Firefly Fic: No Quarter (1/?)
Title: No Quarter (1/?)
Author: cornfields
Fandom: Firefly
Rating: R (violence, language)
Characters: Jayne, OCs, and a glimpse of River
Author's Note: I've been working on this crazy Firefly AU for quite a while. It entered into this world as the premise for my NaNoWriMo novel that, er, never got written. The first chapter was completed at the end of March, and the second chapter (which has been reworked no less than three times as I worked through Jayne's motives and back story) is mostly finished. I'll post a teaser at the end. Much love to meinterrupted for taking the time to read over the first chapter all those months ago and give her approval. Thanks also for the pokage and prodage, because I need to be poked and proded for fic, yo. :)
==
The boredom was what got to him the most, truth be told.
For three days they'd waited, the long stretch of hours winding before and behind him, eating away at his patience until he itched for something, anything to break the monotony. Not that he often found himself directly involved in any of the action. The primary mission of he and his spotter was to play guardian angel to the grunts in their platoon, to be their eyes when the satellites couldn't see through the cover of cloud, dust, or vegetation. At least when he was on surveillance detail he had the constant communication between himself and his NCO to mark the hours.
But this time it was different; this time they played the part of assassins.
"Anything?" he signed to his spotter -- a startlingly young LCpl who went by the name of Ski -- without taking his eye from the scope.
"Negative," Ski's tinny voice whispered in his ear.
They were ensconced more than 25 klicks deep in enemy territory -- Browncoats, they called themselves -- on a deep ridge north and above a camp Allied Intel identified as one of the largest rebel HQs this side of the Rim. Didn't look like much, from where they were sitting. There were a few tents, with a makeshift shuttle bay and line of heavy artillery draped with camo netting. The rest of the HQ looked to be made up of an abandoned mining station, the wood frame buildings weathered and leaning into the wind. He figured they'd dug in good and deep in an attempt to keep the surface as quiet as possible.
"Two o'clock," Ski warned.
A bedraggled group of five Browncoats left the cover of the trees and entered his sights. It was the first sign of life they'd seen since earlier that morning. He zoomed and auto-focused the lens on one man in particular, the servos within the scope whirring and clicking quietly. The retinal scanner pinged in his ear. "Sgt. Les Hall," the scope intoned in its dry electronic voice, even as images and intel regarding Hall bloomed in front of his eyes. Not his man.
He shifted his gaze and the scope's focus followed. "Sgt. Jerrico Foster," the scope identified. "Wanted: sedition." His lip curled in amusement. "Pvt. Bernice Derringer; LCpl. Sun Lu Tang; PFC William Nancy."
"Our target?" Ski's voice was colored with excitement.
He didn't bother to respond. Instead he watched the five Browncoats through the scope, saw them break apart in the middle of the camp and head in two different directions. Sgts. Hall and Foster entered what looked to be a large dilapidated shack, leaving the scope's sights.
"What you wanna bet he's been holed up here all along?" Ski said, then cursed. "We gonna call in a strike?"
"No," he muttered, his voice merely a croak from long disuse. "We got our orders, kid, and that ain't one of 'em just yet."
If he were to be completely honest with LCpl. Ski, he'd admit that he wasn't quite sure what all their mission would entail, nor if they were expected to make it back to base alive. Intel caught a whiff of something, a meeting arranged between some of the higher-ups on this rock, and those that were even higher-up on the Browncoat chain of command. The meeting was to be stopped at all costs, though taking out the entire HQ was secondary on their list of concerns. The primary target was a Brigadier General by the name of Sung -- a man who had, up until very recently, been an officer in the Alliance.
And that's where Cpl. Jayne Cobb, of the 1st Alliance Force Recon, came in.
Jayne shifted from his rifle and scope at last and rubbed his eyes with one hand; it was the only sign of weariness he'd show in front of the kid. LCpl. Aaron Presbyndouski (thankfully shortened by his instructors to Ski when he was taking the indoc), was one of those disgustingly over-eager, excitable kids who weren't happy until they saw a decent bit of action. Ski had seen plenty of it his first week in as Jayne's spotter; Jayne always caught the best kind, whether or not he got involved in the firefight.
"I've got a bird coming in low, nine o'clock," Ski said. "No official markings. Looks like maybe a short-range shuttle. Puddle jumper."
Jayne rolled his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to work out a kink, and went back to his rifle. He swiveled to the left, the scope whirring as it attempted to scan the shuttle for identifiers. "Could be our guy."
Ski made a noncommittal noise. "Could."
"Model 2517 Jörmungandr shuttle, manufactured by Li Aeronautics; unregistered, call sign unknown," Jayne's scope said quietly, and presented him with a spec drawing of the shuttle, including the craft's potential structural weaknesses. He noticed the price tag and made an appreciative noise; this could definitely be their guy.
The Jörmungandr was amazingly quiet, even for a shuttle of its size. It was sleek, shaped somewhat like a shoehorn, and skinned in a dull black metal. Likely low-sig materials, Jayne figured; the fact that the shuttle was unregistered seemed to support this theory. It swung over their heads once before circling back toward the Browncoat HQ. It went out of sight as it skimmed under the low line of camo netting set up over the shuttle bay.
Jayne and Ski waited in tense silence, keeping all ears and eyes out for any further activity down in the HQ. Finally, three people emerged from beneath the netting.
"There's a kid with them, a girl," Ski hissed in surprise. "Is one of the men the Brigadier?"
Jayne's scope auto-zoomed and focused quickly, the retinal scan pinging within moments. "Maj. Mark Hodgkins, wanted: sedition." That amusing sedition charge once again. "Adult female, identification classified." He blinked in surprise, and zoomed closer on the girl.
She was young, younger than even Ski, her long dark hair caught up in several tight braids that were coiled round and round her head. Her features were delicate, and her large eyes so dark they seemed almost black in the low light of the afternoon. She was wearing a nondescript black uniform: tunic, leggings, combat-grade boots.
Through the scope, Jayne watched her tread between the two Browncoats, each long stride elegant. Every single movement she made seemed purposeful, he thought, as if she had them all carefully planned several steps ahead. He split his attention between the scope's intel and the girl herself as he searched through the scope's available records on the girl's identity in an attempt to discover the classification level, and who had ordered her records classified in the first place. He found himself blocked at every turn; even the reason code was cryptic. She glared at him sullenly from the scope's lone picture ident.
As if aware of his confounded scrutiny, the girl paused in the middle of the camp, her mouth quirking into a frown and her brow furrowing. He began to wonder what was wrong with her, when quite suddenly she tilted her head back, shifting her dark gaze upwards until it pierced him through the lens of the scope. It seemed as if she was looking directly at him--
"Did you verify their idents?" Ski's voice interrupted his disturbing train of thought. "The girl... Brass' daughter?"
"Give me just a gorram second," Jayne growled irritably, tearing his focus from the unnerving girl in order to locate the second man.
The scope's display was a wild swirl of intel, photographs, and pertinent facts. "Target identified: BGen Vincent Sung. Wanted: sedition; fraud; 145,894 counts of murder in the first degree."
"That's our guy," Jayne said, his mouth twisting into a fierce grin.
"You've got the shot," Ski said, his voice low and tense. Jayne could hear the sound of the kid shouldering and thumbing the safety on his own rifle. "Take it. You got a clean fucking shot, Cobb."
Jayne's grin widened as his finger shifted from the guard and curled around the trigger. He tracked Sung's movements through the scope, the two men disappearing and reappearing in his sights as they passed between several buildings. There was a long moment where they were completely out of sight, and Jayne thought he'd missed his opportunity. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding when the two appeared once again in the open. Brigadier Sung said something to Hodgkins before he paused and turned -- to look at the girl who had fallen far behind them, probably -- presenting Jayne with a clear shot of the back of his head.
"Call in the strike," Jayne ordered calmly, and fired. Sung's head cracked apart like an overripe fruit, disintegrating into a pink mist of brain and blood and bone. His body slumped lifelessly to the ground.
As Ski pulled the comm and waved their NCO for backup, the Browncoat HQ below, which had seemed small and devoid of activity for the last three days, erupted into chaos. Soldiers poured out of the few standing buildings, armed to the teeth; the camo net on the artillery shimmied wildly as the weapons were brought into position; and the sound of shuttle engines spooling up all but drowned the whooping of the alarm and the shouted orders. In the midst of it all, the late Brigadier lay in a large, dusty pool of his own blood.
Jayne widened his field of view on the scope, ignoring the quiet pings of the retinal scan as men and women wandered through its range. He was looking for the girl, specifically; the way she had seemed to look at him didn't sit well, though he knew it was next to impossible for her to have seen them or know of their presence. This particular mission came directly from the top, completely off the radar.
"You got anything, kid?" he asked, his voice even.
Ski grunted. "Not a thing besides that sniper check clusterfuck down there, Corporal. They're not even looking in our direction, so it's possible they didn't have an alpha sierra perimeter set up." There was the sound of ground vegetation rustling as the kid reached for something just out of Jayne's peripheral vision. "This is one weak dick operation."
"Prob'ly didn't expect we knew squat 'bout this rock," Jayne opined absently. He was itching something fierce to move out. "I suppose we have the good Brigadier to thank for that."
He watched without further comment as four combat-ready shuttles, one after another, left the cover of their camo net. They split up over the HQ into four different directions, keeping their flight paths low to the forest canopy.
"We got fast movers in atmo," Ski announced with barely-contained glee.
Jayne's scope simultaneously offered specs and options for bringing each shuttle down, but he knew the Alliance birds were better equipped and able to take care of those stragglers. "I'll keep an eye out. Collect your go se and prepare to move," Jayne ordered, keeping his eye on the HQ below.
Just as he was beginning to wonder again about the girl and the Jörmungandr shuttle that the Brigadier had flown, he could hear another engine come online. He zoomed out in enough time to catch sight of the Jörmungandr taking off and roaring into the the sky at the steepest possible angle. He followed its breakneck course into the heavens, his finger impatiently tapping the trigger guard as the scope rattled out recommendations for action. At last he toggled the laser sight into the on position with his thumb and applied just enough pressure on the trigger for one click. The tail end of the Jörmungandr was instantly painted in red, marking it as a target.
"Pilot's got balls." Even with the aural implant, Jayne could barely hear Ski's voice above the din.
"That she does," he murmured to himself, imagining the girl at the controls, an expression of fierce determination on her face. He could hear the kid asking him to repeat, but he silently signaled at him to shut his gorram trap.
The Jörmungandr quickly moved well out of the range of his rifle, and then his scope. It was probably already in the process of breaking atmo and landing itself right into Alliance control. He didn't dwell on the thought of what lengths Alliance interrogators would go to to pry information out of the girl, or whomever was piloting that shuttle, once they had it in custody. Despite his training, he didn't much have a taste for torturing women and children.
"Congratulations, gentlemen," their NCO's voice boomed over the implant, causing Ski to curse loudly in surprise, and Jayne's skull to buzz and ache. "Well done."
At that same moment, the first wave of Alliance fighters swarmed onto the Browncoat HQ, kicking the overall deafening volume up another notch. Jayne took his eye away from the scope, silencing at last its constant drone, and winced as he rubbed his temples under his head cover. Only half a klick away, the Alliance was raining twice as much fire and destruction on the Browncoats as they were giving back.
"You are ordered to move out," the NCO continued with authority. "See you back at the base. Report for debriefing at zero eight-hundred."
"C'mon, kid," Jayne grumbled. He banished all thoughts of the girl from his mind and tore his eyes from the destruction below, pushing himself up into a crouching position. He shouldered both his rifle and his ruck pack, ignoring the protests of muscles sore and tight from forced inactivity. "Let's move. We're getting the hell off this BFR."
==
And here is the promised teaser(s) for Chapter 2:
Jayne had barely enough time to make a quick detour for the behind-schedule drop with his platoon contact before Ski alerted him to the presence of brass. The contact and his strung-out cronies had been irate at the delayed delivery, but all Jayne had to do was casually rest his palm on the butt stock of his rifle and the hun dans shut up quick enough. Not like he had control over the circumstances any damn way; besides, he was sure enough to get an earful from Kelly soon as he stepped foot on base, and didn’t care to catch go se from a bunch of junkies.
The Dortmunder always smelled like a hospital to Jayne - cold and clinical, stale recycled air, antibacterial soap, and greasy mess food. It was almost welcome after three days of sweating and lying in the mud.
==
"Sir? Sung is dead."
First Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds sighed, glancing up from his pile of paperwork to find his second standing in the doorway. "Yan Luo?"
She shrugged, but continued to stand stiffly at attention. "Hard to tell who was responsible, sir. We lost Base Omega. One shuttle and the Contact were able to get away. Maybe a handful of the 88th battalion got out, but they're holding radio silence."
Mal smiled slightly. "Zöe." She raised a brow in question, meeting his gaze at last. He pointed at one of the chairs in front of his desk.
"Sir," she said, and at once moved to sit, as if it had been an order.
He sighed again. "How long have we served together, Zöe?"
"Ten years, sir," she said automatically.
"Well, don't you think that affords you a fair bit of slack in the 'sir' department?"
Zöe gave him an are-you-drunk-sir look for half a second before her features smoothed. "No, sir."
==
Yan Luo = Chinese god of Death & ruler of Hell
*wibbles* Back to work. That was the shortest lunch break EVAR. :P
Author: cornfields
Fandom: Firefly
Rating: R (violence, language)
Characters: Jayne, OCs, and a glimpse of River
Author's Note: I've been working on this crazy Firefly AU for quite a while. It entered into this world as the premise for my NaNoWriMo novel that, er, never got written. The first chapter was completed at the end of March, and the second chapter (which has been reworked no less than three times as I worked through Jayne's motives and back story) is mostly finished. I'll post a teaser at the end. Much love to meinterrupted for taking the time to read over the first chapter all those months ago and give her approval. Thanks also for the pokage and prodage, because I need to be poked and proded for fic, yo. :)
==
The boredom was what got to him the most, truth be told.
For three days they'd waited, the long stretch of hours winding before and behind him, eating away at his patience until he itched for something, anything to break the monotony. Not that he often found himself directly involved in any of the action. The primary mission of he and his spotter was to play guardian angel to the grunts in their platoon, to be their eyes when the satellites couldn't see through the cover of cloud, dust, or vegetation. At least when he was on surveillance detail he had the constant communication between himself and his NCO to mark the hours.
But this time it was different; this time they played the part of assassins.
"Anything?" he signed to his spotter -- a startlingly young LCpl who went by the name of Ski -- without taking his eye from the scope.
"Negative," Ski's tinny voice whispered in his ear.
They were ensconced more than 25 klicks deep in enemy territory -- Browncoats, they called themselves -- on a deep ridge north and above a camp Allied Intel identified as one of the largest rebel HQs this side of the Rim. Didn't look like much, from where they were sitting. There were a few tents, with a makeshift shuttle bay and line of heavy artillery draped with camo netting. The rest of the HQ looked to be made up of an abandoned mining station, the wood frame buildings weathered and leaning into the wind. He figured they'd dug in good and deep in an attempt to keep the surface as quiet as possible.
"Two o'clock," Ski warned.
A bedraggled group of five Browncoats left the cover of the trees and entered his sights. It was the first sign of life they'd seen since earlier that morning. He zoomed and auto-focused the lens on one man in particular, the servos within the scope whirring and clicking quietly. The retinal scanner pinged in his ear. "Sgt. Les Hall," the scope intoned in its dry electronic voice, even as images and intel regarding Hall bloomed in front of his eyes. Not his man.
He shifted his gaze and the scope's focus followed. "Sgt. Jerrico Foster," the scope identified. "Wanted: sedition." His lip curled in amusement. "Pvt. Bernice Derringer; LCpl. Sun Lu Tang; PFC William Nancy."
"Our target?" Ski's voice was colored with excitement.
He didn't bother to respond. Instead he watched the five Browncoats through the scope, saw them break apart in the middle of the camp and head in two different directions. Sgts. Hall and Foster entered what looked to be a large dilapidated shack, leaving the scope's sights.
"What you wanna bet he's been holed up here all along?" Ski said, then cursed. "We gonna call in a strike?"
"No," he muttered, his voice merely a croak from long disuse. "We got our orders, kid, and that ain't one of 'em just yet."
If he were to be completely honest with LCpl. Ski, he'd admit that he wasn't quite sure what all their mission would entail, nor if they were expected to make it back to base alive. Intel caught a whiff of something, a meeting arranged between some of the higher-ups on this rock, and those that were even higher-up on the Browncoat chain of command. The meeting was to be stopped at all costs, though taking out the entire HQ was secondary on their list of concerns. The primary target was a Brigadier General by the name of Sung -- a man who had, up until very recently, been an officer in the Alliance.
And that's where Cpl. Jayne Cobb, of the 1st Alliance Force Recon, came in.
Jayne shifted from his rifle and scope at last and rubbed his eyes with one hand; it was the only sign of weariness he'd show in front of the kid. LCpl. Aaron Presbyndouski (thankfully shortened by his instructors to Ski when he was taking the indoc), was one of those disgustingly over-eager, excitable kids who weren't happy until they saw a decent bit of action. Ski had seen plenty of it his first week in as Jayne's spotter; Jayne always caught the best kind, whether or not he got involved in the firefight.
"I've got a bird coming in low, nine o'clock," Ski said. "No official markings. Looks like maybe a short-range shuttle. Puddle jumper."
Jayne rolled his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to work out a kink, and went back to his rifle. He swiveled to the left, the scope whirring as it attempted to scan the shuttle for identifiers. "Could be our guy."
Ski made a noncommittal noise. "Could."
"Model 2517 Jörmungandr shuttle, manufactured by Li Aeronautics; unregistered, call sign unknown," Jayne's scope said quietly, and presented him with a spec drawing of the shuttle, including the craft's potential structural weaknesses. He noticed the price tag and made an appreciative noise; this could definitely be their guy.
The Jörmungandr was amazingly quiet, even for a shuttle of its size. It was sleek, shaped somewhat like a shoehorn, and skinned in a dull black metal. Likely low-sig materials, Jayne figured; the fact that the shuttle was unregistered seemed to support this theory. It swung over their heads once before circling back toward the Browncoat HQ. It went out of sight as it skimmed under the low line of camo netting set up over the shuttle bay.
Jayne and Ski waited in tense silence, keeping all ears and eyes out for any further activity down in the HQ. Finally, three people emerged from beneath the netting.
"There's a kid with them, a girl," Ski hissed in surprise. "Is one of the men the Brigadier?"
Jayne's scope auto-zoomed and focused quickly, the retinal scan pinging within moments. "Maj. Mark Hodgkins, wanted: sedition." That amusing sedition charge once again. "Adult female, identification classified." He blinked in surprise, and zoomed closer on the girl.
She was young, younger than even Ski, her long dark hair caught up in several tight braids that were coiled round and round her head. Her features were delicate, and her large eyes so dark they seemed almost black in the low light of the afternoon. She was wearing a nondescript black uniform: tunic, leggings, combat-grade boots.
Through the scope, Jayne watched her tread between the two Browncoats, each long stride elegant. Every single movement she made seemed purposeful, he thought, as if she had them all carefully planned several steps ahead. He split his attention between the scope's intel and the girl herself as he searched through the scope's available records on the girl's identity in an attempt to discover the classification level, and who had ordered her records classified in the first place. He found himself blocked at every turn; even the reason code was cryptic. She glared at him sullenly from the scope's lone picture ident.
As if aware of his confounded scrutiny, the girl paused in the middle of the camp, her mouth quirking into a frown and her brow furrowing. He began to wonder what was wrong with her, when quite suddenly she tilted her head back, shifting her dark gaze upwards until it pierced him through the lens of the scope. It seemed as if she was looking directly at him--
"Did you verify their idents?" Ski's voice interrupted his disturbing train of thought. "The girl... Brass' daughter?"
"Give me just a gorram second," Jayne growled irritably, tearing his focus from the unnerving girl in order to locate the second man.
The scope's display was a wild swirl of intel, photographs, and pertinent facts. "Target identified: BGen Vincent Sung. Wanted: sedition; fraud; 145,894 counts of murder in the first degree."
"That's our guy," Jayne said, his mouth twisting into a fierce grin.
"You've got the shot," Ski said, his voice low and tense. Jayne could hear the sound of the kid shouldering and thumbing the safety on his own rifle. "Take it. You got a clean fucking shot, Cobb."
Jayne's grin widened as his finger shifted from the guard and curled around the trigger. He tracked Sung's movements through the scope, the two men disappearing and reappearing in his sights as they passed between several buildings. There was a long moment where they were completely out of sight, and Jayne thought he'd missed his opportunity. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding when the two appeared once again in the open. Brigadier Sung said something to Hodgkins before he paused and turned -- to look at the girl who had fallen far behind them, probably -- presenting Jayne with a clear shot of the back of his head.
"Call in the strike," Jayne ordered calmly, and fired. Sung's head cracked apart like an overripe fruit, disintegrating into a pink mist of brain and blood and bone. His body slumped lifelessly to the ground.
As Ski pulled the comm and waved their NCO for backup, the Browncoat HQ below, which had seemed small and devoid of activity for the last three days, erupted into chaos. Soldiers poured out of the few standing buildings, armed to the teeth; the camo net on the artillery shimmied wildly as the weapons were brought into position; and the sound of shuttle engines spooling up all but drowned the whooping of the alarm and the shouted orders. In the midst of it all, the late Brigadier lay in a large, dusty pool of his own blood.
Jayne widened his field of view on the scope, ignoring the quiet pings of the retinal scan as men and women wandered through its range. He was looking for the girl, specifically; the way she had seemed to look at him didn't sit well, though he knew it was next to impossible for her to have seen them or know of their presence. This particular mission came directly from the top, completely off the radar.
"You got anything, kid?" he asked, his voice even.
Ski grunted. "Not a thing besides that sniper check clusterfuck down there, Corporal. They're not even looking in our direction, so it's possible they didn't have an alpha sierra perimeter set up." There was the sound of ground vegetation rustling as the kid reached for something just out of Jayne's peripheral vision. "This is one weak dick operation."
"Prob'ly didn't expect we knew squat 'bout this rock," Jayne opined absently. He was itching something fierce to move out. "I suppose we have the good Brigadier to thank for that."
He watched without further comment as four combat-ready shuttles, one after another, left the cover of their camo net. They split up over the HQ into four different directions, keeping their flight paths low to the forest canopy.
"We got fast movers in atmo," Ski announced with barely-contained glee.
Jayne's scope simultaneously offered specs and options for bringing each shuttle down, but he knew the Alliance birds were better equipped and able to take care of those stragglers. "I'll keep an eye out. Collect your go se and prepare to move," Jayne ordered, keeping his eye on the HQ below.
Just as he was beginning to wonder again about the girl and the Jörmungandr shuttle that the Brigadier had flown, he could hear another engine come online. He zoomed out in enough time to catch sight of the Jörmungandr taking off and roaring into the the sky at the steepest possible angle. He followed its breakneck course into the heavens, his finger impatiently tapping the trigger guard as the scope rattled out recommendations for action. At last he toggled the laser sight into the on position with his thumb and applied just enough pressure on the trigger for one click. The tail end of the Jörmungandr was instantly painted in red, marking it as a target.
"Pilot's got balls." Even with the aural implant, Jayne could barely hear Ski's voice above the din.
"That she does," he murmured to himself, imagining the girl at the controls, an expression of fierce determination on her face. He could hear the kid asking him to repeat, but he silently signaled at him to shut his gorram trap.
The Jörmungandr quickly moved well out of the range of his rifle, and then his scope. It was probably already in the process of breaking atmo and landing itself right into Alliance control. He didn't dwell on the thought of what lengths Alliance interrogators would go to to pry information out of the girl, or whomever was piloting that shuttle, once they had it in custody. Despite his training, he didn't much have a taste for torturing women and children.
"Congratulations, gentlemen," their NCO's voice boomed over the implant, causing Ski to curse loudly in surprise, and Jayne's skull to buzz and ache. "Well done."
At that same moment, the first wave of Alliance fighters swarmed onto the Browncoat HQ, kicking the overall deafening volume up another notch. Jayne took his eye away from the scope, silencing at last its constant drone, and winced as he rubbed his temples under his head cover. Only half a klick away, the Alliance was raining twice as much fire and destruction on the Browncoats as they were giving back.
"You are ordered to move out," the NCO continued with authority. "See you back at the base. Report for debriefing at zero eight-hundred."
"C'mon, kid," Jayne grumbled. He banished all thoughts of the girl from his mind and tore his eyes from the destruction below, pushing himself up into a crouching position. He shouldered both his rifle and his ruck pack, ignoring the protests of muscles sore and tight from forced inactivity. "Let's move. We're getting the hell off this BFR."
==
And here is the promised teaser(s) for Chapter 2:
Jayne had barely enough time to make a quick detour for the behind-schedule drop with his platoon contact before Ski alerted him to the presence of brass. The contact and his strung-out cronies had been irate at the delayed delivery, but all Jayne had to do was casually rest his palm on the butt stock of his rifle and the hun dans shut up quick enough. Not like he had control over the circumstances any damn way; besides, he was sure enough to get an earful from Kelly soon as he stepped foot on base, and didn’t care to catch go se from a bunch of junkies.
The Dortmunder always smelled like a hospital to Jayne - cold and clinical, stale recycled air, antibacterial soap, and greasy mess food. It was almost welcome after three days of sweating and lying in the mud.
==
"Sir? Sung is dead."
First Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds sighed, glancing up from his pile of paperwork to find his second standing in the doorway. "Yan Luo?"
She shrugged, but continued to stand stiffly at attention. "Hard to tell who was responsible, sir. We lost Base Omega. One shuttle and the Contact were able to get away. Maybe a handful of the 88th battalion got out, but they're holding radio silence."
Mal smiled slightly. "Zöe." She raised a brow in question, meeting his gaze at last. He pointed at one of the chairs in front of his desk.
"Sir," she said, and at once moved to sit, as if it had been an order.
He sighed again. "How long have we served together, Zöe?"
"Ten years, sir," she said automatically.
"Well, don't you think that affords you a fair bit of slack in the 'sir' department?"
Zöe gave him an are-you-drunk-sir look for half a second before her features smoothed. "No, sir."
==
Yan Luo = Chinese god of Death & ruler of Hell
*wibbles* Back to work. That was the shortest lunch break EVAR. :P