Someone Else's Sky (2/?)
At long last, here's part 2 of the intro fic. *grin*
Part II
It was a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, they didn't know much of nothing about these folks and their fancy city, but on the other, probably wasn't a good idea to look like hostiles right off the ramp. River seemed to think they were trustworthy and River was a reader, but then River was also still crazy so Mal wasn't much more inclined to trust her unconditionally than Jayne was, even if he was less inclined to ever say so where Jayne might hear.
In the end it was decided that them as carried would carry one piece, and one piece only. And absolutely nobody was to fire on nobody without Mal giving the say-so.
It seemed like a fine plan 'til Jayne showed up in the cargo bay carrying Vera. One of these days he was gonna have to have a talk with Jayne about his fondness for that gun. And he'd have to make sure that Jayne was disarmed whilst they were having it too, seeing as how he wouldn't put it past him to take offense and put a few holes in him over a gun. "Jayne. I said we didn't want to look hostile. How is that not hostile?"
"It ain't hostile 'cause I ain't firing her," Jayne retorted with a scowl and a sickly-fake smile. "Just like you *ordered*." The tone of his voice made it pretty gorramned clear what Jayne thought of them orders. "Honestly, Mal, you think an itty bitty little pistol's gonna do one gorramn bit of good if'n we open that door and there's a passel of Alliance troops waiting for us?"
"Maybe not, but it seems to me they'd be a mite less likely to start shooting if'n that gun ain't the first thing they see."
"Cap'n's right," Zoe put in, holstering her own six-shooter as she came to stand at his side. Not for the first time, Mal was a damned sight glad she was on his side. "We walk down that ramp carrying anything that ain't obviously for self-defense, we're gonna have trouble. And no point in borrowing it--no telling how long we're gonna have to stay here."
Jayne grumbled a bit more under his breath, but moved to comply.
"The knife too," Mal added, suddenly recalling prior incidents.
The mercenary stopped warily. "What about it?"
"The knife. Leave it. 'Long with anything else you might've got taped under that shirt."
Jayne's shoulders slumped and he shot a glare in Mal's direction before heading back up the catwalk towards his bunk.
Turning, the captain surveyed the rest of his crew. Zoe stood at attention, hand hovering over the pistol at her hip and Wash at her back. Kaylee was fidgeting a few feet away, but stopped when Inara--who had finally decided to grace them all with her presence--laid a soothing hand on one shoulder and the mechanic shot her a grateful look. The others were all milling about, 'cept for River, who had her hands and her ears pressed up against the door of the airlock, a funny little smile on her crazy face.
Noticing his eyes on her, she turned the smile on him and said lazily, "They rescued her from the waves, from oblivion and memory. Now it's her job to keep them safe from the storm."
Huh. A bit frightful how much her odd sayings seemed to make sense, these days.
Brown eyes locked on him with an unnerving amount of perception in them, reading his thoughts and speeching them back at him in her own odd way. "She's sister to Serenity in that regard--you rescued her, and now she rescues you. Atlantis will love you too, if you let her."
Make that deeply frightful.
When Jayne reappeared with a few less bulges in his apparel and one handgun appropriately holstered, Mal decided they were as ready as they were ever gonna get, and hit the button to open the bay doors. Then, he stepped back to stand with his crew. He was a little nervous 'bout the absence of a cargo, not to mention the presence of the Doc and his sister, but if'n she were wrong about these folks being safe, there weren't nothing he could do about it now.
Especially not with four men in some kinda uniforms waiting for 'em at the bottom of the ramp, hefting what looked like machine guns.
Huh. Maybe he should've let Jayne keep Vera after all.
~+~+~+~
John Sheppard wasn't sure what he was expecting to see when the doors on the strange ship opened, but a floating Halloween party definitely wasn't it.
Of course, what was really disturbing wasn't the cowboy or cowgirl or the Arabian princess (or whoever she was supposed to be). It was the blond guy in the Hawaiian shirt, the petite girl in mechanic's coveralls, the tall fella in a t-shirt and what looked like cargo pants. He'd seen people in this galaxy who looked like they'd just walked out of a history book, but those three...they looked more like they could've just stepped through the Stargate from Earth.
But then again...considering the name the captain had given Elizabeth, maybe he should've been expecting that.
"Which one of you is Malcolm Reynolds?" John asked warily, lowering his gun a little but not so much that he couldn't bring it right back up if he had to.
The would-be gunslinger in the long brown coat cleared his throat and stepped forward. "That'd be me."
The woman behind him in matching gunslinger garb snapped to attention, one hand hovering over her holster and her eyes fixed warily on John. The big guy was flexing an apparently itchy trigger finger too, but of the two of them Sheppard had a feeling that it was the woman who was more dangerous. Maybe it was the way her level, challenging stare reminded him of Teyla.
Of the entire group, they were the only three that looked dangerous, but John knew better than to underestimate anyone. Not even the petite one with the innocently nervous expression, the waifish girl in the corner talking to herself, the Hawaiian-shirt guy or the lady in formal wear. Still, even if Reynolds and his lieutenant did take the whole cowboy thing seriously enough to be quick draws, there wasn't much they could do against four working P-90s and from the look on the captain's face, he knew it.
Relaxing a little, John signaled for the rest of the security team to lower their weapons and let his drop to his side. "Lieutentant Colonel John Sheppard. Welcome to Atlantis."
His own posture easing, Reynolds took a step forward and cautiously accepted the offered hand. "Y'know, it's a funny thing. How come I never heard of a world called Atlantis?"
John had no idea: most of the folks around the galaxy had at least heard of it, even if they didn't know much about it. "Well, there is the whole submerged-for-ten-thousand-years thing..." he speculated dryly.
The big burly guy behind Reynolds snorted. "Ten thousand years? Jian ta de gui--weren't nobody building cities ten thousand years ago, let alone submerging 'em. Hell, even the Alliance is only 'bout ten years old, much as they might like to pretend they been around forever."
The captain shot him a look. "Jayne, what did I tell you about letting that mouth of yours do the talking?"
Now this was interesting: he'd heard about people like that, who'd never heard of Ancients or stargates, but he'd never actually met one since he got roped into the Atlantis expedition and ceased to be one. Of course, that wasn't half as intriguing as the fact that the other language the big guy had just lapsed into sounded vaguely...Chinese. Or maybe John had just watched one too many bad kung fu movies with subtitles.
Reynolds turned back. "Look, I'll be honest with you. Ain't many in my crew got reason to love the Alliance, but as long as they let us go our way, we'd be happy to keep to ourselves and not cause no trouble."
"That's, uh...good to know, I guess..." Maybe he should've asked Dr. Weir to come along--as much as John was actually understanding of their conversation, they might as well have been speaking another language the whole damned time. "...and what Alliance would that be, exactly?" Maybe they were from some world controlled by the Genii.
"Wait..." The petite girl in coveralls piped up, taking a step forward. "How can you not...they're the Alliance. What other Alliance is there?"
"There is no Alliance here," the girl in the corner interjected, answering before John could even try to. She was thinner than Elizabeth with long brown hair, dressed in some sort of flowy sundress. Up until now, she'd been half-hiding behind the shortest of the men--the one dressed up and frowning like an uppity Puritan confronted with a boy playing hooky from Sunday School--but as she spoke she stepped forward on delicate bare feet. The Puritan tried to stop her with a word of protest--"River..."--but she ignored him.
"East and West: they pretend to be friends but really they're fighting a war with no weapons, only words and thoughts. Too busy racing to find who can eat up the world first to see the danger from the stars."
Okay, when the girl speaking in stream-of-consciousness made more sense than the rest of her party--not to mention knew way too much about Earth politics for an alien--then he definitely needed a translator.
He tapped his earpiece. "Weir, this is Sheppard--I'm bringing them up now."
"Understood," her voice sounded crisply in his ear.
Yep, this was going to be interesting.
(Continued...)
Part II
It was a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, they didn't know much of nothing about these folks and their fancy city, but on the other, probably wasn't a good idea to look like hostiles right off the ramp. River seemed to think they were trustworthy and River was a reader, but then River was also still crazy so Mal wasn't much more inclined to trust her unconditionally than Jayne was, even if he was less inclined to ever say so where Jayne might hear.
In the end it was decided that them as carried would carry one piece, and one piece only. And absolutely nobody was to fire on nobody without Mal giving the say-so.
It seemed like a fine plan 'til Jayne showed up in the cargo bay carrying Vera. One of these days he was gonna have to have a talk with Jayne about his fondness for that gun. And he'd have to make sure that Jayne was disarmed whilst they were having it too, seeing as how he wouldn't put it past him to take offense and put a few holes in him over a gun. "Jayne. I said we didn't want to look hostile. How is that not hostile?"
"It ain't hostile 'cause I ain't firing her," Jayne retorted with a scowl and a sickly-fake smile. "Just like you *ordered*." The tone of his voice made it pretty gorramned clear what Jayne thought of them orders. "Honestly, Mal, you think an itty bitty little pistol's gonna do one gorramn bit of good if'n we open that door and there's a passel of Alliance troops waiting for us?"
"Maybe not, but it seems to me they'd be a mite less likely to start shooting if'n that gun ain't the first thing they see."
"Cap'n's right," Zoe put in, holstering her own six-shooter as she came to stand at his side. Not for the first time, Mal was a damned sight glad she was on his side. "We walk down that ramp carrying anything that ain't obviously for self-defense, we're gonna have trouble. And no point in borrowing it--no telling how long we're gonna have to stay here."
Jayne grumbled a bit more under his breath, but moved to comply.
"The knife too," Mal added, suddenly recalling prior incidents.
The mercenary stopped warily. "What about it?"
"The knife. Leave it. 'Long with anything else you might've got taped under that shirt."
Jayne's shoulders slumped and he shot a glare in Mal's direction before heading back up the catwalk towards his bunk.
Turning, the captain surveyed the rest of his crew. Zoe stood at attention, hand hovering over the pistol at her hip and Wash at her back. Kaylee was fidgeting a few feet away, but stopped when Inara--who had finally decided to grace them all with her presence--laid a soothing hand on one shoulder and the mechanic shot her a grateful look. The others were all milling about, 'cept for River, who had her hands and her ears pressed up against the door of the airlock, a funny little smile on her crazy face.
Noticing his eyes on her, she turned the smile on him and said lazily, "They rescued her from the waves, from oblivion and memory. Now it's her job to keep them safe from the storm."
Huh. A bit frightful how much her odd sayings seemed to make sense, these days.
Brown eyes locked on him with an unnerving amount of perception in them, reading his thoughts and speeching them back at him in her own odd way. "She's sister to Serenity in that regard--you rescued her, and now she rescues you. Atlantis will love you too, if you let her."
Make that deeply frightful.
When Jayne reappeared with a few less bulges in his apparel and one handgun appropriately holstered, Mal decided they were as ready as they were ever gonna get, and hit the button to open the bay doors. Then, he stepped back to stand with his crew. He was a little nervous 'bout the absence of a cargo, not to mention the presence of the Doc and his sister, but if'n she were wrong about these folks being safe, there weren't nothing he could do about it now.
Especially not with four men in some kinda uniforms waiting for 'em at the bottom of the ramp, hefting what looked like machine guns.
Huh. Maybe he should've let Jayne keep Vera after all.
~+~+~+~
John Sheppard wasn't sure what he was expecting to see when the doors on the strange ship opened, but a floating Halloween party definitely wasn't it.
Of course, what was really disturbing wasn't the cowboy or cowgirl or the Arabian princess (or whoever she was supposed to be). It was the blond guy in the Hawaiian shirt, the petite girl in mechanic's coveralls, the tall fella in a t-shirt and what looked like cargo pants. He'd seen people in this galaxy who looked like they'd just walked out of a history book, but those three...they looked more like they could've just stepped through the Stargate from Earth.
But then again...considering the name the captain had given Elizabeth, maybe he should've been expecting that.
"Which one of you is Malcolm Reynolds?" John asked warily, lowering his gun a little but not so much that he couldn't bring it right back up if he had to.
The would-be gunslinger in the long brown coat cleared his throat and stepped forward. "That'd be me."
The woman behind him in matching gunslinger garb snapped to attention, one hand hovering over her holster and her eyes fixed warily on John. The big guy was flexing an apparently itchy trigger finger too, but of the two of them Sheppard had a feeling that it was the woman who was more dangerous. Maybe it was the way her level, challenging stare reminded him of Teyla.
Of the entire group, they were the only three that looked dangerous, but John knew better than to underestimate anyone. Not even the petite one with the innocently nervous expression, the waifish girl in the corner talking to herself, the Hawaiian-shirt guy or the lady in formal wear. Still, even if Reynolds and his lieutenant did take the whole cowboy thing seriously enough to be quick draws, there wasn't much they could do against four working P-90s and from the look on the captain's face, he knew it.
Relaxing a little, John signaled for the rest of the security team to lower their weapons and let his drop to his side. "Lieutentant Colonel John Sheppard. Welcome to Atlantis."
His own posture easing, Reynolds took a step forward and cautiously accepted the offered hand. "Y'know, it's a funny thing. How come I never heard of a world called Atlantis?"
John had no idea: most of the folks around the galaxy had at least heard of it, even if they didn't know much about it. "Well, there is the whole submerged-for-ten-thousand-years thing..." he speculated dryly.
The big burly guy behind Reynolds snorted. "Ten thousand years? Jian ta de gui--weren't nobody building cities ten thousand years ago, let alone submerging 'em. Hell, even the Alliance is only 'bout ten years old, much as they might like to pretend they been around forever."
The captain shot him a look. "Jayne, what did I tell you about letting that mouth of yours do the talking?"
Now this was interesting: he'd heard about people like that, who'd never heard of Ancients or stargates, but he'd never actually met one since he got roped into the Atlantis expedition and ceased to be one. Of course, that wasn't half as intriguing as the fact that the other language the big guy had just lapsed into sounded vaguely...Chinese. Or maybe John had just watched one too many bad kung fu movies with subtitles.
Reynolds turned back. "Look, I'll be honest with you. Ain't many in my crew got reason to love the Alliance, but as long as they let us go our way, we'd be happy to keep to ourselves and not cause no trouble."
"That's, uh...good to know, I guess..." Maybe he should've asked Dr. Weir to come along--as much as John was actually understanding of their conversation, they might as well have been speaking another language the whole damned time. "...and what Alliance would that be, exactly?" Maybe they were from some world controlled by the Genii.
"Wait..." The petite girl in coveralls piped up, taking a step forward. "How can you not...they're the Alliance. What other Alliance is there?"
"There is no Alliance here," the girl in the corner interjected, answering before John could even try to. She was thinner than Elizabeth with long brown hair, dressed in some sort of flowy sundress. Up until now, she'd been half-hiding behind the shortest of the men--the one dressed up and frowning like an uppity Puritan confronted with a boy playing hooky from Sunday School--but as she spoke she stepped forward on delicate bare feet. The Puritan tried to stop her with a word of protest--"River..."--but she ignored him.
"East and West: they pretend to be friends but really they're fighting a war with no weapons, only words and thoughts. Too busy racing to find who can eat up the world first to see the danger from the stars."
Okay, when the girl speaking in stream-of-consciousness made more sense than the rest of her party--not to mention knew way too much about Earth politics for an alien--then he definitely needed a translator.
He tapped his earpiece. "Weir, this is Sheppard--I'm bringing them up now."
"Understood," her voice sounded crisply in his ear.
Yep, this was going to be interesting.
(Continued...)