Ω sweet Ω (Leviathan)

"Ω sweet Ω" is the third episode of the third season of Leviathan: Distant Stars and the twenty-sixth episode in total.

## Summary

### A split party

The party, still on board spirate ship Bounty's Grace is split: Xe'anna and Rachel confront Conrad who, as Jeremiah Bisquick, has joined newly promoted Captain Liang Yuen Heinz and redshirt goon Bob; Kika locked up in a smelly, dimly lit 3m x 3m cell with four slaves, two metal spring beds and very little else; and Theea starting towards Engineering on her trail, crossing her fingers to *Be invisible*.

Xe'anna gets shot and, taking "Bisquick" hostage, gets Liang to hesitate. Bob then leaves the scene and Liang once again shoots at Xe'anna, bringing her HP down to 32.

Kika tries to help Theea locate her by sending her *sound pictures*. Theea's reaction: *What the fuck was that?*

Liang boop-boops a message in Conrad's hear: *Are you wearing your suit?* His reply: *Don't blow the hatch!*

Xe'anna lets Conrad "flee" toward Liang. Having once played in an ICA production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Conrad very convincingly fakes biting Xe'anna, grabbing her hat to put it on Liang's head and shouting *Enjoy the inky void of space!* for good measure.

Xe'anna, who is not amused that Theea has disappeared again, warns her to find shelter or risk being sucked into space and returns to the Bat'leth. Xe'anna is carrying Rachel over her shoulder, and Rachel is not entirely happy of the situation: *I'm very mad at you for manhandling me, but I'm also kind of turned on**.*

Theea awkwardly and uncomfortably but also carefully squeezes her way through the same Kika-hole size Kika had dropped from to reach the engine room. Heeding Xe'anna's warning, she uses her *Toolie 2* to seal the hole behind her. There is a lot of swearing in both Theea's and Xe'anna's mind spaces.

Meanwhile, Rachel throws a pistol she has fashioned into a *gun grenade* in Liang's direction: *tunk, tunk, tunk*.

Kika takes stock of her dire situation. The slaves have no possessions left, and just wear scrub-like prison garb. She tries to cheer them up, explaining that *You're being rescued almost* and *I came to blow up the ship*. How she is actually going to rescue them is *Unclear!* She becomes exasperated because of *Too many questions, not enough results.* One slave does produce a hidden credstick. Kika also notices a couple of empty trays, a plastic bowl and a couple of cups in it. There are also a couple air vents so small even Kika can't fit through. More encouragingly, the metal frames of the beds could be pried open to grant access to their mesh grid and Kika may get access to the wiring in the ceiling's lighting fixture. There is also a camera-microphone in the corner of the cell.

Conrad, running in slow-mo with Liang and Bob toward the bridge of the Bounty's Grace, hears the small-scale explosion of Rachel's grenade. He manages to avoid its blast while the hat flies off Liang's head as she ducks.

The rattle from the grenade's explosion bolsters Kika's speech and gives her information about the door: it could be opened by electrical discharges and it is not sealed well enough to completely prevent venting.

The Bounty's Grace starts detaching from the Bat'leth, leaving Rachel and Xe'anna in a coupling tube from which the atmosphere starts venting fast. Atmosphere also starts leaking from Kika's cell. Theea has made herself safe but still feels the cold.

Oxana opens the door long enough for Xe'anna, who manages to jump back onto the Bat'leth. Rachel, who remembered to exhale, uses a telekinetic power she doesn't even know she has to hurtle Xe'anna towards the door. Xe'anna doesn't resist the familiar push Hexie has used before. Once safe, she recaps the situation for Oxana and Rachel finally gets to know who that Conrad, who didn't always talk like a pirate, is. Rachel proceeds to the gun closet, which she has decorated with a holo-image of her bae by that time.

Kika harangues her companions with her plan to dismantle the lighting fixture and open the cell's door with an electrical discharge. And yes, she has to use Lead, which she doesn't have, rather than Fix to get their attention. Her 7 results in a success with consequence: the slaves start murmuring among themselves about her fate. This leads to an awkward dialogue regarding the other slaves.

> Kika: *Do you care about them?*
>
>

> Slave: *Oh, you really are a spirate.*
>
>

Having checked their sentiments, Kika says she'll fight with them. As the slaves start attacking the lighting, Lauren pans the camera to the corner where Kika taped the camera but not the microphone.
Rachel fires a warning shot that goes wide and fails to impress the Bounty's Grace. She also tries to get an audio-only channel to the ship but only hears:

> *Yarr! you've reached the voicemail of the greatest scourge in the seven sectors, Jeremiah Bisquick Heinz; I am not available to take your call at the moment.*
>
>

Xe'anna then addresses the former slaves on-board and ejects their empty pod into space. The Bounty's Grace still detects eight signatures and Captain Liang brings it aboard. Xe'anna who, *unlike some people*, is all about communication, excitedly meep-meeps the crew, including Conrad, that *They just picked up the bomb.* She is under the mistaken belief that she will have a way to trigger the bomb, when Kika actually rigged it to set off on opening the door.
Theea, hearing noticing below her, drops down and three-point lands in the engine room. She finds burnt hair and sees someone at the other end of the room. She sneaks behind him, doing her *Be invisible* trick with crossed fingers, and strikes him with her rifle. He crumples, but maybe not for too long because Theea rolled a 1 on her attack. Theea doesn't kill him:

> *Theea's humanity takes over a little bit here, the humanity that she would never admit exists, and she doesn't slice his throat.*
>
>

She goes to the console instead, to hack into the system. She loads up a map, locates five groups of 4 to 5 people, and sends hastily crafted commands to open all of the doors before the system boots her out and an alert is displayed to Conrad and Liang. *Jeremiah Bisquick Heinz has it under control*, and starts humming his song, but is reluctant to tell his captain about the *nightmare* he lived through. Liang dispatches him to deal with the intruder while she retrieves the slaves from the pod.

### The truth about the pod

This is when Kika finally tells Xe'anna about the real trigger for the explosion. Xe'anna is not happy, Kika hadn't thought it through, and the worried slaves around her prepare to leave, gathering wires as weapons. There are 3 non-trapped escape pods (at the front, back and bottom) they can use with room for 30 in total at most. 22 slaves are still on the spirate ship, as well as 3 Bat'leth crew.

Kika estimates the power of the explosion at 22000 Ω, which may cause a chain reaction to the engines and the fuel that would take down the whole ship. Meanwhile, Liang is going towards the trapped pod.

### Freeing the slaves

Kika sets the slaves on their way, they are harassed by spirates. Rachel buys them some time by blowing a hole in the hull of the Bounty's Grace on Liang's way to the pod with the Bat'leth's Multi-Focal Laser. Theea makes her way to the pod at the bottom unimpeded by the blast.

Conrad fails to convince most of the spirates to get the slaves on the pods themselves.

Theea leaves the room as the spirate gets up, on her way to meet Kika at the closest escape pod, and immediately regrets not going through the guy's pockets. She sees six slaves approaching, while beating the crap out of one of the overwhelmed spirates who has just recognized Kika as the leader of the riot and clotheslined her. Theea shoots at, and misses the spirate and Kika takes 4 damage tumbling down the stairs. As she always does when emotional and angry, Theea throws her (or rather Conrad's) rifle at her target, and as they always do, the baddy picks it up. Theea expects to take it back when he's dead, as she always does.

Conrad reckons it's *Time to get vertical!*, and injects himself with supercharged Dew through a patch on his arm before leaving the bridge, filled with confidence, if not hit points. On his way to the nearest pod, he shoots at fellow spirates, thus allowing three slaves to reach that pod, near the helm.

Kika and Theea seal their pod, at full capacity with eight slaves; and eject, leaving the injured spirate, Conrad's rifle and Kika's Toolie behind. Another pod jettisons.

Conrad, who can't withdraw from combat due to the Dew and won't leave before all the slaves in the vicinity have embarked anyway, gets shot again. His pod is the last still on the ship; with only 6 of his 61 hit points left, it's high time he got safe himself, and the last slave finally gets on board. He can get on board too, with this comment: *Pizza to go!*

As the last pod departs, Liang, who has been too busy to keep apprised of the situation, finishes repairing the damage and announces she's going to the trapped escape pod. Xe'anna has just enough time to position the Bat'leth to shield the pods from the upcoming blast before *the eruption of a beautiful* *explosion*. The GM had correctly predicted that the ensuing chain reaction would catch on an engine, ignite fuel and blast the back half of the Bounty's Grace. The Bat'leth itself loses half of its 20 hit points as the explosion rips the exterior of its hull. Oxana likens the experience to losing a sizable portion of her flesh.

Xe'anna picks up the pods, one at a time, and jettisons all but one of them. As the slaves disembark, Rachel takes charge and coordinates them, eventually commandeering all the rooms for them, Xe'anna's and Hexie's included.

### Back to Duranga

The Bat'leth makes its way to the nearest suitable place to drop off the former slaves: Duranga. Rachel calls in favors and Xe'anna donates G5000. Rachel also uses her psionic healing on all that need it during the time they have. She also runs through Kika's peculiar, non-useful food inventory while trying to feed all. The upshot: they'll have to restock *everything supplies* on Duranga.

Kika and Theea have one of their talks, with Theea trying to extract from Kika a promise that she won't ever lick any injuries of Theea's the way she does her own.

Conrad has to deal with a lot of system strain and spends most of the time asleep. Theea checks up on him regularly, but doesn't want to be seen caring. Xe'anna catches up on her in one of these moments, and the two exchange nice words. Theea mentions Xe'anna's *Good captaining and shit.*

Xe'anna, who saw through Theea's game with Conrad also recognized Rachel's psionic boost for what it was. Confronted with that truth, Rachel dodges again: *We're alive, right? So that's all that matters*, but still lets on that *untrained psionics go crazy*.

### Rachel leaves, Rachel returns

Some time passes before they reach Duranga. More time then passes to relocate the slaves. Rachel is greeted by Deckard, there is a lot of smooching going on, hormones go crazy, but after two days Rachel is back: she has a bag, and a very dog-penguin, and her eyes are bloodshot and she doesn't say a word and she goes back to her room and she shuts the door. It's not the first time Xe'anna would have a crew member decide they're now a crew member.

Conrad, feeling better, is sitting in the Cube, his legs dangling when Rachel passes by. Xe'anna explains that this lady he only knows as someone who shot him is a fellow crew member and reminds him, in case it were necessary, that he, Conrad, shot her, Xe'anna.

The main mission is coming up next.

## Notes

1. ↑ With an 11 Charisma + Exert (for biting) roll.
2. ↑ Bluejay explained, later: *We're allowed to have emotions, we're not robots.*
3. ↑ Reminder: Hexie IS, not WAS telekinetic.
4. ↑ Rachel was introduced in the episode that followed Conrad's capture.
5. ↑ Dan's comment: *it's good to check that first.*
6. ↑ Claudia: No, of course I didn't, I let that open for you.
7. ↑ Looking at Claudia/Kika there.
8. ↑ Success with consequence.
9. ↑ By a spirate who lifts up their eyepatch.
10. ↑ Dan's comment: *I've been away.*