Spitfire
Title: Spitfire
Author: Aeneas
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Rating: PG (minor cussing)
Summary: An unusual job leads to an equally unusual customer with an unexpected tie to the crew of Serenity.
The Challenge Was: What happens when a natural disaster separates the crew from Serenity.
Disclaimer: A crossover universe that I started a few months ago has eaten my brain. This belongs to that universe. So if it reads like you’re just seeing a sliver of a bigger picture, that’s why. Also, it’s written as one continuous POV, which is very unusual for me.
Location: Silverhold Colonies
“Don’t need to tell you folk to watch your backs. Ain’t likely we’ll find none friendly to us,” Mal barked as he clomped down the stairs, face permanently set to a glower.
Jayne’s grunt echoed the sentiment and he was none too gentle with loading the crates onto the mule. “This job ain’t been nothing but go-se from the set out. Had to keep ‘em flat, had to make sure nothin’ bumped ‘em. What in the ‘verse needs that much gorram babying--”
“Paying customer’s orders,” Zoe interrupted. “Part of the job.”
“Got a mind to be tellin’ this paying customer a thing or two.”
“That how you’re leaning then it might be that you’re staying on Serenity.” Mal gave him a weighted glare and crossed his arms. “Gettin’ good money for a few crates and I ain’t gonna do nothing to ruin the chance they might give us another job. We got precious few friends as it is; don’t need more enemies.”
Kaylee saw the brewing tempest and intervened before two short tempers could turn into one big brawl. “Aw, ease up there, Mal. Ain’t none of us had the sun on our faces in weeks. Jayne’ll play nice, won’t he?”
“Do I got a choice?” Jayne snorted.
“No,” Mal answered sharply and headed for the mule. “Everybody wanting to see what this fine establishment has to offer better gun qui.”
Zoe and Jayne followed Mal onto the Mule, with Kaylee taking the last seat. She was torn about leaving Simon for even a second but Serenity wouldn’t keep herself running and chances for picking up spare parts didn’t come around too often. River had come down to see them off and waved a little shyly as they eased down the ramp out into the crimson hued landscape.
It was a strange place even in a strange ‘verse and Kaylee found her eyes watering with the assault of red. In the back of her mind where the memories of Wash made her sad, she remembered him wanting to visit Silverhold one day. Out of the dozen planets and hundreds of moons in the ‘verse, only a few had been host to any sort of indigenous life forms not of the green and leafy variety. Greenleaf, with its plentiful plants and rivers, had been one of them. The fact that the two moons spinning round it were near barren was one of those ironies Mal seemed to find amusing in particular. Vicious, lizard-like critters rumored to spit acid had once called the jungle planet their home before the Alliance wiped them out. Scary or not, they would’ve been the closest to a dinosaur one could hope to get and since access to Greenleaf itself was Alliance controlled, Silverhold would have been close enough for Wash.
The township could barely be called anything but a handful of red brick shanties huddled together under the sun. Weren’t much that could be called life as far as Kaylee could see; even the trees, with their deep magenta leaves and gnarled limbs, seemed alien. A clapboard sign advertised the general store and saloon, everything necessary for the townsfolk shoveled into a single building. This part of Silverhold mined the iron ore that fed into the backbone of Alliance progress and they’d done well to get a few smelting and processing plants that brought jobs other than mining.
She caught sight of a few determined flowers with pink petals fluttering in the kick-up from the Mule. They seemed to be growing out of the rock itself, their cores red as the dirt around them and probably just as full of iron. She was more than a little disappointed that there didn’t look to be any place that would have much of use when it came to Serenity.
“These folk don’t seem to even have electricity, let alone anything I need,” she mused, careful to keep her voice low so she didn’t offend nobody.
“Seems that way.” Mal jumped off of the Mule and glanced around warily. “You and Jayne stay with the cargo while Zoe and I ask around for our customer.”
Jayne propped his feet up on the side of the Mule and squirmed until he found a comfortable position. “Thought you always had a meeting place set up ‘forehand. Ain’t that the smart thing?”
“Job said we could ask for directions and find our way without no hassle.”
“Right. That way we don’t get no look at the place we’re gonna die until we get there. Smart thinkin’ there, Captain.” He rolled his eyes at the dark look Zoe gave him but settled in to wait and pulled his cap down over his eyes to block out the red.
“Waiting won’t be no problem.” Kaylee smiled and folded her hands in her lap patiently. Soon as Mal and Zoe had disappeared into the store, she was careful not to disturb Jayne as she climbed out to pick one of the tiny pink flowers. It smelled of dust but she conjured it looked pretty tucked into strap of her overalls. Any place with flowers had to be worth liking. And she could stick it in the mouth of one of Wash’s dinosaur toys once she got back. Then part of him would have been to Silverhold after all.
“You found something interestin’ on this go-se moon or you just wanderin’ off to make Mal angry? Cause if it’s the latter, I ain’t gonna stop you,” Jayne drawled without lifting his cap to look at her.
“Just picking one of the pretty flowers is all.” She climbed back into the Mule and tried not to fidget in her seat. “Suppose they shoulda been back by now?”
“I ain’t movin’ until Mal says so. Or someone tries to shoot me.”
“You’re just cranky is all.”
“All this way for two bitty crates? And we gotta be here at a certain time? Gorram right I’m cranky. Plenty of jobs we passed up to take this one.”
“Job’s a job, Jayne. And this one were good and legal.” She readjusted her flower so she could see the dark red core better.
“Fact that the Alliance has an interest in this place don’t make it safe. Even if it were legal.”
Kaylee thumped his arm, growing weary of his grousing. “You see any Alliance round here? Ain’t much of nothing but red and more red and a few pretty little flowers, which you wouldn’t care for, being all cranky and such.” He shifted away from her and made a big show of arranging his cap to ensure he couldn’t see her even if he did turn her way.
She nudged him with her boot toe just to be contrary. “’Sides, you know better than to pick a fight with Mal when he and ‘Nara’s been quarreling. Course, it’s not like they do much else even now that--”
Mal and Zoe’s return cut short any further gossiping she might indulge in to pass the time. Neither of them seemed inclined to do much talking once they were back on the Mule and they were racing off across the dusty landscape. She thought about asking where they was going but Mal didn’t look none to happy about it so she kept her questions to herself and assumed he’d tell her when the time was proper. Until then, she kept her eyes looking down to keep some of the red out.
Away from the township, they found a twisting path that had obviously been worn by forces other than wind and rain. It wound about the boulder strewn plain for a good while before turning toward a jagged outcropping of rocks thrust out of the ground and streaked with red and yellow. The ground here was a swirl of yellow and white with only slashes of the vibrant red iron. At the base of the outcropping was a tiny shack that couldn’t hold more than a person at a time and was decorated with a sign that had been white once upon a time. She couldn’t make out the words until they had pulled up next to the hut and she could peer at it with squinted eyes.
“Eggrolls, five…something. There’s some sorta little symbol there.” She rubbed her eyes and read it several more times before deciding that she wasn’t hallucinating. “Does that make sense to anybody? Cause maybe it’s just me who can’t figure it out.”
“Ain’t just you, Kaylee. But it means we’re in the right spot.” Looking a tad more worrisome than she figured he ought to, Mal reached out and rapped his knuckles against the door. When no answer came, he began looking around for the surprise to jump out and start firing bullets at them.
“Seems to me I was saying somethin’ about this being a stupid idea,” Jayne muttered, drawing his gun as he stepped off the path to peer around the shanty.
Mal was a mirror image, gun in hand and scanning the terrain for an ambush. “That might be, Jayne, but I never conjure you got anything worth listening to.”
“What crawled into both your--” Kaylee was cut short by a slot opening at the bottom of the shack. A small, red dirt stained hand reached out and dropped a thick wad of folded bills onto the ground.
Mal eyed the money with suspicion. “You touch something Kaylee?”
“Leave the crates,” a voice said from inside the structure. “You’d better hurry. Fly toward the night side. If it hits you in the air, you’ll all be dead.”
“Shenme?” Crouching down to pick up the cash, he poked at the slot and tried to find a way to open it from the outside. “Mind telling me exactly what’s goin’ on here? I’m used to meeting my customers face to face.” He waited in vain for an answer. Finally giving up, he brushed dust from his clothes irritably and waved them all back to the Mule.
“Well, if that ain’t the darnedest thing.” Jayne was eying the shed distrustfully as they unloaded the crates and piled back onto the craft. “What did that shingdingbing mean about us ending up dead?”
Mal frowned, but his eyes stayed focused on the narrow path. “I would surely love to know.”
“Payment’s all here,” Zoe shouted over the noise of the Mule before tucking the folded cash into her pocket.
Kaylee grabbed onto the side to keep from being thrown overboard and wondered just who thought it’d be a shiny idea to let Mal behind the controls. This certainly was shaping up to be one of the more unusual jobs they’d taken, right up there with the cattle and a few other animals that turned out to not be what they was supposed to. She wisely kept her mouth shut about any of those, not wanting Mal to get it into his brain that they needed to take corners any faster than they already were. Midway through the mining settlement, Mal hit the brakes hard enough to drive the nose near into the ground and kick up dust all around them. Coughing against the thick haze, Kaylee waved at the red particles in an attempt to push them away from her face.
Jayne coughed violently. “Gorram it, Mal!”
“Shut it, Jayne. Aiya, women wanle. “
Blink dust and grit out of her eyes, Kaylee realized that River was standing dead center in the wide corridor through the township with a rifle in her arms and a hauntingly familiar look in her eyes. Simon batted at the dust cloud around him, approaching River with one hand up in surrender and his scuffed medicine bag in the other. Even Inara had left Serenity and was standing carefully to the side trying not to get her skirts dirty.
River saw them but seemed no less intent on whatever had driven her off of Serenity. "Seomthing's coming."
“We been told that. Means we need to be in the air pronto, little albatross.”
“Not enough time.” She scanned the nearby storefronts with a dark look. The windows were now boarded up and not a sign of life stirred in the heat.
“Sir? These folk got a reason to close up shop that we don’t know about?” Zoe’s hand fell to her holster.
“Who knew it was coming? Who told you?” River demanded.
“Customer,” Mal answered with audible trepidation. “Told us to drop the crates and gave us our payment. That’s the way it works.”
“We have to go back. All of us. Can’t be above ground when it comes.” River motioned to the Mule with the rifle and started jogging in the direction of the narrow trail. “Hurry!” she called back over her shoulder.
“Jayne, lighten up and let Inara take your place.”
“Mal!”
“She can’t barely walk in that confounded get up, let alone run. Drop the hardware and get moving.”
Once Jayne had unloaded and jumped off, Kaylee reached out a hand to help Inara up into the Mule and clung to her even once she was seated. Mal kept the Mule going fast enough that they didn’t bury Jayne in dust but slow enough that they could see if he fell behind. River seemed to leap from boulder to boulder, taking the crow’s path rather than the one they followed.
The tiny shack came into view with a new sense of urgency. River was waiting for them, rifle slung around her back, and carefully running her hands over every inch of wood. Her lips were moving but there was no sound beyond the stomping of boots and Jayne’s panting once he rounded the corner.
“No…gorram…reason,” he gasped, leaning over to grab his knees. “Next time, you get…to run…gan ni niang.”
Mal ignored him completely. “What you got, River? And I do hope you got something cause otherwise, there’ll be a big I Told You So later. Providing we don’t all die. In which case, I told you so.”
“Makes no sense. Shouldn’t be here; not out here buried in dust,” River mumbled.
“Doc? She go crazy again while we weren’t looking?”
“She’s been fine ever since…River?” Simon hurried forward to pull River away from the shack. She resisted and banged on the door with both fists hard enough to rattle the wood frame.
“Simon, you don’t understand…” she trailed off when the slot opened.
“I told you to get out of here,” the now-familiar voice snapped at them.
River dropped to her knees and pressed her hands to the slot. “Li Li? It’s me. It’s River, remember? River Tam.”
The slot slammed shut and the tiny shack seemed to shiver from the inside. To their right, whole boulders sloughed off inches of thick white dust and rose, impossibly, up from the ground. What began as a dark crack along the ground expanded into a wide, rectangular mouth wide enough for all of them plus the Mule. River scrambled up and waved them into the opening. Cascading dirt and debris nearly coated them as they shuffled and jostled into what turned out to be a freight elevator hidden beneath the ground.
Once they were all safely inside, coughing and brushing away the layer of dust, the platform beneath them began to descend with a horrific groan. Darkness was broken by sparsely placed track lights mounted on support bars spanning the shaft around them. With each shudder, more dirt seemed to trickle in around them in a very ominous way.
“We gonna ask crazy girl what exactly it is we’re doin’ here?” Jayne peered into the darkness around them, jostling Kaylee into the corner as he tried to get a better look at their surroundings.
“Customer obviously knows River. Which I’m sure one of you will be explaining shortly.” Mal gave Simon a dark look before rocking back on his heels and smiling tightly. “Can’t really conjure how exactly that works, seeing as how River don’t know anyone in the ‘verse outside this crew. But strange happenings do tend to follow her about. Then there’s the matter of what’s outside might could kill us and why y’all left Serenity when I distinctly remember--”
“We called her Li Li. She was at the Academy,” River said suddenly. She didn’t turn around, her attention fixed on whatever was outside the elevator. It shuddered as it reached the bottom and ground to a shrieking halt.
“The group that contacted me…some of them had family at the Academy. Maybe they got her out too.” Simon was a step behind his sister and the rest followed close behind as they all shuffled out of the elevator into a dimly lit corridor, leaving the Mule behind in the darkness. “River? Do you know where you’re going?”
Cautiously moving along the side with gun in hand, Zoe kept a watchful eye on the supporting beams and each trickle of dirt that fell down around them. “Looks like an abandoned mine shaft.”
“Great. We’re gonna die down here ‘stead of up there.” Kaylee didn’t manage to keep the tremor out of her voice even though she was trying something fierce. It helped a little that Inara was still letting her hold onto her arm and the two of them had to move slower on account of the pretty skirt. The fancy fabric would be ruined for sure once they got back to Serenity, which gave Kaylee a worry other the earth caving in around them to fret about.
Light appeared at the end of the corridor, filtering in from a side channel, and they could hear distinctly mechanical noises in the distance. Jayne adjusted his grip on his gun and paused before peering around the corner. “Before anyone does anything stupider than we already done…you’re saying that this Li-whatever is from where River was from. Don’t that mean she’s loony tunes too? Could be she’s what’ll kill us all.”
“I’m sure she won’t--”
“He’s right,” River interrupted Simon, as calm as the black itself. “She might not like Jayne at all. He’s very loud.”
“Won’t be a trouble, no one really likes Jayne.” Mal straightened his shoulders and started forward. “’sides, if’n it means watching Jayne here get himself beat up by a little girl…again…well worth our time.”
“Little girls happenin’ to be Alliance weapons don’t rightly count, now do they?” Jayne groused loudly enough that his voice echoed through the corridor and brought down a fresh shimmer of dust around them.
“Well, you are loud and tend to be awful obnoxious.” Kaylee glared at him and passed by to follow after Mal. She was so focused on the glaring that she was run up against Mal’s back before she realized he’d stopped. Stepping out around him, her eyes widened at the view stretching out ahead of them. “Wo detain, a.”
Perhaps only Mr. Universe would have appreciated the swathes of cabling that swept and looped above them, draping in the same fashion as the fabric in Inara’s shuttle. Each bundle sprouted like roots from bits of machinery left over from the mining operation; most had been obviously taken apart and put back as the guts of hybrid machines. Huge display panels with bits missing illuminated the cavern around them; one of them was seemingly focused on the giant red star that Silverhold, its fellow moon, and its planet orbited. It didn’t look nothing like any picture of sky that Kaylee had seen, all greens and yellows.
The disembodied voice that belonged to their customer was accompanied by the sound of tools working. “No chairs. Some of them bite if you…if you sit too hard.”
Mal looked around with alarm. “You got chairs that got teeth?”
River caught his arm, moving past to head further into the maze of screens and machinery. “Live wires. Electricity.”
“Course. Chairs ain’t got teeth…knew that.” He relaxed enough to take his hand off the handle of his gun. “Li Li? That your name? You were nice enough to warn us of trouble a-brewing…don’t s’pose you could elaborate on what that would be?”
Ahead of them, Li Li crawled out from a tangle of wires and gears like a tiny creature emerging from its burrow. Jet-black hair had been tied back at one point but had come loose in thick ribbons that hung straight as arrows. What skin wasn’t covered with worn fabric was dark with dirt and grime from the machines. Almond shaped eyes had the same wild look as River’s but were clouded over with a milky white layer. There was a visible scar in the center of her forehead that she seemed to rub unconsciously, as though trying to erase it.
“Don’t believe we’ve formally been introduced. I’m Captain Reynolds and this is--”
“No names. Don’t need names. Just labels and numbers that take away your names. Don’t you have them?” She pulled away from them, nearly pressed up against the wall as she scurried toward the largest of the monitors. “River Tam. Tam River. Used to tap messages through the wall before they cut into our brains and didn’t need tapping anymore.”
“Doc? You bring any of the fancy chemicals made River here a little more sane?” Mal asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“A few.” He glanced at River and then back at Li Li. “How did you escape, Li Li? Did someone get you out?”
“Didn’t. Didn’t escape.” The rubbing against the scar in her forehead intensified and she was all but curled into a ball over the gibberish controls. “Threw me out with the trash. Heart stopped...too broken to keep, not a success like River. Swallowed dirt and drank oil until I landed here. Burrowed into the ground where they can’t see. Down in the earth where even the darkness is afraid of their secrets. Secrets have eyes that see the darkness for what it really is.”
“Well, ain’t this shiny. Another crazy girl. You wanna keep this one too? See how many secrets she’s got in her head that’ll kill us?” Jayne cleared a place to sit, crossing his arms over his chest as he plopped down without regard to the tools he sent clattering to the ground.
River’s face had turned ashen and her hands trembled when she reached out to grab hold of a supporting beam. Immediately Simon was at her side, checking her pulse and brushing her hair out of her face as he tried to calm her. Whatever the source of her distress, it was locked inside the head of Li Li, who continued to work at her controls without taking notice of the people standing behind her.
She stared up at the huge image of the red sun and the rubbing at her forehead abated. “Soon now. Won’t be long.”
“I seem to be repeating myself today.” Mal moved closer to squint at the screen. “What exactly won’t be long?”
“There.” Pointing up at a particularly dark region of the star, she smiled with child-like affection. “Magnetic flux buildup. Explodes with the energy of a million bombs and sweeps the land clean, burning up anything with electricity in its veins. Kill you slow and painful. Bits falling off, brain cut through, and molecules ripped apart.”
“Come again?”
“It’s a solar flare.” Simon turned away from River. “I thought they weren’t dangerous.”
“This star is dying. Gasping like a fish, coughing up its insides.” There was a level of creepiness in her blatant adoration of the star. “Moon made of iron draws them like moths; pulls them in and focuses. Once it’s spent, you can walk the ground again.”
“What about my ship? Ain’t nothing going to happen to my ship, right?” Mal asked with alarm.
“Hull will shield most of it. Might lose a few circuits.” She looked away from the screen to blink in Kaylee’s general direction. “I have spares.”
“Much obliged.”
“Hold on a minute,” Jayne interrupted. “Go back to the part where the big glowing thing in the sky is dying. Don’t that bother anyone else?”
Li Li turned his direction. “Fire doesn’t age in years or seconds. Human time means little. We’re nothing. Just specks and bits of dirt floating about.”
“I think that means it’s probably a few million years until the star dies.” Simon looked to River for confirmation, seeming uncomfortable that he was stuck as makeshift interpreter for the crew. Watching her carefully, he shifted closer while still maintaining a safe distance away from the complicated controls. Something he saw made him frown and that made Kaylee a bit more nervous than she’d been before.
“Oh. Well, that’s good. What she doin’ now?”
Information panels flashed up on the monitors as Li Li’s hands flew over the controls, adjusting and readjusting the complex series of commands. “Alliance will be too late; see it coming but only have time to scramble. They’ll lose more.”
“Can you do it?” River asked suddenly.
“There’s a window. Tiny one, only a minute. Has to be enough.” Li Li’s hands hovered over the control panel.
Mal waved his hands. “None of this psychic stuff. If the both of you would use words so the rest of us has an idea of what we’re walking into, we’ll all be very less likely to get in the way.”
“Not like River.” Milky eyes turned on Mal but didn’t focus. “Can’t read people or hear what’s in your head. You’re blank and empty to me. But I hear them. The circuits and the wires, hear them humming and whispering and telling me where they’ve come from.”
Simon waved his hand in a slow arc through her vision and got no response. “She’s blind, Mal. That’s probably why the Alliance didn’t consider her a success. They blinded her.”
Thin, dirty lips curled into a manic smile. “Didn’t know I could hear their secrets humming in the walls.”
Mal looked unsure of whether or not he should keep listening or find a way to tie the girl up good and proper. “Doc, that safe word you got work on her too?”
“If she’s had the same conditioning as River.”
Li Li turned back to her monitor, muttering about vectors and flux pinning and seeming to completely forget they were there. Once she had cycled through her screens another dozen times, she seemed to slip away into a trance. Her slender hands remained poised over the controls, sightless gaze directed at the screen above her, waiting for a signal only she would recognize.
A sad smile appeared on River’s lips. “Found a back door to slip through when the Alliance is looking the other way. Ships in orbit will sense the solar flare; they’ll have to shut down important systems to protect them. It’ll be chaos. They’ll forget to follow protocol, won’t have time.”
Understanding dawned and Mal took a new interest in the small woman. “Burrow in and dig up their secrets. She means to hack into the Alliance itself?”
“Everything’s connected through the Cortex,” Zoe added softly.
Jayne snorted and rolled his eyes at them all. “Can’t break into an Alliance whatsit, can she? Ain’t those all in the Core? How exactly she supposed to hack into anything that’s worlds away?”
“There’s an Alliance post here on Silverhold,” Simon answered. “Do you know what she’s looking for, River? What information…I mean, we already know about Miranda.”
“Mighty hopeful of you, thinkin’ that’s the only skeleton in the Alliance’s closet, Doc.” Mal found a relatively sturdy chunk of machinery to sit down on, making sure there were no live wires to cause problems. “But I would be interested in knowing exactly what she’s lookin’ for. Or if she’s just in the mood to air a bit of dirty laundry.”
“She wants to know about the Academy. About the Academies other than ours. The first, a long time ago, ended in blood. Something went wrong.” River pulled away from Li Li with a nervous look and moved closer to Simon, as though something in the girl’s head was creepifying even for her. “The Alliance is just the customer. She’s looking for the puppet master.”
Kaylee loosened her grip on Inara’s arm enough to peer at the bits of machinery. “You get all that from her thinkin’?”
River shook her head but gave no further explanation as to the meaning of the gesture. The cavern fell silent except for the whir and hum of machinery. All eyes were focused the picture of the red star and the deceptively innocent looking dark spot that would be lethal if they were above ground. It was surreal in the faint light, surrounded by thick bundles of cables and bits of machinery buried deep in the ground. The humming of electricity around them was almost palpable, filling the air with a strange tension and polarity.
Kaylee pointed up at the screen as the dark patch began to blossom into eye-searing white. “Look! Is that it?”
The impact of the distant explosion was anti-climactic, muted by the silence. A mass of swirling lines dancing gracefully across the screen and out from the star’s corona, reaching toward the tiny moon before contorting and plunging back toward the surface as they were reined in. The apex of the curve continued to balloon until it covered nearly a quarter of the star’s image, still shivering and twisting wildly. Static appeared on the monitor, all but obscuring the image. Li Li’s hands flew over the controls like darting birds pecking at the control screens.
“She can hear it screaming in the black,” River whispered.
“What about all the people?” Suddenly remembering the town they’d come through and all the rest of the mining communities on the planet, Kaylee glanced back at the corridor they’d come through.
“Fair bet she gave them warning already; that’s why the place was cleared out. Probably how she gets what she needs.” Zoe motioned to the electronics around them.
The static on the screen exploded and engulfed the entire image. Li Li pulled her hands away from the controls to cover her ears against the onslaught only she could hear and sunk down to the ground. She curled up against the cables with her eyes shut tight and more nonsensical muttering coming out of her lips. In an instant, River was crouched down beside her. A beat behind her, Simon opened his medical bag with a soft click and managed to clean a spot of skin on the girl’s shoulder, revealing china white skin beneath the dirt. She barely flinched when he injected her.
“That will calm her. It should get her through the worst of it,” Simon assured River.
Mal moved his hand away from a section of gears and eyed them distastfully, as though they might try to grab hold and pull him in. “Then we sit tight, wait for this thingamawhatsit to blow over. Everybody try not to touch nothing you don’t know what is. Which is...most everything, I imagine.”
Even Jayne relaxed once Li Li was quiet, propping his feet up as he settled in to wait. “How we s’posed to know when it’s over anyhow? Ain’t she the only one who knows?”
“Solar flares are transitory phenomena.” River stroked Li Li’s hair gently.
The answer didn’t seem to make Jayne feel any better about their situation. “Still leaves us stuck underground ‘til Lu Lu here wakes up and tells us how to get out. And what if the ship’s fried all to hell?”
“Bi zui,” Mal snapped at him. “You got nothing but questions today, Jayne, and none of us know better’n what you seen with your own eyes. Girl wakes up, helps us get Serenity in the air and then we’re on our way. Chattering like a chuin-zi ain’t gonna help us none. Doc didn’t give her enough of the stuff to keep her out too long, right, Doc?”
“A hour maybe. She’s quite small.” His fingers could near circle around her whole arm and touch together.
“We should get her cleaned up,” Inara spoke for the first time since they had descended the tunnel. “There has to be water somewhere. I’m assuming she lives down here so there must be. And we can’t just leave her like this.”
Jayne perked up. “Think there’s somethin’ worth eating around here too?”
“Unless you brought it with you, I don’t want to see it in your mouth, Jayne. In fact, why don’t you stay here and make sure she stays calm while the rest of us take a look about.” Ignoring Jayne’s grumbling completely, Mal motioned for the rest of the crew to fan out and start investigating the rest of the cavern.
Kaylee lingered because she wanted to get a better look at a set of ancient gears that were well oiled and cared for. Crazy girl must have loved those gears an awful lot to keep them tended even when they were old and long outdated. She supposed that she shouldn’t think of Li Li as Crazy Girl but shoes fit every now and then even in this 'verse. The apologetic look was directed at River, since it was River who could read her mind and know she was thinking unkind thoughts.
“Mal...”
“No,” he answered before she could even finish the question.
“But you didn’t even--”
“Don’t need to. Got plenty of crew as it is. Don’t need one more who ain’t altogether right in the brainpan.”
She followed him along a thick bundle of cables to the far side of the cavern. A hollow had been carved out of the rock just big enough to shelter a pile of dirty and torn blankets. “Just look at this, Cap’n. Inara’s right, can’t just leave her here. Can’t no one live like this.”
“Seems happy enough. If folk whose brains been addled by the Alliance even have a concept of happy.” He shifted uncomfortably and poked at the blankets with the toe of his boot to see if there was anything living hidden inside. “’Sides, we already got men wearing mighty strange gloves, Alliance assassins, and more bounty hunters you can shake a compression coil at chasing us. Last thing we need is to give them another reason to shoot us out of the sky. Hell, half the folk we consider friendly are likely as not to shoot at us.”
“Maybe she just needs to find whatever’s in her head. Worked for River, didn’t it? Once we found Miranda, she was shiny again.”
“And we lost two of our own.” His expression was hard but not without sympathy when he turned to face her. “Answer’s no, Kaylee. I ain’t gonna risk losing no more of my crew. Barely have enough to keep Serenity in the air and work a job as it is. We’re down to bare bones and I need every pair of hands I got.”
The logic of it weren’t something she could argue against. They had enemies a-plenty in near every patch of the black and one more fugitive would attract unwanted attention. Rather than admit defeat, she set herself to tidying up the blankets and shaking as much dirt from them as she could. With that done, she busied herself looking around the rest of the place. She stayed within eyesight of Mal cause it felt safer just in case she got herself into some kind of trouble.
Other than the tight feeling in her chest that came from being too far under ground for her liking, it was a right interesting place. There were more than enough bits and pieces for her to poke at and wonder over. Some of them made sense right away. Fans and pipes brought in fresh air to replace what smelled of earth and lubricating oil. Barrels of the stuff seem a-plenty. A few vertical shafts might have stretched clear up to the surface, full of tangled chains dangling like those floating bubble fish she’d seen in a picture once. There were some pieces that seemed to be in the middle of changing, not quite one thing or the other. She followed a batch of cabling down a narrow corridor off the side of the hollow that served as a bunk, keeping one hand lightly on the cords themselves so she wouldn’t lose her way. There weren’t too many lights this way and her ears were picking up a low thrumming noise that reminded her of Serenity’s engine when it was ramping up to speed. Curious, she pushed on even when it was nearly too dark for her to see and she felt as though she’d been walking forever.
The cavern at the other end of the corridor only had a few flickering lights hanging from crevices above her head. Barely enough for her to see enormous cylinders turning in the center, making the distinctive thrum-thrum-thrum sound like tops set down off center, and that the walls were tinted red with the omnipresent iron that was the lifeblood of Silverhold. All the of the cable bundles seemed to begin in this place, piled nearly as tall as she was and caged with old mining pikes so they wouldn’t roll about.
“Well, I’ll be...ain’t that somethin’?” Mal whistled softly as he emerged from the tunnel behind her.
“Generators of some sort, gotta be. Spin round and make electricity, using the iron in the ground.” She motioned to the cylinders. “Got a few parts on Serenity function on the same principle. There’s a fancy name for it and everything.”
“One little girl couldn’t do all this.”
“Maybe the townsfolk helped her. In exchange for her telling ‘em when those solar flower things were gonna come. And a lot of what I’ve seen looks to be old parts fitted up to be something different. Could’ve been part of the mining, left behind.” It was the best explanation she could offer, seeing as how she couldn’t put sense behind a person as tiny as Li Li lifting even one of the cable bundles.
“Could be,” he said offhandedly and unconvincingly.
“Did anyone look in the crates we brought her? To see what was in them?”
“You know it ain’t good business etiquette to inspect the merchandise, Kaylee.”
She started back toward the main cavern, one hand on the cables as a safety line. “Never stopped you before.”
“Just want to get back to Serenity and see the sky again. Longer we stay, the better the chances the Alliance’ll catch up with us.”
“They ain’t gonna be catching up with their own selves any time soon if Li Li was right about what’s happening up there. Fried to crispy critters and all their ships dead in the water if they didn’t get out the way in time. Least we had more than a minute for warning and I made sure Serenity was shut down proper ‘fore we left.” She elbowed Mal when he prodded her to move faster in the darkness.
“Hope that’ll be a help. I got a feeling about this place...don’t mean to stay longer than I have to.”
“Caves give me the creepies too, ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. All that dirt over your head and just one tiny pebble could bring it all down. Conjure you’d be squashed pretty flat...all those rocks.” She breathed a sigh of relief when they emerged into lighter and more familiar surroundings.
Inara and Zoe had conscripted Jayne into carrying Li Li, albeit grudgingly, to the blankets that Kaylee had straightened and were carefully cleaning what skin they could with bits of cloth and a pail of water. Zoe was concentrating hard and a great deal more awkward with the task than Inara. Behind her, Mal cleared his throat, looking like he was about to face a firing squad.
“Don’t nobody go getting attached. We don’t got room for a stray. I’m the Captain and that’s final.”
“She wouldn’t know what to do out there in the ‘verse even if we did take her, Mal.” Inara’s tone made it clear that he was pitching a tantrum before he had reason to. “And she’s safer here. The Alliance believes she’s dead; it’s best that we keep that secret.”
“Glad you agree with me.” Mal waited a beat. “I am right that you’re agreeing me...cause I can’t never tell with you.”
“For once. Don’t get used to it.”
The frosty edge in Inara’s voice meant that the Captain had done something to vex her and hadn’t managed to make it right yet. Not that he ever did. Kaylee conjured that Inara got weary of being angry before Mal ever made amends. Course, it didn’t seem to be Inara’s way to let him in on what it was he’d done in the first place. The two spun round and round each other without never seeming to make a connection the way they ought to. Despite Kaylee’s hope to the contrary when Inara had come back to Serenity to stay.
“We just gonna sit around or we gonna do something?” Jayne was watching the cleaning a little too closely, probably hoping he’d see something interesting. “Kaylee here can probably figure a way to get us back topside.”
“And if Serenity is dead in the water? We’ll need someone who can patch her up. Just as soon wait here where my molecules stay intact until we can get some help from the little lady.” Mal kept staring at Li Li like he was trying to figure where she fit in all of this. “Doc, got any ideas about how she...does whatever it is she does? Alliance make her this way?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. If she really can sense or hear electricity in any way, it’s unprecedented.”
“They made River a reader. Could be it’s not that much different.”
Simon pondered that for a few long moments. “They must have cut into another part of the brain. Or made a mistake. Millimeters, fractions of millimeters, is all that separates parts of the brain. It could have just been a mistake. If they’d known, they never would have thrown her away like...” he trailed off.
“Like garbage.” Mal's gaze travelled slowly over the walls. “Something ‘bout this ain’t right.”
“What part of cutting into a someone’s brain is right?”
“T’ain’t what I mean. There’s something going on here that don’t make sense and it’s beginning to be worrisome to me. Look around folks, ain’t no mining equipment I know of needs all this and even with every hand up in that township, it’d take the better part of ten years to hollow this out. We all know she can’t have been here more than we’ve had River with us.”
“Mal’s right.” Frowning at the electronics around them, Jayne shifted from foot to foot uneasily. “Something don’t add up here and that usually means we’re about to get humped.”
“Joo koh! Could you stop?” Inara snapped, an outburst that caught everyone by surprise. “We might be alive because of this girl and you have nothing better to do than stand around being paranoid? Does it really matter where all this came from? Where any of it came from? You’ve shown more interest in these pieces of machines than you have in a human being.”
Mal blinked at her, frowning. “Not that I ain’t used to being on the wrong end of your temper but I’m not seeing how me doing a bit of wondering warrants this particular attack.”
“I know her, Mal.” She looked away from them, her hands tightening on the bit of cloth in her hand until dirty water dripped from between her fingers. “I knew her. At the Guild House in Sihnon. She was...look what they've done. Look what they've...” her voice trembled and then fell away into the silence.
There was a long look between Zoe and Mal that didn’t do much to lighten the frown on his face. Inara had no more to say and returned to cleaning away the dirt from Li Li’s skin with gentle strokes. Everybody who wasn’t working on the dirt and grime drifted away from the suddenly intimate scene. Kaylee found her way to Simon’s side and reached down to lace her fingers through his, squeezing his hand tightly. One more piece of Inara’s mysterious past and it seemed that the ‘verse had just gotten a whole lot smaller.
They settled into uneasy waiting, with Simon periodically pulling away to check Li Li’s vital signs. Jayne managed to find a groove in the wall and soon his snoring was echoing around their ears. Inara had taken to staring at the ground and didn’t seem to be planning on saying anything more. Minutes crawled by at an agonizingly slow pace until Li Li stirred, the tension returning instantaneously and making the silence heavy once again.
“Are you all right?” Simon asked gently. He checked her over one last time with careful, soft hands. “There might be some dizziness, that will pass.”
“Don’t make me go back, don’t make me go back,” she whimpered.
“You’re safe now, Li Li. You’re safe.” Even he didn’t sound convinced of the fact. “Do you remember your name?”
“Or how to get us out of here?” Jayne yawned and stretched his neck. “Don’t know about the rest of you but I sure ain’t looking to stay here until the next one of those things shows up.”
Li Li bolted away from Simon quickly. “Need stabilizers. All charged up and no good; not as shielded. Won’t land with feet on the ground.” She hurried back to the main area of the cavern, hugging the stacks of equipment either to stay away from them or to get closer to the humming electricity inside the cables.
A battered, empty crate scraped against rock as she pulled it out from beneath one of the consoles. Muttering too quietly to hear, she dug through piles and crates of strange electronic gizmos, selecting one here and there that went into the crate. Once half a dozen pieces had disappeared into the box, she pushed it toward them and wiggled herself through a gap in the gears. She all but disappeared from view, only her voice and the quiet clang of tools giving away her position inside the tangled belly of the machines.
Mal picked up the box, trying to peer through the gears to see where she’d gone. “Uh...thank you.”
“One little thing and you’ll fall out of the sky. Tiny little thing...doesn’t look like much. Got to watch though. Got to listen.” Her voice got softer and more distant.
“There’s this elevator we might be needed. If you could show us...”
“Sir?” Zoe nodded her head down the corridor that led to the freight lift. “Seems to have powered up.”
“Shiny. Let’s get the hell out of here. This place is beginning to make my skin crawl.” Jayne led the way with long, jaunty strides that underlined his gratefulness for being able to get back to Serenity.
The ride up the elevator was silent excepting Jayne’s off tune whistling and all but Zoe and Mal loaded up on the Mule. Kaylee kept looking back to make sure River hadn’t gotten too far ahead of them, a-wondering what it was they were talking about that needed them to be alone for. Whatever it was about the place that had spooked Mal certainly had her curiosity itching, but she doubted he’d share until he was good and sure of what it was.
Jayne cursing under his breath caught her attention and when she turned to chide him, she realized why. Every boardwalk and step of each building in the township was occupied and every one of the residents was holding at least one gun. They looked none too friendly and River slowed the Mule down to barely a crawl.
“Think they’s looking to start something?” Jayne whispered.
River shook her head. “Making sure we’re not taking her with us. Need her here to warn them when they come.”
“They’s welcome to crazy girl. I mean there’s crazy like River and then there’s crazy like somethin’ else. That girl’s most definite something else. Don’t know what, don’t wanna know.” He remained tense until they had passed the edge of the township and were well on their way toward Serenity’s hiding place in a shallow basin obscured by boulders.
It was a relief to finally see the familiar shape of the Firefly and Kaylee nearly got out and kissed the hull, she was so glad to be back. Once the Mule was secured in the cargo hold, she hurried to check on her baby while River took the box of bits to the cockpit to replace the stabilizer controls. In the engine room, she started with those parts she thought would fry easiest if there were a power surge through the grid. Sure enough, there were a few fried capacitors and a couple more pieces seemed to behave strangely enough to be worrisome. Nothing that weren’t easy to fix or replace, a small piece of mercy on a planet without much beyond but red rocks and dust.
Once the engine was purring like a kitten, she let herself breathe deep and relax some of the tension that had built up in her shoulders. While it hadn’t been the most dangerous or tricky job they’d ever had, it sure had been strange.
Mal wasn’t on the bridge and River was still half buried in the control box replacing more bits and running every diagnostic check there was to run on a Firefly. Kaylee hummed a little, cheerful now that she was back in her home and with all sorts of familiar surrounding her. Not to mention the absence of more earth than she could imagine just waiting to cave in on her head if it had the mind to. Deciding to check the cargo hold, she just about rounded the corner when she heard Mal’s voice. He was standing on the catwalk with Inara, both of them looking away from her.
“We can never come back to this place,” Inara told him urgently. “Whatever offer, whatever job...I’ll match the payment you’d receive. But we can never come back.”
“You gonna tell me why you got such a powerful urge to protect this girl?”
She lowered her gaze and smiled ever so slightly before turning to walk toward her shuttle. “Because I couldn’t.”
Once Inara was gone, Kaylee figured it was safe to creep out of her hiding spot. “Cap’n? Came to tell you the engine’s shiny. Soon as River’s through putting in those fancy bits, she’ll be good as new.” He nodded but didn’t say anything, still watching the spot where Inara had stood as though she was still there. “You don’t s’pose we’ll ever know why she left, will we?”
“I doubt it, little Kaylee. Every woman’s got her secrets.”
“Conjure Inara has more’n enough for both Zoe and me. Since we don’t got any of our own.”
“Don’t sell yourself short there, bao bei. 'Tis a wonder to me how you keep this boat in the air sometimes.” He shook off whatever trance had held him captive and grinned at her. “Can’t say I dislike these more interesting jobs. Learning new stuff about stars and such. It’s...educationing.”
“You’re just disappointed you didn’t get to shoot nothing.”
He thought on that a moment before giving her a wink. “There is that.”
Fin
Author: Aeneas
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Rating: PG (minor cussing)
Summary: An unusual job leads to an equally unusual customer with an unexpected tie to the crew of Serenity.
The Challenge Was: What happens when a natural disaster separates the crew from Serenity.
Disclaimer: A crossover universe that I started a few months ago has eaten my brain. This belongs to that universe. So if it reads like you’re just seeing a sliver of a bigger picture, that’s why. Also, it’s written as one continuous POV, which is very unusual for me.
Location: Silverhold Colonies
“Don’t need to tell you folk to watch your backs. Ain’t likely we’ll find none friendly to us,” Mal barked as he clomped down the stairs, face permanently set to a glower.
Jayne’s grunt echoed the sentiment and he was none too gentle with loading the crates onto the mule. “This job ain’t been nothing but go-se from the set out. Had to keep ‘em flat, had to make sure nothin’ bumped ‘em. What in the ‘verse needs that much gorram babying--”
“Paying customer’s orders,” Zoe interrupted. “Part of the job.”
“Got a mind to be tellin’ this paying customer a thing or two.”
“That how you’re leaning then it might be that you’re staying on Serenity.” Mal gave him a weighted glare and crossed his arms. “Gettin’ good money for a few crates and I ain’t gonna do nothing to ruin the chance they might give us another job. We got precious few friends as it is; don’t need more enemies.”
Kaylee saw the brewing tempest and intervened before two short tempers could turn into one big brawl. “Aw, ease up there, Mal. Ain’t none of us had the sun on our faces in weeks. Jayne’ll play nice, won’t he?”
“Do I got a choice?” Jayne snorted.
“No,” Mal answered sharply and headed for the mule. “Everybody wanting to see what this fine establishment has to offer better gun qui.”
Zoe and Jayne followed Mal onto the Mule, with Kaylee taking the last seat. She was torn about leaving Simon for even a second but Serenity wouldn’t keep herself running and chances for picking up spare parts didn’t come around too often. River had come down to see them off and waved a little shyly as they eased down the ramp out into the crimson hued landscape.
It was a strange place even in a strange ‘verse and Kaylee found her eyes watering with the assault of red. In the back of her mind where the memories of Wash made her sad, she remembered him wanting to visit Silverhold one day. Out of the dozen planets and hundreds of moons in the ‘verse, only a few had been host to any sort of indigenous life forms not of the green and leafy variety. Greenleaf, with its plentiful plants and rivers, had been one of them. The fact that the two moons spinning round it were near barren was one of those ironies Mal seemed to find amusing in particular. Vicious, lizard-like critters rumored to spit acid had once called the jungle planet their home before the Alliance wiped them out. Scary or not, they would’ve been the closest to a dinosaur one could hope to get and since access to Greenleaf itself was Alliance controlled, Silverhold would have been close enough for Wash.
The township could barely be called anything but a handful of red brick shanties huddled together under the sun. Weren’t much that could be called life as far as Kaylee could see; even the trees, with their deep magenta leaves and gnarled limbs, seemed alien. A clapboard sign advertised the general store and saloon, everything necessary for the townsfolk shoveled into a single building. This part of Silverhold mined the iron ore that fed into the backbone of Alliance progress and they’d done well to get a few smelting and processing plants that brought jobs other than mining.
She caught sight of a few determined flowers with pink petals fluttering in the kick-up from the Mule. They seemed to be growing out of the rock itself, their cores red as the dirt around them and probably just as full of iron. She was more than a little disappointed that there didn’t look to be any place that would have much of use when it came to Serenity.
“These folk don’t seem to even have electricity, let alone anything I need,” she mused, careful to keep her voice low so she didn’t offend nobody.
“Seems that way.” Mal jumped off of the Mule and glanced around warily. “You and Jayne stay with the cargo while Zoe and I ask around for our customer.”
Jayne propped his feet up on the side of the Mule and squirmed until he found a comfortable position. “Thought you always had a meeting place set up ‘forehand. Ain’t that the smart thing?”
“Job said we could ask for directions and find our way without no hassle.”
“Right. That way we don’t get no look at the place we’re gonna die until we get there. Smart thinkin’ there, Captain.” He rolled his eyes at the dark look Zoe gave him but settled in to wait and pulled his cap down over his eyes to block out the red.
“Waiting won’t be no problem.” Kaylee smiled and folded her hands in her lap patiently. Soon as Mal and Zoe had disappeared into the store, she was careful not to disturb Jayne as she climbed out to pick one of the tiny pink flowers. It smelled of dust but she conjured it looked pretty tucked into strap of her overalls. Any place with flowers had to be worth liking. And she could stick it in the mouth of one of Wash’s dinosaur toys once she got back. Then part of him would have been to Silverhold after all.
“You found something interestin’ on this go-se moon or you just wanderin’ off to make Mal angry? Cause if it’s the latter, I ain’t gonna stop you,” Jayne drawled without lifting his cap to look at her.
“Just picking one of the pretty flowers is all.” She climbed back into the Mule and tried not to fidget in her seat. “Suppose they shoulda been back by now?”
“I ain’t movin’ until Mal says so. Or someone tries to shoot me.”
“You’re just cranky is all.”
“All this way for two bitty crates? And we gotta be here at a certain time? Gorram right I’m cranky. Plenty of jobs we passed up to take this one.”
“Job’s a job, Jayne. And this one were good and legal.” She readjusted her flower so she could see the dark red core better.
“Fact that the Alliance has an interest in this place don’t make it safe. Even if it were legal.”
Kaylee thumped his arm, growing weary of his grousing. “You see any Alliance round here? Ain’t much of nothing but red and more red and a few pretty little flowers, which you wouldn’t care for, being all cranky and such.” He shifted away from her and made a big show of arranging his cap to ensure he couldn’t see her even if he did turn her way.
She nudged him with her boot toe just to be contrary. “’Sides, you know better than to pick a fight with Mal when he and ‘Nara’s been quarreling. Course, it’s not like they do much else even now that--”
Mal and Zoe’s return cut short any further gossiping she might indulge in to pass the time. Neither of them seemed inclined to do much talking once they were back on the Mule and they were racing off across the dusty landscape. She thought about asking where they was going but Mal didn’t look none to happy about it so she kept her questions to herself and assumed he’d tell her when the time was proper. Until then, she kept her eyes looking down to keep some of the red out.
Away from the township, they found a twisting path that had obviously been worn by forces other than wind and rain. It wound about the boulder strewn plain for a good while before turning toward a jagged outcropping of rocks thrust out of the ground and streaked with red and yellow. The ground here was a swirl of yellow and white with only slashes of the vibrant red iron. At the base of the outcropping was a tiny shack that couldn’t hold more than a person at a time and was decorated with a sign that had been white once upon a time. She couldn’t make out the words until they had pulled up next to the hut and she could peer at it with squinted eyes.
“Eggrolls, five…something. There’s some sorta little symbol there.” She rubbed her eyes and read it several more times before deciding that she wasn’t hallucinating. “Does that make sense to anybody? Cause maybe it’s just me who can’t figure it out.”
“Ain’t just you, Kaylee. But it means we’re in the right spot.” Looking a tad more worrisome than she figured he ought to, Mal reached out and rapped his knuckles against the door. When no answer came, he began looking around for the surprise to jump out and start firing bullets at them.
“Seems to me I was saying somethin’ about this being a stupid idea,” Jayne muttered, drawing his gun as he stepped off the path to peer around the shanty.
Mal was a mirror image, gun in hand and scanning the terrain for an ambush. “That might be, Jayne, but I never conjure you got anything worth listening to.”
“What crawled into both your--” Kaylee was cut short by a slot opening at the bottom of the shack. A small, red dirt stained hand reached out and dropped a thick wad of folded bills onto the ground.
Mal eyed the money with suspicion. “You touch something Kaylee?”
“Leave the crates,” a voice said from inside the structure. “You’d better hurry. Fly toward the night side. If it hits you in the air, you’ll all be dead.”
“Shenme?” Crouching down to pick up the cash, he poked at the slot and tried to find a way to open it from the outside. “Mind telling me exactly what’s goin’ on here? I’m used to meeting my customers face to face.” He waited in vain for an answer. Finally giving up, he brushed dust from his clothes irritably and waved them all back to the Mule.
“Well, if that ain’t the darnedest thing.” Jayne was eying the shed distrustfully as they unloaded the crates and piled back onto the craft. “What did that shingdingbing mean about us ending up dead?”
Mal frowned, but his eyes stayed focused on the narrow path. “I would surely love to know.”
“Payment’s all here,” Zoe shouted over the noise of the Mule before tucking the folded cash into her pocket.
Kaylee grabbed onto the side to keep from being thrown overboard and wondered just who thought it’d be a shiny idea to let Mal behind the controls. This certainly was shaping up to be one of the more unusual jobs they’d taken, right up there with the cattle and a few other animals that turned out to not be what they was supposed to. She wisely kept her mouth shut about any of those, not wanting Mal to get it into his brain that they needed to take corners any faster than they already were. Midway through the mining settlement, Mal hit the brakes hard enough to drive the nose near into the ground and kick up dust all around them. Coughing against the thick haze, Kaylee waved at the red particles in an attempt to push them away from her face.
Jayne coughed violently. “Gorram it, Mal!”
“Shut it, Jayne. Aiya, women wanle. “
Blink dust and grit out of her eyes, Kaylee realized that River was standing dead center in the wide corridor through the township with a rifle in her arms and a hauntingly familiar look in her eyes. Simon batted at the dust cloud around him, approaching River with one hand up in surrender and his scuffed medicine bag in the other. Even Inara had left Serenity and was standing carefully to the side trying not to get her skirts dirty.
River saw them but seemed no less intent on whatever had driven her off of Serenity. "Seomthing's coming."
“We been told that. Means we need to be in the air pronto, little albatross.”
“Not enough time.” She scanned the nearby storefronts with a dark look. The windows were now boarded up and not a sign of life stirred in the heat.
“Sir? These folk got a reason to close up shop that we don’t know about?” Zoe’s hand fell to her holster.
“Who knew it was coming? Who told you?” River demanded.
“Customer,” Mal answered with audible trepidation. “Told us to drop the crates and gave us our payment. That’s the way it works.”
“We have to go back. All of us. Can’t be above ground when it comes.” River motioned to the Mule with the rifle and started jogging in the direction of the narrow trail. “Hurry!” she called back over her shoulder.
“Jayne, lighten up and let Inara take your place.”
“Mal!”
“She can’t barely walk in that confounded get up, let alone run. Drop the hardware and get moving.”
Once Jayne had unloaded and jumped off, Kaylee reached out a hand to help Inara up into the Mule and clung to her even once she was seated. Mal kept the Mule going fast enough that they didn’t bury Jayne in dust but slow enough that they could see if he fell behind. River seemed to leap from boulder to boulder, taking the crow’s path rather than the one they followed.
The tiny shack came into view with a new sense of urgency. River was waiting for them, rifle slung around her back, and carefully running her hands over every inch of wood. Her lips were moving but there was no sound beyond the stomping of boots and Jayne’s panting once he rounded the corner.
“No…gorram…reason,” he gasped, leaning over to grab his knees. “Next time, you get…to run…gan ni niang.”
Mal ignored him completely. “What you got, River? And I do hope you got something cause otherwise, there’ll be a big I Told You So later. Providing we don’t all die. In which case, I told you so.”
“Makes no sense. Shouldn’t be here; not out here buried in dust,” River mumbled.
“Doc? She go crazy again while we weren’t looking?”
“She’s been fine ever since…River?” Simon hurried forward to pull River away from the shack. She resisted and banged on the door with both fists hard enough to rattle the wood frame.
“Simon, you don’t understand…” she trailed off when the slot opened.
“I told you to get out of here,” the now-familiar voice snapped at them.
River dropped to her knees and pressed her hands to the slot. “Li Li? It’s me. It’s River, remember? River Tam.”
The slot slammed shut and the tiny shack seemed to shiver from the inside. To their right, whole boulders sloughed off inches of thick white dust and rose, impossibly, up from the ground. What began as a dark crack along the ground expanded into a wide, rectangular mouth wide enough for all of them plus the Mule. River scrambled up and waved them into the opening. Cascading dirt and debris nearly coated them as they shuffled and jostled into what turned out to be a freight elevator hidden beneath the ground.
Once they were all safely inside, coughing and brushing away the layer of dust, the platform beneath them began to descend with a horrific groan. Darkness was broken by sparsely placed track lights mounted on support bars spanning the shaft around them. With each shudder, more dirt seemed to trickle in around them in a very ominous way.
“We gonna ask crazy girl what exactly it is we’re doin’ here?” Jayne peered into the darkness around them, jostling Kaylee into the corner as he tried to get a better look at their surroundings.
“Customer obviously knows River. Which I’m sure one of you will be explaining shortly.” Mal gave Simon a dark look before rocking back on his heels and smiling tightly. “Can’t really conjure how exactly that works, seeing as how River don’t know anyone in the ‘verse outside this crew. But strange happenings do tend to follow her about. Then there’s the matter of what’s outside might could kill us and why y’all left Serenity when I distinctly remember--”
“We called her Li Li. She was at the Academy,” River said suddenly. She didn’t turn around, her attention fixed on whatever was outside the elevator. It shuddered as it reached the bottom and ground to a shrieking halt.
“The group that contacted me…some of them had family at the Academy. Maybe they got her out too.” Simon was a step behind his sister and the rest followed close behind as they all shuffled out of the elevator into a dimly lit corridor, leaving the Mule behind in the darkness. “River? Do you know where you’re going?”
Cautiously moving along the side with gun in hand, Zoe kept a watchful eye on the supporting beams and each trickle of dirt that fell down around them. “Looks like an abandoned mine shaft.”
“Great. We’re gonna die down here ‘stead of up there.” Kaylee didn’t manage to keep the tremor out of her voice even though she was trying something fierce. It helped a little that Inara was still letting her hold onto her arm and the two of them had to move slower on account of the pretty skirt. The fancy fabric would be ruined for sure once they got back to Serenity, which gave Kaylee a worry other the earth caving in around them to fret about.
Light appeared at the end of the corridor, filtering in from a side channel, and they could hear distinctly mechanical noises in the distance. Jayne adjusted his grip on his gun and paused before peering around the corner. “Before anyone does anything stupider than we already done…you’re saying that this Li-whatever is from where River was from. Don’t that mean she’s loony tunes too? Could be she’s what’ll kill us all.”
“I’m sure she won’t--”
“He’s right,” River interrupted Simon, as calm as the black itself. “She might not like Jayne at all. He’s very loud.”
“Won’t be a trouble, no one really likes Jayne.” Mal straightened his shoulders and started forward. “’sides, if’n it means watching Jayne here get himself beat up by a little girl…again…well worth our time.”
“Little girls happenin’ to be Alliance weapons don’t rightly count, now do they?” Jayne groused loudly enough that his voice echoed through the corridor and brought down a fresh shimmer of dust around them.
“Well, you are loud and tend to be awful obnoxious.” Kaylee glared at him and passed by to follow after Mal. She was so focused on the glaring that she was run up against Mal’s back before she realized he’d stopped. Stepping out around him, her eyes widened at the view stretching out ahead of them. “Wo detain, a.”
Perhaps only Mr. Universe would have appreciated the swathes of cabling that swept and looped above them, draping in the same fashion as the fabric in Inara’s shuttle. Each bundle sprouted like roots from bits of machinery left over from the mining operation; most had been obviously taken apart and put back as the guts of hybrid machines. Huge display panels with bits missing illuminated the cavern around them; one of them was seemingly focused on the giant red star that Silverhold, its fellow moon, and its planet orbited. It didn’t look nothing like any picture of sky that Kaylee had seen, all greens and yellows.
The disembodied voice that belonged to their customer was accompanied by the sound of tools working. “No chairs. Some of them bite if you…if you sit too hard.”
Mal looked around with alarm. “You got chairs that got teeth?”
River caught his arm, moving past to head further into the maze of screens and machinery. “Live wires. Electricity.”
“Course. Chairs ain’t got teeth…knew that.” He relaxed enough to take his hand off the handle of his gun. “Li Li? That your name? You were nice enough to warn us of trouble a-brewing…don’t s’pose you could elaborate on what that would be?”
Ahead of them, Li Li crawled out from a tangle of wires and gears like a tiny creature emerging from its burrow. Jet-black hair had been tied back at one point but had come loose in thick ribbons that hung straight as arrows. What skin wasn’t covered with worn fabric was dark with dirt and grime from the machines. Almond shaped eyes had the same wild look as River’s but were clouded over with a milky white layer. There was a visible scar in the center of her forehead that she seemed to rub unconsciously, as though trying to erase it.
“Don’t believe we’ve formally been introduced. I’m Captain Reynolds and this is--”
“No names. Don’t need names. Just labels and numbers that take away your names. Don’t you have them?” She pulled away from them, nearly pressed up against the wall as she scurried toward the largest of the monitors. “River Tam. Tam River. Used to tap messages through the wall before they cut into our brains and didn’t need tapping anymore.”
“Doc? You bring any of the fancy chemicals made River here a little more sane?” Mal asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“A few.” He glanced at River and then back at Li Li. “How did you escape, Li Li? Did someone get you out?”
“Didn’t. Didn’t escape.” The rubbing against the scar in her forehead intensified and she was all but curled into a ball over the gibberish controls. “Threw me out with the trash. Heart stopped...too broken to keep, not a success like River. Swallowed dirt and drank oil until I landed here. Burrowed into the ground where they can’t see. Down in the earth where even the darkness is afraid of their secrets. Secrets have eyes that see the darkness for what it really is.”
“Well, ain’t this shiny. Another crazy girl. You wanna keep this one too? See how many secrets she’s got in her head that’ll kill us?” Jayne cleared a place to sit, crossing his arms over his chest as he plopped down without regard to the tools he sent clattering to the ground.
River’s face had turned ashen and her hands trembled when she reached out to grab hold of a supporting beam. Immediately Simon was at her side, checking her pulse and brushing her hair out of her face as he tried to calm her. Whatever the source of her distress, it was locked inside the head of Li Li, who continued to work at her controls without taking notice of the people standing behind her.
She stared up at the huge image of the red sun and the rubbing at her forehead abated. “Soon now. Won’t be long.”
“I seem to be repeating myself today.” Mal moved closer to squint at the screen. “What exactly won’t be long?”
“There.” Pointing up at a particularly dark region of the star, she smiled with child-like affection. “Magnetic flux buildup. Explodes with the energy of a million bombs and sweeps the land clean, burning up anything with electricity in its veins. Kill you slow and painful. Bits falling off, brain cut through, and molecules ripped apart.”
“Come again?”
“It’s a solar flare.” Simon turned away from River. “I thought they weren’t dangerous.”
“This star is dying. Gasping like a fish, coughing up its insides.” There was a level of creepiness in her blatant adoration of the star. “Moon made of iron draws them like moths; pulls them in and focuses. Once it’s spent, you can walk the ground again.”
“What about my ship? Ain’t nothing going to happen to my ship, right?” Mal asked with alarm.
“Hull will shield most of it. Might lose a few circuits.” She looked away from the screen to blink in Kaylee’s general direction. “I have spares.”
“Much obliged.”
“Hold on a minute,” Jayne interrupted. “Go back to the part where the big glowing thing in the sky is dying. Don’t that bother anyone else?”
Li Li turned his direction. “Fire doesn’t age in years or seconds. Human time means little. We’re nothing. Just specks and bits of dirt floating about.”
“I think that means it’s probably a few million years until the star dies.” Simon looked to River for confirmation, seeming uncomfortable that he was stuck as makeshift interpreter for the crew. Watching her carefully, he shifted closer while still maintaining a safe distance away from the complicated controls. Something he saw made him frown and that made Kaylee a bit more nervous than she’d been before.
“Oh. Well, that’s good. What she doin’ now?”
Information panels flashed up on the monitors as Li Li’s hands flew over the controls, adjusting and readjusting the complex series of commands. “Alliance will be too late; see it coming but only have time to scramble. They’ll lose more.”
“Can you do it?” River asked suddenly.
“There’s a window. Tiny one, only a minute. Has to be enough.” Li Li’s hands hovered over the control panel.
Mal waved his hands. “None of this psychic stuff. If the both of you would use words so the rest of us has an idea of what we’re walking into, we’ll all be very less likely to get in the way.”
“Not like River.” Milky eyes turned on Mal but didn’t focus. “Can’t read people or hear what’s in your head. You’re blank and empty to me. But I hear them. The circuits and the wires, hear them humming and whispering and telling me where they’ve come from.”
Simon waved his hand in a slow arc through her vision and got no response. “She’s blind, Mal. That’s probably why the Alliance didn’t consider her a success. They blinded her.”
Thin, dirty lips curled into a manic smile. “Didn’t know I could hear their secrets humming in the walls.”
Mal looked unsure of whether or not he should keep listening or find a way to tie the girl up good and proper. “Doc, that safe word you got work on her too?”
“If she’s had the same conditioning as River.”
Li Li turned back to her monitor, muttering about vectors and flux pinning and seeming to completely forget they were there. Once she had cycled through her screens another dozen times, she seemed to slip away into a trance. Her slender hands remained poised over the controls, sightless gaze directed at the screen above her, waiting for a signal only she would recognize.
A sad smile appeared on River’s lips. “Found a back door to slip through when the Alliance is looking the other way. Ships in orbit will sense the solar flare; they’ll have to shut down important systems to protect them. It’ll be chaos. They’ll forget to follow protocol, won’t have time.”
Understanding dawned and Mal took a new interest in the small woman. “Burrow in and dig up their secrets. She means to hack into the Alliance itself?”
“Everything’s connected through the Cortex,” Zoe added softly.
Jayne snorted and rolled his eyes at them all. “Can’t break into an Alliance whatsit, can she? Ain’t those all in the Core? How exactly she supposed to hack into anything that’s worlds away?”
“There’s an Alliance post here on Silverhold,” Simon answered. “Do you know what she’s looking for, River? What information…I mean, we already know about Miranda.”
“Mighty hopeful of you, thinkin’ that’s the only skeleton in the Alliance’s closet, Doc.” Mal found a relatively sturdy chunk of machinery to sit down on, making sure there were no live wires to cause problems. “But I would be interested in knowing exactly what she’s lookin’ for. Or if she’s just in the mood to air a bit of dirty laundry.”
“She wants to know about the Academy. About the Academies other than ours. The first, a long time ago, ended in blood. Something went wrong.” River pulled away from Li Li with a nervous look and moved closer to Simon, as though something in the girl’s head was creepifying even for her. “The Alliance is just the customer. She’s looking for the puppet master.”
Kaylee loosened her grip on Inara’s arm enough to peer at the bits of machinery. “You get all that from her thinkin’?”
River shook her head but gave no further explanation as to the meaning of the gesture. The cavern fell silent except for the whir and hum of machinery. All eyes were focused the picture of the red star and the deceptively innocent looking dark spot that would be lethal if they were above ground. It was surreal in the faint light, surrounded by thick bundles of cables and bits of machinery buried deep in the ground. The humming of electricity around them was almost palpable, filling the air with a strange tension and polarity.
Kaylee pointed up at the screen as the dark patch began to blossom into eye-searing white. “Look! Is that it?”
The impact of the distant explosion was anti-climactic, muted by the silence. A mass of swirling lines dancing gracefully across the screen and out from the star’s corona, reaching toward the tiny moon before contorting and plunging back toward the surface as they were reined in. The apex of the curve continued to balloon until it covered nearly a quarter of the star’s image, still shivering and twisting wildly. Static appeared on the monitor, all but obscuring the image. Li Li’s hands flew over the controls like darting birds pecking at the control screens.
“She can hear it screaming in the black,” River whispered.
“What about all the people?” Suddenly remembering the town they’d come through and all the rest of the mining communities on the planet, Kaylee glanced back at the corridor they’d come through.
“Fair bet she gave them warning already; that’s why the place was cleared out. Probably how she gets what she needs.” Zoe motioned to the electronics around them.
The static on the screen exploded and engulfed the entire image. Li Li pulled her hands away from the controls to cover her ears against the onslaught only she could hear and sunk down to the ground. She curled up against the cables with her eyes shut tight and more nonsensical muttering coming out of her lips. In an instant, River was crouched down beside her. A beat behind her, Simon opened his medical bag with a soft click and managed to clean a spot of skin on the girl’s shoulder, revealing china white skin beneath the dirt. She barely flinched when he injected her.
“That will calm her. It should get her through the worst of it,” Simon assured River.
Mal moved his hand away from a section of gears and eyed them distastfully, as though they might try to grab hold and pull him in. “Then we sit tight, wait for this thingamawhatsit to blow over. Everybody try not to touch nothing you don’t know what is. Which is...most everything, I imagine.”
Even Jayne relaxed once Li Li was quiet, propping his feet up as he settled in to wait. “How we s’posed to know when it’s over anyhow? Ain’t she the only one who knows?”
“Solar flares are transitory phenomena.” River stroked Li Li’s hair gently.
The answer didn’t seem to make Jayne feel any better about their situation. “Still leaves us stuck underground ‘til Lu Lu here wakes up and tells us how to get out. And what if the ship’s fried all to hell?”
“Bi zui,” Mal snapped at him. “You got nothing but questions today, Jayne, and none of us know better’n what you seen with your own eyes. Girl wakes up, helps us get Serenity in the air and then we’re on our way. Chattering like a chuin-zi ain’t gonna help us none. Doc didn’t give her enough of the stuff to keep her out too long, right, Doc?”
“A hour maybe. She’s quite small.” His fingers could near circle around her whole arm and touch together.
“We should get her cleaned up,” Inara spoke for the first time since they had descended the tunnel. “There has to be water somewhere. I’m assuming she lives down here so there must be. And we can’t just leave her like this.”
Jayne perked up. “Think there’s somethin’ worth eating around here too?”
“Unless you brought it with you, I don’t want to see it in your mouth, Jayne. In fact, why don’t you stay here and make sure she stays calm while the rest of us take a look about.” Ignoring Jayne’s grumbling completely, Mal motioned for the rest of the crew to fan out and start investigating the rest of the cavern.
Kaylee lingered because she wanted to get a better look at a set of ancient gears that were well oiled and cared for. Crazy girl must have loved those gears an awful lot to keep them tended even when they were old and long outdated. She supposed that she shouldn’t think of Li Li as Crazy Girl but shoes fit every now and then even in this 'verse. The apologetic look was directed at River, since it was River who could read her mind and know she was thinking unkind thoughts.
“Mal...”
“No,” he answered before she could even finish the question.
“But you didn’t even--”
“Don’t need to. Got plenty of crew as it is. Don’t need one more who ain’t altogether right in the brainpan.”
She followed him along a thick bundle of cables to the far side of the cavern. A hollow had been carved out of the rock just big enough to shelter a pile of dirty and torn blankets. “Just look at this, Cap’n. Inara’s right, can’t just leave her here. Can’t no one live like this.”
“Seems happy enough. If folk whose brains been addled by the Alliance even have a concept of happy.” He shifted uncomfortably and poked at the blankets with the toe of his boot to see if there was anything living hidden inside. “’Sides, we already got men wearing mighty strange gloves, Alliance assassins, and more bounty hunters you can shake a compression coil at chasing us. Last thing we need is to give them another reason to shoot us out of the sky. Hell, half the folk we consider friendly are likely as not to shoot at us.”
“Maybe she just needs to find whatever’s in her head. Worked for River, didn’t it? Once we found Miranda, she was shiny again.”
“And we lost two of our own.” His expression was hard but not without sympathy when he turned to face her. “Answer’s no, Kaylee. I ain’t gonna risk losing no more of my crew. Barely have enough to keep Serenity in the air and work a job as it is. We’re down to bare bones and I need every pair of hands I got.”
The logic of it weren’t something she could argue against. They had enemies a-plenty in near every patch of the black and one more fugitive would attract unwanted attention. Rather than admit defeat, she set herself to tidying up the blankets and shaking as much dirt from them as she could. With that done, she busied herself looking around the rest of the place. She stayed within eyesight of Mal cause it felt safer just in case she got herself into some kind of trouble.
Other than the tight feeling in her chest that came from being too far under ground for her liking, it was a right interesting place. There were more than enough bits and pieces for her to poke at and wonder over. Some of them made sense right away. Fans and pipes brought in fresh air to replace what smelled of earth and lubricating oil. Barrels of the stuff seem a-plenty. A few vertical shafts might have stretched clear up to the surface, full of tangled chains dangling like those floating bubble fish she’d seen in a picture once. There were some pieces that seemed to be in the middle of changing, not quite one thing or the other. She followed a batch of cabling down a narrow corridor off the side of the hollow that served as a bunk, keeping one hand lightly on the cords themselves so she wouldn’t lose her way. There weren’t too many lights this way and her ears were picking up a low thrumming noise that reminded her of Serenity’s engine when it was ramping up to speed. Curious, she pushed on even when it was nearly too dark for her to see and she felt as though she’d been walking forever.
The cavern at the other end of the corridor only had a few flickering lights hanging from crevices above her head. Barely enough for her to see enormous cylinders turning in the center, making the distinctive thrum-thrum-thrum sound like tops set down off center, and that the walls were tinted red with the omnipresent iron that was the lifeblood of Silverhold. All the of the cable bundles seemed to begin in this place, piled nearly as tall as she was and caged with old mining pikes so they wouldn’t roll about.
“Well, I’ll be...ain’t that somethin’?” Mal whistled softly as he emerged from the tunnel behind her.
“Generators of some sort, gotta be. Spin round and make electricity, using the iron in the ground.” She motioned to the cylinders. “Got a few parts on Serenity function on the same principle. There’s a fancy name for it and everything.”
“One little girl couldn’t do all this.”
“Maybe the townsfolk helped her. In exchange for her telling ‘em when those solar flower things were gonna come. And a lot of what I’ve seen looks to be old parts fitted up to be something different. Could’ve been part of the mining, left behind.” It was the best explanation she could offer, seeing as how she couldn’t put sense behind a person as tiny as Li Li lifting even one of the cable bundles.
“Could be,” he said offhandedly and unconvincingly.
“Did anyone look in the crates we brought her? To see what was in them?”
“You know it ain’t good business etiquette to inspect the merchandise, Kaylee.”
She started back toward the main cavern, one hand on the cables as a safety line. “Never stopped you before.”
“Just want to get back to Serenity and see the sky again. Longer we stay, the better the chances the Alliance’ll catch up with us.”
“They ain’t gonna be catching up with their own selves any time soon if Li Li was right about what’s happening up there. Fried to crispy critters and all their ships dead in the water if they didn’t get out the way in time. Least we had more than a minute for warning and I made sure Serenity was shut down proper ‘fore we left.” She elbowed Mal when he prodded her to move faster in the darkness.
“Hope that’ll be a help. I got a feeling about this place...don’t mean to stay longer than I have to.”
“Caves give me the creepies too, ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. All that dirt over your head and just one tiny pebble could bring it all down. Conjure you’d be squashed pretty flat...all those rocks.” She breathed a sigh of relief when they emerged into lighter and more familiar surroundings.
Inara and Zoe had conscripted Jayne into carrying Li Li, albeit grudgingly, to the blankets that Kaylee had straightened and were carefully cleaning what skin they could with bits of cloth and a pail of water. Zoe was concentrating hard and a great deal more awkward with the task than Inara. Behind her, Mal cleared his throat, looking like he was about to face a firing squad.
“Don’t nobody go getting attached. We don’t got room for a stray. I’m the Captain and that’s final.”
“She wouldn’t know what to do out there in the ‘verse even if we did take her, Mal.” Inara’s tone made it clear that he was pitching a tantrum before he had reason to. “And she’s safer here. The Alliance believes she’s dead; it’s best that we keep that secret.”
“Glad you agree with me.” Mal waited a beat. “I am right that you’re agreeing me...cause I can’t never tell with you.”
“For once. Don’t get used to it.”
The frosty edge in Inara’s voice meant that the Captain had done something to vex her and hadn’t managed to make it right yet. Not that he ever did. Kaylee conjured that Inara got weary of being angry before Mal ever made amends. Course, it didn’t seem to be Inara’s way to let him in on what it was he’d done in the first place. The two spun round and round each other without never seeming to make a connection the way they ought to. Despite Kaylee’s hope to the contrary when Inara had come back to Serenity to stay.
“We just gonna sit around or we gonna do something?” Jayne was watching the cleaning a little too closely, probably hoping he’d see something interesting. “Kaylee here can probably figure a way to get us back topside.”
“And if Serenity is dead in the water? We’ll need someone who can patch her up. Just as soon wait here where my molecules stay intact until we can get some help from the little lady.” Mal kept staring at Li Li like he was trying to figure where she fit in all of this. “Doc, got any ideas about how she...does whatever it is she does? Alliance make her this way?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. If she really can sense or hear electricity in any way, it’s unprecedented.”
“They made River a reader. Could be it’s not that much different.”
Simon pondered that for a few long moments. “They must have cut into another part of the brain. Or made a mistake. Millimeters, fractions of millimeters, is all that separates parts of the brain. It could have just been a mistake. If they’d known, they never would have thrown her away like...” he trailed off.
“Like garbage.” Mal's gaze travelled slowly over the walls. “Something ‘bout this ain’t right.”
“What part of cutting into a someone’s brain is right?”
“T’ain’t what I mean. There’s something going on here that don’t make sense and it’s beginning to be worrisome to me. Look around folks, ain’t no mining equipment I know of needs all this and even with every hand up in that township, it’d take the better part of ten years to hollow this out. We all know she can’t have been here more than we’ve had River with us.”
“Mal’s right.” Frowning at the electronics around them, Jayne shifted from foot to foot uneasily. “Something don’t add up here and that usually means we’re about to get humped.”
“Joo koh! Could you stop?” Inara snapped, an outburst that caught everyone by surprise. “We might be alive because of this girl and you have nothing better to do than stand around being paranoid? Does it really matter where all this came from? Where any of it came from? You’ve shown more interest in these pieces of machines than you have in a human being.”
Mal blinked at her, frowning. “Not that I ain’t used to being on the wrong end of your temper but I’m not seeing how me doing a bit of wondering warrants this particular attack.”
“I know her, Mal.” She looked away from them, her hands tightening on the bit of cloth in her hand until dirty water dripped from between her fingers. “I knew her. At the Guild House in Sihnon. She was...look what they've done. Look what they've...” her voice trembled and then fell away into the silence.
There was a long look between Zoe and Mal that didn’t do much to lighten the frown on his face. Inara had no more to say and returned to cleaning away the dirt from Li Li’s skin with gentle strokes. Everybody who wasn’t working on the dirt and grime drifted away from the suddenly intimate scene. Kaylee found her way to Simon’s side and reached down to lace her fingers through his, squeezing his hand tightly. One more piece of Inara’s mysterious past and it seemed that the ‘verse had just gotten a whole lot smaller.
They settled into uneasy waiting, with Simon periodically pulling away to check Li Li’s vital signs. Jayne managed to find a groove in the wall and soon his snoring was echoing around their ears. Inara had taken to staring at the ground and didn’t seem to be planning on saying anything more. Minutes crawled by at an agonizingly slow pace until Li Li stirred, the tension returning instantaneously and making the silence heavy once again.
“Are you all right?” Simon asked gently. He checked her over one last time with careful, soft hands. “There might be some dizziness, that will pass.”
“Don’t make me go back, don’t make me go back,” she whimpered.
“You’re safe now, Li Li. You’re safe.” Even he didn’t sound convinced of the fact. “Do you remember your name?”
“Or how to get us out of here?” Jayne yawned and stretched his neck. “Don’t know about the rest of you but I sure ain’t looking to stay here until the next one of those things shows up.”
Li Li bolted away from Simon quickly. “Need stabilizers. All charged up and no good; not as shielded. Won’t land with feet on the ground.” She hurried back to the main area of the cavern, hugging the stacks of equipment either to stay away from them or to get closer to the humming electricity inside the cables.
A battered, empty crate scraped against rock as she pulled it out from beneath one of the consoles. Muttering too quietly to hear, she dug through piles and crates of strange electronic gizmos, selecting one here and there that went into the crate. Once half a dozen pieces had disappeared into the box, she pushed it toward them and wiggled herself through a gap in the gears. She all but disappeared from view, only her voice and the quiet clang of tools giving away her position inside the tangled belly of the machines.
Mal picked up the box, trying to peer through the gears to see where she’d gone. “Uh...thank you.”
“One little thing and you’ll fall out of the sky. Tiny little thing...doesn’t look like much. Got to watch though. Got to listen.” Her voice got softer and more distant.
“There’s this elevator we might be needed. If you could show us...”
“Sir?” Zoe nodded her head down the corridor that led to the freight lift. “Seems to have powered up.”
“Shiny. Let’s get the hell out of here. This place is beginning to make my skin crawl.” Jayne led the way with long, jaunty strides that underlined his gratefulness for being able to get back to Serenity.
The ride up the elevator was silent excepting Jayne’s off tune whistling and all but Zoe and Mal loaded up on the Mule. Kaylee kept looking back to make sure River hadn’t gotten too far ahead of them, a-wondering what it was they were talking about that needed them to be alone for. Whatever it was about the place that had spooked Mal certainly had her curiosity itching, but she doubted he’d share until he was good and sure of what it was.
Jayne cursing under his breath caught her attention and when she turned to chide him, she realized why. Every boardwalk and step of each building in the township was occupied and every one of the residents was holding at least one gun. They looked none too friendly and River slowed the Mule down to barely a crawl.
“Think they’s looking to start something?” Jayne whispered.
River shook her head. “Making sure we’re not taking her with us. Need her here to warn them when they come.”
“They’s welcome to crazy girl. I mean there’s crazy like River and then there’s crazy like somethin’ else. That girl’s most definite something else. Don’t know what, don’t wanna know.” He remained tense until they had passed the edge of the township and were well on their way toward Serenity’s hiding place in a shallow basin obscured by boulders.
It was a relief to finally see the familiar shape of the Firefly and Kaylee nearly got out and kissed the hull, she was so glad to be back. Once the Mule was secured in the cargo hold, she hurried to check on her baby while River took the box of bits to the cockpit to replace the stabilizer controls. In the engine room, she started with those parts she thought would fry easiest if there were a power surge through the grid. Sure enough, there were a few fried capacitors and a couple more pieces seemed to behave strangely enough to be worrisome. Nothing that weren’t easy to fix or replace, a small piece of mercy on a planet without much beyond but red rocks and dust.
Once the engine was purring like a kitten, she let herself breathe deep and relax some of the tension that had built up in her shoulders. While it hadn’t been the most dangerous or tricky job they’d ever had, it sure had been strange.
Mal wasn’t on the bridge and River was still half buried in the control box replacing more bits and running every diagnostic check there was to run on a Firefly. Kaylee hummed a little, cheerful now that she was back in her home and with all sorts of familiar surrounding her. Not to mention the absence of more earth than she could imagine just waiting to cave in on her head if it had the mind to. Deciding to check the cargo hold, she just about rounded the corner when she heard Mal’s voice. He was standing on the catwalk with Inara, both of them looking away from her.
“We can never come back to this place,” Inara told him urgently. “Whatever offer, whatever job...I’ll match the payment you’d receive. But we can never come back.”
“You gonna tell me why you got such a powerful urge to protect this girl?”
She lowered her gaze and smiled ever so slightly before turning to walk toward her shuttle. “Because I couldn’t.”
Once Inara was gone, Kaylee figured it was safe to creep out of her hiding spot. “Cap’n? Came to tell you the engine’s shiny. Soon as River’s through putting in those fancy bits, she’ll be good as new.” He nodded but didn’t say anything, still watching the spot where Inara had stood as though she was still there. “You don’t s’pose we’ll ever know why she left, will we?”
“I doubt it, little Kaylee. Every woman’s got her secrets.”
“Conjure Inara has more’n enough for both Zoe and me. Since we don’t got any of our own.”
“Don’t sell yourself short there, bao bei. 'Tis a wonder to me how you keep this boat in the air sometimes.” He shook off whatever trance had held him captive and grinned at her. “Can’t say I dislike these more interesting jobs. Learning new stuff about stars and such. It’s...educationing.”
“You’re just disappointed you didn’t get to shoot nothing.”
He thought on that a moment before giving her a wink. “There is that.”
Fin