Firefly Fic: Passage (Gen, PG)
Title: Passage
Genre: Gen, Crew (post-movie)
Rating: PG
Words: 3200
Summary: It's bad business when a world tries to spit people out.
Notes: This is for _beetle_ for Serenity Santa - Happy Holidays! Many thanks to lunabee34 for beta!
1 -
She declines to watch the planet as they depart. The observation deck serves all levels, and she has no desire to be packed in with the maudlin, unwashed classes, listening to their cries and pathetic stories of good times and bright days.
Instead, she settles on a plush seat, one of many in her cabin. She's paid the highest fare on the best ship out of here. There's no reason to leave her private space, not now that she's found passage to a lush, new planet, guaranteed to form the new centre of the 'Verse.
"Madam can watch our departure from her monitor," the steward had said, as she'd boarded. "I'm told," he'd added, fingers nervously combing through dust-dulled hair, "it is quite a spectacular view."
What point would that serve? She is not given to dwelling on the past, particularly when that past is filled with rising temperatures and a planet of dwindling resources. She is no longer willing to live with the compromises that must be made in such circumstances.
No. Watching a worthless planet recede into space is far from Rachel's idea of entertainment. Instead, she reclines back against soft pillows, sipping slowly at her triple-distilled glass of ice-cold water. Eyes closed, she dreams of her promised estate on newly-terraformed Athens, guaranteed by estate agents to be a rich, opulent world with resources and lands for the taking. She dreams of the empire she and her descendents will build, and the power they will wield in a bright, new future.
For the first and last time, Rachel Cobb leaves Earth behind.
* * *
"Move!" Jayne yells over the howling of the wind. "Won't be breathin' for much longer!" He pulls the oxygen mask back down over his mouth, glad he ain't one of the gorram suckers trying to function without one. Then again, maybe if they hadn't had masks onboard, Mal wouldn't have gone and taken them on this damnfool evac job in the first place.
His earpiece crackles, messed up by the storm. He can't quite hear everything coming through, but it ain't hard to figure it's little sister again, asking for another update. Girl don't know when to quit. "Say again," he yells.
"Time's running out," she says, voice almost sing-song in that way she gets that's downright irritating. Still, mostly she only uses it when things are bad.
"Gotcha. Workin' on it," he says, even as he hauls another gorram settler out of the dust-bath he's taking. Some of these idiots can't even make it the last few steps to Serenity's hold.
"Captain's back aboard. Work faster," he hears, before the radio goes out altogether.
2 -
"Sir," a discreet, hushed voice says behind him.
He turns. "Yes?"
Navigation Officer Bai smiles awkwardly. "We're drifting slightly off-course again. There seems to be an ongoing glitch in the program."
"Can you fix it?"
Her smile wavers at the edges. "I've tried, but so far I can only get temporary patches. At this point, we need a program specialist to come up and try to get to the root of it."
"Do we have one aboard?"
"Yes, luckily. It's just…she's known to be - difficult."
Of course she is. It would be too easy otherwise. "Difficult how?"
Now Bai's smile almost looks real, perhaps even playful. "She has a reputation for disliking authority."
Authority. He manages not to laugh at the word. He'd hardly call himself authority on this ship. If it isn't the remnants of the Earth government sending needless communiqués and demands, it's the fledgling New Allied Worlds authorities insisting on updates and status reports, and sending reminders that he's transporting Top Level Refugees with special needs, eclectic whims, override privileges and ultimate authority.
And those Top Level Refugees certainly don't hesitate to make demands for more water, more food, more heat, more space, more speed, and more guided tours of the bridge. He's beginning to feel less and less like an authority and more like a sub-contracted mass transit driver.
This is the last run, he tells himself. As soon as they land on Bernadette, he's going to give up his commission and take up farming somewhere far, far away from anyone.
"Sir?"
He shakes the frustration away. "I'll open up a line of communication with her. Maybe I can coax her up here. Open up a channel to her berth."
If he didn't know better, he'd think that perhaps Bai had just winked at him. Before he can ask, he hears, "What? What do you want? I'm working," from the nearest communication station. He turns to find a frazzled woman scowling up at him from his screen.
Charm, he thinks, smiling. This calls for charm. "Ma'am, this is First Officer Andrew Tam. I hope you are well this evening. As I understand it, you're an expert in programming, and we have a slight problem with which we could use your insight."
* * *
The storm has no pattern, except to get exponentially worse. Dust becomes grit, wind turns to howls, whole planet gets eaten up. But no matter how intently she searches, River can't see any other patterns. No dancing spirals of debris. No flickering in and out.
Beneath her, Serenity's engine hums. She closes her eyes, focussing on the familiar rhythm. The engines are beginning to struggle, but the pattern - high hum, low hum, whirr, speed up, slow down, shudder - continues. It's comforting and predictable.
The captain's footsteps also have a predictable pattern, even when his boots are filled with sand. "Captain," she says, without turning away from the controls.
"You ready to go when I say go?"
"Yes. We should go soon."
"Fifteen more minutes. Might be some last-minute folk still out there. Zoe's waiting on them."
Zoe. Also dependable, though far from predictable. She opens her eyes. "We're ready." The ship hums.
3 -
This is not what she expected. Back at the Relocation Lottery Centre, she'd prayed for her name to be called. She'd welcomed the medical tests, the aptitude tests, the endless invasive questions and examinations, all in hope that the results would help her chances. The day she'd been handed those results, her hands had shaken as she'd held the certificate under a dim, flickering bulb.
"Female, Fertile and Healthy, Unattached," the certificate had read, followed by, "Unexceptional Intelligence, Minimal Practical Skills." The last two had been a blow, but the first two had clearly overridden them. Proven fertility had become of exceptional value, particularly among newly-single women. "Lottery Priority 2," had been her designation, an almost unbelievable ranking, barely dreamed possible.
She'd waited, camping in the grim, overcrowded spaces of Lottery Centre Five's Holding and Relocation Barracks. She'd guarded her meagre possessions, waiting for word of the next departure and the day that her name might be called. She'd closed her eyes against the press of humanity, ignoring the desperation and growing tension. She'd leaned against hard walls, constantly sweating, imaging that each rumble of the ground singled another ship departing, leaving her one day closer to her own time.
It had come, beginning with a sharp, "Serra, Caterina!" called during Lottery announcements one sweltering morning. "1100 hours, berth 2159, Exodus II." Other names, other berths had followed, so fast that at first she thought she'd misheard.
But here she is. Another crowded, desperate holding area, though it isn't on familiar land. At first it had been a novelty to be surrounded by a hull so cold to the touch. Now, she's tired of the near-constant shivering, the stink of fear from her fellow Lottery winners, and the half-rations. Months into a hellish journey to a new, promised planet, Caterina sometimes wonders if she made the right choice. Perhaps she should have hunkered down with the Dissenters and accepted her fate as tied to that of Earth.
"Sihnon," someone says to her, hope and want mingling, "it sounds like a good place."
"Yes," she replies, just as she has a thousand times before, to a thousand of her fellow disposable, workhorse bodies. "Yes."
* * *
Basic medical training - how to inject a vaccine, or a liquid anti-viral, how to skin-seal and bind a simple wound - is part of Companion training. Her time on Serenity has expanded on her knowledge, but Inara is not prepared for this sheer volume of people and their needs.
"Simon," she calls, hand holding an oxygen mask over a boy's face, "He's not responding to the oxygen -"
He's there before she finishes, deftly injecting something into the boy's arm. The boy's wheezing eases almost immediately. "Keep him on the oxygen for a few minutes, and then move onto the next one," Simon says, before turning away, moving on.
She is trained in maintaining a façade of collected calm in uncertain situations. She keeps it up now without thinking about it. But everything about Simon's body language says his calm is different - rooted in a profound confidence that he can handle this and worse, that he knows exactly what to do.
Fingers close around hers, jolting her gaze away from Simon. "It's all right." She smiles down at the boy, her free hand stroking through his hair. Grit catches at her skin. "You're safe here. Breath deeply now."
He does, and Inara follows his lead.
4 -
"Your navigation programming is a joke." She doesn't look up from the monitor. "Back-alley, bargain-basement, third-run, cheap-as-shit garbage. Did you scavenge the system from an uncertified technical school?"
First Officer Tam clears his throat. "It's standard issue for the Fourth-Wave Evacuation Fleet."
She scowls. "I should have gone private." She can almost hear Tam biting on his tongue, and for the first time in a while, she grins. She looks up. "Yeah, I know you're thinking I couldn't have afforded it. You're right. I could barely afford the shit-hole fourth-class berth I've been wedged into for the last two months."
"You'd hate to see the general accommodations level. It's - difficult."
She's heard. Hell, she's seen for herself, a brief glimpse of horror. "And yet you have one."
"Unfortunately. Much like I have an unfortunate 'cheap-as-shit' piece of programming garbage that, unfortunately, I must depend on to get my passengers safely to Bernadette where, again, unfortunately, I'll need to deal with various government resettlement bureaucracies."
She grins again. "Fortunately, you have me."
"True."
"You're very restrained," she says as she turns back to the monitor. "Usually by now I've managed to get a few sharp words out of a person."
This time, she can hear his smile. "Ms. Reynolds, restraint has become increasingly necessary on this particular journey."
She surprises herself by almost liking this government lackey.
* * *
Mal nods to Jayne as he drags another evacuee to the hold. "That's enough," he says, and then flicks on his radio. "Zoe, ten minutes!" He waits until he hears her faint, "Sir," in response, then checks her tether's secure.
Inside, it's plain to see they ain't nearly full up to capacity. Partly it's a relief - they won't be turning folks away at least. But -
"Not as many as anticipated," Inara murmurs, coming to stand beside him.
"No."
"You're covered in grit," she says, absently brushing at his shoulders.
"Could be worse." Could be buried in it.
"Yes."
"Any of them die?"
Inara shakes her head, hair full of shine even in the dull light. "No. Simon has done an excellent job, as usual."
He can hear the doubt in her voice. "But?"
She gestures. "We don't have any intact families. Most of them came in alone. They've all lost someone. It's possible that one of the other evacuation ships might have family members, but -"
He nods. Shock. Loss. Grief. It's all coming. Hard.
5 -
Francis keeps to a quiet corner of the kitchen, listening to the cabin stewards gossip, yell instructions, trade tips. Their voices mingle with the sounds of cutlery dropping, plates clanging on counters, the hiss of pressure cookers.
"Cabin 12A, make sure you compliment her hair, she'll leave you the leftovers, and there are always leftovers with her -"
"-so I said the Damson Wine was an especially fine vintage and he actually believed me -"
"If he grabs my ass one more time, he's going to be missing fingers when we make landfall!"
"You'll regret it if you touch him, I hear he was ruthless in securing this passage…"
Technically, he's not supposed to be here, but there are times when he makes himself useful, and besides, everyone says he's special. None of the other kids are taking to ship life so well. He didn't get space-sick, he never gets lost, and even if he can't look out as many viewports as the rich kids, something keeps him excited. It's like he's supposed to be here, like he wasn't made for life planet-side. He's in space, up among stars he'd never been able to see from dusty old Earth.
"Shrimp omelette again for the pissant in cabin 4C," his brother Richard yells, running into the kitchen. "Think I should tell 'im it ain't so much shrimp as reconstituted shrimp-like product?"
The others laugh, and someone starts up a debate about the last time real shrimp had actually existed on Earth.
"Francis Alleyne!"
He looks up, smiling his best smile.
"Get out of this kitchen and to the classroom right now!"
He ducks away from his ma's half-hearted smack, sneezing at the puff of rice flour from her hands. "Going!" Maybe today they'll learn more about space.
* * *
"Sir," she says in affirmative, clicking off her radio and scanning the skyline. Not that she can see much, but there's still the chance a few more figures will resolve out of the dust in the next ten minutes.
This is why Zoe never did quite trust living planet-side. Might be that a ship can be a death-trap, but at least you learn what to maybe expect after half a lifetime living in the Black. But planets - ain't any real way to know what to expect, especially out on the Rim. Maybe Ariel and Londinium and the like have controlled weather, such that even the rain is carefully planned, but that kind of tech ain't out here. Planets - sometimes she wonders how many of them are just waiting to wipe away the humans that try to control them.
No matter how nice a beach might be once in a while, Zoe would rather be shipboard, in atmos built by humans for humans. She ain't idealizing it, mind. Helps if you've got a genius mechanic on your side.
Something flickers in her peripheral vision, and she does a quarter turn to the left, squinting. Sure enough, something's struggling against the wind. Checking her waist tether, she advances one step, two, and finds herself within arm's reach of a kid being dragged by a dog.
She shakes her head. Thing must've heard the engine, 'cause the kid sure ain't following their emergency broadcast signal. "No animals," she can hear Mal saying, almost like he's standing right there.
But hell, he ain't, and the kid maybe ain't moving, but she's still breathing. "Good dog," she yells, through her mask, slipping off her belt and fixing it around the dog's collar. The kid herself barely weighs anything, fitting snugly under Zoe's arm. "Let's go."
They follow her tether back home.
6 -
These days, seems all he ever hears is the sound of one ship after another taking off. Always starts the same - clanging of an alarm signalling impending take-off, the slight rumble of engines gradually becoming a roar. Isn't so much just a sound anymore, either. Whole area shakes with it, even though his burrow isn't close to the launch stations.
Sometimes, he wonders if the entire planet sounds and feels like this - and how much shakes away with each wave of ships leaving the desperate behind.
Back in the early days of exodus, when stories say Earth weren't so bad, folk left in dribbles. Hard to imagine those days - mostly clean air, water enough for everyone, unlimited time outside. Doesn't seem possible, no matter how many captures he sees, that there was a time most would want to stay on Earth.
Today, whole warrens are emptying out faster than he can count. Everyone wants gone, while there's still some kind of resources left for buying onto a ship. Government-subsidy ships, private liners, tiny retrofitted shuttles - people take what's going. He's heard tell of those crammed into holds on ships barely held together, and those living in private estates on high-tech ships for the rich.
He uses his daily twenty-minute Above Ground time to watch for ships, their lights visible even in the thick, red smog. He watches, and thinks about the planet stories shared in the warrens, a kind of warming even when there's nothing to burn. Sihnon, of the shining cities. Bernadette, where there's plenty of work to be had. Greenfall, asking for folk willing to farm.
Some days he thinks on it so hard that his chest starts to tighten up.
"Hey!" Rough hands shake his shoulder. "Your oxy scrubber's failing. Get back down below."
Some days he thinks on it so hard he forgets the air ain't breathable no more, and that's the damn reason his chest is tightening up.
Adam Frye, Warren 1253, Burrow 15-B, trudges back down below to dream of a world without masks.
* * *
It's worrisome that even though she ain't stepped near the hold or outside, she's still finding grit around her eyes and in her hair. She comms the captain again. "Gettin' dusty down here. Things are startin' to get gucked up from outside-in. We gotta leave soon, Cap. Real soon."
There's a pause before he answers, almost too long, but then, "I hear you, Kaylee. Zoe and Jayne're back. We're closed up. Go airborne when you're ready."
"Gotcha, Cap," she says, flicking off the comm. "Come on, now," she murmurs to Serenity. "You can do it. Ain't nothing a little planet-wide permastorm can do to stop you."
Outside, the winds howl, and she shudders. Don't make sense how the settlers managed to stay here for so long, before they caved and sent the evac call. She ain't never heard a planet-wide evac call before - ain't even heard of something like that existing, though Mal had gone real grim, real fast.
"What's it mean?" she'd asked Zoe, hushed-like after Mal had announced the detour.
"Bad business. World trying to spit people out."
Even though she's been keeping the engines working the whole time they've been landed, Serenity don't lift right away. Maybe it's the wind, maybe it's grit, but they've been through worse than this, and Kaylee knows Serenity don't give up easy. "Little extra, now," she says, pushing the engine up close to full burn.
She knows it's going to work when she feels a shudder start down by her feet and work its way up. She sits herself down, wedged in safe against a bumpy ride, and then they're up, moving fast, faster, as fast as they need.
Bracing her hand against the wall, Kaylee looks up at Serenity and smiles.
End
Genre: Gen, Crew (post-movie)
Rating: PG
Words: 3200
Summary: It's bad business when a world tries to spit people out.
Notes: This is for _beetle_ for Serenity Santa - Happy Holidays! Many thanks to lunabee34 for beta!
1 -
She declines to watch the planet as they depart. The observation deck serves all levels, and she has no desire to be packed in with the maudlin, unwashed classes, listening to their cries and pathetic stories of good times and bright days.
Instead, she settles on a plush seat, one of many in her cabin. She's paid the highest fare on the best ship out of here. There's no reason to leave her private space, not now that she's found passage to a lush, new planet, guaranteed to form the new centre of the 'Verse.
"Madam can watch our departure from her monitor," the steward had said, as she'd boarded. "I'm told," he'd added, fingers nervously combing through dust-dulled hair, "it is quite a spectacular view."
What point would that serve? She is not given to dwelling on the past, particularly when that past is filled with rising temperatures and a planet of dwindling resources. She is no longer willing to live with the compromises that must be made in such circumstances.
No. Watching a worthless planet recede into space is far from Rachel's idea of entertainment. Instead, she reclines back against soft pillows, sipping slowly at her triple-distilled glass of ice-cold water. Eyes closed, she dreams of her promised estate on newly-terraformed Athens, guaranteed by estate agents to be a rich, opulent world with resources and lands for the taking. She dreams of the empire she and her descendents will build, and the power they will wield in a bright, new future.
For the first and last time, Rachel Cobb leaves Earth behind.
* * *
"Move!" Jayne yells over the howling of the wind. "Won't be breathin' for much longer!" He pulls the oxygen mask back down over his mouth, glad he ain't one of the gorram suckers trying to function without one. Then again, maybe if they hadn't had masks onboard, Mal wouldn't have gone and taken them on this damnfool evac job in the first place.
His earpiece crackles, messed up by the storm. He can't quite hear everything coming through, but it ain't hard to figure it's little sister again, asking for another update. Girl don't know when to quit. "Say again," he yells.
"Time's running out," she says, voice almost sing-song in that way she gets that's downright irritating. Still, mostly she only uses it when things are bad.
"Gotcha. Workin' on it," he says, even as he hauls another gorram settler out of the dust-bath he's taking. Some of these idiots can't even make it the last few steps to Serenity's hold.
"Captain's back aboard. Work faster," he hears, before the radio goes out altogether.
2 -
"Sir," a discreet, hushed voice says behind him.
He turns. "Yes?"
Navigation Officer Bai smiles awkwardly. "We're drifting slightly off-course again. There seems to be an ongoing glitch in the program."
"Can you fix it?"
Her smile wavers at the edges. "I've tried, but so far I can only get temporary patches. At this point, we need a program specialist to come up and try to get to the root of it."
"Do we have one aboard?"
"Yes, luckily. It's just…she's known to be - difficult."
Of course she is. It would be too easy otherwise. "Difficult how?"
Now Bai's smile almost looks real, perhaps even playful. "She has a reputation for disliking authority."
Authority. He manages not to laugh at the word. He'd hardly call himself authority on this ship. If it isn't the remnants of the Earth government sending needless communiqués and demands, it's the fledgling New Allied Worlds authorities insisting on updates and status reports, and sending reminders that he's transporting Top Level Refugees with special needs, eclectic whims, override privileges and ultimate authority.
And those Top Level Refugees certainly don't hesitate to make demands for more water, more food, more heat, more space, more speed, and more guided tours of the bridge. He's beginning to feel less and less like an authority and more like a sub-contracted mass transit driver.
This is the last run, he tells himself. As soon as they land on Bernadette, he's going to give up his commission and take up farming somewhere far, far away from anyone.
"Sir?"
He shakes the frustration away. "I'll open up a line of communication with her. Maybe I can coax her up here. Open up a channel to her berth."
If he didn't know better, he'd think that perhaps Bai had just winked at him. Before he can ask, he hears, "What? What do you want? I'm working," from the nearest communication station. He turns to find a frazzled woman scowling up at him from his screen.
Charm, he thinks, smiling. This calls for charm. "Ma'am, this is First Officer Andrew Tam. I hope you are well this evening. As I understand it, you're an expert in programming, and we have a slight problem with which we could use your insight."
* * *
The storm has no pattern, except to get exponentially worse. Dust becomes grit, wind turns to howls, whole planet gets eaten up. But no matter how intently she searches, River can't see any other patterns. No dancing spirals of debris. No flickering in and out.
Beneath her, Serenity's engine hums. She closes her eyes, focussing on the familiar rhythm. The engines are beginning to struggle, but the pattern - high hum, low hum, whirr, speed up, slow down, shudder - continues. It's comforting and predictable.
The captain's footsteps also have a predictable pattern, even when his boots are filled with sand. "Captain," she says, without turning away from the controls.
"You ready to go when I say go?"
"Yes. We should go soon."
"Fifteen more minutes. Might be some last-minute folk still out there. Zoe's waiting on them."
Zoe. Also dependable, though far from predictable. She opens her eyes. "We're ready." The ship hums.
3 -
This is not what she expected. Back at the Relocation Lottery Centre, she'd prayed for her name to be called. She'd welcomed the medical tests, the aptitude tests, the endless invasive questions and examinations, all in hope that the results would help her chances. The day she'd been handed those results, her hands had shaken as she'd held the certificate under a dim, flickering bulb.
"Female, Fertile and Healthy, Unattached," the certificate had read, followed by, "Unexceptional Intelligence, Minimal Practical Skills." The last two had been a blow, but the first two had clearly overridden them. Proven fertility had become of exceptional value, particularly among newly-single women. "Lottery Priority 2," had been her designation, an almost unbelievable ranking, barely dreamed possible.
She'd waited, camping in the grim, overcrowded spaces of Lottery Centre Five's Holding and Relocation Barracks. She'd guarded her meagre possessions, waiting for word of the next departure and the day that her name might be called. She'd closed her eyes against the press of humanity, ignoring the desperation and growing tension. She'd leaned against hard walls, constantly sweating, imaging that each rumble of the ground singled another ship departing, leaving her one day closer to her own time.
It had come, beginning with a sharp, "Serra, Caterina!" called during Lottery announcements one sweltering morning. "1100 hours, berth 2159, Exodus II." Other names, other berths had followed, so fast that at first she thought she'd misheard.
But here she is. Another crowded, desperate holding area, though it isn't on familiar land. At first it had been a novelty to be surrounded by a hull so cold to the touch. Now, she's tired of the near-constant shivering, the stink of fear from her fellow Lottery winners, and the half-rations. Months into a hellish journey to a new, promised planet, Caterina sometimes wonders if she made the right choice. Perhaps she should have hunkered down with the Dissenters and accepted her fate as tied to that of Earth.
"Sihnon," someone says to her, hope and want mingling, "it sounds like a good place."
"Yes," she replies, just as she has a thousand times before, to a thousand of her fellow disposable, workhorse bodies. "Yes."
* * *
Basic medical training - how to inject a vaccine, or a liquid anti-viral, how to skin-seal and bind a simple wound - is part of Companion training. Her time on Serenity has expanded on her knowledge, but Inara is not prepared for this sheer volume of people and their needs.
"Simon," she calls, hand holding an oxygen mask over a boy's face, "He's not responding to the oxygen -"
He's there before she finishes, deftly injecting something into the boy's arm. The boy's wheezing eases almost immediately. "Keep him on the oxygen for a few minutes, and then move onto the next one," Simon says, before turning away, moving on.
She is trained in maintaining a façade of collected calm in uncertain situations. She keeps it up now without thinking about it. But everything about Simon's body language says his calm is different - rooted in a profound confidence that he can handle this and worse, that he knows exactly what to do.
Fingers close around hers, jolting her gaze away from Simon. "It's all right." She smiles down at the boy, her free hand stroking through his hair. Grit catches at her skin. "You're safe here. Breath deeply now."
He does, and Inara follows his lead.
4 -
"Your navigation programming is a joke." She doesn't look up from the monitor. "Back-alley, bargain-basement, third-run, cheap-as-shit garbage. Did you scavenge the system from an uncertified technical school?"
First Officer Tam clears his throat. "It's standard issue for the Fourth-Wave Evacuation Fleet."
She scowls. "I should have gone private." She can almost hear Tam biting on his tongue, and for the first time in a while, she grins. She looks up. "Yeah, I know you're thinking I couldn't have afforded it. You're right. I could barely afford the shit-hole fourth-class berth I've been wedged into for the last two months."
"You'd hate to see the general accommodations level. It's - difficult."
She's heard. Hell, she's seen for herself, a brief glimpse of horror. "And yet you have one."
"Unfortunately. Much like I have an unfortunate 'cheap-as-shit' piece of programming garbage that, unfortunately, I must depend on to get my passengers safely to Bernadette where, again, unfortunately, I'll need to deal with various government resettlement bureaucracies."
She grins again. "Fortunately, you have me."
"True."
"You're very restrained," she says as she turns back to the monitor. "Usually by now I've managed to get a few sharp words out of a person."
This time, she can hear his smile. "Ms. Reynolds, restraint has become increasingly necessary on this particular journey."
She surprises herself by almost liking this government lackey.
* * *
Mal nods to Jayne as he drags another evacuee to the hold. "That's enough," he says, and then flicks on his radio. "Zoe, ten minutes!" He waits until he hears her faint, "Sir," in response, then checks her tether's secure.
Inside, it's plain to see they ain't nearly full up to capacity. Partly it's a relief - they won't be turning folks away at least. But -
"Not as many as anticipated," Inara murmurs, coming to stand beside him.
"No."
"You're covered in grit," she says, absently brushing at his shoulders.
"Could be worse." Could be buried in it.
"Yes."
"Any of them die?"
Inara shakes her head, hair full of shine even in the dull light. "No. Simon has done an excellent job, as usual."
He can hear the doubt in her voice. "But?"
She gestures. "We don't have any intact families. Most of them came in alone. They've all lost someone. It's possible that one of the other evacuation ships might have family members, but -"
He nods. Shock. Loss. Grief. It's all coming. Hard.
5 -
Francis keeps to a quiet corner of the kitchen, listening to the cabin stewards gossip, yell instructions, trade tips. Their voices mingle with the sounds of cutlery dropping, plates clanging on counters, the hiss of pressure cookers.
"Cabin 12A, make sure you compliment her hair, she'll leave you the leftovers, and there are always leftovers with her -"
"-so I said the Damson Wine was an especially fine vintage and he actually believed me -"
"If he grabs my ass one more time, he's going to be missing fingers when we make landfall!"
"You'll regret it if you touch him, I hear he was ruthless in securing this passage…"
Technically, he's not supposed to be here, but there are times when he makes himself useful, and besides, everyone says he's special. None of the other kids are taking to ship life so well. He didn't get space-sick, he never gets lost, and even if he can't look out as many viewports as the rich kids, something keeps him excited. It's like he's supposed to be here, like he wasn't made for life planet-side. He's in space, up among stars he'd never been able to see from dusty old Earth.
"Shrimp omelette again for the pissant in cabin 4C," his brother Richard yells, running into the kitchen. "Think I should tell 'im it ain't so much shrimp as reconstituted shrimp-like product?"
The others laugh, and someone starts up a debate about the last time real shrimp had actually existed on Earth.
"Francis Alleyne!"
He looks up, smiling his best smile.
"Get out of this kitchen and to the classroom right now!"
He ducks away from his ma's half-hearted smack, sneezing at the puff of rice flour from her hands. "Going!" Maybe today they'll learn more about space.
* * *
"Sir," she says in affirmative, clicking off her radio and scanning the skyline. Not that she can see much, but there's still the chance a few more figures will resolve out of the dust in the next ten minutes.
This is why Zoe never did quite trust living planet-side. Might be that a ship can be a death-trap, but at least you learn what to maybe expect after half a lifetime living in the Black. But planets - ain't any real way to know what to expect, especially out on the Rim. Maybe Ariel and Londinium and the like have controlled weather, such that even the rain is carefully planned, but that kind of tech ain't out here. Planets - sometimes she wonders how many of them are just waiting to wipe away the humans that try to control them.
No matter how nice a beach might be once in a while, Zoe would rather be shipboard, in atmos built by humans for humans. She ain't idealizing it, mind. Helps if you've got a genius mechanic on your side.
Something flickers in her peripheral vision, and she does a quarter turn to the left, squinting. Sure enough, something's struggling against the wind. Checking her waist tether, she advances one step, two, and finds herself within arm's reach of a kid being dragged by a dog.
She shakes her head. Thing must've heard the engine, 'cause the kid sure ain't following their emergency broadcast signal. "No animals," she can hear Mal saying, almost like he's standing right there.
But hell, he ain't, and the kid maybe ain't moving, but she's still breathing. "Good dog," she yells, through her mask, slipping off her belt and fixing it around the dog's collar. The kid herself barely weighs anything, fitting snugly under Zoe's arm. "Let's go."
They follow her tether back home.
6 -
These days, seems all he ever hears is the sound of one ship after another taking off. Always starts the same - clanging of an alarm signalling impending take-off, the slight rumble of engines gradually becoming a roar. Isn't so much just a sound anymore, either. Whole area shakes with it, even though his burrow isn't close to the launch stations.
Sometimes, he wonders if the entire planet sounds and feels like this - and how much shakes away with each wave of ships leaving the desperate behind.
Back in the early days of exodus, when stories say Earth weren't so bad, folk left in dribbles. Hard to imagine those days - mostly clean air, water enough for everyone, unlimited time outside. Doesn't seem possible, no matter how many captures he sees, that there was a time most would want to stay on Earth.
Today, whole warrens are emptying out faster than he can count. Everyone wants gone, while there's still some kind of resources left for buying onto a ship. Government-subsidy ships, private liners, tiny retrofitted shuttles - people take what's going. He's heard tell of those crammed into holds on ships barely held together, and those living in private estates on high-tech ships for the rich.
He uses his daily twenty-minute Above Ground time to watch for ships, their lights visible even in the thick, red smog. He watches, and thinks about the planet stories shared in the warrens, a kind of warming even when there's nothing to burn. Sihnon, of the shining cities. Bernadette, where there's plenty of work to be had. Greenfall, asking for folk willing to farm.
Some days he thinks on it so hard that his chest starts to tighten up.
"Hey!" Rough hands shake his shoulder. "Your oxy scrubber's failing. Get back down below."
Some days he thinks on it so hard he forgets the air ain't breathable no more, and that's the damn reason his chest is tightening up.
Adam Frye, Warren 1253, Burrow 15-B, trudges back down below to dream of a world without masks.
* * *
It's worrisome that even though she ain't stepped near the hold or outside, she's still finding grit around her eyes and in her hair. She comms the captain again. "Gettin' dusty down here. Things are startin' to get gucked up from outside-in. We gotta leave soon, Cap. Real soon."
There's a pause before he answers, almost too long, but then, "I hear you, Kaylee. Zoe and Jayne're back. We're closed up. Go airborne when you're ready."
"Gotcha, Cap," she says, flicking off the comm. "Come on, now," she murmurs to Serenity. "You can do it. Ain't nothing a little planet-wide permastorm can do to stop you."
Outside, the winds howl, and she shudders. Don't make sense how the settlers managed to stay here for so long, before they caved and sent the evac call. She ain't never heard a planet-wide evac call before - ain't even heard of something like that existing, though Mal had gone real grim, real fast.
"What's it mean?" she'd asked Zoe, hushed-like after Mal had announced the detour.
"Bad business. World trying to spit people out."
Even though she's been keeping the engines working the whole time they've been landed, Serenity don't lift right away. Maybe it's the wind, maybe it's grit, but they've been through worse than this, and Kaylee knows Serenity don't give up easy. "Little extra, now," she says, pushing the engine up close to full burn.
She knows it's going to work when she feels a shudder start down by her feet and work its way up. She sits herself down, wedged in safe against a bumpy ride, and then they're up, moving fast, faster, as fast as they need.
Bracing her hand against the wall, Kaylee looks up at Serenity and smiles.
End