Fade in

INT – Day – Tajemnica cargo hold

The hold is pitch black, except for the light of his flashlight, and an LED on the wall com panel.

Helton: Let’s really see what we’ve got.

He places his hand on the dimly lit comm/security panel on the wall, and stands in front of it.

Helton: Strom, Helton T, new owner and captain.

The panel lights up and scans his hand and face.

Ship AI: (voice is brisk, male, and military sounding) Present certification, please, sir.

Helton holds up the title to the panel. It is lit up, and the panel blinks. There is a long pause. Continue reading →

Cut to a close-up view of his head in profile as he looks around for a moment with his flashlight

There is a slight sound behind him. He feels the cold point of a knife on his neck.

Allonia: (OC) FREEZE!

[NOTE for non-screen-play familiar folks – “OC” means “Off Camera,” someone talking or noise or action that is something in the scene that cannot be seen on-screen. Could be stage left or right, could be over an intercom, or whatever. You can’t see the speaker, because they are “Off Camera”]

Camera view pulls back, and there is the blade of a chef’s knife against the back of his neck. He freezes, then slowly raises his hands.

Allonia:(OC) You are?

Helton: Helton. New owner of this ship. You?

Allonia: (OC) You don’t look like the owner I met a few months ago. Continue reading →

Fade in

EXT – day – A graceful, streamlined, 50-passenger, mid-sized flier is knifing through the air above the “spaceport” of Adelaide, a wide and tan plain stretching below into the hills, blue sky above.

Aerial view following the flier as it descends towards the landing field, a small and dusty landing facility that is only barely a spaceport, with mountains in the background. There is a large central building, with 6 concourses radiating out from it. Along each concourse are 3 pairs of landing pads, small ones close to the center, larger ones outside. There are a dozen or so ships of various sizes and shapes on different pads. There is a road leading away from the end of the largest concourse, and going away from the other arms are much smaller roads leading to warehouses and various industrial areas. There are some smaller pads near some of the outbuildings, away from the main terminal, that have a collection of ship parts, wreckage, tarp-covered heaps, and smaller personal air-craft and space-craft. Near one of these smaller outbuildings is a squat, dirty, rectangular-ish, partially tarp-covered, very dusty craft that is all but unnoticed. The flier zips down, heading for one of the mid-sized landing pads. Continue reading →

Fade in

INT – night – card table in a discreetly lit, respectable-looking entertainment establishment

Helton sits at a table with seven others. All are nicely dressed, somewhat steam-punkish general style, and there are a lot of chips on the table. Helton has the smallest pile, but it’s substantial. He eyes his cards, and the lone 10 of spades in the center of the table, and tosses in a pair of chips. The next person folds silently, and the next puts in two to meet, and raises by three chips of a different kind. There are murmurs from the handful of onlookers around them. Continue reading →

Fade in

INT – day – brightly lit, crowded and busy spaceport lounge

Helton and Harbin and a few of the other passengers from the pirate rescue are sitting around a long table with drinks and the remains of meals in front of them. The other passengers talk among themselves.

Harbin: It’s been a while since I had more action on leave than in the field. Felt good to be in a fight where the only rule was “WIN.”

Helton: Too bad about your getting shot, though. The leg seems to be healing nicely, no noticeable limp at all.

Harbin: Shouldn’t be. The Boss and the Wife both frown on getting damaged outside the line of duty. Continue reading →

EXT – day – view of the airfield, with the ship they just boarded in the foreground

(note: this is really the part that needs the heroic action music in the background)

The large flier rises slowly, but unevenly. Suddenly it tips, lurches to one side, and runs into the other large flier next to it with it’s landing strut, tearing large gash and tangling Helton’s ship forward landing gear in its side. Helton’s flier tries to move this way and that trying to free itself, but just gets more tangled. After a few moments of trying to get free by pulling this way and that to whining sounds of over-stressed drives, it sways and sags down on the opposite side of the grounded ship and a steep angle, front end on top of the second large flyer, back end squishing a small flier that was sitting on the field. Continue reading →

Fade to

Low angle of Guard 1 tied up similarly to the first slaver, two bodies laying nearby, with Helton and Harbin in the background looking into an open gun crate.

Harbin: If we can find ammo, these will make things a bit easier.

Helton: I’ll look, you get a couple unpacked.

Harbin stoops down and removes a black plastic-shrink-wrapped rifle from the packing crate, and starts to peel back the wrapping.

Helton: (OC) Found it.

Harbin: Good. Drag a few thousand round up front, then find magazines.

Helton: WHAT?

Harbin: Hope we don’t need it all, but ammo is like money – I have yet to have too much.

Continue reading →

 Cut to

Helton and Harbin are looking at the security camera screens, and they hear a groan. They look back toward where the prisoner is, take a quick glance at the screens, then go back to where Slaver1 is tied up to a large, heavy-duty shelving unit. His hands are bound behind his back, his feet are bound, and there is a cord around his neck with a noose tied to the shelf, so if he moves or tips over he gets choked. There is blood on the floor behind one knee. Helton looks sharply at Harbin.

Harbin: (flatly) Hamstrings. Didn’t want him getting any ideas.
Continue reading →

Fade in

EXT-Day-low rocky ridge

Helton and Harbin are lying just below the crest of a ridge of rocks, peering over the top toward the mine. The sun is not quite overhead. Their cloths are covered with dust, so they blend into the rocks well. In the near distance, against the far wall of a small valley is the prison / mining operation. It is located about where three steep-walled valleys converge. There is a scattering of rock piles here and there, and a flat landing spot to one side with two medium-large sized fliers, one medium-small, and two small two-person quad-rotors. There is no wall or fence, just a some industrial-style buildings built against the rock face, a few out-buildings, and a couple of conveyor belts coming out leading to large gravel piles. Continue reading →

Cut to interior view of cave entrance.

INT – day – in a cave

Helton and Harbin slide down the loose rocks and stuff half-filling the cave mouth, and lay, panting quietly but otherwise motionless, with a look of listening intently for what’s passing outside. The humming sound of a flier gets louder as it approaches, then it Dopplers down and fades away. They are just about to get up and move again when  the sound of another flyer is heard approaching, then fading away again. They look at each other, then around the cave.
Continue reading →

Fade in

EXT – day – near the foot of a long mesa

Helton and Harbin scramble rapidly along at the a narrow flat spot at the foot of a mesa, Helton’s traveler coat flapping in the wind, with a steep side going up on their left, and a deep, even-but-rough, nearly semi-circular valley going down to the right (it’s a cut made by a terraforming machine). They hop from one rock to another, moving smoothly along, a half-dozen paces apart.
Continue reading →

From between two group of passengers, a frail-looking elderly man in a monk’s habit gets slowly to his feet, then walks creakingly toward them, and they eye him as he approaches. He stops a few yards away and regards them intently. His face is ashen and yellowish, and even the whites of his eyes are yellow, but it’s clear his mind is still all there from his expression.

Monk: What now, my violent young friends?
Continue reading →

Fade in

EXT – day – desert valley

Low angle, close up view of Helton’s face, as he lies face down in the sandy dirt, brightly lit by the reddish sun at a low angle. There is a flopping / thudding sound, and puff of dust blows by his face. He twitches, and he blinks his eyes and squints a bit as if he just waking up. Camera pulls back and gets a wider view, and we see that he is lying on the ground, stretched out, with some other people lying in the dirt near him. As he starts to groggily move, some of the others start to make small movements, too. Then, a big brute of a man wearing something vaguely resembling a uniform, SLAVER1 walks into view, dragging two people by their collars. He drops them roughly in the dirt next to Helton, and turns and walks back the way he came. Another man, SLAVER2, also big and rough looking, wearing similar cloths, drags in two more, a child and woman, and drops them like a poorly trained baggage-handler would treat cheap luggage. As the view expands, we see there are about two dozen people, men, women, and a few children, dropped like so many sandbags, scattered about on the dry, dusty ground of a desert basin around the loading ramp of a small anti-grav transport. A couple of them are recognizable from the background of when Helton was at dinner aboard ship.

Continue reading →

Fade in

EXT – night – dimly lit space-station, black of space in background

Several ships are attached to a large transfer-point space station in orbit 4 or 5 AUs from the star, well out to the edge of its gravity well. One liner is approaching, a freighter is leaving. Serene and quite looking, as everything goes according to computer-regulated plan. On one of the docked liners, there is a small (compared to the liner) flash of an explosion, and debris sprays away from it into space. Continue reading →

Cut back to a view of the table

The people at Lag’s table look between themselves, and at the departing Plataeans, then at Lag.

Senator: (eyebrows raised in surprise) What did you say to them?
Continue reading →

Lag returns to his table and sits. Looking around at them, he nods and smiles cheerily.

Lag: I think they will be quieting down soon. They did well, and deserve a good celebration, but I think they understand things now.
Continue reading →

Lag walks up to the table at which seven young Plataeans (4 male, 3 female) dressed in dark semi-uniform cloths somewhat similar in style and color to Lag’s, are sitting celebrating loudly; in his hand he carries a glass. He smoothly helps himself to the one empty seat at the table. It takes them a moment, but they all notice him, turning silent and eye him warily as they do so. Lag’s expression is cheerful, and demeanor friendly. He speaks quietly and sincerely.

Continue reading →

Fade in.

INT – DAY – Star-liner dining room

Continue reading →

INT – Day – Space liner hallway.
Continue reading →

Fade in.

INT – night – sparse and spare starship lounge, dimly lit in red-ish light Continue reading →