could do, but it was not their forte. Now was the time to treat this not as a landing or a takeoff, but as a nose dive. No, scratch that. It was time to treat this as what it was...a dive bomb.

This time, Ick DID flick the squawk box. "Grip tight, Revenge! We're about to get a nice boost in three...two...one..."

Boom. Ick threw the healthy majority of everything Revenge had going for her into propulsion. After all, just because one COULD save fuel on propulsion while using the Hammer Highway didn't mean one HAD to save fuel on propulsion while using the Hammer Highway.

[William Breene]

"Breene, make whoever is piloting that Fey Wu push the starboard thrusters to max to cancel out the spin, but be quick about it! Reorient and get back onto the Lead Ship! Dock like a person, don't just slam into it this time!"

"I am - hughhhhlllfff--"

Willy continued to evict the tenants of his stomach for a moment before finding manual controls for the starboard thrusters. He slammed the throttle all the way down for a few seconds and almost too long. They started to rotate in the other direction for just a split second before correcting. Just enough extra wobble to bring breakfast up again.

"I did i-uuhhno-"

He almost made it through his victorious proclamation but his stomach had to finish its business after the nearly fatal barrel rolls.

With a slight groan, he resumed addressing his crewmates:

"Got it, Cap. You good Holgie-Bear?"

After the extra large order of ginger finished puking directly onto Breene's shirt, he wiped his mouth and then smiled big.

"We're back in this, Mel!"

Forward thrusters went all the way down. This time, the newly minted pirate was dead-set on catching up with that ship. In the back of his mind, something occurred to him. His prior employers, to this moment, probably still think he's dead. But with all the witnesses waiting on that Space-liner, boarding that ship meant Willy was risking letting that ill-tempered cat out of its bag.

Should I have asked about whether I should be wearing a mask? Sure the handsome Marshall knows I'm alive but he'd never - shit who am I kidding? He's a cop. Balls. I'm boned either way. I've been publically accused of worse things I definitely did. Willy Breene, Pirate King! Actually, I'm the newest person on the crew. What even IS my rank?

As they closed in on the Excelsior, Breene asked with suppressed embarrassment.

"What uhh... rank am I?"

Holger raised an eyebrow and answered with enthusiasm:

"Cabin-boy."

Easing up on the gas this time, Cabin-Boy Breene was hoping to avoid turning into a human dreidel again.

"I am not - Really? Am I at least chief cabin-boy? Senior cabin-man?"

Creeping up nice and he'd killed the forward thrusters and was gaining on Excelsior with just momentum.

"Hold that thought, hold on!"

Bringing the Blue Sun ship around one hundred and eighty degrees as fast as he could, the lowest-ranking pirate on the crew was finally getting a hang of their stolen ship. With a faint hiss and a light thud, the docking bays locked onto each other. Promotion to Senior-Cabin-Boy was just around the corner if he kept redeeming himself like this.

[Joakim Soong]

Location: Revenge, Bridge

"Jo, go ahead and establish communication with that ship, see if you can't convince them to surrender?"

Jo's hands were already moving over the controls, hard at work following the first half of his orders, when the second half gave him pause.

"See if I can't convince them to surrender? Mel--" Jo felt a sudden lurch in his stomach; whether it was brought on by the prospect of having to do the talking or the sudden increase in speed was a mystery. Probably bit of both. With some effort he managed to maintain the precarious position in which he'd propped his ankle.

"I'm not sure I'm the right person--" His protests got lost in the scuffle of Mel barking orders and mashing at the ship controls. She was doing a remarkable job keeping all the plates spinning in such a frantic situation, but Jo worried she was close to snapping -- he could particularly see the beads of sweat glistening on her brow. This wasn't a good time to argue.

Then again he really didn't want to be the one to do the talking.

"I'm better at the behind the scenes stuff," he said finally, waiting for Mel to double down or, hopefully, delegate the task to someone with better public speaking skills.

[Izak Archer]

Then:
Izak gave Jo a thumbs up when he mentioned advertisements. "I yield to the maestro."

However, the situation when completely to hell after that. In a hand-basket that was dropped from low orbit.

Well, not completely, maybe he was just bitter that he did not get to do what he wanted on this one. Melody told him to hold off, which was not knew by any means. He did have a habit of screwing things up a bit. But he was keen to see what she had planned next. If the other ship has something else that they could use or...strategically transfer to an alternate location before profiting from it, he was game. They were kinda broke at the moment.

"Alright Cap, you got it," Izak then waited for his next order.

Now:
Then things really, actually, truly, started going sideways. But Mel kept her cool and kept things moving. It was delightful to watch. Perhaps the old fighter jockey did have some solid leadership skills after all. Izak did not trust her completely yet, but he figured he should give her time. She pulled this job back in order fast and could adapt on the fly.

Jo had definitely come out of his shell a bit more too. The man was a technological savant the likes of which would have impressed many of the intel officers he had crossed paths with over the years

However, his initial plan was no longer needed it would seem, as Melody ordered him below to where the ships had docked to support their good doctor. He stood from his seat swiftly.

"On it Mel. Jo, good luck." He disappeared below with w quick nod stopping to grab a weapon on his way to the airlock.

[Ick Rosewater]

There comes a time in every mechanic's tenure when they learn a ship's limits. The hard way. And all one can wish for is that such tragically taught lessons don't happen an an inopportune moment. Like, say, while engaged in acts of high piracy.

But as the saying goes, you can wish in one hand and lā shǐ in the other and see which gets filled first.

CLUNK!

Ick froze. The sound wasn't enough to immediately diagnose what the hell just went wrong with Revenge, but he was well acquainted with the sounds a ship SHOULD be making and "CLUNK!" wasn't on the list. No, that was the unmistakable sound of things going to a special hell reserved for mechanics who, as a teen, may have creeped a little too hard on their brother Avram's girlfriend down at the old swimming hole.

"Oooooh, don't go all fakakta on me now, friend," said Ick to both Revenge and the situation at-large. His eye flew across his instruments. Engines fine. Whew. Attitudinal framework and gyros all fine. Double whew. Life support...not so fine. The most that could be said for life support was that it was still there. No air was being lost to the black and temperatures were maintaining. Oh, wait. Not ALL temperatures were maintaining. They weren't dropping fast at all, but Ick saw the trickle.

He checked climate control. No air was moving at all. None. Which meant no CO2 was getting scrubbed from it. That wasn't an immediate death sentence for the crew. People breathing and walking around, along with temperature fluctuations throughout the ship would keep air moving enough throughout the cabins to keep the crew from suffocating in a cloud of their own CO2. The real problem was that virtually ANY of Revenge's systems had at least one vital component that relied on air-cooling. Which meant that while nearly every system was currently working absolutely ace, soon they would all overheat and die one-by-one. And THAT, of course, WAS an immediate death sentence for the crew.

Ick mashed the squawkbox.

"FISHER-PRICE, CAP'N! FISHER-GORRAM-PRICE!"

He braced his forehead against the bulkhead, wrenching his braingears for an idea. Sometimes airflow systems get a surge of energy and blow so hard that they blow themselves out. There were safeguards to prevent such a thing but Ick may have intentionally blown right through them earlier in his quest to deliver his afore-promised boost.

Yup. This was his fault.

It wouldn't be an insurmountable thing to get the airflow going again. But Ick couldn't be in all the necessary places at once.

He hit the squawkbox again.

"I need more hands, Cap'n!" he said. "More hands and bodies to help me out here. I'll take anybody you can give me in the engine room now, please and thank you!"