542 – Starhunter Redux – Bad Girls

The stuff of nightmares is letting an unstable teenage misfit develop automated weapons’ system.  Kennth and Eugene discuss the techno-ethicist’s nightmare that is Bad Girls. Episode Synopsis Percy is doing something very, very stupid, she’s decided to rig up an automated gun emplacement in the shuttle bay access area.  During her installation process, she nearly kills Dante.  Being surprisingly up-to-date on the thinking of techno-ethicists, Dante lets Percy know that you can’t turn guns over to automated computer control.  He tells her to remove it, immediately.  She ignores his instructions to his face.  She’s also working on trying to retrieve that secret conversation between Luc and Dante, which has been deleted and the backups deleted. Rudolfo calls with a new, plumb assignment, rich-guy who works for a company that has dealings with the Orchard wants to travel, along with his two daughters, on the Trans-Utopian.  That’s not at all suspicious.  Rich guys with tenuous connections with the Orchard want to travel on a dump of spacecraft every day. When their shuttle arrives, Percy is still installing her gun emplacement.  Dante asks her if she uninstalling it and she gives a childish evasive answer that anyone except the dumbest of morons would instantly see though. Hamilton’s two daughters, Ayla and Cordula, are about Percy’s age, but Percy blows them off when Dante tries to get them to make nice. Shortly after Hamilton is on board, another, corrupted message from Rudolfo arrives.  Dante asks Percy to decode it, but, with her usual charm, she refuses, opting instead to hang out with da’ bitches. Hamilton asks Lucretia to give him a tour of the ship and he tries to ply his charms on her to get her to open up about her family.  She shoots him down, but reports back to Dante that he’s definitely trying to get information, probably on behalf of the Orchard. Ayla wants to do drugs, but it’s no fun alone and Cordula isn’t in the mood.  Percy takes her place and the two get even stupider than they already were. The message from Rudolfo is retrieved by Caravaggio, and it reads basically like this:  Hamilton has some debts and the debtors have paid me to double-cross him and turn him in.  A marshall will be there in 4 hours to transfer him off the ship.  It has taken three hours to decrypt the message. Dante and Luc go to arrest Hamilton, but decide to let him stay in his room, apparently with an unlocked door.  Dante goes to retrieve the daughters and finds Ayla and Percy stoned out of their minds.  This puts Dante in a bad mood. Anyways, there’s lots of talking in little groups. Hamilton will be killed by his creditors.  The Orchard will bail him out if he gets the skinny on Lucretia’s loyalties and any information she may have.  The Orchard chat with Hamilton and say, just kill Lucretia and you’ll be fine.  The marshal arrives and , surprise, he’s not really a marshal, he’s just there to take Hamilton, Dante won’t give him up, then Hamilton gets a gun from the gun locker – which despite the lessons of last episode – is still not so much a gun locker as it is a gun dispensing machine.  This surprise causes them to all scatter throughout the ship. The faux-marshal kidnaps stoned Percy thinking she’s one of Hamilton’s daughters, and demands an exchange and Dante’s fine with that.  So he takes Hamilton back, but Percy thinks she’s fine because of her gun emplacement, which doesn’t work and she nearly gets killed, but Dante kills the so-called marshal. Now, Hamilton pulls a gun on Lucretia to kill her. Then troops from the Orchard arrive and this time Percy’s defense system does work, killing them all, and Hamilton is thrown in the cell. And finally, despite Percy’s gun emplacement being one of the dumbest ideas ever, instead of facing the consequences for her idiotic actions it has saved the day, proving its merit and therefore, now, Percy is willing to remove it, because… that’s what passes for logic on Starhunter Redux.