Fic: Sticking Point (1/9)
Rating: PG13
Characters: Mal, Wash, Zoe, Bester, Kaylee.
Word count: ~1400 for 1/9. In entire: ~29,500
Summary: Set early pre-series. Serenity is stuck on the ground with major engine trouble. No one's exactly tickled about that fact, some lots less than others. In fact, some find it outright crazy-making. (Third of six in a Mal & Wash story arc. Written for 2by2fics . Prompts: Pride & Answer.)
A.N.: The seed for this comes from two snips of Firefly dialogue. The first is in the following exchange between Mal and Bester in Out of Gas:
Mal: (Walking in on Bester and Kaylee going at it in the engine room.) What's this I hear about another delay? ... You do realize we been parked on this rock near a week longer 'n we planned?
Bester: Yeah, but- There's stuff to do.
Mal: As for example that job we got waitin' for us on Paquin. When we landed here you said you just needed a few days before we were space worthy again and is there somethin' wrong with your bunk?
And this between Zoe and Wash at the beginning of Shindig, as they are landing on Persephone:
Zoe: Heard tell though, we're gonna stay a while on Persephone, upwards of a week maybe.
Wash: Shiny!
Zoe: (Seriously) Yeah? Thought you'd get land-crazy, that long in port.
Wash: Probably. But I been sane a long while now, and change is good.
~*~
Eight days stuck on this rock, and Mal couldn't decide which of his crewmen he was gonna shoot first, the mechanic or the pilot. T'was a real conundrum. He needed his mechanic to fix his ship, and once fixed, he needed his pilot to get them back into the sky. And while in the grand scheme of things, the mechanic probably deserved shooting more, the pilot was, his own personal self, driving Mal kuangzhe de, and giving him no small portion of anxiousness. Didn't help that Renshaw, that poaching hun dan, had lit down in his all-too-perfectly flyin' boat yesterday, and had been sniffin' around after the man.
After the past eight days he'd just had a lesser man - or a man without what Mal's mama had named “pig-headed pride” - might be havin' second thoughts about this whole sailing-just-out-of-the-Alliance's-reach notion. 'Cuz a ship needed to be aloft for that to work out, and it had been over a week since flight had been an option.
~Day 1~
First day down, he hadn't been entertaining murderous notions of any sort, mostly on account of being grateful to be alive. If he had been, though, Mal knew his pilot would not have been their focus, as he was pretty gorram sure the guy had just kept them all from a fiery demise. Could definitely not say the same about the mechanic.
Mal'd had no practical reason to be on the bridge. But in the six months Serenity had been flying, it had become his habit to at least make an appearance there when they were hitting or leaving atmo. Couldn't say why, exactly. Wasn't like he could take the helm and save the day if Wash came up against a situation he couldn't handle. Zoe might have had a chance, being born and raised on a heavy transport. But she was no pilot, by training or inclination. (Otherwise, there would not now be an array of plastic dinosaurs arranged in strangely evocative patterns on the helm.) She often joined Mal, though, standing behind him, one hand on the back of the co-pilot's chair. It was true that landings and take-offs did tend to be among the more exciting parts of this whole space-going venture. This particular landing being a case in point.
Wasn't much to draw Serenity to Wyoming, the moon spinning furthest out around the gas giant, Heinlein. Not much more than a rock with some air, although ten years ago it had been self-sufficient, with just enough agriculture and industry to keep its hardy people fed and busy. However, having spent what little treasure it had, in lives and resources, on the losing side of the War, it now languished under the non-benign neglect of its supposedly compassionate Alliance overseers. Not much of a market, either black, white, or gray. But for someone in Mal's line of work it still remained, in the right part of its primary's orbit, a convenient, unremarkable drop-off site. That was Serenity's business here today, lighting down just long enough to drop off one package and pick up another to carry on to her next port of call on Paquin. No coin coming their way, the job being just one of those favors Mal and Monty tossed back and forth between them.
“Just a touch an' go this time, Wash,” he declared as he settled into the co-pilot's seat, peering through the front screen at the rapidly approaching dun colored moon. “Zoe 'n' me 'll make the swap, might take a little look 'round. Should be no more'n a few hours though. You lay us down a course for Paquin, have us ready to go.” Mal felt rather than heard Zoe come up to stand behind him. He glanced back at her, noting her slightly narrowed eyes sweep over the helm's tell-tales. She'd still not warmed to their pilot, seemingly unable to find it in herself to extend even the smallest measure of trust toward the man.
“Paquin, yep,” Wash replied a bit absently, eyes fixed on his board, fists tight on Serenity's quivering yoke. He'd been tinkering with the guidance hydraulics for months, but entering atmo still set them to rattling pretty hard. Growing friction heated her belly and nose, dull red flares flickering up over the forward screen.
In the thickening atmosphere, Wash brought the pods' turbine blades on-line, further slowing the rush of the world coming toward them. Then Serenity's nose made a sudden unexpected dip to the left, quickly coming back up at Wash's corrective twist of the yoke. His right hand darted up, hitting the comm connection to open it ship-wide, then down, to play with the toggles Mal recognized as the jets' power feed controls.
“Hey, Bester, what's up down there?” he inquired. “Just lost about forty percent of thrust from my port pod.”
Mal shot a quick glance at his pilot's face. His expression matched his voice, calm, unconcerned. So maybe losing some thrust was no big deal. Though forty percent seemed a tad on the high side.
“Um, yeah, hang on, there's a-” Bester's voice, a little more anxious than Mal cared for, was followed by sharp bang. With great assurance, the man then announced, “That's got it.”
Serenity abruptly lurched to the right - starboard, as Mal was training himself to think - and then kept spinning, fast, seemingly intent on corkscrewing herself straight into the ground. The ship's internal gravity kept things inside her more or less steady, but the world rapidly whirling toward them definitely inspired in Mal some internal uneasiness.
“I would say that it is not got. Port's still at sixty, starboard's now only giving me ten.” Wash's voice, while still calm, had become more clipped. “Can you clear the-”
“Screw you, Washburne! I'm workin' on it!”
“Fine, okay. Look, dirt is less than thirty seconds away. I'm gonna boost the screens.”
“But that could fry the grav damp!”
“Yep. Hang onto something, everyone.”
Part of Mal desperately wanted to object, 'cuz while he had only a vague notion as to the grav damp's purpose, he was gorram sure he didn't want any part of his boat fried. But he kept his mouth shut, remembering Wash had got him and the damaged shuttle down in one piece on Ita, and the guy's hands were moving with the same deft assurance on the helm as they had then. 'Sides, a goodly portion of his breath had been snatched when his innards had swooped up into his throat when Wash diddled the grav slider. He heard Zoe gasp softly behind him, became aware of both her hands clenching, pale knuckled, on either side of his head on the back of his chair. A crash and a pained squawk over the still open comm let Mal know that his mechanic had failed to take Wash's advice.
Wash managed to stop Serenity's spin and get her nose back up, seemingly by sheer muscular effort. But the ground still came at them mighty fast, and they landed hard, the shock absorbers on the landing gear squealing in metallic pain as they over-flexed. Serenity's undercarriage bumped dirt, a deep, drum-like note echoing through her belly. Jarring as it was, that was all Mal heard; no cracks or snaps or ripping sounds. Pale yellow dust billowed up around them, obscuring the forward view. Wash, fingers flying through the shut-down sequence, muttered imprecations in impressively colorful Chinese. Behind him, Mal could hear Zoe take a series of deep breaths before she said with a rather peculiar tension, “I'll be in my bunk.”
Surprised, Mal swiveled his seat around, but she was already vanishing through the outer bridge hatch. “Huh,” he said toward her retreating back. After unclenching the death-grip he had on his armrests, he stood, turning to his pilot saying, “Gonna go see if Bester got his neck broke,” and found he was addressing the man's backside as he crawled underneath the helm.
“Uh huh,” Wash replied, voice muffled. “I'll be down as soon as I figure out what I just blew. Could be a capacitor. Something's spilling ozone.”
That explained the lightening-storm tang in the air. Mal nodded at Wash's buttocks, and set off at a clattering trot for the engine room.
~*~
hun dan - bastard
kuangzhe de - insane
On to Day Two...
Characters: Mal, Wash, Zoe, Bester, Kaylee.
Word count: ~1400 for 1/9. In entire: ~29,500
Summary: Set early pre-series. Serenity is stuck on the ground with major engine trouble. No one's exactly tickled about that fact, some lots less than others. In fact, some find it outright crazy-making. (Third of six in a Mal & Wash story arc. Written for 2by2fics . Prompts: Pride & Answer.)
A.N.: The seed for this comes from two snips of Firefly dialogue. The first is in the following exchange between Mal and Bester in Out of Gas:
Mal: (Walking in on Bester and Kaylee going at it in the engine room.) What's this I hear about another delay? ... You do realize we been parked on this rock near a week longer 'n we planned?
Bester: Yeah, but- There's stuff to do.
Mal: As for example that job we got waitin' for us on Paquin. When we landed here you said you just needed a few days before we were space worthy again and is there somethin' wrong with your bunk?
And this between Zoe and Wash at the beginning of Shindig, as they are landing on Persephone:
Zoe: Heard tell though, we're gonna stay a while on Persephone, upwards of a week maybe.
Wash: Shiny!
Zoe: (Seriously) Yeah? Thought you'd get land-crazy, that long in port.
Wash: Probably. But I been sane a long while now, and change is good.
~*~
Eight days stuck on this rock, and Mal couldn't decide which of his crewmen he was gonna shoot first, the mechanic or the pilot. T'was a real conundrum. He needed his mechanic to fix his ship, and once fixed, he needed his pilot to get them back into the sky. And while in the grand scheme of things, the mechanic probably deserved shooting more, the pilot was, his own personal self, driving Mal kuangzhe de, and giving him no small portion of anxiousness. Didn't help that Renshaw, that poaching hun dan, had lit down in his all-too-perfectly flyin' boat yesterday, and had been sniffin' around after the man.
After the past eight days he'd just had a lesser man - or a man without what Mal's mama had named “pig-headed pride” - might be havin' second thoughts about this whole sailing-just-out-of-the-Alliance's-reach notion. 'Cuz a ship needed to be aloft for that to work out, and it had been over a week since flight had been an option.
~Day 1~
First day down, he hadn't been entertaining murderous notions of any sort, mostly on account of being grateful to be alive. If he had been, though, Mal knew his pilot would not have been their focus, as he was pretty gorram sure the guy had just kept them all from a fiery demise. Could definitely not say the same about the mechanic.
Mal'd had no practical reason to be on the bridge. But in the six months Serenity had been flying, it had become his habit to at least make an appearance there when they were hitting or leaving atmo. Couldn't say why, exactly. Wasn't like he could take the helm and save the day if Wash came up against a situation he couldn't handle. Zoe might have had a chance, being born and raised on a heavy transport. But she was no pilot, by training or inclination. (Otherwise, there would not now be an array of plastic dinosaurs arranged in strangely evocative patterns on the helm.) She often joined Mal, though, standing behind him, one hand on the back of the co-pilot's chair. It was true that landings and take-offs did tend to be among the more exciting parts of this whole space-going venture. This particular landing being a case in point.
Wasn't much to draw Serenity to Wyoming, the moon spinning furthest out around the gas giant, Heinlein. Not much more than a rock with some air, although ten years ago it had been self-sufficient, with just enough agriculture and industry to keep its hardy people fed and busy. However, having spent what little treasure it had, in lives and resources, on the losing side of the War, it now languished under the non-benign neglect of its supposedly compassionate Alliance overseers. Not much of a market, either black, white, or gray. But for someone in Mal's line of work it still remained, in the right part of its primary's orbit, a convenient, unremarkable drop-off site. That was Serenity's business here today, lighting down just long enough to drop off one package and pick up another to carry on to her next port of call on Paquin. No coin coming their way, the job being just one of those favors Mal and Monty tossed back and forth between them.
“Just a touch an' go this time, Wash,” he declared as he settled into the co-pilot's seat, peering through the front screen at the rapidly approaching dun colored moon. “Zoe 'n' me 'll make the swap, might take a little look 'round. Should be no more'n a few hours though. You lay us down a course for Paquin, have us ready to go.” Mal felt rather than heard Zoe come up to stand behind him. He glanced back at her, noting her slightly narrowed eyes sweep over the helm's tell-tales. She'd still not warmed to their pilot, seemingly unable to find it in herself to extend even the smallest measure of trust toward the man.
“Paquin, yep,” Wash replied a bit absently, eyes fixed on his board, fists tight on Serenity's quivering yoke. He'd been tinkering with the guidance hydraulics for months, but entering atmo still set them to rattling pretty hard. Growing friction heated her belly and nose, dull red flares flickering up over the forward screen.
In the thickening atmosphere, Wash brought the pods' turbine blades on-line, further slowing the rush of the world coming toward them. Then Serenity's nose made a sudden unexpected dip to the left, quickly coming back up at Wash's corrective twist of the yoke. His right hand darted up, hitting the comm connection to open it ship-wide, then down, to play with the toggles Mal recognized as the jets' power feed controls.
“Hey, Bester, what's up down there?” he inquired. “Just lost about forty percent of thrust from my port pod.”
Mal shot a quick glance at his pilot's face. His expression matched his voice, calm, unconcerned. So maybe losing some thrust was no big deal. Though forty percent seemed a tad on the high side.
“Um, yeah, hang on, there's a-” Bester's voice, a little more anxious than Mal cared for, was followed by sharp bang. With great assurance, the man then announced, “That's got it.”
Serenity abruptly lurched to the right - starboard, as Mal was training himself to think - and then kept spinning, fast, seemingly intent on corkscrewing herself straight into the ground. The ship's internal gravity kept things inside her more or less steady, but the world rapidly whirling toward them definitely inspired in Mal some internal uneasiness.
“I would say that it is not got. Port's still at sixty, starboard's now only giving me ten.” Wash's voice, while still calm, had become more clipped. “Can you clear the-”
“Screw you, Washburne! I'm workin' on it!”
“Fine, okay. Look, dirt is less than thirty seconds away. I'm gonna boost the screens.”
“But that could fry the grav damp!”
“Yep. Hang onto something, everyone.”
Part of Mal desperately wanted to object, 'cuz while he had only a vague notion as to the grav damp's purpose, he was gorram sure he didn't want any part of his boat fried. But he kept his mouth shut, remembering Wash had got him and the damaged shuttle down in one piece on Ita, and the guy's hands were moving with the same deft assurance on the helm as they had then. 'Sides, a goodly portion of his breath had been snatched when his innards had swooped up into his throat when Wash diddled the grav slider. He heard Zoe gasp softly behind him, became aware of both her hands clenching, pale knuckled, on either side of his head on the back of his chair. A crash and a pained squawk over the still open comm let Mal know that his mechanic had failed to take Wash's advice.
Wash managed to stop Serenity's spin and get her nose back up, seemingly by sheer muscular effort. But the ground still came at them mighty fast, and they landed hard, the shock absorbers on the landing gear squealing in metallic pain as they over-flexed. Serenity's undercarriage bumped dirt, a deep, drum-like note echoing through her belly. Jarring as it was, that was all Mal heard; no cracks or snaps or ripping sounds. Pale yellow dust billowed up around them, obscuring the forward view. Wash, fingers flying through the shut-down sequence, muttered imprecations in impressively colorful Chinese. Behind him, Mal could hear Zoe take a series of deep breaths before she said with a rather peculiar tension, “I'll be in my bunk.”
Surprised, Mal swiveled his seat around, but she was already vanishing through the outer bridge hatch. “Huh,” he said toward her retreating back. After unclenching the death-grip he had on his armrests, he stood, turning to his pilot saying, “Gonna go see if Bester got his neck broke,” and found he was addressing the man's backside as he crawled underneath the helm.
“Uh huh,” Wash replied, voice muffled. “I'll be down as soon as I figure out what I just blew. Could be a capacitor. Something's spilling ozone.”
That explained the lightening-storm tang in the air. Mal nodded at Wash's buttocks, and set off at a clattering trot for the engine room.
~*~
hun dan - bastard
kuangzhe de - insane
On to Day Two...