This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place soon after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the beginning of a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first Firefly story, since it sets the stage.
In this first chapter of FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED, Hoban Washburne is still working on getting used to being a woman after rejoining his crew as their new pilot, but she soon discovers her new body might have issues with her moving in -- and moving on -- as well. And returning a favor to someone who helped Mal and Zoe during the War for Independence might be harder than either of them imagines.
FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED
by Randalynn
Part 1: Reservations
NOTE: These chapters ain't gonna be comin' as fast as the ones for the first story, Browncoats. I've only got this one chapter and the next one completed, but I REALLY wanted to post something, 'cause gorram it, it's been too long. I will try to make each chapter more self-contained and less cliff-hangery, but i can't hold myself back anymore. I hope nobody minds. -- Randalynn
The sky on Boros was a deep clear blue, with scarcely a cloud in sight. The hills around the Firefly class transport Serenity were green and rolling, and seemed to go on forever. And the temperature outside was absolutely perfect -- warm without being hot, and just the slightest breeze ruffling the grass.
In fact, it was just the right sort of weather for putting on your skimpiest bathing suit and lying out in the sun, so your man can stare at you in all your sexiness until his eyes plumb fall out.
At least, that's what Kaylee said when she burst into the pilot's quarters that morning, dived into her footlocker, and started flinging bits and pieces of clothing into the air. After a few seconds, the mechanic squealed and pulled out an entirely-too-brief yellow string bikini. She turned to the other woman in the room with a grin, holding up her prize triumphantly.
"I knew I saw this when I helped you unpack," Kaylee said as she tossed the bright bits of cloth at the totally surprised redhead. The pilot snatched them out of the air without thinking, then held them at arm's length, suspended between confusion and fear. "Now get your clothes off and let's get outside!"
The woman froze, unable to believe what she'd just heard. "Excuse me?"
"I said get naked and put on your suit, Linda!" Kaylee could barely contain her excitement. "Come on, girl, time's a'wastin'. Simon's in the cargo bay, and Jayne's outside doin' somethin' with all his guns. It's the perfect time to show some skin!"
Her current appearance to the contrary, Hoban Washburne had been a man for most of his life. He grew up, became a pilot, taught himself how to juggle geese, flew a ship that he loved, and eventually married a warrior woman who loved him back. Despite the fact that he, his wife, and the entire crew of Serenity were smugglers and on the run, Wash had nonetheless looked forward to a long and happy future.
But after a life-ending encounter with a large metal spike and a brief meeting with an unlikely angel, he learned that his old ship and crew were in danger, and the only way to save them was to come back to the Verse as Serenity's new pilot. Unfortunately, that meant both becoming Linda Rachel Wehr, a beautiful redhead with enough curves to make even a flight suit look sexy -- and keeping his true identity a secret from friends and family.
Wash had spent the past two weeks getting comfortable in her new skin, and up until the mechanic's surprise entrance, she had thought she was doing pretty well. She didn't get startled by her own reflection anymore. She had adjusted to how her new body moved, and learned how to handle a radically different set of personal hygiene requirements without becoming seriously unhinged. And she'd found an ally in River Tam, a prodigy, a "reader" and an Alliance-trained living weapon, who could see past the woman she had become to the man she had been. River helped her bridge the gap between her two lives when things got ... interesting.
Of course, nothing he had experienced before or since she became Linda had ever prepared her for dealing with Kaywinnet Lee Frye when she was on a mission -- especially when that mission involved getting Wash into a string bikini.
Oblivious to her friend's discomfort, the mechanic pulled her own equally skimpy bathing suit out of a pocket and started peeling off her jumpsuit.
"I ain't been ogled proper in longer than I care to remember," Kaylee said over her shoulder, "and a girl likes to be . . . appreciated once in a while, don't ya think? Besides, we can give the boys somethin' to look at besides bulkheads and cows -- without lettin' 'em know that's what we're aimin' to do, a'course."
Wash watched as her new best friend pushed her mechanic's coveralls down over her hips and let them slide to the deck.
'This is not happening,' she thought, small pulses of fear running through her body. 'This is just a really bad dream. Can a person have a daymare? Because if she can, I'm having one.'
"I love comin' up with new ways to get Simon excited." The pretty mechanic kicked her feet to get them clear, slipped out of her panties, and started unhooking her bra. "And paradin' around wearing near enough to nothin' without actually bein' naked always seems to do the trick when it comes to menfolk."
Her underthings in a pile on the floor, Kaylee stopped to give herself a critical glance in the full-length mirror. She twisted slightly and nodded before she started shimmying into her suit bottoms.
Wash was mildly surprised at how small an impression a totally naked Kaylee made on her. She gave it a little thought, but finally decided her lack of appreciation was due as much to the situation as it was to being as much a woman as Kaylee -- well, physically, anyway. Then, unable to avoid it anymore, she focused on her growing sense of panic at the thought of having to actually put the bikini on ... and leave her cabin.
She held the various pieces of yellow cloth out in front of her, trying to process how they would fit on her new body, and how little of it they would actually cover.
'I can't wear this!' Wash thought, trying very hard to keep her fear from reaching her face. 'It's only pretending to be a bathing suit -- nothing but triangles and string! And I sure as hell don't want to get . . . well, anybody excited if I can help it!'
Kaylee threw a look over her shoulder at the frozen pilot, and her lips twisted into a bemused smile.
"Come on, girl! Get a move on! Who knows when the Captain and Zoe are goin' to get back from meetin' with the customer?" She finished pulling the bottom on, and started fussing with the top, taking her attention away from Wash. "You know Mal don't care too much for being this close to the Alliance shipyards, so we may have to break atmo pretty fast when he gets back."
Wash looked at the scraps of cloth, then looked at Kaylee in her own bikini. Suddenly, the pilot's bottom lip began to quiver, and her brain stuttered to a stop.
Her top securely fastened, the mechanic turned to find Linda on the edge of crying. Her own happiness forgotten, she stopped and dropped to one knee in front of her friend.
"What's wrong, honey?" Her voice was full of concern. "Why're you so upset?"
Wash opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What could she say? It was Linda's suit, after all. Why would Linda be afraid of wearing her own suit?
Kaylee put a hand on her knee. "It's just a bathin' suit, nǚ há¡i. Nothin' to fret about. We ain't plannin' an orgy. Just want to tease 'em some is all."
"And that's the problem, jei mei."
Kaylee turned, surprised. River was perched on top of the dresser, looking down at the mechanic with a small smile on her face.
"RIVER! How did you get in here?"
"I took atmospheric control shaft C from the kitchen," she replied, her tone conversational. "I crawled across to the main wiring juncture, and climbed past the self-sealing bulkhead doors at frame 17 to maintenance duct 21A. Then I wriggled 3.7 meters forward and dropped through that access hatch there." River cocked her head slightly, as if amused by the question. "How else would I have done it?"
"You coulda come through the door, genius." Kaylee stood up and put her hands on her hips. "And you coulda knocked first."
"I was already up in the superstructure." The younger girl dropped down to the deck with a dancer's grace, and rose to stand in front of the angry mechanic. "Besides, if I'd done it your way, Linda would still be sitting there with her lip quivering, NOT telling you what you need to know."
For a moment, the two women stared at each other. Finally, Kaylee sighed. "And what exactly do I need to know, River?"
"That Linda doesn't want to 'tease' anybody, especially Jayne. Right, Linda?" River moved aside so Kaylee could see the pilot's head bobbing like one of those silly bobble-headed geisha dolls Mal had them smuggle once, back when jobs weren't quite as easy to get as they are now.
"Really? Oh, honey, I'm so sorry." The mechanic plopped down on the edge of the bed next to Linda and gave her a quick hug. "I didn't mean to push you where you didn't wanna go, honest! I just seen how close you and Jayne have been since we left the Skyplex, and I thought ... well, you know."
Wash felt confusion rising up behind her eyes. "Know what?"
Kaylee hesitated. "You know ... that maybe you're gettin' ... interested in Jayne. Like, interested interested. Lots of star watchin' when you're flyin' and talkin' up a storm in the kitchen when you ain't, and I thought ... you know, maybe you and he -- maybe you wanted to --"
"Hey!" Agitated, Linda stood up and moved away, crossing her arms as she did. To Wash, the feeling of cradling her breasts as they rested on her forearms made her a bit uncomfortable. It reminded her of her new body just when she'd rather forget. But the woman she had become (and whose memories she shared) didn't notice the weight at all. She was uncomfortable for a whole different reason, and she wished the other girl would just let the subject drop.
The pilot turned back to her friend, almost pleading. "Look, Kaylee, it's only been ... what, a couple of weeks? I am so not ready for ... Jayne is not ... he's not ... WE'RE not ... I'm just being friendly!"
"Well, there's friendly and then there's friendly," Kaylee said, a bemused smile playing on her lips. "From where I'm sittin', Jayne's actin' like he's courtin' you, and you're actin' like you're being courted. He holds your chair at dinner every night, and you let him. Hell, you give him a thank you and a smile, every night. He ain't cussed once since we left Santo orbit, and he's got this goofy grin that creeps onto his face when he thinks he's all alone ... or when he thinks you ain't lookin'."
Wash stood there, dumbstruck. Inexplicitly, she felt her bottom lip begin to quiver again.
'I thought things were going so well,' she thought sadly. 'Jayne seemed to be growing up more and more each day. Now Kaylee thinks he's falling in love with me -- and I just let it happen. More than that, I encouraged it!'
Kaylee saw that lip start moving again and jumped to hug the other girl.
"Aww, honey, it's not a bad thing," she whispered, holding Linda as she trembled. "He's been so much nicer since you came aboard, and that's a fact. And he's got muscles on his muscles, and sweet eyes ... and that smile ain't half handsome. Maybe gettin' together with Jayne isn't the worst idea in the Verse."
"Besides," the mechanic said, pulling back to look in the pilot's eyes. "I've seen the same goofy grin on your face when you think he ain't looking. I'm thinkin' you like him more than you think you do -- or more than you want to admit."
Wash's blood froze. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
BOOM! BOOM!
The pounding on Linda's door took everyone but River by surprise. Her lip twitched once, as if she knew it was coming. The door swung inward, and a voice echoed down the ladder.
"Hey, uh, Linda? Didn't you say you wanted me to show you how t' shoot?"
Wash saw a way out of continuing this talk with Kaylee.
"Absolutely!" she hollered, her happiness and relief apparent in her tone. "Can't wait!"
"Great!" She heard the smile in Jayne's reply. "See ya outside!" The door slammed shut.
Linda turned to Kaylee with a smile, only to find the mechanic grinning at her. Kaylee's eyes were bright with pleasure. She grabbed the pilot by her shoulders.
"Jayne's teachin' ya how to shoot?" The question came out as a whisper, and Wash nodded, giving Kaylee a questioning look.
The mechanic squealed, jumped up and down, and wiggled all over like a puppy. Then she gave Linda another hug. The confused pilot did her best to return it.
"Why're you so happy?" she asked.
"Because he's teaching you how to shoot! Hell, girl, don’t you get it? You're goin' on a gorram date!" Kaylee grinned and gave her another squeeze. Still a little in shock, it took her a second to realize what the other girl had said.
"A ... a date?"
Kaylee nodded happily. "Guns and such are what Jayne knows best. A'course he's gonna want to bring 'em out and show 'em off for you." The other girl's eyes glazed over, and her grin became a dreamy smile. "He'll stand real close, and put his arms around you ... just to fix your aim. Then he'll put somethin' long and hard in your hands that explodes if you touch it just right." She stifled a giggle.
Wash turned to River, panic in her eyes. "A date?"
River threw her a small smile, and the pilot heard the younger girl's voice inside her head. 'Just go with it for now, Hoe-bann. It's not a tragedy. It's exactly what you were planning on doing anyway, only now Kaylee's slapped a label on it you can't deal with yet. We'll talk later, okay?'
Linda sighed, nodded, and turned back to the mechanic. "A date," she agreed, resigned to the inevitable. "Of course it's a date. What else could he do, find a five-star restaurant in the next cow pasture over?"
"You'll see," Kaylee said, giving Linda another hug. "Trust me, it'll be fun!"
"Fun," Wash replied, with a shaky smile. "Absolutely."
River leaped, spun once in mid-air, and landed crouching on top of the dresser.
"My work here is done," she intoned, her tone solemn. Then a little smile played at the edges of her lips, and she pulled herself up into the ship's in-between spaces, and was gone.
Kaylee shook her head.
"She's gonna fry something important crawlin’ around up there someday," she muttered, "and fry herself too, unless I can talk her into walkin’ around like everybody else. Thing is, all those ... side trips ... mean she probably knows Serenity better than I do by now – so I ain’t got much to say to make her stop."
The mechanic took a step back and gave Linda a critical once-over. "But You! Just look at you! You can't go on a date dressed like that!" She turned to Linda's closet and started burrowing again. "Get those gorram clothes off, and I'll see what I can find that'll make him want to pull your trigger!"
With another sigh, Wash turned away and started pulling her tee shirt over her head. 'Undressing for Jayne already?' she grumbled to herself. 'Is that what I've come to?'
Inside, a small part of her woke up and whispered, 'Whatever Kaylee choses, I hope it makes him smile. I really do like his smile.'
Wash frowned, confused. 'Dung ee-miao! Where the hell did that come from?' she wondered. 'Did I really think that?
Kaylee saw Linda freeze for a second and gave her a push. "Come on, fly girl! You're supposed to keep a man waitin', but not ‘til Hell freezes. Short attention spans, you know."
Wash went back to unbuttoning her pants and started rolling them over her hips. Whatever Kaylee was going to pick for her, she was sure it was going to be pretty, and feminine and exactly what Wash didn't want to wear. She just knew she wasn't going to like it.
'But I bet Jayne will,' she thought, and another smile grew on her lips before she pushed it away with a will. 'Aiya! Huaile! What is wrong with me? I feel like I'm fighting myself -- and no matter who wins, I know I'm gonna wind up losing!'
###
'You lied to her, River.' Chiang's voice was mild inside River's head, but she could hear what he wasn't saying as clear as if he'd said it aloud.
'Don't talk to me about lying, old man.' Her mental tone was conversational, almost as if they were discussing the weather. 'You've shown that you're surprisingly good at deception for someone who's supposed to be a good guy.'
'As are you, child," Chiang replied, a touch of ice behind his words. 'I'm still recovering from my ... night at the ballet.'
River smiled. 'Good. It wouldn't be much of a lesson if it didn't stick, now would it, Gladys?' The mental sigh made River smile wider, although her concern over Wash made it slip away much faster than it might have otherwise.
The object of her concern stood below her, shivering in her bra and panties. River perched in the gridwork above Wash’s cabin and watched through the many small holes in the ceiling. She could clearly see that the pilot was torn somehow, and a glance into her mind told her why. Half of her was excited by the prospect of wearing something that would catch Jayne's attention, and the other half was wondering why the first half had suddenly popped up and decided to let her know it was interested -- and how she could get that part to just go away.
'She's been acting more and more feminine in the past few weeks, but this ... it's way too soon. It's like something inside her wants to take things to the next level with Jayne,' she mused, reaching out to try and find where that impulse was coming from. 'But the Wash she used to be is soooo not ready.'
'Still, you did lie to her." Chiang appeared behind Kaylee in the room below, watching the proceedings with interest. Kaylee, of course, remained totally oblivious to his presence, as did Wash.
'I didn't lie," River replied, her mind elsewhere. 'The shooting lesson was exactly what Wash was planning on doing anyway. She just didn't realize it was actually a date until Kaylee decided it was one. And once that was out in the open, it was obvious that the word "date" really was a label Wash couldn't deal with ... yet.'
'But you downplayed its significance. It really is not just a shooting lesson anymore. Kaylee is quite right. Jayne is viewing this as a way to impress her ... to bring them closer. This is a date.'
'Yes, it is.' The girl kept probing the dividing line between Wash's two sides. 'And it's more. It's also forcing a confrontation inside her that could rip Wash apart. I won't let that happen.'
Chiang was silent for a moment, watching the pilot shiver. He sighed. 'I can tell you what Wash's problem is, although I'm afraid there is nothing you can do to help her.'
River growled inside. 'We'll see, old man. What's wrong with Wash?'
He looked up at the ceiling directly into River's eyes and sighed. 'Linda.'
###
For a while at least, the trip back on the Mule was whisper quiet. But Mal just knew it couldn't last. Even though a half hour had gone by since they'd left the meeting, he could feel Zoe finally getting ready to speak. He braced himself for the flood of common sense objections he knew she'd be hitting him with ... well, just about now.
"I don't like it, Sir." 'And there it is,' he thought, setting his jaw.
"I'm not likin' it too much my own self," Mal replied, his voice deceptively calm. "But there it is."
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then ...
"I REALLY don't like it, Sir."
"I'm getting that, Zoe. I truly am." Heavy sigh. "But we owe Berenger a lot for gettin' us that ammo durin' the war when the supply lines were cut. He saved our lives when they needed savin', and that's a fact. I ain't about to say no to him now that he's the one in a tight spot. Especially since there's more cashy money waitin' when we set down at the delivery spot, and we never have enough of that."
Another long silence. "Captain, most of the crew are women."
He let a touch of irritation slip into his tone. "I had noticed that, Zoe. I ain't completely moon-brained."
"Not completely, no Sir."
"Zoe --"
"Captain, taking a ship full of women to Flynt is asking for trouble. It isn't safe, especially for Inara."
Mal set his jaw. "I ain't about to put her at risk, knowin' how they feel about Companions." Zoe flashed him a look, and he sighed. "Ain't about to risk any of you womenfolk going near the ground, either. Serenity stays in orbit. Me, the Doc, and Jayne take the cargo down in one of the shuttles. There ain't gonna be so much of it that we can't do it in two or three trips, easy peasy."
Another long silence. "Then I'm going with you, Sir."
"No, you ain't."
It was Zoe's turn to look stubborn. Mal sighed.
"Not sure if you looked in a mirror lately, Zoe," he said, "but there ain't no way in the Verse they ain't gonna notice you're a woman, and prob'ly a darn sight prettier than the ones they already got. You know gorram well what'll happen next. If you or me or Jayne have t' kill somebody 'cause they decide they want you to stay, we probably ain't gonna get paid. Now we're not flyin’ quite as close to the raggedy edge as we used to, but havin' coin sure enough beats not havin' coin when it comes to keepin' my boat in the black and my crew fed. So you stay on board and keep an eye on Serenity. That's an order."
It was Zoe's turn to sigh. "Yes, Sir."
Another minute passed. "Sir?"
"Yes, Zoe?"
"Just wanted to tell you I appreciate the compliment, Captain."
"Compliment?"
There was a small smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. "Yes, Sir. It sorta takes my breath away. All these years serving together and I never once knew you thought I was pretty."
Zoe could see the muscles in Mal's jaw moving as he gritted his teeth. "Just drive, Zoe."
"Yes, Sir."
###
Jayne hovered over the targets and the weapons, making sure everything was lined up just so. He knew he couldn't afford to mess this up, not even a little bit.
'Things have been real shiny with Linda the past few weeks,' he thought, moving a revolver just slightly to line up with its automatic cousin. 'Sure, there ain't been nothing like when she kissed my hand that night, but things are pretty easy between us, and gettin' easier every day. She sure does smile an awful lot when we're together, and that's more than I coulda hoped for back when she first joined the crew.'
Mal seemed to think Jayne was doing good, too, and that made him feel okay, even though he couldn’t quite puzzle out why the Captain’s opinion should matter all that much.
‘Listenin' to Mal ... well, it's workin' so far, even if it ain’t worked so good for Mal in the past,’ Jayne mused, picking up a clip full of hollow-point and running his thumb over it. ‘Still, ‘Nara seems happy enough, and that’s no lie. If he can keep ahold a' her, he must know somethin’ about keepin’ women happy.’ He thought about it for a second, then shrugged. 'Maybe he just knows how to keep 'Nara happy. But I guess for Mal, that's plenty.'
"Hey, mister. That's a lot of iron you're laying out there. Thinkin' the cows might attack?"
Linda's voice sounded almost like music, and he turned at the sound of it with a smile on his face to find her standing there --
-- wearing a dress.
###
Wash felt awkward and clumsy and a little exposed. The joke she tried to use to take the edge off of her "unveiling" had evidently slipped completely past him -- or had been totally trumped by his reaction to the outfit she had worn.
And it was just the reaction she had hoped to avoid.
The trouble with this double life of hers was that Wash had no way of coming up with good reasons why she didn't want to do what Kaylee wanted her to do, especially if it were something a woman might do and not think twice. For better or worse, Linda was a woman, and Wash was Linda now. Kaylee's usual response to Wash's half-hearted protests was confusion. "Why shouldn't you wear this dress, jei mei? How often do you get the chance, anyway? And why do you have it in your closet if you don't want to wear it someday?" Wash just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with questions somebody born in a body like this could answer.
And she couldn't just say "no" – not to Kaylee. Wash had always had a soft spot for the mechanic. She was one of the sweetest girls he'd ever known, back when he was still a guy. The pilot could see how important it was to Kaylee to dress Linda up, and in her new life, she loved Kaylee too much as a friend and a sister to push back too hard when she really wanted something. Also, the pilot knew that Kaylee's chances to indulge the girl inside her were few and far between -- after all, there was no room for frillies and flowers in the engine room, for all that she enjoyed her time there.
So, since Wash couldn't come up with a good enough reason not to, she found herself standing in a cow pasture wearing a sunflower-yellow dress that wrapped around her and hugged her body like a giant cloth anaconda.
'It covers everything and hides nothing,' Wash thought with a suppressed sigh. 'Just what I was afraid of.'
Kaylee had also made her hold still for what she called a "lick of paint," although the labels on the applicators made it plain it was really lipstick and blush. Add a pair of low-heeled sandals and a giggle-driven push out the cargo door, and here she stood, watching Jayne's eyes fall out.
But what really bothered Wash was, even though she was feeling mostly clumsy and awkward and exposed, there was also a rush of satisfaction and even pride at the effect she had on Jayne. Whatever had surfaced in her cabin was still with her, sending messages she didn't want and raising desires she couldn't handle. Whatever was happening, she felt like she was being pushed over a cliff into a lake of womanhood so deep, she might drown.
And when she realized that part of her welcomed the fall, another emotion rushed in and sent chills up and down her spine.
Fear.
###
Jayne didn't know enough about girl stuff to describe it, but it made her look so gorram pretty he couldn't take his eyes off her. It was mostly sorta yellow, and wrapped itself around her curves well enough so you darn well knew they were there. It also showed enough skin to take a man's breath away.
Linda gave him a nervous smile, and took a step forward. "Penny for your thoughts?" she said, her tiny feet walking through the tall grass while the rest of her body played catch-up.
Jayne grinned and ducked his head. "You'd be wastin' your money, miss. Ain't been a thought in my head since I saw you in that dress, and that's a fact."
He watched her blush, and realized she felt as awkward as he did. 'And why would she feel like that?' he wondered. 'She's the one who wore the gorram thing. She had to know it'd drive me crazy -- why else would she wear it?'
###
Wash didn't know what to say, but she knew she had to say something.
"Well, it's so hard to choose what to wear to a shooting lesson," she said lightly. She tried to look down at her feet as she walked, but once again found her chest in the way. "They didn't really cover that in school, but I thought if you're shooting, you might want to ... you know, stand out? Instead of blending in, I mean. So other folks can ... not shoot you?"
"Well, you do stand out," Jayne smiled again. "But then, you stand out all the time, Linda. That there dress just makes you stand out ... a mite more, is all."
She stopped a few steps away from the mercenary. Wash thought quickly, trying to come up with something to say to a compliment she really didn't want, but her mind just came up blank.
But from somewhere deep inside, a triumphant surge of emotions rushed through her, too powerful to repress. There was an overwhelming wave of pride and lust and love and joy -- 'he thinks I'm special!' -- and she felt a smile light up her eyes an instant before it reached her lips.
"Thank you," she heard herself say, and she looked Jayne right in the eyes an instant before she lowered her lids to look at him through her lashes. Then, to Wash's surprise, her body performed a small bob of a curtsey, followed by a laugh that was little more than a giggle.
And Wash felt ... wonderful.
"So, are we going to get to the part where you actually teach me how to shoot," Linda went on playfully, "or just stand here talking about how good I look until it gets too dark to aim?"
###
Inara Serra watched the pair from the cargo bay door, a slight frown on her face. She had been waiting for Mal's return, anxious to hear where their next destination might be. Although she and her lover had come to an uneasy truce about her chosen profession, she still tried to avoid confronting him with it directly. In fact, she hadn't really taken on a client since Miranda, and her first and only job since then had turned out to not to be a client at all, but a trap -- one that nearly managed to kill them all when Niska used her as bait for Mal and the crew.
The truth was that Inara's reasons for becoming a Companion in the first place had faded with experience. Originally, the thought of being a bringer of pleasure and comfort to men and women across the Verse gave her a positive reason to flee her home world, and gave her life a real purpose, where before, she had none.
Inara learned the arts well, being both intelligent and caring. The circles she traveled in were rich and exotic, and the people to whom she brought pleasure and peace were erudite and witty. For the first time in her life, she was well and truly happy, and she looked forward to years of a life she thought she loved.
Then Inara chose to leave the central planets completely. There was a chance she might be pushed into service as a House Mother, instead of a working Companion, and the one thing she didn't want was to be in a situation where she would come to care for people as more than just friends or customers. So she headed out into the Verse, all the way to the Rim. But instead of the freedom she had hoped to find, she found Mal Reynolds and the crew of Serenity -- people who cared for each other, with lives that actually mattered. They were a family, held together by that impossible man who loved her for who she was, not for what she could do for him.
Mal was unlike any other man she'd ever known. His bitterness and disillusionment about the war hid a heart full of love and pride and fierce loyalty, and an honor that came from within. Oh, he was stupid on occasion -- Inara was sure that came with the testosterone -- but he was also brave and true, and a part of her had fallen for him within a week of renting his shuttle.
She fought it, of course. Getting involved was not a good career option for a Companion, and his dislike for her profession colored almost every interchange between them. But over time, she could see that Mal hated what she did, not who she was. And when she decided to stay on Serenity instead of going back to the Training House, Mal began to think about his reaction to what she did, and how it had pushed them apart. Even though he hated the thought of sharing Inara with others, Mal had gritted his teeth and agreed that she should follow her calling, if it was what she truly wanted. But once he agreed, she found her commitment to being a Companion fading, and her commitment to being Mal's alone growing.
It was not surprising that Inara was starting to wonder what she would do with her life if she chose not to be a Companion. But thinking about that just made her mind spin in circles, and the drama just unfolding outside the ship provided a welcome distraction -- and a bit of a mystery, too.
"They're cute, aren't they?" Simon had come upon her from behind, and followed her gaze towards the couple in the field. He shook his head. "I never thought I'd ever refer to Jayne as cute, but then I never thought he'd be able to charm our pretty new pilot quite so easily."
"It hasn't been easy for him, Simon." Inara didn't turn around. "He has been a hard man in a hard business for a long time, and not smart about many things. Learning to be something more than a thug -- learning to be the man he should have been instead of the man he was -- it was a challenge. Still is. And as for Linda ..." She let her voice trail off, watching.
Linda was still something of a puzzle. As part of her Companion training, Inara had been taught how to read people. Subtle cues in speech or movement were clues to emotional states, and in the two weeks since the Skyplex incident, Inara had seen Linda's actions warring with her emotions too many times not to wonder what was going on in the woman's head.
After the incident with the two hired men who tried to steal Serenity, Linda should have been a lot more shaken than she was. She had almost been raped by two strangers with guns, yet she seemed perfectly fine a few hours later. And Kaylee said she was talking and joking about the whole thing only minutes after Jayne rescued her. It didn't seem right, somehow, for her to shake off something like that so easily. Initially, Inara put it down to a pilot's overwhelming self-confidence, but still ... it seemed odd.
And Inara could also see that Linda was sometimes physically unsure as well. Most of the time she moved easily -- a woman comfortable with her body and content in her soul. But every once in a while her movements became awkward and unsure. Her face changed, too, sometimes, when she was thinking. Her expressions seemed strangely familiar, but not quite what you'd expect to see on a young woman's face at all.
"As for Linda," Kaylee said almost proudly, slipping into Simon's arms, "it looks like she's finally getting past that awful shyness that keeps creepin' up and stoppin' her from getting' what she wants. About time, too."
Simon's discovery of a swimsuit-clad mechanic in his arms distracted him for a moment, but after a kiss and a cuddle, he and Kaylee went back to watching the drama outside.
"She didn't look like she was enjoying herself when she first walked out there, Kaylee." Inara's voice held a note of mild disapproval, and her eyes never left the pair in the pasture. "One would almost think someone dressed her like that when she wasn't ready, and sent her where she didn't want to go looking like a princess ... or a snack for a certain mercenary."
"Well, she needed a bit of a push is all," the mechanic replied, just a touch defensive. "She doesn't want to admit that she likes him as more than just a friend, but a girl can tell. She's smitten, and that's a fact." She gave Simon a tight hug, and he hugged her back.
"Maybe." Inara watched a totally different Linda flirting her way through the lesson. "But for all that laughing and teasing she's doing now, a part of her is still fighting to pull back."
"That's not surprising, really," Simon put in, kissing the top of Kaylee's head. "Jayne's only been new and improved for a few weeks. She'd have to be a little worried he'd backslide, and become the ill-mannered thug he used to be."
"Not when he's got her interested at last," Kaylee insisted. "The walls are down, and he's got himself a gorram reward for trying to be better. Ain't no way he's gonna mess that up now."
Inara smiled, and shook her head. "He's still Jayne, Kaylee. He's made more than his share of stupid decisions over the years. I'm not sure he's totally cured of being his own worst enemy, are you?"
###
Jayne was a mite surprised by how downright ... playful Linda was being. Not that he minded. It was the first time she'd really flirted with him since she came on board, and he had to admit it was a hell of a lot of fun. He really wasn't sure what it meant, though.
He spent a lot of time thinkin' about it, between teachin' her how to hold and aim a piece, and doin' his best to flirt back. Flirtin', he'd discovered, could be plenty hard. Playin' with words, while keepin' an eye on all sorts of lines he couldn't cross, while she said and did things that made him want to scoop her up and carry her to his bunk. Gorram confusin' -- he was both excited and scared at the same time.
'In the past, flirtin' was what came before bein' sexed -- or at least settin' a price,' he thought, watching her handle one of the smaller revolvers. 'But I'm know she ain't lookin' for coin. Question is, is she lookin' for sex? Or is it just too soon for that? Damn it, Mal, where the hell are you? If I guess wrong, she's gonna hate me somethin' fierce, and that's a fact.'
One thing for sure -- even in a purty yellow dress, she could shoot the wings off a gorram fly, and it'd never know they was gone until it tried to take off. And that was just with what he had out here. With the Callahan Minaret he'd bought her back in the Skyplex, she'd be durn near unstoppable.
###
Linda was enjoying herself, mostly. There were so many things to experience now, and so much fun just being again. She loved the feel of the dress as it held her. She couldn't remember the last time Linda had worn it, but it felt wonderful, and she knew ... she knew she looked good in it. She loved the way Jayne paid attention to her when she moved, and she loved how it felt inside when she paid attention to Jayne as he moved. And flirting! Gods, she'd always loved flirting, and she enjoyed watching Jayne do his best to flirt back.
And the shooting! She'd hadn't been bad at it, back when Wash was a he, but in Linda's body, every shot was a bulls-eye. Every weapon felt just right in her hand, and the shots always went where they were told. In a way, it was just like flying, only in the palm of your hand. She knew it impressed the hell out of Jayne, and she really wanted to impress him ... among other things she'd like to do with someone built like that.
For the first time in weeks, she was well and truly happy, and it made her glow in ways she couldn't describe, but didn't have to. She just felt ... good!
###
Meanwhile, the man who used to be Hoban Washburne felt the bits and pieces of who he had been start to slip away in the joy of just being. The desperate need to be whole again -- to finally just feel right, body and soul -- poured out of the core of what had been Linda Wehr and threatened to drown him, leaving nothing but a memory.
'Hey! Still IN here!' he hollered into the rush of feelings. 'Still ME in here!' When nothing happened, he yelled, 'Still SUPPOSED to be me in here, right?!'
'Yes, it is.' Chiang's voice settled over him, granting a measure of calm. 'But the years of memories from Linda's past, and all the physical responses from a past happily spent as a woman, have risen together. They are threatening to take back Linda's life from the soul we sent to take her place. And all you have to fight her is who you were ... who you are.'
'It feels so good, not to fight it anymore. To just BE.' She shuddered, as another wave of happiness washed over her. 'But I can't surrender. I can't BE her. I have to be ME to save the crew.'
'How do I fight this?!' Wash was frantic. 'It's too much. Too soon! Damn it, Chiang, save me!'
'I can't save you,' the old man replied with a touch of regret. 'This is one battle you must fight on your own.'
'But they're ALL battles I have to fight on my own!' The pilot felt frustration merging with his fear. 'Ai-yah! Tyen-ah, Gladys, can't you do anything except float on command and hang me out to dry?'
Wash felt Linda eyeing Jayne lustfully as he bent over to retrieve some spent shells, and the feelings of desire that rushed through her were so strong that they overwhelmed what little restraint she could muster. It was both unbelievably welcome and incredibly frightening. The chance to be whole again ... she wanted it so much, Wash and Linda both. But accepting her need for Jayne meant surrendering completely to the woman she had become.
But Wash wasn't ready to give up being Wash just yet. And if she was supposed to save the crew as Wash, how could she do it when all there was left in the pilot's seat ... was Linda?
'Relax, Hoe-bann.' River's voice pushed back on Linda's influence with a calm assurance that lent Wash strength. The feeling of being overwhelmed receded just a little, and Wash took a trembling step back from the edge.
'River!!' Wash screamed inside.
'Don't worry, fly girl. I won't let you fall.'
'But how can you stop me? There's so much of her, pushing to make me be the Linda that was.' Wash felt her resolve slipping. 'How can you save me? How can I save myself?'
River's image rose in front of him, and she smiled. 'That's easy, Wash. By remembering.'
'Remembering?' The pilot let confusion enter her inner voice. 'Remembering what?'
'Who you are, and why you're here.' River looked right at her, and Wash could feel the young girl's power push Linda's ghost back even more. 'Think back to where you came from, and remember who you loved and lost and came back here to save.'
She looked over Wash's shoulder. 'Turn around, jei mei. This will make it much simpler.'
The sound of the Mule's engine's whine rose behind her, and fell off to silence. She turned, and saw Zoe's smiling face as she jumped from the driver's seat and wandered over to stand next to Linda and look towards her target.
'Zoe.' The name pulled Wash back from the brink, and pushed back the remnants of Linda's comforting sense of implacable wholeness with memories of the before times. Between the strength of her bond with her former wife, and the powerful love they once shared, Linda's influence receded, and the pilot found she could breathe again.
"Hey, Linda," Zoe said with a smile, throwing an arm around the pilot's shoulders and giving her a squeeze. Wash felt it deep in her soul, and smiled back. "If those targets are yours, you're a mighty fine shot."
"Well, Jayne's a mighty fine teacher," Wash replied, nodding over at the mercenary. "Credit where credit is due."
"I ain't had nothin' to do with it, and that's a fact." Jayne grinned. "She's a natural."
Mal's voice came from behind. "Well, this I've got to see. Knew we got us a better than fair pilot -- never figured we'd pick up a sharpshooter, too."
"Show 'em, Linda," Jayne said, stepping back and waving a hand at the targets. Wash took aim at the nearest one, and made sure the range was clear. Then she pulled the trigger.
And missed, barely hitting the target.
There was a long silence. She focused, and tried again. This time she hit one of the inner circles, but nowhere near the center.
"Whoa," she breathed. "What happened?"
Zoe put a hand on her shoulder. "We did, honey."
Wash turned to her, a question on her face. Zoe sighed. "I've seen this before. You were in the zone, and we came and knocked you out of it." She gave the pilot's shoulder a squeeze. "Not to worry, Linda. You'll get it back. Once you've been there, it's easy to find again."
Jayne started towards the fence. "I'll set up some new targets and we'll work on it some more."
Mal's voice cut in. "No, you won't, Jayne. We got us a job, and we need to hop to. Linda's shootin' practice'll have to wait. We need her in the pilot's seat now to get Serenity to the pick-up point." The captain looked her up and down. "Ain't got time for you to change, girl. Can you still fly in that pretty dress?"
Wash blushed. "Yes, sir, Captain sir," she replied. "The skill doesn't come with the flight suit."
He grinned and ducked his head. "Right enough," he said. "So get on back and start gettin' the boat ready. We lift as soon as we're able. Zoe, tell Kaylee we need to be in the air sooner rather than later. I'll help Jayne stow his ... gear."
Wash nodded, turned, and started making her way back across the pasture. She was in control again, thank the gods. But a feeling of uneasiness began creeping over her as she walked.
She was moving too easily. The uneven ground had been a challenge only a short time ago. Now the unfamiliar combination of dress and sandals felt almost comfortable, and she covered the distance between the targets and the ship with barely a stumble.
In spite of River's help, some of the Linda That Was had managed to wind up a part of Wash, almost without her noticing. And that frightened her, all over again.
Because if she lost a little of herself every time she won a battle, how long would it be before she lost the war?
This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place soon after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the second part of a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first Firefly story (and the first chapter of this one), since they both set the stage.
In this second part of FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED, events from Linda's recent past loom large in Wash's present, as she tries to deal with aspects of her situation she thought she'd already put behind her. She also learns more about her body's mutiny, lets Zoe talk her into somethin' all manner of stupid, and gets her first experience with the power of sisterhood.
FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED
by Randalynn
Part 2: Headwinds
Zoe walked alongside Linda as they headed back to the ship. She watched the pilot glide across the pasture, the hem of her dress swirling around her legs.
“Why in the name of Earth That Was would you wear that to a shooting lesson?” Her smile became a grin. “Not that Jayne complained, I’m sure, and it is a pretty dress and all, but ... it’s all manner of odd, don’t you think?”
Linda sighed, and nodded her head towards the cargo bay door. “Blame the matchmaking mechanic over there. She decided the lesson was a date, and demanded I dress for the occasion.” Zoe smothered a laugh, and Linda gave her an exasperated look. “It’s not funny, Zoe. I’m lucky I got away this easily. This ...” She waved her hands over the front of her outfit. “ ... was actually a compromise.”
“A compromise? That?”
The pilot nodded. “Kaylee wanted me out here in a bikini before the whole ‘date’ thing came up.”
“Ah. That explains why she’s standin’ in the cargo bay ready to go swimming when there ain’t a drop of water in sight.” Zoe shook her head. “Girl, you need to learn to push back when she pushes.”
“I know.” Linda hung her head. “It’s just ... she’s just so gorram cute! And when she uses those puppy eyes, it’s like I can’t say anything but yes. My little sister did the same thing when I was growing up.”
“Really? My husband’s sister was the same way.” Zoe looked down briefly as they reached Serenity. “Or so he used to say. I never did get to meet her.”
“Cuteness is the secret weapon of little sisters everywhere.” Wash smiled, remembering the little girl who made his former life miserable growing up.
Zoe eyed Linda curiously. “I never said she was younger.”
Wash stirred inside, and gave Zoe a grin. “Well, I was the older sister, and I never once got to use my puppy eyes on anyone. I’m figuring it’s just little sisters who get to do that — some kind of wacky Alliance law.”
The first mate nodded and fell silent.
‘Remembering too much has its downside,’ Wash thought. ‘I nearly tripped myself up there.’
‘No worries, I’m thinking,’ River thought back. ‘Zoe would have to take a big leap into the black to even guess her husband was walking beside her.’
They reached the cargo bay door, and Zoe stepped up into the ship.
“Best put something on over that pretty suit, Kaylee,” she said to the mechanic. “We’ve got a cargo to pick up, and the Captain wants us there sooner rather than later. So head for the engine room and get our girl ready to fly.”
“I thought I got her ready to fly a few hours ago.” Kaylee grinned at Linda and gave her a wink. Wash threw her a pout, cocked a hip, and folded her arms under her breasts. River had to stifle a mental giggle over the picture of aggrieved femininity that the pilot presented so easily.
The mechanic saw the look in Zoe’s eyes and pretended to realize her error. “Oh, you mean Serenity!”
Zoe gave the mechanic a no-nonsense look, the kind Wash remembered from his days as her husband. “Yes, I mean Serenity. And for the record, playin’ matchmaker for Linda and Jayne isn’t in your job description. Let the woman do her own courtin’ ... or not. It’s her choice, dohn-mah?”
The first mate brushed past the group without waiting for an answer, and headed for the stairs up to the cockpit. Kaylee turned to look at her back. “I never said it wasn’t,” she said softly, a little hurt in her voice. She turned to Linda.
“You aren’t mad at me for getting you to dress that way, are you, jei mei?”
Wash sighed. “A little, Kaylee. Listen, I know you’re just trying to help. You want Jayne and I to be a couple, but I need time. We need time, he and I, to get to know each other a little better and decide for ourselves what we want. If things move forward too fast, it won’t be right. Don’t you see?”
‘Very nice, Wash.’ River’s mental voice came over a little cool. ‘Almost too nice,’ she continued to herself.
The pilot took a deep breath and continued on quickly. “Like you and Simon — it took a while for you two to get together, didn’t it?”
Simon and Kaylee looked at each other, and back at Linda. “Yes, it did,” Simon said slowly, his arm still around Kaylee. “How did you know that?”
Wash cursed herself and thought fast. “I didn’t,” she replied with a smile, “But you two are so perfect together, and good things always come to those who wait. I bet you two danced around the issue for months.”
Kaylee nodded. “Longer than I wanted,” she said sadly.
“And now you’re pushing Jayne and me together because you don’t want me to wait the way you did.” Linda reached out and put her hand on the mechanic’s arm. “But I’m not you, Kaylee. I’m not sure about Jayne the way you were about Simon. I want to wait, and take it slow. If it’s going to happen, then I want it to be right. Okay?”
Kaylee hestitated, then nodded. Linda saw the look on her face and pulled her into a tight hug.
“Don’t worry, honey,” she said, giving her a squeeze. “I’ll call if I need help, I promise. For example, I’m not sure I remember how to get out of this dress.”
“I’m sure Jayne would love to help you with that.” She heard Mal’s voice and his boots on the cargo bay ramp, and she turned to find the captain grinning at her, his arms full of weapons. “Right after we’re finished getting the cargo, you can ask him.” The grin slipped off his face, and his tone turned serious. “But since you and Kaylee both need to be where I told you to be RIGHT NOW, I’m thinkin’ you can both put the huggin’ off until after we’re out in the black a spell. dohn-mah?”
“Understood, Captain sir!” Linda spun around, straightened her shoulders, and threw him a salute before turning and heading for the stairs as quickly as her sandals would allow. Behind her, she could feel Jayne watching her walk away and start to climb, and she heard Mal’s voice take on a teasing tone. “That’s a right nice suit you got there, Kaylee. Did you find a swimmin’ hole while we were gone? Oh, I know! You put a pool here in the cargo bay, and you was just waiting to surprise us all when we got back!” There was a pause. “Suit kinda gives it away though, don’t ya think?”
Jayne snorted, and Wash hurried up the corridor to the flight deck, the clatter of her sandals on the metal deck chasing her to the cockpit.
Linda held the wheel tight, her arms shaking as she worked to keep Serenity on the beacon back to the customer’s warehouse. She didn’t remember atmospheric flight being quite as ... strenuous as this, back when she was a he.
“That’s because your former muscles were a little stronger than the ones you’re living with now.” River moved in behind her and put both hands on her shoulders. “You’ll adjust. You’re already doing it now. Just like you’ve been doing for the past few weeks, Hoe-bann.”
“Not fast enough for the rest of me, I guess,” Wash replied, her eyes still staring out at the horizon. She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m trying to fight off a mutiny in my own body. Even worse, I can’t believe I’m failing.” The pilot looked up at River. “Thank you for helping me back there.”
River nodded, even though Wash couldn’t see her, and gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “We pushed her back, jei mei ... but she did take some ground. Just look at you. You’re sitting in the pilot’s seat wearing a dress and sandals — back straight, chest out, knees together. But you’re flying as well as you ever did, even though how you’re sitting would be totally unnatural for the man you used to be.”
It was Wash’s turn to nod. “Why is this happening now? I thought I was doing well, and then ...”
“It wasn’t your fault.” River stepped clear of Wash’s station, then leaned forward into a handspring and a reverse flip that left her standing on the forward console’s chair. She curled up into a ball, arms around her knees, and looked at Wash expectantly. “It was bound to happen, eventually.”
Wash looked back, surprised. “You knew?”
She nodded. “I suspected. If you would have thought about it for a while, you would have seen it coming, too. Chiang yanked Linda’s soul out, then dropped you into a body that was radically different from the one you used to have. So here’s her body, all brimming with hormones and a lifetime of experience as a woman, and here’s you, drowning in an ocean of estrogen, with only a lifetime of male memories to keep you afloat — in a body that wants nothing to do with them ... or you.”
“It’s as if somebody forced you into the pilot seat of a ship you’ve never flown. You’ve only seen ships like it from the outside, and you’ve admired them, but you never actually wanted to fly one — just be a passenger once in a while.” River smiled, and Wash blushed.
“Suddenly, you find yourself in the cockpit, and you have to fly it, or die. But it turns out the control system isn’t standard. Instead, it’s totally customized for the pilot who came before. She spent decades flying it her way, to the point where all the ship’s systems are used to her touch. Is it any wonder the ship would make things hard on a new pilot? Want to make him do things the way the old pilot did?”
Wash focused on the landscape in front of her. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Linda’s body isn’t a ship.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a living thing, and that’s another part of the problem.” The pilot looked up at her, confused, and River sighed. “Linda lived a full life. She was born into a loving family, and she grew up and learned to fly. She was a woman who loved men and loved to be loved by them. Now you’re here, and you keep fighting against how your body thinks you should react. As a result, all of the physical ‘you’ is rejecting your soul because it’s not behaving properly, and your system is out of harmony.” She shrugged. “It needs you to be the Linda it ... remembers. That’s all.”
“But that’s what I wanted, too! I mean, eventually.” River cocked her head, and Wash turned back to look out through the windscreen, trying to avoid the question in River’s eyes.
“Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about all this,” Wash said softly. “And I wasn’t sure if you were reading me or not.” River shook her head, and the pilot caught it out of the corner of her eye and nodded once. “Thank you for that.”
“I touch your mind from time to time, Wash,” the younger girl replied softly. “I don’t swim in it. It’s wrong.” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I don’t have a guidebook for how to be a reader. I’m sort of working that out as I go along.”
The pilot looked back over at River, then grinned.
“Believe me, I understand. After what I’ve been through, I know what it’s like to fly by the seat of your pants.” River smiled back, and Wash turned her eyes to the horizon ahead.
“The truth is, now that I’m like this and there’s no turning back, I decided that I was going to do my best to get used to being a woman. That’s what I am, after all, and I sure as hell didn’t want to spend the rest of my new life hanging on to my old one, or trying to be something I’m not anymore.” She sighed.
“But once I made the decision to actually be the woman I already am, then I had to decide what kind of woman I wanted to be.” It was River’s turn to looked puzzled, and Wash’s turn to sigh. “At first I thought, ‘I’ll just be me, Wash as a woman. That’ll work, right?’ Then I realized I didn’t have the first clue what that means. So I started thinking about who I was now ... who I appeared to be to everyone. I looked through Linda’s things and tried accessing some of her memories, and as it turns out, she was a pretty special person — a lot like the man I used to be in many ways.”
She took a deep breath and went on. “And so, I thought, well, maybe I should just try to be the kind of woman Linda was, and live her life forward as it should have been, without losing me along the way.”
“I thought I was doing well, taking it a day at a time. Apparently, I’m doing so well, Jayne’s falling in love with me. And maybe ... I’m falling a little for him, too, gods help me.” She shook her head and sighed again. “Now suddenly I’m in the middle of the metaphysical equivalent of a shark attack, and I have to fight to keep myself from just getting swallowed whole. Chiang says I still need to be me to save the ship, but walking that line between Wash and Linda is getting harder. And who is me, anyway?”
“I had hoped you would grow into being Linda, over time,” River said. She rose from her seat in a single fluid motion, and walked over to stand beside the pilot. “I hoped that, if Linda’s body and your soul moved forward together slowly, you would eventually become comfortable together, as Wash-in-Linda. You would feel happy being a woman, and her body would support your soul, and make you feel welcome.”
“Maybe we can ... I don’t know, negotiate with the rest of me? Make it back off somehow?”
“Wash ... there’s nobody there to talk to. You’re fighting whatever Linda left behind when her soul left. Memories stored in the deep structures of her brain, some established habits and responses, and pure hormonal overload.” River sighed and shook her head. “You might as well try to negotiate with a thunderstorm for all the good it will do.”
“I don’t believe it. I’ve always been able to talk my way out of trouble before —”
The insistent beeping of an incoming comm signal interrupted her sentence. The pilot reached over and flicked several switches, and a male voice came over the speaker, using the crisp measured tones of a military officer.
“This is the Alliance Shipyard Port Authority. Incoming ship, please identify.”
Wash thumbed the mike button and spoke. “This is the transport ship Tranquility, en route to the Berenger freight depot for cargo pickup.”
“Ship’s registry number?”
She reached over and read a sixteen-digit number from a list on a clipboard next to her station. The last time the ship was near Osirus, River had hacked into the Alliance Navy Ship Registry and added a number of Firefly-class ships to the rolls, making it a bit easier for Serenity and her crew to slip past checkpoints and avoid entanglements. She also worked with Kaylee to put together a way to re-program the ship’s transponder to provide whatever registry code the captain decided to wear. A polarizing screen over the ship’s name on the side changed as well to reflect the registry code she wore. So, when she flew this close to the Alliance shipyards, Serenity became Tranquility, a model of a modern freight carrier with a spotlessly clean record.
While she was in the Admiralty computer core, River could have gotten herself a legitimate fake pilot’s license as well, but she would have had to put her retina scans, fingerprints, and brain engrams into the system for registration purposes, and they weren’t sure whether the Alliance was still looking for her. In the end, Mal decided it really wasn’t worth the risk. He went hunting for a licensed pilot to replace Wash and found Linda ... without realizing she really wasn’t a replacement at all.
The speaker crackled to life. “Registry confirmed. Maintain course and speed. Authority out.”
Wash looked up at River with a grin. “Such a nice boy. Friendly and helpful, that’s the Alliance motto. Why, I haven’t been treated so politely since a headwaiter on Ariel objected to my shirt being too bright for his establishment and ignored me for twenty minutes ... while I stood directly in front of him.”
The younger girl grinned back. Knowing Wash as she did, she knew this sort of behavior would not go unpunished. “And what did you do to get yourself ... noticed?”
Just as Wash opened her mouth to reply, the incoming comm signal sounded again. She swiveled and switched the receiver on.
“Oy!” A deep male voice bellowed. “You dere! Ooo da hell ‘re you, und why’re yoo commin’ at us like a batouttahell??”
With a glance at River, the pilot activated the transmitter. “Transport ship Tranquility requesting docking instruc —”
“Hold up dere, missy. Put yer pilot on, dere’s a gut gurl.”
Wash felt a flash of irritation. “I AM the pilot, requesting docking instructions at the Berenger freight depot.”
“Yur de pilot?” The voice rumbled and burst into laughter. “Hey, Viktor! Tell the udder ships ta git offa dah field. Ship commen in wid a bird onna stick, and she’s hot!”
Another voice chimed in from farther away from the microphone. “Who’s hot, Zev? The girl or the ship?”
“Both, I betcha,” Zev replied. “Ship’s commen in mighty fast for atmo, and the gurl sounds like she’s mebbe fast, too.”
Wash and River heard the one called Viktor speaking as he approached the microphone. “Hey, Zev says you’re on the stick. Does that mean you’re flyin’ that boat with your hands, or are you actually ... um, on the stick, if you catch me?” He snickered, and the other man laughed again. Wash felt almost nauseous, thinking about what this idiot must be thinking of her, but that was soon followed by a quick burst of anger. She reached for the microphone switch again, only to have River put her hand on Wash’s.
‘ Careful, jei mei,’ she spoke mind to mind. ‘Remember, we have to work with these sah gwa to get our cargo, and the captain won’t like it if you throw a tantrum and the job goes south.’
‘Tantrum?’ Wash shot back, her thoughts awash in anger. ‘These guys sound like they never made it past the second grade!’
‘Then spank them, Hoe-bann,’ River replied, ‘but do it gently, with words.‘
Wash sighed, then took a deep breath and calmed herself before she thumbed the switch to “Transmit.”
“I’m flying the ship with my hands, the way any pilot would,” she said simply. “I’m damned good at it, too. And the only time I’ll ever fly anything the other way you described would be in your dreams — and my nightmares, hwoon dahn. I’m not a doxy or a slut, I’m a pilot. So why don’t you and your friend give me a landing pad assignment near our cargo, and leave your rich fantasy life in your bunk, where it belongs?”
There was a long stunned silence on the other end of the connection, followed by loud raucous laughter that seemed to go on and on.
“Yur a real firecracker, un dat’s a fact, sweetie,” Zev growled, still laughing. “Put ‘er doon on pahd tree ... follow duh sub beekan when yu hit B’rngur ahrspace — und try nut to hit duh depot, ‘kay?”
He started laughing again, and the comm went silent. Wash heaved a sigh of relief, and began to slow her speed while doing progressive scans for the beacon.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered under her breath. “Men!”
“Careful, Hoe-bann,” River teased, standing behind the pilot’s chair. “You of all people should know better than that. You were a good man, once. There must be others out there.”
“Well, from this side of the gene pool, I’m thinking they should be drowned at birth,” Wash replied. “Those two, anyway. I’m reserving judgment about the rest of the gender.”
“And Jayne?” The younger girl’s question left the pilot confused.
‘ How do I feel about Jayne?’ She thought about everything that had happened in the past few hours, and shook her head. ‘I know how I feel ... how I think I feel. But how much of that feeling is mine, and how much belongs to the woman who used to live here?’
Wash finally caught the sub-beacon and made her final approach with an ease that came from a thousand perfect approaches that came before.
Sometimes she wished living could be as easy as flying.
Berenger’s depot was like too many others Wash had seen in her day — crowded, busy, and a real pain to fly through. Fortunately, Serenity had an excellent pilot, and she found her way to pad three with a minimum of powered acrobatics that left many of her peers envying her skill.
Wash heaved a sigh of relief and began putting flight systems on stand-by. Given Serenity’s past history, there was no way in Hell she would totally clip her wings with a cold shutdown in an exposed position like this. River had wandered off shortly before she reached the depot, understanding that the pilot’s attention needed to be on what she was doing. The hum of the powered cargo door reverberated through the ship, and she was glad others were going to be dealing with the freight handlers. The overwhelmingly male freight handlers.
‘ They were bad enough on the comms,’ she thought sourly. ‘Gods forbid I should have to meet them in person. Especially wearing this.’
The pilot sat there for a moment, going back over the things that had happened to her since this whole wacky adventure started. Sometimes she felt like she had been caught up in a flood of events that pushed her into her new life with the force of a hard burn. Sometimes it felt like the Verse was conspiring against her, and that whatever control she thought she had was only an illusion.
When she thought about what Teller and Beeks almost did to her when she first joined the crew, she realized how powerless she felt as Linda. She had only just become a woman, and it almost didn’t seem real at the time. After it was all over, it had been easy to push it aside and move forward. After all, she was here, back with friends and family, and what did it matter how close she came to being a victim?
But it did, she realized suddenly. Her knock-out punch on Teller aside, she wasn’t Zoe. ‘No warrior woman here,’ she thought with a frown. ‘I get the sense that Linda could fight, but avoided conflict if she could. A lot like I used to be, come to think of it. Even when I was a man, I wasn’t exactly the most ná¡n zÇ qᬠguy out there — enough man to steal Zoe’s heart and keep her happy, but the rest of the Neanderthal guy mentality, like “fight first, eat lunch, then fight later” never really made it onto my personal agenda.’
It was becoming clear to Wash that direct confrontation wasn’t usually an option when you looked like Miss Osirus, and this translated in her mind to a powerlessness that seemed all too linked to the new body she wore — even though as a man, Wash did his best to avoid a fight without losing face. Now things with her new body were going south, in a bad way. It seemed to be doing its best to try and write over the Wash That Was, and there seemed to be a part of Wash that wanted to help.
The part that was interested in Jayne.
When she had revealed to River that she had planned to try and be the woman she appeared to be, there were a lot of aspects of that choice she really hadn’t wanted to think about when she made the call originally. Like sex, and men ... and specifically, sex with men. But her new body wanted her to know exactly how Linda felt about the male of the species — and she’d been made more than aware of just how much of a man Jayne was.
But Jayne was one thing. Those idiots in the dispatch shack were something else. And the pilot had the uncomfortable feeling that there were a lot more idiots than there were men worth being with in the Verse. A LOT more. She started feeling even more lost and alone, and started wondering if she should have been issued a tee-shirt with the words “potential victim” printed on the chest. Right across her breasts, where the boys would be sure to read it.
Wash felt her lower lip start to quiver again, and a tear trickled down her cheek before she realized where her head was going. A bit of anger rose up to take charge, and she shook her head and brushed the tear aside with the back of her hand.
‘Enough!’ she growled at herself. ‘I chose this path, and it was the right choice. I’m not powerless. I’m alive, and with people I love!’
She was just confused and feeling sorry for herself, and that was wrong. Self-pity had never gotten her anywhere before, and she wasn’t going to start wallowing in it now. There were still a few things she had control over, and it was time to take charge.
‘For example, I get to choose what I wear,’ she thought, ‘And I’ve been in this dress long enough. There’s a flight suit and a pair of boots waiting in my quarters, and wearing this outfit within ten klicks of a freight depot is just asking for trouble. Time to change.’
She unstrapped from the pilot’s chair and stood up, reaching upward to stretch the tension from her back. Just then, there was a clatter on the deck outside the flight deck door. Jayne poked his head in, flashed her a smile, and handed her a clipboard.
“Hey, Linda. Cap’n needs you to go groundside, check in with the depot master, get us a manifest, and confirm loadin’ and leavin’ times.”
‘Terrific. Just terrific.’ She felt her brief push for control slipping through her fingers. ‘I’ll have to deal with those idiots in person. Thank you, gods. I’ll be sure to do you a good turn myself real soon.’
Ou the outside, Wash put on a cheerful face. “Sure thing, Jayne. Just let Mal know it’s going to take me a minute to change.”
The mercenary tilted his head and gave her a once-over, followed by a grin. “Why’re ya gonna change, girl? What you’re wearin’ looks just fine to me. Better than fine.”
Wash felt herself blush, and a rush of sexual feeling roared through her. She looked down for a few seconds to avoid meeting his eyes. “Ummm ... thank you, Jayne.”
“Ain’t nothin’ but the truth, Linda. Don’t see no reason to hide how pretty you are.” Jayne looked at her curiously. “‘Sides, I think the cap’n’s getting’ a mite worried, us bein’ so close to the Alliance ‘n all. He wants us to be far away from here before the Feds decide to give us a second look.”
“Gorram right I’m worried,” Mal said briskly, coming up behind Jayne. “We’re already late gettin’ off of this rock as it is, and we ain’t even loaded cargo yet. Best be on your way.”
Wash felt frozen to the spot. Could this really be happening? She opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out. The captain watched her for a few seconds.
“Now is better than five minutes from now, Linda.” The pilot managed a small nod, and Mal gave her a small smile in return. “Good girl. Off you go.”
He turned and ambled down the passageway, and Jayne followed, leaving her standing there in a state of shock — a numbness that started feeling very much like fear.
Zoe was in the cargo bay, keeping her eyes on the cargo bay door and one hand on her gun. Depots like this had their share of thieves, and an open door was too much of an invitation for her to leave it unguarded. Besides, she didn’t quite trust Berenger the way the Captain did. The businessman may have helped them out in Serenity Valley when they needed it, but he was quick enough to cash in on the favor when he needed a run to Flynt. That didn’t make him a friend, as far as Zoe was concerned. Berenger was just someone who knew the value of an obligation, and how deep the Captain’s sense of honor ran.
Taking advantage of what a good man the Captain was didn’t do him any favors in Zoe’s heart, either.
There was the sound of shoes on the metal steps, and Linda came walking down from the cockpit. She was still dressed to kill, which seemed odd to Zoe, since there was certainly enough time to change now that they were actually at the depot. As she walked past Zoe, the first mate realized she was heading for the cargo door ... and a freight yard full of men.
In a dress that was sure to get her ... noticed.
She stood up quickly and put out her hand, touching the other woman’s shoulder. “Linda?”
The pilot turned, and Zoe saw the look on her face. She seemed almost in a trance, like she was sleepwalking. For the first time, Zoe started to worry. This wasn’t anything like the Linda she’d come to know in the past few weeks. This looked more like what she’d seen in the war — like the woman was headed into battle.
“Where’re you goin’, girl?” She deliberately used a teasing tone, to try and coax Linda out of her shell. “Are you okay?”
“Captain wants me to go to the dispatch office, get the cargo manifest and loading times squared away.” Her voice had an almost wooden quality, stiff and flat.
Zoe kept her playful tone. “In that outfit? Aren’t you a bit ... overdressed? Or maybe underdressed?”
“Captain said there wasn’t time for me to change.”
“But there must be at least a hundred men out there,” Zoe said slowly, “and I bet most of them haven’t seen someone as pretty as you in months.”
Linda’s lower lip began to tremble. “Don’t you think I know that?” Her mask began to break, and Zoe could see she was afraid.
The first mate growled inside, thinking about all the things the Captain didn’t think about.
“I know I’m being stupid,” the pilot went on, her voice starting to rise with each word. “I know I shouldn’t care. I mean, this is just part of being a woman, right? I should shut up and do my job. I don’t even KNOW these people! And it’s not like I have to listen. They won’t say anything that matters. They’ll just yell insulting things like they’re compliments, make degrading offers to do things with me that no sane woman would even think about without throwing up, and UNDRESS ME —” She stopped in mid-yell, took a breath and continued, almost in a normal voice. “Undress me with their eyes. And I’ll just let it slide off my back and do my job, because I’m a woman, and that’s what I’m supposed to do.”
Linda turned and looked Zoe in the eye. “That’s what I’m supposed to do,” she repeated, then sighed. “I just ... I don’t think I can, today, that’s all. I’m ... afraid, Zoe. I’m supposed to be brave, and do my job, but all of the sudden, I’m scared. What happened at the Skyplex, and Kaylee, and this dress, and Jayne, and those jerks in the dispatch office on the comms ... it’s just too much, too soon. Maybe some other time ... maybe tomorrow, I could just do it. But right now, there’s a part of me that’s just screaming enough. And I so want to listen.”
Zoe’s voice became soft, and she reached out and took Linda’s hand. “Then don’t go, honey. You don’t have to. Stay here. Let Jayne do it, or Simon.”
“I can’t, Zoe. It’s my job. I pull my weight, and I get paid. That’s how it works.” She sighed again. “Besides, the Captain told me to.”
“Well, the Captain is an ass.” Both women turned to see Inara standing at the top of the stairs, on the walkway to her shuttle.
“HEY!” Mal’s voice rang out across the bay, and all three women turned to see him standing on the other side, near the corridor to the cockpit. “I heard that!”
“You were MEANT to,” Inara shot back, leaning on the railing. “What the hell were you thinking, Mal? Three weeks ago, that girl barely managed to avoid being raped while defending your ship. She had to strip naked at gunpoint, after being your pilot for less than an hour! And now you want her to walk through a freight yard full of men wearing THAT dress? You know what men like that are like! What is WRONG with you?”
“She seemed to be handling what happened at the Skyplex okay,” Mal countered angrily. “After we took back the ship, she put her clothes on and went back to work. How was I supposed to know there was somethin’ wrong? Besides, she’s the one who wore THAT dress. I thought she might want the chance to show it off some, since she won’t be gettin’ off ship where we’re headed. Why else would she wear it?”
Zoe looked up, her arm around Linda’s shoulder. “Kaylee made her wear it for Jayne, Sir. She didn’t want to do it, but you know how persuasive Kaylee can be. And when Linda put it on earlier, I’m pretty sure she never thought she’d be forced to model it for every member of the local Freight Workers union.”
“Forced? Ain’t nobody forcin’ anybody to do anything!” Mal’s voice was starting to betray his confusion.
“But you ordered me to go, like this!” Linda’s voice rose up, shaking slightly.
“Oh, honey,” Kaylee appeared next to her, put her arm around her from the other side and gave her a squeeze. She looked up at Mal with anger in her eyes, and her voice was rock hard. “I heard the whole thing. Don’t pay him no mind. The captain’s always orderin’ folks around. If it don’t make any sense, just ignore him. That’s what the rest of us do and it works well enough most of the time.”
“Wait a minute! How did this get to be my fault?” The Captain looked down at his pilot, his mechanic, and his first mate. Then he looked up at the woman he loved. She looked back, angry enough to spit bullets. He stopped, and he thought, and he sighed. “Never mind. It don’t matter how, it just is. All my fault. I ain’t sayin’ I’m stupid, but I will admit to bein’ more than a mite dense about what goes on in a woman’s head ... or a woman’s heart.”
Inara’s expression softened, and Mal felt something in his heart click. He smiled at her, ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head.
“Go get changed, Linda,” he said, looking down at the pilot. “Sorry I almost sent you out there to get ... looked at by folks who wouldn’t know how to treat a woman if Zoe beat it into ‘em with a stick. I’ll go to the dispatch office.”
The pilot sighed, turned back to the stairs, and took a single step before Zoe’s hand touched her shoulder. She turned, and saw her former wife with the oddest expression on her face — her eyes wide with a smile just starting to touch her lips.
The first mate leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “Do you trust me, Linda?” she whispered, her breath hot on the other woman’s cheek. Wash nodded without hesitation.
“With my life,” she replied softly.
“Good. Because I have something to show you.” Zoe raised her voice. “It’s okay, Sir. Linda and I will handle the run to the dispatch office.”
Inara looked down at the pair and cocked her head, confused. The captain did the same.
“Is that what you want, Linda?” Mal asked tentatively, not sure what to think.
Wash looked into Zoe’s eyes and saw love and concern, and the strength she always knew was there. She turned to look up at the Captain and nodded.
“Yes, Captain,” she replied, raising her voice. “Zoe and I will take care of it.”
Mal looked over to Inara, and she looked back, her eyebrows raised. Then she shrugged, and he looked back at Linda and sighed.
“All right, then,” he said, still confused. “Aren’t you gonna change first?”
Wash looked back at Zoe, and Zoe’s smile became a grin. She shook her head.
“No, Sir,” the first mate said, slipping past Linda and climbing the stairs leading up to the crew quarters. “I am.”
Jayne lay in his bunk, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Linda.
‘ She’s about as big a puzzle as ... as the biggest puzzle I ever seen,’ he thought, his eyes glazing over from thinkin’ so hard. ‘I can’t even come up with anythin’ as confusin’ as that girl is, and that’s a fact. Half the time I think she wants me, an’ the other half I’m thinkin’ she’s runnin’ away while she’s standin’ still. And Mal’s too busy trying to get offa this ruttin’ rock before the Feds tumble that we’re here, so I can’t ask him. Not that he’d know, but at least I’d have someone to ask.’
“You could ask me.” River’s face suddenly loomed in his line of sight, and his whole body jerked. He sat up quickly, but not quick enough for the young girl’s reflexes (and the fact that she knew when he was going to move before he did).
“Don’t DO that!” he snapped. “Gorram it, River, my bunk is supposed t’ be private. How’d ya git in here without me noticin’?”
“You were thinking so hard about Linda, you didn’t see me coming in through maintenance hatch seventeen,” she replied sweetly. “I think it’s nice how much you think about her, but she’s going to need our help soon, and lying in your bunk won’t get the job done.”
“Help her?” Jayne swung his legs over the side of the bed and braced himself with his hands. River looked down at him, a smug smile on her face. “What’s wrong with her? Is she in trouble?”
“Not yet.” The girl danced over to the open maintenance hatch and stopped directly under it. “But Zoe’s got this idea to make Linda not be afraid anymore, after what happened at the Skyplex. It’s a good plan, and she’s brave to try it, but there are a few holes in it that might need fixing. That’s our job.”
“Holes?” The mercenary felt awkward, as if River was speaking in a different language and nobody was botherin’ to translate.
“Yes, holes,” she replied. “Great big gaping ones, like the whole depot rioting, followed by violence, gunfire, and Feds. But long before that, Zoe and Linda lying broken and dead in the yard in their pretty dresses, because Zoe couldn’t see what I see, looking at what is and seeing what might be.”
Jayne’s blood ran cold. River looked into his eyes and nodded. “So we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen, Jayne Cobb. You, and me, and that Interceptor you conned out of that merchant before we left the Skyplex.”
“Interceptor? I ain’t got no Interceptor.”
“Sure you do.” River leaped into the air and slipped back into the ship’s infrastructure. Her voice echoed in his head. “Under your bunk, up towards where you keep your pillow, wrapped in an old duffel bag and a Blue Sun tee shirt that’s seen better days.” She popped her head down into the room and smiled, then spoke out loud again. “You should know better than to try lying to a reader, Jayne.”
“I reckon I should.” He sighed and stood up. “And why try hidin’ it anyway?”
“Old habits?” She grinned.
“Maybe. I bought the gorram thing to keep folks safe. Might as well use it.” Jayne went to his knees and pulled the sniper rifle out from under the bed. He started unwrapping it. “Okay, I’m in. Where do you want me?”
“Up on top of the ship. You can see the whole freight yard from up there.” Her head disappeared, and she spoke to him again, mind to mind. “And you’re going to have to, to keep everything smooth and shiny.”
Jayne shivered and looked up at the ceiling. “Hey!” he shouted. “Would you STOP talkin’ inside my head?” After a few seconds of silence, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Uh ... please?”
River’s head slid slowly down into the room through the open hatchway.
“No,” she said aloud, and closed the door.
“Gorram creepifying ...” he muttered, reaching for the trank loads. “Good thing she’s crew, or I’d be lookin’ to shoot HER.”
“I love you too, Jayne.”
“STOP that!”
“This is a bad idea, Zoe.” Mal had followed her from the cargo bay into the passageway up to crew quarters.
“I think you said that before, Captain. Multiple times.”
“Well, it is. Sayin’ it more than once don’t make it any less true.”
Zoe stopped at the door to her room and turned around. “And I’m thinkin’ you don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about in this situation, Sir.”
Mal took a step back and held up his hands. “Look, a few minutes ago y’all convinced me it was a bad idea for Linda to go out there dressed like that. Now you want to go WITH her?”
“Not wantin’ to, Sir. More like got to.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s crew. That makes her family, and she needs our help.” The first mate pushed her door in and put a foot on the ladder leading down.
“And how does taking a walk across a freight depot dressed like that help her?”
Zoe gave him a look, trying to decide if an explanation would help. “Well ... it’s like gettin’ back on a horse that threw you, Captain.”
Mal felt what little control he had over this conversation slippin’ away. “In a dress??”
She sighed. “I need to get changed, Sir.”
The door clanged shut.
Wash stood by the cargo bay door, her arms folded under her breasts.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ she thought, a tiny bit of fear creeping into her brain. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to walk across that field and into the dispatch office wearing this dress. Why did I agree to this? Oh, yes. Zoe asked me if I trusted her, and like a lovestruck idiot, I said yes. What was I thinking? What was Zoe thinking? She’s crazy! She’s certifiable! She’s —’
Zoe Washburne walked down the stairs into the cargo bay, wearing a slinky lavender dress with long bell sleeves that shimmered in the shine of the overheads. The strappy heels she wore made her legs look like rich mahogany that had been shaped by the most talented sculptor in the Verse, and her make-up was as understated and elegant as her smile was wide.
“You’re beautiful,” Wash whispered, remembering the first time she’d ever seen Zoe dressed for a night on the town.
“Why, thank you,” she replied, striking a model’s pose at the bottom of the steps. “I clean up real good, now don’t I? A’course, you’re lookin’ mighty shiny yourself, girl. Which is why I had to take a little longer gettin’ ready. Can’t let the pilot outshine the first mate. Against the law of the skyways.”
“The what now?” Wash felt a giggle slip through her defenses and let it go. She just had to laugh, and if Linda’s body wanted to giggle, she sure wasn’t going to go out of her way to stop it.
Zoe’s eyes widened, and her mouth opened in feigned shock. “Oh my! You, our intrepid pilot, have never heard of the law of the skyways?”
“OH!” Linda said, striking her forehead with the flat of her hand. “THAT law of the skyways!”
“That’s better.” Zoe took Linda’s arm and started walking towards the open cargo bay door. “Now, I’m thinkin’ the reason you’re feeling afraid is ‘cause you forgot just how much power a good looking woman has in this Verse. You knew before you joined the crew. You had to, if you grew up looking like that. And I know you wouldn’t have been able to get through flight school with a bunch of pilot-wanabees if you hadn’t figured out how to put them in their place. Believe me, I was married to a pilot — I know how most of them behave with womenfolk.” Her voice took on a wistful tone. “Never had to worry about him, though.”
She shook her head and focused on Linda again. “Anyway, you used to know how strong you are. But what happened at the Skyplex made you forget for a while, and you started thinkin’ you were weak, just ‘cause you couldn’t stop two zuì fàn from scaring the pants off you at gunpoint. And that just ain’t right.”
She stopped and turned Linda to face her. “From where I stand, you did just fine. Wasn’t much else you could do, to tell the truth. And you took your clothes off to protect River, not because you were scared. But sometimes folks have a way of twisting the facts after something bad happens, just ‘cause they think they coulda done somethin’ different, even when they couldn’t.”
There was a dainty clattering on the steps behind them both, and they turned to watch Inara descend in the same dress she had worn to that shindig on Persephone long ago. It was off white and sleeveless — classically beautiful, with a deep décolletage and a long flowing skirt that seemed to float when she moved. She had left the long gloves in her shuttle, choosing instead a pair of wide gold bracelets with a tasteful pattern of gemstones on each, and her hair was loose around her shoulders and brushed to a warm sheen.
“Excuse me,” she said with a smile. “You wouldn’t happen to be going for a walk, would you?”
“Might be,” Zoe replied, smiling back. “It’s a beautiful day, after all.”
“May I join you?” Inara stepped off the bottom stair and made her way gracefully to where they stood. “I have a sudden uncontrollable urge to parade myself in front of a crowd of lustful gōng rén — most of whom have almost totally forgotten what a real woman is supposed to look like.”
“We’d be delighted to have you.” The first mate’s smile became a grin. “Wouldn’t we, Linda?”
“Of course we would,” Wash replied automatically, then stopped herself and turned to Inara. “You do know this is crazy, right? I mean, you yelled at the Captain so I wouldn’t have to go — and now you want to come along?”
Inara shook her head. “Originally, all I wanted to do was keep you safe. But after thinking about it, Zoe is right. What happened to you at the Skyplex is haunting you, and making you forget what you learned the day some boy noticed you were different ... and liked the difference enough to put your needs ahead of his.”
The companion crossed over to take both of Linda’s hands in hers. “There’s a risk, certainly, but not as big a risk as you might think, qīn ài de. What you need to remember is that, no matter how much they might want us, the entire weight of civilization stands between us and them. There’s a very good chance they won’t do anything at all, because generations of mothers and grandmothers before us have battered it into their brains that women are to be respected.”
“Add to that the fact that actin’ like a bèn dàn isn’t going to get them anywhere close to gettin’ any of us in bed,” Zoe said, “If they think there’s a chance with any of us, they might actually be nice. Ain’t likely, but stranger things have happened.”
“But ... but what if I’m right to be scared?”
“You’re not.” The voice came from the catwalk above, and everyone looked up to see Kaylee, still in her mechanics jumpsuit and boots. “Jei mei, they’re just men. They’re half the folk in the Verse, and they ain’t all evil, lecherous humps no matter what your mama said to keep you from gettin’ sexed when you was growin’ up. They just know what they want, and most all of ‘em know they won’t get it unless they treat us the way we want to be treated.”
She walked down the stairs and over to Linda, then put her arm around her and squeezed softly.
“Every man ain’t lookin’ to hurt you, nǚ hái,” she said softly. “Heck, most of ‘em are kinda nice. Those two xié è nán rén at the Skyplex just spooked you is all. We’re gonna show you how things really are.”
“We?” Inara raised an eyebrow, and Kaylee gave her a sharp look.
“Gorram right. You ain’t gonna leave me behind. I’m the reason why she’s wearing that dress. I pushed when I shouldn’t have, and it’s at least a bit my fault she’s feelin’ a more than a mite shaky around menfolk right now. So she ain’t goin’ out there without me, dohn-mah?”
Inara hesitated, then nodded. Kaylee smiled back in return.
“Aren’t you going to change?” the Companion asked. Kaylee shook her head.
“I like dressin’ up as much as the next girl,” she replied, “but according to Simon, this outfit is downright sexy, just ‘cause I’m wearin’ it.” Inara was surprised to see Kaylee blush, just a little. “I ain’t gonna argue with that.”
Inara moved away from Linda and Kaylee to stand beside Zoe.
“This really is insane,” she whispered through her smile. “Totally yǒu jīng shén bìng.”
Zoe nodded. “Right enough.”
“And we’re doing it because ...?”
“Because Linda needs it. Because we can.” The first mate looked into Inara’s eyes. “And because every once in a while, a woman needs to cut loose and do somethin’ wild and all manner of stupid — somethin’ folks tell her not to do, just ‘cause she’s a woman. Sometimes a girl needs to prove she’s not ‘less than’ just ‘cause she ain’t a man. Captain doesn’t really understand that.”
Inara shrugged. “Mal wants to protect us. We’re crew, we’re family, and we’re women, and that’s how his mind works. It’s not always a bad thing.” Inara watched as Linda and Kaylee started walking towards them, and the cargo bay door. “But in this Verse, a woman has the right to go where she pleases, and Linda may not be the only one who needs reminding. Are you armed?”
“Yes, ma’am. Aren’t you?” Inara smiled and ducked her head. Zoe grinned. “Alright, then. We know where we stand.”
“Together.”
“Gorram straight.” Linda and Kaylee reached the pair, and Zoe stood up a little straighter. “Is everyone ready?”
The pilot took a deep breath, then nodded. The mechanic just grinned and bobbed her head.
“All right, then,” Inara said, turning towards the cargo bay door. “Come on, ladies. Let’s go for a walk.”
None of them saw the shadow that slipped by them and out into the yard, only to vanish in the sunlight as shadows do.
NOTE: I did promise to try and make each chapter more self-contained and less cliff-hangery, and I DID try -- but the chapter started getting longer and longer, so i went and broke it into two. Not to worry, though. The rest will be coming your way soon enough ... as soon as this girl gets to finishin' it. *grin* -- Randalynn
This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place soon after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the third part of a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first Firefly story (and the first two chapters of this one), since they both set the stage.
In the third part of FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED, Wash and the ladies go for a walk in the freight yard, Jayne plays guardian angel with a "dumb-ass piece of Alliance plastic" for a gun, and our intrepid pilot finally faces her fear -- with surprising results!
All River had to do was keep a lid on those few simmering pots of misogynistic rage and hormonal excess, and stop them from boiling over just long enough for Wash and the ladies to reach the dispatch office, do what needed to be done, and get back to Serenity in one piece.
‘As the Captain would say,’ she muttered to herself, ‘best be about it.’
She moved through the dispatch yard like a ghost. It was partly because of her natural grace and her stillness, and partly because of those abilities the Alliance had enhanced in her to make her become a living weapon. Mostly, she would reach into the minds of the men around her and just make herself ... unnoticed. To the men she touched with her talent, she was a shadow, or a doorway, or a drainpipe -- just another part of the everyday landscape for the eye to pass over and ignore.
From on top of the ship, Jayne watched as River flowed around the groups of working men like ... well, like a river around a bunch of rocks. It was pretty, how she moved, almost like she was dancing. But that made it all manner of creepifying, too, since none of the men on the field seemed to see her at all.
He shifted uncomfortably, looking through the scope of the Interceptor with the magnification pulled back so he could watch River dance. When she reached the dispatch shack, she changed her rhythm and seemed to scurry up the side of the wall like a spider to land lightly on the roof. Jayne shuddered. ‘It just ain’t natural to be able to do something like that.’
‘What does that make me, Jayne?’
“Cut that out!”
“Here’s the plan,” River’s voice whispered in his head, and he could almost hear her grinning. “Set the amount of paralyzing agent in each shot for no more than three minutes. We don’t want to leave the crew chiefs with a bunch of unexplained statues where they used to have working men.”
“How do I do that?”
The young girl sighed. “Hit the red recessed button below the sight to switch to operations mode. Go to the main menu, then ammo, then settings. Adjust the slider to three minutes, hit save, and exit. Honestly, Jayne, didn’t you even glance at the manual? It’s right there under your bed in the duffel bag. I read it one night last week when you were lifting weights. It’s not bad.”
“I prefer poking at somethin’ to figure out how it works,” the shooter replied, a little defensively. “And I ain’t never been good at book learnin’.”
“You might want to start thinking about getting good at it, Jayne. A lot of women are attracted to smart men.” As his temper rose a bit, River continued. “And you’re smarter than you let on. I can see it in you. You just need to be able to show it ... and Linda needs to be able to see it.”
Jayne felt himself turning red at the unexpected compliment. “Can we get back to the job?”
“Okay.” Another sigh. “Here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to read everyone in the crowd and find the troublemakers. I’ll try to keep the men on the edge from going over, and mark the ones you need to paralyze before they explode.”
“And how are you gonna mark ‘em so I can see ‘em?” Jayne growled, looking at her standing there in plain sight while the rest of the world ignored her. ‘It ain’t natural,’ he thought with a scowl.
“It is for me.” He could hear her smiling, and he shook his head and smiled too, just a little. “You’ll see it when it happens. Yellow means they could be trouble, so keep an eye on them. If they turn red, hit them before they do something stupid.”
The shooter grunted and nodded. There was a pause, and then River’s voice spoke again.
“I meant what I said, back in your quarters. If you have questions about why Linda is the way she is, I’m here. I know you’re talking to Mal about women, and that’s fine. But I know things he can’t, and I think you and Linda have ... possibilities. I just want to help you get together, if it’s meant to be.”
Jayne paused, one eyebrow raised. “You mean it?”
“I do.” There was a short pause. “Here they come!”
Dolph Trumbauer put down the crate he had been carrying, sweat pouring from his body. His arms and chest were solid slabs of muscle from the hours spent shifting cargo from one point to the next, and that wasn’t a bad thing for a man to be able to say. Still, he wondered whether Mister Berenger might think about getting some decent exo-suits to take the load off. He liked working in the depot, no question -- but a machine assist could make him a lot more productive, and he enjoyed looking at his work sheet at the end of the day and seeing how much he had moved, all by himself.
“With the right exo, I could move twice the weight in half the time,” he said to his friend Yuri, pulling a rag from his hip pocket and mopping his face as he spoke. “A regular Colossus. Boy, that would be something to see.”
The whole yard seemed to fall silent, all at once. The forklifts and loaders they did have coughed and died, and everything suddenly went very still.
“Spasebo!” Yuri breathed, his voice just barely above a whisper. He nudged Dolph’s arm. “Talk about something to see ...”
Dolph turned, and watch four angels walk out of the cargo bay door of the Firefly-class boat on pad three. They glided down the ramp and into his heart with an ease that made him ask himself why there was no woman in his life, and how he could ever find someone like this to share his days and warm his nights. These women ... they seemed to embody the essence of what men think of when they think of woman. They walked past dozens of working men like they owned the yard, and headed for the dispatch hut with a stride that left no doubt they knew where they were going.
For a moment, Dolph remembered when he was so much younger. He had always been a big reader, and had even written poetry for a while — some of it pretty darned good, too. He had secretly wanted to go to college and learn more, until he made the mistake of mentioning it where his father could hear. The man had beaten Dolph until schooling and poetry were the furthest things from his mind, and his ambition had stayed locked away for twenty years or more.
Until today, when the poet in Dolph’s soul rose up and tried to paint these women with words.
‘There’s the elegant one, dressed in white, fair of face wth a noble’s grace,’ he thought, ‘And the one in purple, strong and true, with beauty and loyalty none can undo.’
Every man followed their every step, their eyes full of fantasies. Dolph looked at the woman in the stained jumpsuit, with a warm smile on her face
‘That one tastes like strawberry wine -- a burst of light when the sun doesn’t shine.’ The loader smiled and turned his attention to the one beside her in a yellow sundress. She almost seemed to hesitate, even as she moved forward.
‘That redhead,’ he mused, ‘so pretty, yet so unsure ... is she afraid, or just demure?’
Dolph paused a moment, thinking about that last line.
‘She’s not shy,’ he realized. ‘She’s frightened. But why? What could she be afraid of?’
He turned slowly, looking at the men struck dumb by the parade of beauty. Some of them were openly leering, and Dolph could almost see the lust pouring from their bodies in waves, their eyes glistening with barely suppressed desire.
‘Us,’ he thought, the idea coming first as a surprise, then as so much a certainty he almost kicked himself for not seeing it sooner. ‘She’s scared of us!’
It made him sad, that such a pretty woman could fear him without even knowing his name. Then he looked around again, thinking that maybe she wasn’t wrong to be afraid at all.
He knew some of these men didn’t like pretty women at all ... or strong women, for that matter. Oh, they wanted the beautiful ones, to be sure, but they seldom managed to charm any of them, because their manners were coarse and their overtures rude. Eventually, they came to see every woman as a tease, dangling a vision of something they could never have just out of reach. This frustration made them angry ... and sometimes violent.
He’d seen ‘em on a few trips to what passed for a major city on this Alliance-heavy rock. They always tried to take the ladies down a peg, getting rougher and rougher until whatever establishment they were in kicked them out. Then they would wait in the street until the women left, only to follow them with words (and sometimes hands) until the local police stopped them and sent them on their way.
As Dolph watched, the crowd became more and more excited. The men began talking to each other, and he began to worry about the angels from that transport. As the rumbling of voices started growing louder, his eyes kept scanning the freight yard. Before he realized he was moving, he had started pushing through the crowd towards the dispatch hut, and the worry turned to fear.
Because there wasn’t any law enforcement to speak of in the Berenger depot, but there were more than enough idiots to go around. And it only took one to start a riot.
Jayne kept his eye on the Interceptor’s scope and tried real hard not to look at the four ladies walking across the field. He was supposed to be keepin’ ‘em safe, but they were enough of a distraction all by themselves to make savin’ ‘em harder than it oughta be. He gave ‘em one look when they left the cargo bay, just to make sure River was right.
‘Of course I’m right, Jayne. Keep your eyes on the crowd.’
He did what she said. Eyes on the crowd. She was right. He wasn’t gonna save anybody watchin’ the ladies. He was in this to keep Linda and the rest safe, and that’s what River wanted, too. So he listened. Didn’t mean he liked her poking around in his head, even if it was for a good reason.
There were a few folks out in the crowd colored yellow, but no reds yet. Jayne didn’t want to think too hard about how deep inside his head River had to be to do something like this, but it sure made his job easier.
The ladies walked into view, and he pulled back on the scope’s mag to take in a wider view.
‘Some of the crowd’s still yellow,’ he thought, ‘but I’m thinkin’ a few of ‘em are getting a mite orangy around the edges. Is she supposed to be doin’ orangy?’
“JAYNE!”
The shooter felt his whole body tense, and his trigger finger twitched.
“Gorram it, Mal,” he growled, forcing all his muscles to relax. “I almost wasted a trank on some poor idjit juss standin’ there watching the parade go by.”
“What the hell are you doin’ up here?”
“Watchin’ the ground crew get all heated up through this dumb-ass piece of Alliance plastic,” Jayne replied, his eyes not leaving the scope. “Tryin’ to look out for the ladies without lookin’ like I’m tryin’ to look out for ‘em.”
“Why?”
“Cause River said Zoe’s got some damn fool idea in her head about showin’ Linda she don’t hafta be afraid of every guy, just ‘cause a what happened on the Skyplex. Inara and Kaylee went, too. Hell if I know why.”
Mal stepped forward and looked down at the procession making its way across the compound. “Huh,” he said, as his thoughts ran to catch up with the rest of him. “Inara, too. Showin’ me she can go where she wants to, I reckon. Like I didn’t already know that.”
“Zoe wants to throw Linda into a pit full of men and show her they can keep their hands to themselves.” Jayne snorted. “I ain’t sayin’ it’s the worst plan in the Verse, but I guess I’m just here makin’ sure they keep their distance, ‘cause River knows some of ‘em won’t.
The captain thought for a second, then nodded slowly. “Like getting’ back up on a horse that threw ya.”
Jayne squinted and cocked his head. “In a dress?”
Mal smiled, remembering saying the same thing to Zoe a few minutes ago. “If that what it takes.”
He walked over and stood beside Jayne, watching as the ladies approached the dispatch office. “Look at ‘em, Jayne. Takes all manner of courage to go through the world lookin’ that good without being afraid some man’s gonna try to scare you, bully you, or make a toy outta you, juss ‘cause they think they can. You and me, we make our way and don’t think twice, ‘cause most folk know enough not to try and push us too hard.”
The mercenary grinned, still watching the crowd through the scope. “Gorram right. Not if they know what’s good for ‘em.”
Mal continued, almost thinking aloud. “But womenfolk go through life havin’ to be better, all the while pretendin’ they ain’t afraid that some sah gwa with too many muscles and too little sense decides he wants a poke and won’t take no for an answer. I think Linda just forgot how not to be afraid. I guess Zoe and Inara and Kaylee ...”
“And me.” River’s voice echoed in both of their heads.
“And you, little Albatross ... they want to remind her that it ain’t as bad out there as she thinks it is.”
“Only it is that bad,” Jayne muttered, “or I wouldn’t be here, waitin’ for some ruttin’ fool to get stupid.”
“One hundred sixty seven men, and only eight of them could be trouble,” River said from her vantage point on the building across the way. Jayne watched as eight of the men glowed orange for a moment, and suppressed a shudder. “The captain’s right. It isn’t as bad as Linda thinks it is.”
“Well, if everyone would just shut up a while, maybe I could do my job and convince her its true, even if it ain’t.” Jayne settled back down behind the gun, muttering to himself. “Then she’ll get back to the boat thinkin’ all the men in the Verse are church-goin’ Sunday school teachers. Until one of them grabs a piece of her that ain’t up for grabs."
The shooter rolled his shoulders and tried to loosen up some, as the women walked the last ten feet into the dispatch office.
“Halfway home,” he whispered, a trickle of sweat making its way down his back. “Get back quick, Linda, afore somethin’ goes wrong.”
The inside of the dispatch office was a peculiar mix of the latest Core technology, a forest of paper forms and folders, and the usual clutter produced by men who don't have anyone to impress with either cleanliness or attention to detail. Used food and drink containers mixed with ancient alerts from Alliance traffic control, covering every flat surface, along with discarded animated newspads from a hundred Alliance worlds.
Zev, the older of the two on duty that day, was a graying Buddha of a man, balding with a long mustache and a wispy beard. He was built like a scaled-down version of a sumo wrestler, and looked like one as he hunkered down over a collection of monitors that tracked everything from Boros space command intercepts and local traffic control to loading completion and dispatch assignments.
Viktor, the other man in the dispatch center, was small, thin, and pale, with dark, wild hair, sunken eyes and a sharp chin. His job was to keep the crews on task and the cargo in the depot flowing smoothly, and his eyes darted from monitor to monitor to make sure the crews were doing their jobs.
Only they weren't. They were standing around, their heads turning to follow something moving through the center of the dispatch yard. Viktor kept switching from camera to camera to try to see what it was they were looking at, but he always seemed to switch views too late.
He turned up the sensitivity of the external microphones, only to receive another shock. There was dead silence for a few seconds, and the men started talking softly, apparently commenting on whatever they were looking at, but in tones too low to be distinguishable as individual words. Viktor growled to himself and turned to his partner.
With a genial laugh, Zev sat back in his seat, his headset perched upon his head like a black preying mantis carved from plastic and metal.
“So den Viktor asks her if she's just flyin' urr if she's really ON duh stick,” he said to the dispatcher at the Hung Dao depot a few hundred klicks away. “Yoo shoulda hurd hur pitchun ah fit!” He laughed again, bigger the second time. Frustrated, Viktor picked up an empty bottle of Blue Sun Cola and threw it at the back of Zev's head. It bounced off and hit the tile floor with a clatter, and Zev spun around and gave the other man a stern look.
“Wut duh hull iz yur prublum, Viktor?”
“My problem? MY problem?” Viktor jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the depot monitors. “WE got a ground crew full of meat mannikins out there instead of men moving cargo.”
Zev raised his eyebrows in confusion, and Viktor raised his voice in response.
“There's a hundred sixty men just standin' around the depot like statues,” he said, “and when Mister Berenger sees that nothing is getting done, he's not going to care whose fault it is. He's not going to care about ANYTHING but the bottom line, and how WE let productivity drop to zero in the middle of a work day. So it's OUR problem, Zev. Not mine, OURS.”
The older man stared at his partner for a few seconds, then glanced at the depot monitors before turning to his own station and pulled up the camera displays.
“Dey'ur luukin at sumtin, yah,” he said, switching from camera to camera. “I canna see anyting, doh.”
As he kept looking, Zev became more and more frustrated he muttered, “Wut wur dey luukin at?”
An unquestionably female voice came from the doorway. “That would be us.”
Both men turned towards the sound and found four women standing there, three dressed for a night on the town and a fourth in a mechanic’s jumpsuit that hugged her curves. The fourth one reminded Viktor of Ludmilla, the girl he left behind on New Smolensk. Of course, Milla never looked quite as good in her jumpsuit, which is probably why Viktor left, but still ...
The redhead with the figure that didn't stop seemed to stumble forward, and turned to the woman in the jumpsuit behind her with an annoyed look on her face, as if she'd been pushed. Standing up straight, she turned back to the two men.
“I'm the pilot of Tranquility, the Firefly-class over on pad three,” she said, her voice loud and strong. “I need the manifests, dispatch logs, and scheduled departure times, please.”
“Yur deh pilot? DAT pilot??” Zev stood up, a huge smile spreading across his face. “Gurl, you made my day, dat’s fur damn suur. Gave yu greef, und yu turn ‘roun’ und giff bak’ as gud as you got, und den sum. Been tellin’ the utter disbachers ‘bout yu, how yu damned neer ripped us boat a new vun, ain’t dat right, Viktor? If I had a hat on, I’d take it off t’ yu, und dat’s a fact.”
Viktor stood up, too, grinning like a loon. “You sure shut us down. I ain’t been slapped so hard long distance since I called my best girl Carla on a comm call.” His eyes twinkled. “Her name was Ludmilla.”
Both men laughed, and Wash found her lips twitching into a half smile in spite of herself.
‘These were the men I was afraid of?’ she wondered, as Viktor started bringing up the documents on the system and setting them to print.
“We’ll have you squared away in no time,” Viktor said, “even though we’d love to have you stay a while.”
“Dammed straight! Yoo giff us sometin’ bettah to look at den dose fellahs outside,” Zev rumbled, jerking a thumb at the central display. “Boring times infinity, yoo bet. We culdn’t wait fur yu to show up.”
“Then why were you so mean to her on the comms?” Kaylee burst out. The pilot turned around, having completely forgotten about her companions.
Viktor grinned.
“It breaks up the monotony,” he replied. “No offense to the pretty pilot here, but we’re pretty much rude to all the pilots, because ... well, because they’re pilots!”
Zev nodded. “Dey’re always so full of demselves, deh ‘kings uf deh sky!’” He snorted, and his eyes twinkled. “Viktor und I, we tink uf it as a public survice to take dem down a few notches when dey fly into dis depot.”
“The first time Zev rips ‘em up, most of them are so surprised that their brains shut off.” Viktor shook his head. “But you ... you handed it back as fast as we dealt it. Shoulda figured a woman wouldn’t put up with that sort of sh -- uh, talk.”
There was a sudden beeping from Zev’s console, and he dropped back into his seat and swiveled around to face the microphone. He flicked a switch with the back of his hand.
“Oh, its yoo, Toshi,” he roared with a grin that woudn’t quit. “Since I know yoo, I’m not surprised when yoo show up like dis tree hours outside yur pick-up window, und I bet yur pro’bly so drunk yur seein’ five depots when der’s only one. Tell yah what, doh ... if yoo ken pick deh right depot and put dat rat trap yoo call a ship down on pad five without turnin’ it into scrap metal, I got a few containers needin’ movin’ t’ Whitefall. But if yoo crash und burn in my yard, all bets ur off.”
Zev flipped the switch closed, then swiveled back to face the ladies, still smiling.
“See?” Viktor almost laughed, but managed to keep it inside. “Zev’s an equal opportunity offender!”
Zoe came up behind Linda and touched her shoulder. The pilot bowed her head.
“I feel so silly now,” she whispered. “Just a little teasing, and I fall apart.”
“Hush, now,” Zoe replied, her tone a little fierce. “It was more than these two, and you know it. You had leftover baggage from the Skyplex weighing you down, not to mention Kaylee’s stunt with the dress.”
There was a muted “hey!” from behind them. Both women ignored it.
“Besides,” the first mate went on, smiling. “How could you possibly know they were a pair of harmless idiots before you met them?”
Both men looked at the two women, clearly confused.
“Is something wrong?” Viktor took a step forward.
“Linda was almost raped at gunpoint a few weeks ago,” Kaylee replied.
Both Zoe and Linda turned and spoke as one. “Kaylee!”
“Well, you were!” she protested, “And it don’t make much sense to keep it a secret if these two sah gwa want to know why you’re so upset.”
Linda glared at her. “MY secret to tell, péng gÅ« niang.”
Inara stepped forward. “Your teasing brought back how she felt then, and made her feel . . . weak. And scared. We came with her to provide a little moral support when she came to get our paperwork.”
Kaylee snorted. “She didn’t expect to find two wá¡n ná¡n rén playing silly games.”
The two men looked at each other, then back at the women. Zev sighed, then rose and took a few steps to the pilot.
“Nee ta ma duh tyen-shia suo-yo duh run doh gai si,” he muttered. Then, taking her hands in his, he looked into her eyes. “I um sorry ve said anyting to disdress yoo. We didn’t know, or we wuldn’t haff said wat we said.”
“We didn’t mean to hurt you,” Viktor said. “We just figured that, since you’re a pilot, you’d have the same planet-sized ego all the other pilots have. We’re sorry.”
Both men looked so sad, Linda couldn’t help but smile. She shook her head and gave Zev’s hands a squeeze.
“Apologies accepted,” she said, and the two dispatchers visibly relaxed. “No real harm done, after all. I expect I’ll have more than a few rough times ahead getting over ... what happened. You just happened to hit me when I was feeling it more.”
“Well, we were really impressed with how fast you came back at us, Miss Linda,” Viktor said, turning back to finish processing the paperwork. “I sure wouldn’t call you weak, not after feeling the sharp edge of your tongue.”
“Ya, dat’s true,” Zev agreed, letting go of Linda’s hands and slipping his in his pockets. “If dat’s yoo when yur feelin’ weak, I be shoor ta stay a few clicks outta range when yur at yur peak.”
Viktor started hitting some keys. “I’m going to put your ship at the head of the line, ladies ... get you loaded and cleared as quick as I can. It’s the least we can do to make up for our rudeness.”
“Thank you,” Inara replied, fidgeting slightly. “Our captain is anxious to get back out in the black.”
“With uh crew full uf such beeyoutiful women, that’s no surprise,” Zev grinned. “After all, out dere he can keep all dis beauty to himself.”
Zoe walked over and put her arm around Inara.
“Well, Inara here is more than enough beauty for the Captain,” she said with a smile. “And Kaylee there has got the ship's doctor keepin' his eyes on her vitals, right enough. Linda's got herself a man, too ... though whether she plans to keep him or not is still up in the air. But I thank you for the compliment, from all of us.”
Zev took a sheaf of paper from the printer and handed it to Linda with a flourish.
“I'll get sum loaders out dere to put deh cargo on yur boat,” he said, glancing up at one of the overhead monitors and shaking his head. “If I ken ever get dem to start movin’ again. You ladies damn near shut down deh yard, un dat’s a fact.”
“And we probably will again on the way back.” Inara sighed. “I'm glad that's all that happened, though.”
“Don’t be too sure it’s over,” Viktor said, looking up at Inara. “There are men in that crew out there I wouldn't trust within a hundred miles of a good-looking woman — and they're a damned sight closer than that. You've got a long walk back across the yard, and a lot can happen between here and there.”
The situation in the dispatch hut having resolved itself well, River turned her attention back to the yard. She tried to see through the rising waves of lust and excitement to find the ones she had singled out before, but she hadn’t counted on the raw power of the primal emotions rising from the crowd. Trying to single out the dangerous ones from the emotional “ground clutter” was pushing her to the limit of her gift, and River began to feel overwhelmed.
‘Not quite so easy to control events, is it?’ Chiang’s mental voice held just a touch of mockery. ‘Maybe it’s not a game for amateurs.’
‘I never said it was easy, old man,’ she replied through gritted teeth, watching as the women left the dispatch hut and started back across the yard. ‘The Verse was born in chaos. For all our talk of a natural order, the Verse thrives on confusion and coincidence, laughs at cause and effect, and thinks all our plans and schemes mean nothing. It’s full of messy people living their messy lives and making all the wrong choices for the wrong reasons, every minute of every day.’
‘Then why try to change anything?’
‘Because we can. Because nothing worth doing is ever easy. And because if a job is hard, you try harder, and do better.’
‘And still fail?’ River could hear the smile behind Chiang’s words.
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘But you’re going to fail anyway if you don’t try, Gladys. Now I’m busy. Bizui and let me work.’
Unfortunately, Chiang’s distraction was enough. River’s concentration wavered, just for an instant. It turned out to be an instant too long.
Viktor’s prediction was all too accurate. Fifty feet from the dispatch hut door, two men stepped out of the crowd in front of them, blocking the way back to Serenity. The women stopped, almost as one.
The taller of the two, stepped forward and cleared his throat.
“Ladies, allow me to introduce myself,” he said, staring down at Linda. The smile that followed was little more than a barely disguised leer, made more obvious by where his eyes rested. “My name’s Dalton Sweeney, and I know you’re gonna want to remember it, ‘cause me and my friends here plan to show you the best time you ever had, right here.”
Linda looked up at him, her face an emotionless mask. “I’m sorry, but we can’t stay. We’re on a tight schedule.”
“Aww, but it’s been so long since anybody as purty as you came visitin’, we’re thinkin’ you’ll stay awhile, git better acquainted.” He put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at it as if it was some kind of alien insect.
“And we’re thinking we’ve got deliveries to make, and very little time to make ‘em,” she replied evenly, her heart pounding in her chest. “Nothing personal, Mr. Sweeney. Just orders. Our ship’s a freighter. We pickup and we deliver. That’s how we make our way. So when the captain says we fly, we fly. Dong-luh-mah?”
“I could have a word with your captain,” Sweeney looked down at the pilot. “Make him see its better off for him if you stay awhile, keep us happy.”
Zoe moved forward to stand beside Linda, and smiled slowly.
“I see you don’t know the Captain very well, and that’s a shame,” she said. “He’s not about to do anything to keep you happy ... and trying will only make him mad.”
Sweeney shifted his eyes to her, and his smile became more vicious than sexual. “Then maybe we don’t load your boat until we have some time alone with you all.” He took a step closer to Linda, and she looked up at him, afraid but refusing to take a step back. “Hell, maybe we just take your boat until he lets us do what we want with you.”
“Oh, that’s a bad idea,” Kaylee piped up helpfully. “I remember one idiot who tried to ‘take our boat.’ Cap’n wound up kicking him into the port engine . . . while it was running. After that, wasn’t much left of him but an awful stink and a bad memory. It was a couple of trips across the system afore we finally lost the smell.”
“Well, your captain isn’t here now, is he?” Sweeney sneered. “It’s just you, and us.”
He motioned in the air, and two more men appeared behind the women. “You can’t go forward, and you can’t go back. So why not come play nice while you still have a choice?”
“Gorram it, those idjits ain’t even yellow!’ Jayne swore, trying to get a clear shot at the men. “If I woulda known they was targets, I coulda tapped ‘em with the re ... recog ... with the part that lets the shots know how to find ‘em. Then I coulda juss shot up in the air and let the gun do the work.”
He turned to Mal to complain, but all he saw was the hatch closing. He turned back to the scope and kept trying for a shot. ANY shot.
“River!” he almost shouted. “Ai-yah Tyen-ah! Where ARE you, girl? We got trouble.”
Suddenly there was her voice, echoing in his head. ‘It’s okay, Jayne. Stand down. It’s okay.’
“No, it’s not!” he shot back. “Damn it, open your eyes.”
‘I don’t need them,’ River replied. ‘I can see it all from here. More than you. So don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.’
The mercenary looked up at the sky and growled. “How do you KNOW that?”
‘Because I know. Trust me.’
Jayne shook himself like a wet dog, then leaned back over the Interceptor’s scope. “Like I have a gorram choice,” he muttered.
“The gentlemen in the dispatch hut might have something to say about how you’re treating us.” Inara gave him a scathing look. “You do work for them, you know.”
“We work for Mister Berenger.” One of the other men spoke up. “He knows what women are for, and he knows when to look the other way. Anyway, Zev and Viktor ain’t comin’ to help anybody. There’s only one door in and out, and we got it covered.”
Linda glanced back to see two large men holding the door closed, and she could hear the two dispatchers banging on it. She turned back to see Sweeney smiling, and it suddenly raised an unexpected emotion in her ... something that seemed to bring Wash and the Linda-That-Was together in a way they’d only been once before.
She was angry. No, she’d gone way past angry, and moved clear into a furious, blinding rage.
Sweeney felt a savage kind of joy, knowing he’d managed to put these bitches in their place and his smile widened, thinking of this redhead on her knees before him.
It lasted all of two seconds, before her fist collided with his chin.
He staggered backward, his hand coming up towards his face, just in time to see her foot slam into his groin with every ounce of strength she could muster. It hurt so badly he couldn’t even scream, just whine as both hands sunk towards the source of infinite agony that used to be his testicles.
The other three men stood there, stunned, as their leader curled up into a fetal ball on the dusty ground. Sweeney’s companion took one look at Linda’s face, glanced behind her, and stepped back, his hands in the air.
The pilot turned, and saw Zoe standing there with two small pistols in her outstretched hands, ready to shoot anything that moved. Inara’s bracelets had somehow become a matching pair of daggers, and from the way she was standing, it was pretty clear she knew how to use them.
And Kaylee stood behind them both, holding what appeared to be the mother-of-all wrenches. She was trying to look fierce, but to Wash, she just looked like a kitten trying to frighten a pack of bulldogs. No matter what, she was still just Kaylee.
‘And she always will be,’ the pilot thought, suppressing a smile. After a second, her anger resurfaced and she turned back to face the crowd.
“Listen up!” she shouted, fists clenched. “You have absolutely no idea who you’re dealing with here. I’m just a gorram pilot, but I put him down fast enough. And I’ll do the same to anyone who tries what he tried. Maybe we aren’t a match for a hundred men. Hell, maybe we aren’t a match for twenty. But three of us are armed, two of us are downright dangerous, and all of us are angry. So you WILL get the hell out of our way, or you will learn exactly why it’s a bad idea to get between any woman . . . and her home.”
It was so quiet, she could clearly hear Zev cursing on the other side of the dispatch door. Then a mountain of a man stepped up behind the two men between them and the dispatch hut and lifted them clear off of the ground, holding them both by the back of the neck.
“Ain’t none of us going to do anything but wish you all well, miss,” Dolph said, his voice betraying no special effort. “These yuá¡n wá² don’t speak for us, and never will. We apologize for their actions. They have disgraced us all, pretty ladies, and they will be punished for it.” He raised his voice. “Isn’t that right, gents?”
The crowd answered with a roar that stunned the women, and Dolph grinned. Spinning around, he tossed both of Sweeney’s men up into the air. The workers on either side of the path caught them as they fell and lifted them high, passing them from man to man across the dispatch yard until they disappeared from sight.
The two men by the dispatch hut doors had tried to slip away, but the men closest to them grabbed and held them both as the dispatchers finally wrenched the door open and stepped outside.
“Yu and yu,” Zev roared, his face red with fury. “Yuur SO fired, I’m surprised there ain’t nothing but a smoking spot where yu used to be standin’!”
Viktor turned to the ones holding them. “You two — throw ‘em all inna crate until we can figure out where to send ‘em — and if they give you any trouble, send ‘em back to their next of kin in a unpressurized cargo drone, cash on delivery.”
Another cheer rose from the rest of the men as the two were hustled away.
Dolph walked over, picked Sweeney up, and pitched his whimpering body out into the crowd overhand like a giant beach ball. Then he looked at Sweeney’s other man. The thug looked up at Dolph, shrugged, and faded back into the mass of workers on the edge of the path.
The huge loader turned to Linda and the others and bowed once.
“We aren’t all like them, miss,” he said softly. “I saw you walking across the yard to the hut, and it made me sad that you were so afraid. You don’t have to be frightened, or angry, around any of us. We’re all just people, that’s all. Most of us good people, most of the time.”
Dolph ducked his head and grinned. “A little rougher around the edges than you ladies, I think, but still just people all the same.”
Zev came over and clapped Dolph on the shoulder. “Trumbauer! The ladies need to be loaded and gone, so we’re shiftin’ dem up the queue. Grab some of the best we got and hustle ovur to pahd tree.”
“Yes, boss,” Dolph replied.
Inside, Wash felt surprisingly whole. Her body and soul were closer than they had ever been, and it almost seemed as if the rage that Sweeney brought forward in her had also brought them both to a common ground.
But it wasn’t the rage that united them. It was what Wash had discovered about who she was now, and what she was capable of. Her courage was still there, and the part of her that made her such a damned fine pilot — the part that knew how risky some things are, and did ‘em anyway. Because you had to, to be who you were. Who you are. And who you wanted to be.
For the first time in a while, she felt comfortable in her own skin — probably because the part of Wash that had been holding back finally knew it was her own skin.
She stood there, in that summer dress she knew was pretty and those silly heels that she vowed she’d never wear again. She felt the fabric wrapping every curve, and accepted that those curves well and truly belonged to her, for the rest of her stay in the Verse. And everything finally came together in a way that left her in no doubt as to who she was — who she truly was, and who she was meant to be, now.
‘I am a woman,’ she thought, a small smile slipping onto her lips. ‘And that means whatever I want it to mean, nothing more or less. I don’t have to be anything I don’t want to be. I don’t have to be afraid, and I sure as hell don’t have to live my life on anyone’s terms but my own. And that’s as it should be.’
And just like that, the parts of Wash that worried about what being a woman would mean to the rest of her life were gone — or at least had quieted down enough for now to let her figure it out as she went along.
She was still Wash, all the way down to her core. But the parts of Linda that still lingered seemed to accept her as part of them ... provisionally. And Wash accepted them, as well as all of Linda’s history they brought along.
Provisionally.
There was still a long road ahead for both of them, but Wash and the Linda-That-Was had gone a long way towards becoming one. And to Wash, that felt just fine.
There was the sound of boots running hard on the packed surface of the freight yard, and Mal came into view down the open path between the dispatch hut and the ship. When he saw everyone standing around like a gorram tea party, he realized that his full-tilt run from Serenity may have been a mite uncalled for. With an odd shuffle and a previously undiscovered grace, the captain managed to turn his run into an easy amble with enough time to stumble to a lazy stop and hitch his thumbs on his gun belt.
“Ladies,” he said, cocking his head. “I was wonderin’ what was keepin’ you. With us wanting to be on our merry so quick and all, I woulda thought you’d been back by now.”
“We were on our way, Sir.” Zoe threw him a quick smile, her guns back where they had been hidden before she drew them. “In fact, the dispatcher just moved us to the head of the queue for loading, so we should be gone within an hour.”
“Shiny,” the captain replied, feeling a lot of tension slip from his body. “For once, a plan goes smooth.”
Inara walked over to Mal and slipped her arm in his, her bracelets once again just bracelets.
“How about walking a pretty girl home, Captain Reynolds?”
“it would be my honor,” he said, throwing her a half-bow with a small click of his heels. Then Mal grinned. “Just as soon as someone tells me why Kaylee is holdin’ that wrench of hers like she’s plannin’ to hit something.”
“This?” Kaylee looked down at her hands, almost surprised to find herself holding the tool. Then she looked back at the captain and smiled. “I only brought it along in case somebody needed fixin’.”
Mal cocked his head. “Don’t you mean ‘somethin’, Kaylee girl?”
She just smiled that little smile of hers and pushed past them both to wander back toward the ship, her wrench resting on her shoulder like a parasol.
“I’d best see to the loading, Sir,” Zoe headed after Kaylee with a purposeful stride that looked just as powerful in a slinky dress as it did in her working clothes. Mal and Inara turned to follow, but the captain looked back at his pilot.
“Comin’, Linda?” he asked.
“In a second, Cap’n,” she replied with a smile. The pilot turned her smile on Dolph, and his eyes widened. “Thank you ... for stepping in the way you did.”
“It’s what a man does,” Dolph answered slowly, “if he wants to be the kind of man worthy of a woman like you.”
Wash found herself blushing. “You don’t know me,” she said. “You have no idea who I am.”
The loader looked down at her and smiled. “I know you are brave enough to walk across a field full of men, even when your fear made you white as a ghost. I know you are strong enough to face down someone like Sweeney, even surrounded by men twice your size. And I know you are fierce enough to challenge a hundred men to a fight you couldn’t possibly win.”
He reached down and took her hand in his, and his touch was surprisingly soft. She turned a deeper red.
“I know you well enough to know that I truly don’t know you at all.” Dolph looked into her eyes, and she saw his sadness. “And I know you well enough to mourn that I will probably never get the chance to know you better.”
“Mr. Trumbauer!” she said with a smile. “You’re a poet!”
“Once upon a time,” he replied. “A long time ago. Not anymore.”
“Still, I think.” She squeezed his hand. “And before you decide to mourn missed opportunities, we DO have a ship to load, and a walk across the field to reach her. We have the time to at least get started knowing each other better ... if you’d like.”
“It’d be my pleasure,” Dolph replied, “but please ... call me Dolph.” He offered her his arm. Without a thought, the pilot slipped her arm through his and gave it a squeeze.
“Dolph,” she said as they started back towards the ship. “And it’s not like I’m flying off on a suicide mission or anything. It’s just a gorram delivery, after all. And it’s a small Verse, when you think of it — at least the parts we can reach.” She grinned. “We may meet again.”
As they followed the rest of the crew, the pilot bumped Dolph’s shoulder with her head. “So tell me, Mr. Trumbauer ... Dolph ... how does a poet get biceps like these, anyway?”
Dolph chuckled. “Lifting dictionaries, splitting infinitives with an axe on cold winter mornings, and thinking heavy thoughts, Miss ...?”
“Linda,” Wash said without missing a beat. Then she smiled and shook her head. “Just call me Linda.”
NOTE: Sorry this took so long, but getting Wash where she needed to be took a bit of time, and time is not something this writer has in abundance lately. *grin* I'm so happy I finally got to write for me again ... and for you. -- Randalynn
This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place soon after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the fourth part of a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first Firefly story (and the first three chapters of this one).
In the fourth part of FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED, the crew finds out where the cargo's destined for, and ain't none of 'em are happy about it. A lot happens between pick-up and delivery -- folks get inventive, Wash learns more about herself than she'd like, and everyone wonders if, just this once, Mal's plan will finally go smooth. *snort* As if.
“We’re going WHERE?”
Inara’s shout bounced off of the kitchen walls. The whole crew was sitting around the table, dinner dishes still waiting to be gathered and washed, when Mal let slip where the ship was heading.
Mal looked at Inara. “Flynt. That’s the job. It’s just a delivery, ‘Nara. Zoe and I owe Berenger from ... before, and this job is payback. That’s all.”
“The Guild has a standing warning out for Flynt,” the Companion said, her face torn between anger and fear. “The people who run it have Alliance patrons so powerful, not even the Guild can put pressure on them. And any woman who lands on Flynt never leaves. Ever. No one knows why, and anyone they send in to find out doesn’t come back either.”
“Ain’t gonna land.” Zoe spoke up, although her tone indicated she didn’t necessarily believe what she was saying. “Captain said we’d load the cargo in one of the shuttles, then he and Jayne make two or three trips. I believe the expression was ‘easy, peasy,’ wasn’t it, Sir?”
“Serenity ain’t getting any closer to that moon than she has to, and that’s a fact.” Mal stood up. “I ain’t risking my crew or my ship just to pay back a debt. If I didn’t think we could do this, we wouldn’t be on our way. Hell, they don’t even have to know we got women on board. We just tell ‘em we’re using the shuttle to save fuel, ‘cause the cargo is so small.”
“Yes, Cap’n ... but Flynt?” Kaylee looked up at Mal. “I mean, I heard about Flynt long before I signed up with you. Campfire stories, like Reavers, and we all know how much truth there was in them.”
“Well, Mal and I keep our eyes open, maybe we find out why Flynt’s so gorram scary,” Jayne said, pouring himself another whiskey. “I ain’t sayin’ I’m happy we’re goin’ anywhere near the place, but if I learned anythin’ from what happened on Miranda, it’s that not knowin’ somethin’ can bite you pretty hard. And I ain’t got over the last time we got bit.”
Mal shook his head. “We already know Flynt’s dangerous. That’s all we need to know. We do the job. We get paid. And we get gone. Dong-mah?” He gave Jayne one last look before turning and walking away from the table.
Inara watched his back and sighed. “That exit would have been more effective if he actually had somewhere to go.”
“Anywhere but here was good enough for now, I’m thinking.” Zoe looked in the direction Mal had gone, as if she could see him through the walls of the ship. She shook her head. “Captain isn’t happy with doing this either. He doesn’t want to put any of us in danger, but he owes Berenger, and Mal always pays his debts. So he’ll do what he can to keep us safe, but he can’t turn down the job. Not and be the Captain.”
“Some of those stories, Zoe ...” Kaylee shivered. “I know they were supposed to be scary and all, but some of ‘em talked about girls treated like animals ... and one girl said she heard the men there liked to steal women from passing ships and serve ‘em up in a stew for supper.”
“You seem awfully quiet, Linda.” Inara turned her attention to the pilot. “What do you think of all this?”
Wash was staring at the far corner of the room, thinking back to all the stories she’d heard in flight school about Flynt. Wash had become a pilot to go see as much of the Verse as she could, and visit every star she could never see from the surface of her cloud-shrouded homeworld. But even when she had been a he, she’d had no desire to go site-seeing on that particular hunk of rock. She remembered wanting to give the moon a wide berth. After all, any place that made women disappear was no place Hoban Washburn ever wanted to go. He LIKED women. A lot.
Now that she was one, Flynt was about as attractive a destination as the heart of the Sun. Or whatever was left of Earth That Was. She sighed.
“I’m thinking that Flynt is the last place any of us want to be,” she said simply. “I also think it’s the one place Mal has to take us to still be Mal, even though it’s eating him up inside to take us along. He’s my captain, and this is my crew. So I’ll be flying when Serenity hits orbit. No matter what happens.”
She pushed her cup around on the tabletop, then looked up at Inara.
“There’s an old saying, dates back from when Earth That Was was all there was,” she said softly. “From Navy ships, I think. ‘The Captain is right, even when he’s wrong.’ I never used to believe it, but now I’m starting to understand.”
Inara tiled her head slightly, confused. Kaylee and Simon looked at each other, then back at Linda.
“Makes no gorram sense,” Jayne growled. ‘How can he be right, even when he’s wrong?”
River spoke up for the first time, and everyone turned to her. “It means we’d better hope that he’s right, even when we think he’s wrong. He’s the Captain, and that’s the hardest job on the ship. Mal has to make the right call every time a decision needs to be made, because we follow him and all of our lives are in his hands. If he calls it wrong, we could lose everything.”
Linda nodded. “What makes it worse for Mal is that we’re not just crew, we’re family. And this is not just a ship. It’s home.”
Zoe gave her a grin. “Damn, girl! When did pilots get so smart?” Linda blushed and looked down.
“So what can we do?” Kaylee took Simon’s hand. Simon gave it a squeeze.
“We do whatever we can to make sure the Captain’s plan goes smooth,” he replied. “And we think about what we can do to fix things if it doesn’t.” Simon thought for a moment. “Jayne had the right idea a few minutes ago.”
The mercenary turned. “I did?”
Simon nodded. “I know, it’s hard for me to believe, too.”
Jayne narrowed his eyes and gave the doctor a mock snarl. “We may be ‘family’ now, doc, but I grew up knockin’ my brothers around when they forgot to mind their manners.”
After looking at Jayne for a few seconds, Simon nodded.
“You’re right, Jayne, I’m sorry,” he said. “I saw an easy point to score and I took it.”
Jayne gritted his teeth to keep his jaw from dropping. The doctor was apologizin’ ... to him?
‘Ain’t never expected the doc and me would get along,’ he thought, ‘just sort of keep our distance. Always felt like he looked down on me, never did like it much. But Kaylee loves him. He stood up on the Skyplex. And this ... well, it’s — different. Not sure what it is, but it ain’t nothing. Best be careful about it.’
Still keeping his expression calm, he nodded once.
“All right, then,” he replied, and pushed his private bottle over to Simon. “Pour yourself some home brew and tell me what I was right about.”
Simon raised an eyebrow, then poured himself a small shot before continuing.
“Despite what Mal said, you need to keep your eyes open down there.” He stood up, drink in hand, and started to pace. “You’re going to have to watch his back and try to figure out what’s going on at the same time. And you need to let us know somehow, without them knowing you’re talking to us. Any ideas?”
“A short-range comm fits right in the ear,” Zoe said thoughtfully, “but it doesn’t have enough power to reach Serenity in orbit.”
“I can rig a short-range comm to bounce transmit through the shuttle’s system,” Kaylee said, watching Simon move around the room. “Just need to hide it from pryin’ eyes is all, so the channel stays open even when it looks shut down.”
“It would help if we had a way to see as well as hear.” River pulled her feet up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “A picture is worth a thousand words, and the less Jayne talks, the less likely it is that they’ll figure out he’s talking to us.”
“I don’t think we have anything that can do that,” Kaylee replied sadly. “That’s high-end Alliance tech.”
“Dobson!” Inara stood up. “He had some things with him ... a pocket transmitter powerful enough to reach an Alliance patrol ship. Maybe he had something we could use.”
“Ain’t gonna do us much good if he did,” Jayne said, slumping back in his chair. “I think Mal tossed his stuff out an airlock once we were far enough from Whitefall. Afraid there might be a tracker or somethin’ hidden in ol’ Lawrence’s luggage.”
There was a silence as the group sat, thinking.
Suddenly, Wash remembered something.
“Inara,” she said slowly. “You’ve got a high-end Cortex terminal in your shuttle, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Inara replied. “It’s how I find clients, independent of Serenity’s main comm system.”
River’s head came up, a tiny smile growing on her lips. “It’s got a very nice camera in it.”
“But it’s a desktop unit. Jayne couldn’t carry it around with him.” The Companion’s lip quirked. “I thought we were trying to be ... sneaky.”
Kaylee grinned. “Don’t need the whole terminal, ‘Nara. Just need to borrow the camera for a while.” She stood up and started pacing herself. “Got to figure out how to sync the transmission with the short range comm, but that ain’t the problem. Hiding the rig on Jayne might be. Won’t be huge — heck, camera’s not much bigger than a bug bite -- but it needs a clear view, a power source, and another short range comm.”
She stopped and turned, blushing slightly. “Oh, sorry. Gettin’ ahead of myself. Can we borrow it, ‘Nara? I can put it back afters, I promise.”
“Of course, Kaylee.” Inara smiled. “I can do without it for a while. After all, it’s not like I plan on doing any business on THAT moon.”
‘Or on any moon for a while, if at all,’ she thought, her mind wandering back to leaving the Guild and her profession. ‘I’m starting to think I can’t be a Companion anymore. But will it be enough for me just to be ... Mal’s?’
“I got some belt buckles might be big enough,” Jayne mused, staring up at the ceiling. “Got some mini-grenades in ‘em, for emergencies, like. Never got around to wearing ‘em, though. Havin’ explosives that close to my crotch — well, it just didn’t set right somehow.”
Kaylee came over and pulled Jayne out of his chair. “Well come on, then! Let’s see what ya got!”
Linda stood up. “I think I know enough to disassemble that terminal and remove the camera, if that’s okay, Inara?”
The Companion nodded, her attention focused on the crew she’d truly become part of when they found Miranda and lost Wash and Book. She watched these people coming together, using what they know to back up the Captain without him even knowing they were doing it, and suddenly felt strangely useless.
‘If I really am crew, I need a purpose on this ship.’ The thought disturbed her. ‘And what can I do to keep Serenity flying that no one here can do as well or better?’
“Inara?” Linda stood next to her. She looked up at the pilot and smiled.
“Yes, that’s fine, Linda. As Mal says, ‘let’s be about it.’”
Wash found her smaller fingers made working with the tiny Alliance-made electronics much easier than it used to be, and she delivered the camera to Kaylee in Jayne’s quarters. The mechanic was removing the mini-grenades from the belt buckle one at a time, bypassing the dispenser that armed them automatically when they were released.
Jayne picked up each explosive pill carefully and put it in a cushioned wooden box. As the pilot leaned in to watch, she found her breasts pressed into the mercenary’s side. Jayne froze in mid-motion.
“Linda,” he whispered, almost too soft to hear. “As nice as that feels, it ain’t worth all of us blowin’ up, don’t ya think?”
Wash backed up, realizing she had crossed a line she didn’t know was there.
“I’m sorry,” she said aloud, her voice trembling as she backed all the way to the ladder. “I shouldn’t be in here when you’re doing this anyway. Barely room enough for one as it is. Let me know if you need something.”
The pilot turned and climbed, moving up and out of the space as quickly as she could.
“Nice going, Jayne,” Kaylee muttered, her eyes still on her work. “She didn’t mean nothin’ — she just wanted to see what was goin’ on.”
“Well, don’t matter none if she meant it or not,” he replied. “That girl does things to me that shouldn’t oughta be done to a man when he’s movin’ ‘splosives around. I ain’t sayin’ I don’t want her to do that again, I’m just sayin’ there’re better things to be holdin’ onto when she does.”
“Maybe you should tell her that,” the mechanic said, lifting the last grenade from the buckle, “once her face stops being as red as a strawberry waitin’ to be picked.”
“Maybe I will.” Jayne took the device from Kaylee and turned slowly. He hesitated for a minute, then went on. “This courtin’ stuff ain’t easy. Seems like half the time everythin’ I do is wrong. If she don’t know what she does to me by now, maybe I’d best be showin’ her how I feel.”
“How do you feel, Jayne?” She bent over the buckle intently. “About Linda?”
He froze, then tried to bluff. “Gorram, Kaylee girl. Ain’t it a bit late for the birds n’ the bees, considerin’ the noises comin’ outta your bunk ... yours and the Doc’s?”
She tossed him a frown and went back to her work. “I ain’t talkin’ about getting sexed, sah gwa, and you know it. How do you feel about her?”
His fingers shook as he put down the last grenade. Kaylee snuck a peek out of the corner of her eye, and watched him swallow.
“You love her, don’t you?” The words hung there in the air for a second as Jayne thought about ‘em.
“I ain’t never been in love before, as far as I know,” the mercenary said finally, his eyes glued to the box of grenades. “But I ain’t never felt like this for a woman before, and that’s a fact. I been workin’ on being the kinda man she’d think about lovin’ back, but damned if I know how that’s workin out.”
“Pretty well, I’m thinkin’,” Kaylee replied, “If what happened just now means anything, she’s as confused as you are. Maybe it is time you showed her how you feel, so she knows where you stand ... and whether she wants what you’re offerin’.”
“I bought her somethin’ special.” Jayne turned to look at the back of Kaylee’s head while she worked. “Back at the Skyplex. Figured I’d hold onto it until the right time — like I’d know when the right time is.”
“There you go. Maybe it’s now. Give the girl a gift already, let her know you care.” She popped out the dispenser mechanism and started poking at the buckle’s innards with her smallest tools. “In the meantime, go somewhere else for a while.”
“You kickin’ me out of my bunk?” His eyes widened. Kaylee turned her head and gave him a frown.
“Unless you want to explain to the Captain what I’m doing carrying around your belt buckle, Inara’s camera, some short range comms and a whole bunch of tools — you know, if I should bump into him on the way back to my workbench.” She turned back to her work. “I ain’t leavin’ this room until somebody can look at your crotch and smile, Jayne. So this might take some time.” Her lip twitched.
“Huh,” he muttered, heading for the ladder. “That’s HI-larious.”
Wash let the ladder-door of her room slam shut above her, then hugged herself and blew a stray piece of hair out of her face.
“Ai-yah. Tyen-ah,” she moaned, “Gao yang jong duh goo yang!”
She threw herself face first onto her bunk, then rolled over to stare balefully at the traitorous orbs she saw peeking from the top of her tee shirt.
‘Damn,’ she thought, ‘you two are going to get me in big trouble someday. I remember how good it feels when a woman does that. And I did that to Jayne?? How the hell did I NOT remember you were there? You move around so much most of the time, I couldn’t forget you if I tried, and then just this once you disappear from my memory long enough for me to ... to ...’
“To press ‘em both into Jayne’s arm?”
River stood on top of the dresser, a knowing smile on her face.
‘Damn that maintenance hatch!’ Wash raised herself up on her elbows, letting a little anger slip into her eyes. “You said you weren’t going to be looking into my mind without permission.”
River looked down, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but you were so hurt and confused I could hear you clear across the ship. If you want me to go ...”
Wash bit her lip and sighed. “No, it’s okay. Please stay. I need to talk this out.”
The younger girl slipped down to floor level and sat down next to Wash on her bed.
“So you gave him ... both barrels?” The reader tried unsuccessfully to hide her smile
“Yes, while he was handling a grenade. Talk about distractions!”
“I’m not thinking that’s the sort of explosion you were trying to create, jei mei.”
“I wasn’t aiming for ANY kind of explosion!”
“Part of you says different.”
“Well, parts, anyway. You never said breasts could think for themselves.”
“They can’t. But you can. And we both know you want Jayne more than you’re willing to admit.”
She rolled over and curled up into a ball. “River, I wasn’t trying to seduce Jayne!”
“Your body was. That’s why you forgot. That’s why you pushed closer.”
Wash rolled back to face the other woman. “No! That’s not true. I pushed closer to see —”
“See what? People moving dangerous explosives around in a very small place?”
The pilot stopped, her mouth open.
“Is that what you wanted to see close up? Does that sound like something Wash would want to do? Ever?”
Wash closed her mouth, then her eyes. She took a deep breath, and then sighed. “I am so humped.”
“You’re not humped, Wash. You just want to be.” The pilot groaned and buried her face in the pillow. River smiled softly. “And it’s not a bad thing, jei mei. It’s a good sign that your soul and your body are coming together, learning to coexist and eventually merge.”
“But I’ve never ... thinking about a man that way ...” Wash’s voice was muffled, but her pain and confusion were clear.
“Okay, step back for a minute,” River said, putting her arm around Wash and giving a squeeze. “The prevailing belief in the medical community is that the gender you’re attracted to is located in the brain, not the body.”
“But —“
“Shhhhh.” River put a finger up to Wash’s lips. “But your brain isn’t YOUR brain, silly. It’s Linda’s. Chiang put you there and you’re dealing not just with her hormones, but her desires as well. She’s a normal young woman who happens to be hetero. She likes men, and she has an itch she wants scratched in the worst way. I bet you haven’t done a thing to address that, either.”
“Like I’d know how!” Wash blurted out, then blushed all over. “Besides, there’s some element of fantasy involved in the whole itch-scratching thing, and I have no clue who the hell I’m supposed to be fantasizing about, let alone what I’m supposed to be wanting them to do for me.”
“Leaving the who aside for a minute, the what is easy. Do what makes you feel good -- what makes Linda feel good.” She looked at the pilot sideways. “You’ve got Linda’s memories in there, too. So experiment, Ho-ban. Think about what made Linda squeal ... what made Zoe squeal ... and try it on yourself.”
Wash thought for a moment, then shuddered all over and shook her head.
“This is going to be hard.”
“Only as hard as you make it, jei mei.” River grinned. “In more ways than one, if Jayne’s involved.”
“Oh, Jayne ...” The pilot moaned, falling back onto the bed and staring at the ceiling. “Wo you dian bu shu fu! I feel sick! Why do I want Jayne?”
“There are a few reasons a girl might look twice at the ‘Hero of Canton,’” the younger girl said. “But stop thinking about Jayne for a minute. I want to get you to look at this from a different angle. Close your eyes.” Wash gave her a quick look, then put her head back and did as she was told.
“I want you to think back to the depot now.” The pilot took a deep breath and nodded. “How did you feel ... about Dolph?”
The pilot raised her head and looked at River. “Dolph?”
“Head down, eyes shut!” River commanded, and Wash hurriedly complied. “Yes, Dolph. You talked with him, you took his arm and walked with him back to the loading bay. You even flirted with him, remember? That guy you watched lifting heavy things as he loaded the boat until the captain told you to go prep for lift?”
Wash blushed. “Oh. Dolph.”
River nodded, even though the pilot couldn’t see. “Think back to when you were with him. How did he make you feel?”
The pilot took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was just coming down, realizing I wasn’t going to have to fight my way free. Then he came out of the crowd and reminded me there are decent men in the world.” She thought for a moment. “He cared about me. He made me feel ... good.”
“Just good?”
Wash bit her lip and sighed. “Okay, he made me feel ... special. I could see I really mattered to him. I was something more than just a woman he wanted to ... take to bed. He ... liked me, maybe. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was more than lust ... and I found myself thinking about him the same way.”
The younger girl let it rest for a moment, then spoke. “And physically?”
The silence grew. Finally, she spoke. “I ... wanted him.”
After a second, Wash went on. “I didn’t even know exactly what I wanted, but I wanted him. Warm all over, and a melting feeling inside I couldn’t ... or maybe didn’t ... want to understand. It was hard to see the cargo hatch close with him on the other side. I had to shake off a feeling like I was missing something, and I didn’t even know what it was I missed.”
“Opportunity,” River said softly. “I think the word you want is opportunity.”
Simon sat in the med bay, pouring through his encyclopedia and looking for references to Flynt. It wasn’t very helpful, just a single listing and a scattering of loose references that left him frustrated and confused. The listing was as bare bones as he’d ever seen, almost as if the moon wasn’t worth talking about. The references in other listings were vague, and whatever links there were led nowhere — literally. It was as if someone had gone through the publication before its release and eliminated everything they could find about Flynt.
“Considering the Alliance’s interest in the moon, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,’ he thought, tossing the reader aside. ‘They certainly did a number making an entire planet disappear when the whole Pax experiment went bad on Miranda.’
“Doc?” Simon looked up to see Jayne standing in the doorway.
“Yes, Jayne?” The mercenary looked ... uncomfortable. “Is something wrong? Are you alright?”
“Just fine,” Jayne replied, and fidgeted for a minute. “I was wonderin’ if you could do me a favor, after Mal and I head down to Flynt.”
“If I can,” the doctor said, a little confused.
“There’s a stack of boxes in bright wrappin’ paper under my bunk. I was wonderin’ if you’d take ‘em and put ‘em in Linda’s room after I’m gone ... stack ‘em up somewhere she can see ‘em when she goes back in there.”
“Sure.” Simon stood up slowly, not sure why. “Be happy to.”
Jayne reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “If you could put this in front of the boxes, or on top of ‘em or somethin’. Just where she can see it.”
“I’ll take care of it.” The doctor took the paper from Jayne’s hand. The mercenary opened his mouth, and Simon shook his head. “Don’t worry, Jayne. I won’t read it.”
Jayne fidgeted, and then surprised the other man again. “It's okay, Doc. It's just tellin' her I left her a message on her terminal.”
Simon looked at the paper, and back up at Jayne. Jayne shrugged.
“I ain't much good at readin' or writin', and I sure ain't gonna try to put what I'm feelin' down on paper. I ain’t never been good at tellin’ anyone how I feel, either, but I figgered I had a better shot talking at a camera then putting words on a page.”
He turned to go, then stopped and turned back.
“From what I ‘member, you weren’t so good at it either when you first joined the crew. But you caught Kaylee right enough, so I figgered you must know more about this courtin’ thing than I ever knew.” He took a deep breath. “What’d you tell Kaylee that made her fall for you?”
After a moment, Simon sat down slowly, the letter still in his hand.
“All I ever did to win Kaylee was to tell her the truth,” he said. “I spent all my time worrying about River, and never thought about myself. When we almost died facing the Reavers, trying to get the word out about Miranda and the Pax, I finally told her how I really felt about her. She did the rest.”
He raised the paper up and looked at Jayne. “In your message, did you tell her how you feel?”
“I did the best I could,” he replied. “I ain’t much with words, but — I did the best I could.”
“Then I can’t help you do any better.” Simon put the letter down on the counter. “I’ll make sure she gets your message. After that, it’s up to Linda.”
Jayne nodded, and turned to go. As he reached the door, Simon spoke again.
“Thanks,” he said softly. The mercenary turned and looked over his shoulder. “For what?”
“For trusting me with all this.”
Jayne shook his head. “Aw, hell, Doc! Mal don't know about the present, and so I can't ask him for help. 'Nara might tell Mal, so I can’t talk to her. And there ain’t nobody else besides you ‘cept River and Zoe anyway. Besides, who else can a fella trust if he can’t trust his doctor?”
He walked out of the room, leaving Simon wondering what the hell had just happened, and why.
The picture was sharp and clear — nothin’ but shades of gray, but you could see and hear everything.
“I had to take the color out,” Kaylee said apologetically. “Juss ‘cause I was workin’ with the short range comms and I didn’t have ‘nough room for it on the wave. Best I could do.”
“No, Kaylee, it’s perfect!” Zoe bent over and stared at the belt buckle, as everyone else watched the monitor. “You can’t even see the camera.”
Jayne was feeling a mite uncomfortable, having Zoe staring at him like that.
“I adjusted the angle, too,” the mechanic admitted, feeling a little proud. “So we get to look up and see faces instead of bulge.”
“That’s a plus.” The first mate shook her head, still staring at the camera. “A definite plus. Bulge wouldn’t tell us much, I’m thinkin’.”
“Ceptin’ maybe who was popular.” Both women laughed, and Jayne felt worse. Zoe stood up.
“Now we go load cargo and get this underway,” she said. Kaylee shook her head.
“Not just yet. I made Jayne a promise a while back, and I can’t leave the room until ...”
River popped her head down from the maintenance hatch, stared first at the monitor and then at Jayne’s crotch, and smiled. Kaylee grinned and nodded.
“Okay, then. My work here is done. Let’s get to it!”
Mal handled the conversation with Flynt approach while Wash sat quiet in the pilot's seat and chewed her lower lip. It seemed to go well, but she heard something in the controller's voice that made her pause. It seemed to bother Mal, too, once he closed transmission, but he only hesitated a minute before giving the pilot a pat on the shoulder and turning away.
Everyone helped load the first batch of cargo, even Inara, which was the first surprise. She came down from her shuttle dressed in a black gi and slippers, and just started helping without a word. But the shock from that paled in comparison to what came next, when Jayne put his foot down and stopped Simon from joining in.
“You get those fingers of yours crushed and I ain't got anyone to patch me up or dig a bullet outta me when I need it,” he said, “and the way my luck's been holding out, I'm gonna need it, pro'bly sooner than later. I'm a mite selfish about my hide, Doc, so do what you're good at and leave the heavy liftin' to me.”
Mal looked sideways at Jayne and shot Zoe a glance, clearly confused. She gave a little shake of her head and raised an eyebrow in return.
For his part, Jayne gave the doctor a long stare, and Simon realized what he wanted and excused himself.
Soon the first load was ready, and Mal made his way to the shuttle's cockpit through the cargo. Jayne stopped at the door and looked back, catching Linda's eye. Linda looked back and smiled.
“Give us a good show, Jayne,” she whispered. “And keep the captain safe. We're counting on you.”
Jayne nodded once, gave her the barest hint of a smile, and disappeared inside, closing the hatch behind him.
It was going to take a while for the shuttle to reach the surface, and Jayne’s camera was shut down for the trip dirtside to save power. After a few minutes, everyone went back to the day-to-day business of keeping the ship running. Even though Serenity was in stable orbit around Flynt and the proximity alarms were set far enough away to make sure nobody was going to be sneaking up on her without a whole lot of noise, Wash stayed in the pilot’s seat. It was where she felt most at home, after all.
Still, her eyes kept straying to the blip on the long range radar that was Serenity’s shuttle, wondering if they were going to be safe — or if this was going to be another in a long string of times where one of Mal’s plans just didn’t go smooth.
She had to admit she finally felt comfortable in her new body, even if it still felt strange once in a while. But her earlier conversation with River had left her unsettled, as if she had somehow crossed a line by admitting to herself that she had wanted Dolph the way a woman wants a man — which of course she had.
And crossing that line raised the question of Jayne, and how she felt about him.
Wash couldn’t deny she had come to like the man, which is something she never thought would happen. He had changed since he came to Serenity, and changed more after Book’s death and the events surrounding Miranda. After Wash’s death, a few months had passed before she came back, so she didn’t know what to make of the Jayne she met on Santo when she first became Linda. But it seemed pretty clear that Linda’s arrival had made Jayne want to be more than just a hired gun — and more to the pilot than just another member of the crew.
With a sigh, Wash admitted that Linda found him ... desirable. Since Wash was Linda, she was dealing with that attraction as well, although she was damned if she knew what to do with it -- or if she even wanted to do anything.
Because she graduated from flight school on Osiris, Linda’s contraceptive and STD implants were up-to-date, so worrying about pregnancy or the latest creeping crud from the Rim wasn’t an issue.
Being true to Zoe? “Til death do us part” was pretty standard fare for a wedding ceremony, even this far from Earth-That-Was.
Getting Zoe back? Linda wasn’t Wash, and never could be again. Zoe wasn’t wired that way, and Wash didn’t think Linda was, either. With a small tear, she finally let go of that last bit of hope that she and Zoe could ever be anything else but friends.
But ... Jayne? She liked him well enough, even admired him some for how hard he worked to change for the better — for her. Did she like him enough to cross that last line between Hoban Washburn and Linda Wehr ... without looking back?
‘And where the hell does love fit in here?’ The pilot asked herself. ‘Or does it? I don’t love Jayne. I may like him, but I don’t love him — at least, not the way I loved Zoe. But I loved Zoe a hell of a lot. Do I need to love someone for sex? The man I used to be did. At least he needed to care for her enough to trust her to care for him in return. To ... be with Jayne, I need to trust him enough to surrender who I was and be who I am. Can I?’
“I can trust Jayne with my life,” she whispered aloud. “He’s already proven that. But how much has he really changed inside? Can I trust him to really care for me? For the woman ... the person I’m becoming?”
After staring at the blip for the twenty-seventh time and chewing on her bottom lip, Wash decided to go into her cabin for a few minutes and stretch out on her bunk. She was only a few seconds away if anything happened, after all. That’s why she had the room near the flight deck.
When her boots hit the deck at the foot of her ladder, she turned and saw the stack of brightly wrapped boxes waiting on her dresser.
Wash walked up to them slowly, wondering where they came from, and who might have left them there. She saw a slip of paper sticking out from between the top two boxes. Opening it, she saw the words, “CHECK YOUR MESSAGES” crudely written in big block letters an inch high. The pilot sighed and stepped over to her terminal. More mysteries.
She hit the message button and collapsed back onto her bunk to watch.
The screen lit up, and Jayne Cobb looked back at her with an expression on his face she’d never seen before. It was a mix of fear, uncertainty, and resolve. She leaned forward, wondering what was coming next.
“Linda.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “I picked up that stack of boxes over there on the Skyplex a while back. It’s — they’re a present. Well, a buncha presents, I guess. I wanted to get ya somethin’, to make up for bein’ so gorram stupid when you joined the crew. I reckon you know by now that bein' ... well, one of us ... can be a mite dangerous, and I figured I'd get you somethin' that would help you keep your own self safe if things went south, and I wasn't around.”
Jayne smiled and looked down. “Don’t know if you opened ‘em or not yet, so maybe I’m spoilin’ the surprise, but you know me well enough by now to know that what I know best is guns, and that’s what I got you. I thought I'd step up and teach you how to shoot if'n you didn't already know. But then I find out you're a natural, girl, and that's a fact. Ain't never seen anythin' like it before, and if I had a hat, I'd … I'd take it off for you — well, to you. Aw, hell.”
The mercenary shook his head and looked back at Linda.
“You know I got feelings for you, 'cause I ain't much good at hiding it. Back when I first saw you, I tried treatin' you the way I always treated girls, 'cause I was stupid and didn't know better. Hell, I'm probably still stupid, but I'm tryin' hard not to be, ‘cause I don't much think you'd care for a stupid man, and I … well, I want you to. Care, I mean.”
“This is the toughest thing I've ever done, mostly 'cause I ain't never done anything like it before. In my line of work, feelin's tended to get in the way of makin’ it back to your bunk instead of findin' yourself in a pine box. But since I been on Serenity, I'm learnin' that carin' about somethin' makes a man want to keep himself alive, and the one thing I'm carin' most about … is you.”
“I ain't never been in love before, so I ain't too sure what it's supposed to feel like. But I think about you every morning when I roll outta my bunk, and the first time I see you every day, I just got to smile. You make me happier than I ever been, Linda, just by being around you. I know you don't know it, but to tell you the truth that ain't sayin' much, because I ain't never been all that happy before. I went my way and did what I pleased, but I'm seein' now it didn't matter worth a damn, because I ain't had nobody to share it with.”
Jayne's image looked down at his hands, and back up again. “Much as I want to, I can't make you love me, but I think you like me some, and that’s somethin’. I'm doin' what I can to be the kind of man you could love, maybe. I know I ain't smart enough for you, and I sure as hell ain't good enough for you. But I’m tryin’, and the one thing Jayne Cobb's always been is stubborn.”
“I want to be your man, Linda, if you'll have me. Don't know how long you'd put up with me if you said yes, but I'll take whatever I can get if you'd just look at me one time the way Kaylee looks at the Doc, or Zoe looked at Wash back in the day.” He grinned and shook his head again. “Or like 'Nara looks at Mal when she thinks he ain't lookin' ... or even when he is.”
“Anyway, that's about what I wanted to say. If I coulda said it in person, I woulda. But it was hard enough doin' it this way, and if you said no to my face ... well, lettin' you see me bawl like a baby … I don't think I could handle it.”
Jayne looked right into the camera … right into her eyes.
“I love you, Linda.” His voice caught in his throat, and as he shook his head again, she could see the tears in his eyes. “Gorram it, I love you. And I hope maybe, one day ... you'll love me too. If I’m lucky.”
The message ended and the image froze, and gods help her, Wash could see how he felt, pouring out of him with such longing that she could feel her own tears start to fall.
A few minutes before, she’d wondered if he cared enough. But this left no doubt. Jayne had changed. By telling her how much she meant to him, and showing her how he truly felt, he laid himself open like he had never done to anyone before — and trusted her with everything he had.
Jayne Cobb trusted her.
‘There is courage in this man,’ she thought, wiping her eyes as she stared at the frozen image on her screen, only to have them fill with tears again. ‘I doubted him. But he’s more than I ever thought he was, or could be. And he cares enough to put his heart in my hands and beg me not to crush it.’
Jayne had risked everything — just to tell her he loved her.
And he was too far away for her to tell him she understood ... and that she loved him, too.
NOTE: I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I loved writing it. I love these people Joss created, and I hope I'm doing them justice. In any case, the old Chinese blessing (or curse) "may you live in interesting times," definitely applies to Serenity's crew, and I'm glad I'm getting to bring them back to life.
"Big damn heroes? Ain't they just!" *grin* -- Randalynn
This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place soon after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the fifth part of a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first Firefly story (and the first three chapters of this one).
In the fifth part of FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED, Mal and Jayne head off to a special delivery, only to discover just how "special" it is. The crew get a guided tour of beautiful downtown Flynt, only to discover there's nothing beautiful about it. And everyone learns why Flynt isn't a nice place to visit, only to discover a reason to have to.
Jayne sat in the co-pilot’s seat and kept his hands well away from the controls. He didn’t know how to fly the shuttle, and wasn’t much interested in learning. That was okay, though. Mal wasn’t the best pilot in the Verse, but as long as he kept the gorram thing in the air until it was close enough to the ground not to crash ‘fore he landed it, that was good enough for Jayne. Besides, the mercenary had other things to think about.
Like what Linda did when she found her presents. And checked her messages.
And if she had, what the hell was she thinkin’ now?
‘It’s gorram frustratin,’ he thought, ‘Like rollin’ the dice in a game of craps, then getting’ up and walkin’ away for a day or two without bein’ able to see if you won or lost. I rolled the dice. I took my chance, and now I’m halfway dirtside with no way to tell what she’s thinkin’.’
Jayne shook his head. ‘As if I ever knew what she was thinkin’ before.’ He snorted.
“Something funny?” Mal looked over and raised an eyebrow.
“Not so much,” Jayne replied, “Just thinkin’ about how little I know about what goes on in a woman’s head.”
“Any woman in particular?” The captain smiled.
“Well, Linda, mostly,” the other man admitted. “Although Kaylee’s almost easy compared to ‘Nara. Zoe’s just ... well, Zoe. And River?” He shuddered. “She’s just plain scary sometimes. Knows more than she tells, and pro’bly way more than she should.”
Mal nodded. “Good thing she’s on our side.”
Jayne thought about that some. “I reckon so. Still ain’t normal.”
“Ain’t much about Serenity’s crew that is, and that’s a fact.” The captain flicked a few switches and changed the approach angle a bit. “Not complainin’ though. I’m thinking that’s one reason we’re all still alive.”
Jayne thought back to the Reverend, and to Wash.
“Not all of us,” he said. He felt rather than saw Mal stiffen, just a little, and realized he’d crossed a line. Not that he knew what to do about it. Jayne had never been much good at making folks feel better. He usually had more luck making them hurt when he needed to.
‘Didn’t mean to hurt Mal, though,’ he thought, ‘He’s been pretty good about helping me with Linda. And even if it ain’t my job to make him feel better, I need him sharp when we hit dirt, or it ain’t gonna be pretty. Asides, ‘tweren’t like he killed ‘em on purpose, no matter what he thinks.’
The mercenary shook his head. “I ain’t sayin’ it was anybody’s fault, Cap’n. We lost a couple of folks because when you live the life we’re livin’, stuff happens you ain’t expectin’, that’s all. I seen my share of folks die ‘fore I ever joined up with you. Some of ‘em I liked, some I didn’t give a hoot about, but they died all the same, and sometimes all I could do was watch.”
Jayne turned and looked out the window, away from Mal. “Since Miranda, I think I finally figured out that the crew’s a lot more important than just crew to me. Didn’t happen all at once — hell, didn’t even know it was happenin’ until the Skyplex — but it’s the gorram truth, and I’m stuck with it. My job was always supposed to be keeping everybody in one piece, but now I got a better reason to make it happen than cashy money.”
“What about what we’re doin’ now?” Mal said. “This job ain’t safe for anybody. At least with Miranda, there was somethin’ more than coin involved.”
Jayne turned and saw it was the captain’s turn to be looking the other way. He shrugged, even though Mal couldn’t see, and spoke to the back of the captain’s head.
“Thrillin’ heroics don’t pay the bills,” he replied. “You owe this Berenger fella, and that’s fine. But the man’s payin’ us, and that’s fine, too. Your job is to keep us flyin’, and that means sometimes doin’ stuff like this, ‘cause we need the work and we need the coin. And yeah, it ain’t safe, but not much is out on the edge.”
Mal turned and looked at Jayne, but the other man didn’t look away.
“You’re the one who has to make the call,” Jayne said, ‘cause you’re the captain, she’s your boat, and we’re your crew. It ain’t safe, but like I said, stuff happens you ain’t expectin’. That’s why you got me, and Zoe, and even River. If somethin’ happens to put us all in the cᨠsuÇ’, it’s our job to pull us out, and the Doc’s job to keep us alive so we can do it again the next time things don’t go smooth.”
It was Mal’s turn to snort, and he shook his head. “Ain’t much of a recommendation for my captainin’ skills, is it?”
“Ain’t your fault the Verse is a stone cold bitch, Cap’n.” Jayne looked down at the moon below. “And after all we been through, Serenity’s still flyin’, so think about it. How bad a captain can you be?”
Mal gave Jayne a long hard look, and sighed before turning back to the controls.
“I’m surprised my own self,” he said, “but thanks.”
Jayne shrugged. “Just the truth, Mal.”
‘And it was, at that,’ he thought. ‘Huh. Maybe River’s right. Maybe I’m smarter than I think I am.’
‘Now there’s a scary thought.’
The crew was gathered on the flight deck, huddled around the small viewscreen and waiting for Jayne to switch on the camera. They were monitoring Mal’s approach on the comms, so they knew the shuttle wasn’t far from landing.
Kaylee had drummed it into Jayne’s head to wait until the last minute before turning on the camera, because “the batteries won’t last longer than a sneeze, with all we’re askin’ ‘em to do.” So it wasn’t until the shuttle touched down and both men reached the cargo door that Serenity’s crew got their first close-up look at Hustler, Flynt’s largest city.
“The docks are like a ghost town,” Inara said slowly. “You’d think a place where cargo comes in would be full of people and ships, but it’s nearly empty. And so quiet.”
Simon looked closer. “We know they don’t really want visitors, Inara. After all, the Alliance wants to hide Flynt so badly, they edited the entire moon out of the encyclopedia — not just the book, but right off the Cortex. I’m surprised they even have a place for Mal and Jayne to land and unload.”
Zoe shook her head. “I’m not. This moon isn’t really large enough to sustain itself. Just a few smallish cities and a lot of empty space, judgin’ from what we’ve seen from up here. They need shipments from outside just to stay alive. Maybe they just don’t need that many of them.”
There were four men waiting outside the cargo door, all dressed in what looked like the latest fashions from Osiris. But Linda was far more interested in what she could see of the city behind the welcoming committee.
“Look. Cutting edge Alliance tech,” she said, one finger following the path of something flying across the skyline on the screen. “This place looks like little more than a settlement, but they’ve got air cars with remote traffic control, and a lot more of them than there should be for a town this small.”
She looked at Inara. “This place is definitely important to the Alliance. They may not want visitors here, but they’re giving these folks the latest and greatest. The only question is ... why?”
River looked down from her perch above the flight deck door.
“Because whatever the people of Flynt are doing for the Alliance,” she said, her eyes glued to the screen, “it’s worth whatever they need to pay to keep them happy.”
Wash sat back in her chair and let the others get a better view. The whole thing felt wrong, and a part of her wondered whether this was what people referred to as women’s intuition, or just the feeling a good pilot gets when something’s about to go horribly wrong.
‘Given that I’m both a woman and a pilot, probably both,’ she thought, then shook her head and smiled. ‘Another line crossed. I just admitted I’m a woman. Although considering how I feel about Jayne now, why should I be surprised?’
It was still strange for Wash to think about loving someone not Zoe, let alone a man. Let alone Jayne. But Wash remembered how hard he fought being attracted to Zoe at first, when he was sure he could never charm her into accepting him as anything other than a nuisance who knew how to fly.
‘Love does what love does,’ she thought, looking over at her wife with affection. ‘Zoe taught me that when she fell in love with me. I knew I wasn’t what she thought she wanted in a husband, until suddenly, she did.’
Was Jayne what Linda wanted in a husband? What Wash wanted? Did Wash even want a husband -- ever? The pilot closed her eyes and sighed.
‘I never thought I’d be asking myself a question like that,’ she said to herself. ‘And it’s way too soon to even think it, let alone ask it. Damn, girl, it’s less than an hour since you realized you loved the guy, and you haven’t even told HIM yet!’
Mal and Jayne stepped forward, and the view from the camera swayed from side to side with the mercenary’s every step. Wash looked back at the screen as the pair approached the welcoming committee.
“Be careful,” she whispered, leaning forward along with the rest of the crew. “Both of you.”
“Captain Reynolds!” The talk, burly man in the front of the group stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “I’m Hugh Aubrey, planetary governor and head honcho here on Flynt. This is Wilson Danbury, mayor of Hustler, and Justin Hammer, dockmaster. That over there is Harris, my number two.”
Mal gave Aubrey a quick handshake and motioned towards Jayne. “This here is Jayne Cobb, my first mate.”
Aubrey shook his head.
“Oh, I doubt that, Captain” he said, the corners of his lips twitching upward. “I believe that would be Zoe Washburn, if Berenger’s wave was correct. A very beautiful woman, to be sure. But not the only one aboard your ship, I believe. Kaywinnet Leigh Frye, your mechanic, is quite winsome, I’ve been told. And Linda Wehr, your pilot, turned a few heads in the depot as well. And of course, Inara Sera, your ... Companion. They’ll all be welcome here, to join our community.”
His smile became a frown. “Except for the whore, of course. She’ll have to die. Way too dangerous to have a strong-willing Guild-trained bitch down here among the sheep.”
Mal’s temper flared and he reached for his gun, only to have his arms pinned to his sides from behind. Someone else tried the same stunt with Jayne, but a quick head butt put his attacker down with a broken nose. The mercenary stepped back over the bleeding thug, and stood with his feet apart, his back to the shuttle, and a Callahan Enforcer in each hand.
“Reckon we’ll be leaving now,” he said, both guns steady. “Best let the captain go before I show you what a good shot I am. ‘Course, being as how you’re all such big close targets, I ain’t gonna have to do much.”
“I think not, Mister Cobb,” Aubrey replied. “You have the remainder of our cargo on your Firefly, and we mean to have it.”
“We’ll push the rest of the crates out the cargo door and let you pick ‘em up in orbit,” Jayne said with a grin, “on our way to anywhere but here.”
“That’s not the cargo I’m referring to.” Aubrey took a step forward, and Jayne waved a gun at him.
“I ain’t dumb, mister.” He shook his head. “There ain’t no way you’re getting’ anywhere near my crew. You’re gonna let my captain go, and we’re gonna get back in the shuttle and be on our way. Or blood’s gonna spill, startin’ with yours.”
Jayne saw a flash of color out of the corner of his eye, and he glanced down to see a single red dot on his chest. It was soon joined by a second, and a third, and a fourth, and he realized that his two Enforcers were no match for a bunch of distant snipers, no matter how good a shot he was. He lowered both guns slowly, and sighed.
“You may not be dumb, Mister Cobb,” Aubrey said, stepping forward and taking both weapons. “But you are hopelessly outgunned.”
“Ain’t the first time,” The mercenary replied, disgusted. “Sure as hell hope it won’t be the last.”
The crew watched helplessly as Mal and Jayne were herded away from the shuttle, hands tied behind their backs. Linda pushed her worry aside and punched in some commands that put the feed from the camera on every screen on the flight deck, and started recording it.
“Everybody take a screen,” Inara said. “Look for street signs, landmarks, anything we can use to figure out where they’re being taken.”
“Good thing nobody’s getting’ in front of ‘em.” Kaylee had her nose nearly pressed against her screen. “Or we wouldn’t see nothin’ but backsides.”
“Standard procedure, if you’re even half smart,” Zoe said, focusing on the video. “Put a prisoner in the middle of a group, and they can cause a lot of damage before you bring ‘em down. And putting prisoners behind you is just plain stupid.”
Simon had an overhead view of the docks on a separate screen. Cloud cover and the shortcomings of Serenity’s external cameras made it blurry and hard to follow, but it was still better than nothing. “From the video, it looks like they’re headed west, into the town. They’re just leaving the shuttle where it landed.”
“What’s in those crates was never what they were really after,” Inara said softly. “What they wanted was Zoe and Linda and Kaylee ...”
“And you dead,” Zoe finished for her. She flashed the Companion a dark look. “That ain’t gonna happen, so you put it out of mind.”
River dropped down next to the secondary flight console and started typing furiously. “Signal strength, vector and power consumption ... Kaylee, what frequency did you use?”
“Same as the short range comms,” the mechanic replied. “Didn’t see much reason to change it.”
“But I bet you played with the power consumption, didn’t you?”
“Had to! Between sendin’ pictures and the comms usually being sound only, and the size of the buckle? Batteries that small wouldn’t last three minutes without a bit of tweakin’ to the power feed.” Kaylee cocked her head. “Why?”
“Because signal strength is going to change the further they get from the shuttle.” River grinned. “And if I can figure out the power and distance ratio ...”
“... we can figure out just how far away from the shuttle they are,” Kaylee grinned back. “Damn, girl, you’re good!”
She came over and started entering some numbers on River’s keypad. “That oughta narrow things down a bit.”
“They’re entering the heart of the town,” Simon said.
“As if this town has a heart,” Linda murmured, and Simon threw her a look. She shrugged.
“Goddess ...” Inara breathed, and everyone’s attention turned to the monitors at once.
Directly in front of Jayne, a man and a woman moved across the camera’s field of view. The man wore a business suit, not unlike the one Simon wore when he first came aboard Serenity with River’s cryo-chamber in tow. But the woman wore nothing, except a metal collar and a pair of sandals, and walked gracefully a short distance behind the man with her head bowed. She carried a briefcase and several bags, apparently full of groceries. They all watched as the man turned to her and delivered what appeared to be a series of orders, then took his case, turned her around, and gave her a firm swat on her bottom.
She smiled over her shoulder at him and walked away. As he watched her leave, another couple wandered past the camera pickup. The woman wore a form-fitting shiny black unitard with cutouts at crotch and nipples, and a form-fitting hood that made it impossible for her to do anything more than see. She crouched beside the man, leashed and collared, hunched over beside him as they moved past.
As Jayne continued to move through the crowd, the crew saw more women being treated as slaves, or pets, or even beasts of burden. It was always women, and always without a single sign of complaint, let alone rebellion. In fact, all of them had the same small smile on their faces. It was shocking and disturbing ... as Jayne would have said, “downright creepifyin’.” But no one could look away.
Except for River.
She sat back, her eyes glazing over as her mind spun through possibilities. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Simon’s screen, still displaying the overhead view of Flynt, and something registered deep inside. She moved closer to the screen, unable to believe what she was seeing, and Simon turned and watched her expression go from intrigued to horrified.
“What is it, mei mei?” he asked, causing everyone else on the flight deck to turn and look at them both. River raised her finger and pointed to a shape on the screen.
“I’ve seen this before,” she replied. “Lots of ‘em in fact. Same basic design. On Miranda, as we flew into the capital city.”
“Just air processors,” Zoe said, switching her monitor to mirror River's view. “Nothing new there. Every terraformed world needs them.”
“At first, yes.” The young girl nodded. “But Flynt’s clearly been terraformed long enough to develop a stable ecosystem. There’s no real need for atmospheric processors anymore. Unless they’re using them for a different reason.”
The doctor nodded, catching up with his sister.
“Like providing a controlled mix of some chemical compound into the air,” he said slowly. “Something designed to reduce aggression, and make people passive and pliable ... like G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate.”
“Something like it, but not exactly,” Inara was still looking at the feed from Jayne’s camera. “It’s clearly modified to affect only women.”
“That makes sense,” Simon said, causing all of the women on the flight deck to stare at him. He raised his hands and continued quickly. “Experimentally speaking, I mean. If you’re trying to code a weapon for a specific human genetic trait, why not choose one that gives you a clear indicator of success? Targeting the XX chromosome pair means that more than half of your experimental subjects could be affected by the altered Pax.”
Kaylee cocked her head. “A weapon? What makes you think they’re makin’ a weapon? Since the Independents lost, the Alliance doesn’t have anyone to use it on! Besides, you’d have to be pretty gorram stupid to mess with the Pax after what happened on Miranda. Why risk it?”
“Maybe because of what we did,” River said softly. “We told the Verse about what happened on Miranda, and that made a lot of people wonder if the same thing might happen to them — and whether being part of the Alliance was really as good an idea as they thought it was when they signed up. So the Alliance needed an edge.”
Simon frowned. “I don’t think so. We might have stirred up some anti-Alliance feelings, but we didn’t cause this.”
“Why do you say that?” Zoe asked, clearly skeptical.
“Because the timeline is wrong,” the doctor replied. “They clearly edited Flynt out of the encyclopedia and the Cortex before the war ... at least ten years back, and probably more. Kaylee heard horror stories about Flynt around campfires back when the Alliance was telling everyone Miranda was a failed attempt at terraforming -- nothing but a dead world. So this ... experiment must have been going on at least since then.”
Inara leaned forward. “You think they set up Flynt at the same time as Miranda?”
“Yes. This is probably a parallel project — an offshoot of the original Pax research. It was no secret the worlds on the Rim didn’t want to join the Alliance. They were probably trying to turn it into a weapon so they could deal with the Independents without firing a shot.”
Zoe nodded. “Makes sense. If there was a rebellion, they wanted a Pax variant they could mix into the atmosphere of a planet or moon that would pacify the planet — and what we’ve seen here indicates they wanted something that would only affect that world’s inhabitants.”
“How could they do that?” Inara stood up and folded her arms, clearly disturbed. “Most colony worlds have a diverse population to avoid having too small a gene pool to survive.”
“Most colony worlds start from the smallest group that can provide that level of diversity,” Simon said. “So there could be a lot of shared genetic markers. But even if there aren’t, they could flip the development process around and create a variant that would affect everyone except those with a specific combination of genetic traits.”
“Why would they want something like that?” Kaylee asked.
River spoke up. “After they use the Pax and the colony world is peaceful and compliant, Alliance troops with that specific combination of traits — like green-eyed women with red hair taller than six feet, for instance — could go down and take the place over without worrying about being affected.”
Linda waved at the screen. “Not only that ... if this stuff works the way it seems to, the Alliance may be able to tell them how to think, and make it stick. This isn’t just pacification. From the look on those women’s faces, it’s mind control.”
The younger girl shook her head. “We don’t know enough about the experiment to be sure of that, jei mei. The fact that they’re still pumping it into the atmosphere could mean the effect doesn’t last once you stop being exposed to it. I’m sure if they could make it permanent, they would. A docile population is so much easier to lead than an aggressive one.”
“This all sounds exactly like something the Alliance would do.” Zoe looked grim. “For all their big cruisers and fancy weapons, we cut ‘em deep enough to make them bleed for a long time after the last war ended. If they knew that we were going to do that going in, finding a way to win without a fight makes a lot of sense. We’re just lucky they didn’t want to win bad enough to wind up with a bunch of dead worlds half full of Reavers on the Outer Rim.”
Inara thought for a moment, then her eyes narrowed. “Now it makes sense. That’s why they want to kill me — and why no woman the Guild ever sent to Flynt has come back alive.”
She looked at the assembled crew and took a deep breath. “This is a Guild secret, so it doesn’t leave this room. Because of the work we do, we are very vulnerable whenever we’re with a client. It would be a simple matter to capture an unwary Companion and use drugs to turn him or her into a sex slave. So the Guild has developed a series of immunizations and mental techniques that make it nearly impossible to play with a Companion’s mind. Companions are conditioned, both physically and mentally, to resist any attempt at mind control.”
“Why didn’t the Guild ever send a man?” Kaylee looked at Inara. “I mean, seems t’ me like if you got a place where women disappear and you send folks out to see why, best chance of getting’ someone to come back and tell you would be to send a guy. There are Boy Companions, right?”
“The Guild has always been led by women,” Inara replied, a little embarrassed. “I think ... I think their first impulse is always to trust a woman more.”
Kaylee frowned. “Guess they ain’t ever been to school with somebody like Becky Larson,” she muttered. “Boyfriend-stealin’ jien huo. Couldn’t trust her worth a damn.”
Zoe stood up and walked towards the front of the cabin, clearly thinking. Everyone watched her for a minute, and then she turned and smiled.
“Well, now,” the first mate said. “I’m thinking we’ve got ourselves some options. They don’t even know Simon’s here. He never got off the boat on Boros, so they don’t know what he looks like. And I’m thinking if we can change the way Inara looks enough to keep them from recognizing her, you two can go down and bring the captain and Jayne back.”
There was a long silence, and then River spoke. “The men at the Depot didn't see me, either. And I think I might be able to go with Simon and Inara - without worrying about the Pax.”
“What makes you think that, mei mei?” Simon asked.
“Because there’s a good chance I might be immune, too,” she replied. “The Alliance wanted to turn me into a weapon, just like the Pax. It stands to reason they would want to make sure I couldn’t be turned against them ... or pacified by the Pax myself.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Zoe looked skeptical. “If you are, you could wind up ordered to fight against us.”
“Well, Simon still knows the sleep command he used on me in that bar,” River countered. “And I can’t do much for — or to — anyone if I’m unconscious.”
Zoe thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Having you down there with Simon and Inara is too good an edge to pass up. If you all have to fight your way back to the shuttle, I’d rather River were fighting next to you every step of the way.”
She grinned “So it looks like we’ve got ourselves the start of a big damn rescue ... just as soon as we figure out where the hell they are. So back on the screens, people.”
As Mal found himself thrown into a plain wooden chair in Hugh Aubrey’s office, his first thought was that the chair seemed oddly out of place. Then as he looked around, he realized that he’d seen rooms almost exactly like this before — too big for one man, full of expensive fá¨ijiá¹ zá¡wá¹ from a dozen different worlds, but strangely empty.
‘Just like Aubrey,’ he thought. ‘Like Badger on Persephone. He's just another suit with attitude.’
“Huh.” The sound escaped before he could stop it.
Aubrey stopped on his way to his chair and turned. “Something to say, Captain Reynolds?”
“Just figured out that this office ain’t really an office,” Mal replied, looking up into the other man’s eyes. “It ain’t a place a man works. It’s a place he brings other folk so they can see how important he is. Hell, maybe you even come here your own self just to sit in that chair and look at all this fine luh-suh ... maybe make yourself think you’re important, too.”
Jayne snorted. “Course with half the folk on Flynt bein’ slaves, I’m thinkin’ he could just order all the girls to tell him he’s the best they ever had. Maybe if they tell him enough, he’ll start believin’ it.”
Aubrey sat in his chair and swiveled to face his prisoners. “As if the opinion of a woman would ever matter here.”
“Well, I reckon you ain’t nothin’ more that a gorram go tsao de hwoon dahn,” the mercenary replied, his lip curling into a sneer. “That’s a man’s opinion, you piece of gos se. How’s it feel?”
“Now, now, gentlemen.” Mayor Danbury spoke as he crossed the room to a small bar in the corner. He began to fix himself a drink. “No need to be rude. After all, you are our guests.”
“That’s an odd word for it,” the captain said, still focused on Aubrey. “I guess on Flynt, it’s fine to greet folks with a twenty-one gun salute — aimed at their heads.”
“Your reputation precedes you, sir,” Aubrey replied evenly. “You are extremely formidable, and if the situation were different, I would have had you both shot dead at the docks. But there’s a ship full of women up there, and if I killed you, I know they’d get a bit ... emotional. Since having the main engines of a Firefly class transport burning a hole in downtown Hustler isn’t going to get me what I want, I need to keep you alive. For now.”
“They could just fly away and leave us.”
Aubrey smiled. “I don’t think so. Berenger told me all about you, Captain Reynolds. In the war, the troops you led were extraordinarily loyal.”
Mal shrugged. “People change.”
“Not as much as you might think.” The man behind the desk shook his head. “No, Captain. Your crew isn’t about to leave you here and ‘just fly away.’ Oh, they’ll wait for you to rescue yourself at first, but if you don’t, they’ll come for you. And then we’ll have them.”
Jayne glared at Aubrey. “And if they don’t? They can wait a long time, yu bun duh. Firefly transports go weeks between touching dirt.”
“That’s why we’re going to give them a deadline.” Danbury spoke from across the room. “And I do mean dead. They’ll come. And if they don’t ... if they just sit up there ...well, we’ll go get ‘em.”
The mercenary shifted in his seat and smirked. “Yeah, well, good luck with that. You ain’t met the crew.”
“Oh, but I want to, Mister Cobb.” Aubrey leaned back in his chair and smiled again. “Rest assured, I want to meet them all, very much. For now, though, let’s let them know where you are. Wilson?”
Danbury reached over and flicked a switch on a small box on Aubrey’s desk. The lights in the room went down, and the walls behind Mal and Jayne flickered and turned into institutional gray brick. High above them, just barely visible, a barred window let in a small amount of washed-out sunlight. Aubrey smiled.
“Call the Firefly.”
They'd watched the group approach a large building and walk past a group of uniformed men to a central lobby. Aubrey activated a private elevator, and the group shuffled into it. Once they reached the office upstairs, they saw and heard everything -- until the
image from the camera stuttered and died.
The audio stayed live for a few seconds longer, just enough to hear Aubrey say “Call the Firefly” before it, too, failed. Almost immediately, a repeating beep sounded from the main console. Linda reached up and flicked a few switches.
“Incoming transmission from Flynt,” she said. Everyone turned to look at her, and she shrugged. “Come on, folks. Somebody has to state the obvious. This time it gets to be me. What’ll I do, Zoe?”
The first mate thought for a second. “Turn our cameras and audio off, throw the transmission on all screens.”
A dim image of Mal and Jayne sitting in a jail cell came up, along with a voice they all recognized as Hugh Aubrey.
“Listen up. We are holding Captain Reynolds and Mister Cobb, to ensure you don’t do anything we’ll both regret. You have 24 hours to land your ship at the Hustler docks and surrender, or they both die. I know you don't want that. And it’s not as if it would be so horrible, joining our community. Life here on Flynt can be very fulfilling for a woman. Once you come down, you’ll discover that you’ll enjoy doing whatever we tell you to. It’s what you were born to do, after all ... surrendering to the will of a man. And you know if you want to keep these men alive, that’s just what you’ll do. Surrender.”
The transmission cut out, and everyone on the flight deck looked at each other. Linda retrieved the recording and put it up on all screens.
“So they’re in a cell at or below ground level,” she said.
“No they ain’t,” Kaylee replied. She overrode several of the screens and put up her own content. “Using the signal strength and power consumption numbers, River and I think they’re in this big building, center of town. City Hall.”
“That’s consistent with a jail cell,” Simon countered.
“Normally yes, sweetie,” the mechanic said with a smile, “but the signal got stronger when they took the elevator to the office, so that means they went up, not down, ‘cause there wasn’t as many buildings between them and the docks. They sent that transmission to Serenity only a few seconds after the camera’s signal died, so they didn’t have enough time to get Jayne and the captain down underground anyway before we got the transmission.”
She pointed to where the picture from the transmission was still up. “And look here. Those boys may think they’re smart, but they ain’t. When you send a holo projection over a standard ship‘s comm, there’s this weird glitterin’. It’s like an interference pattern. The cap’n and Jayne are real, but the walls look like somebody went and sprinkled fairy dust all over ‘em. They can’t see it on their end, but it’s plain as day when it shows up here. See?”
“That means they’re still in the office.” Zoe leaned closer to the screen. Kaylee nodded.
“But they want us to think they’re down in the cells.” She tapped on the picture of Mal and Jayne. “They’re expectin’ us to go down and try a rescue, ‘cause they think we don’t know about the Pax. So we break in, they pin us down, and while we’re fightin’, we’re breathin’.”
“And suddenly, you all decide to stop fighting and do whatever they say.” Simon shook his head. “Not a bad plan, if they were dealing with anyone but Kaylee.” She blushed.
“They gave us 24 hours.” Everyone turned to look at River. She smiled. “That means they’re not expecting us to do anything until the deadline approaches. Like Aubrey said, he thinks we’ll wait for Mal and Jayne to try to rescue themselves, and then try to go in and get them at the last minute.”
She reached out and tapped the screen that showed the fake jail cell walls. “They think we’re going to wait, and then attack the holding cells. But we know where Mal and Jayne are right now. I say ... let’s go get them and bring them home.”
“Just ‘go get them?’ From the office of the planetary governor, above the police headquarters of the biggest city on this gorram moon?” Zoe said, her own smile mirroring River’s. “I’m assuming you have a plan?”
“Oh yes,” the girl replied, her smile becoming an impish grin. “We’re going to walk right in the front door.”
This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place soon after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the sixth part of a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first Firefly story (and the first five chapters of this one).
In the sixth part of FIREFLY: DOUBLE BOOKED, The crew stages a big damn rescue, and everyone's invited -- you, too, folks. *grin* Will the plan go smooth? Read on and find out!!
Silas Macawber sat in Flynt’s air traffic control center and waited for the end of his shift.
That’s what he did most days, and even though it was boring as hell, it suited him just fine. After all, they paid him good credits every day just to sit there for eight hours at a time and monitor the planetary traffic system. Since the only ships that showed up were Alliance transports and cruisers, you could set your watch by the schedule they kept. That meant that Silas had one of the cushiest jobs on the moon — keeping an eye on something that didn’t really need watching.
Still, the regular schedule had to be maintained, and that meant Silas needed to be here every day for his eight-hour shift, regardless of whether there was any incoming traffic due. Today was a little different, what with the Firefly transport moving into orbit and the shuttle landing a few hours ago. But other than that, the sky above was empty, leaving Silas at loose ends, as usual.
To kill some time, the controller was getting a lengthy foot massage from Wynona, his personal slave girl. She was a stunningly beautiful brunette with green eyes, a beautiful smile, and absolutely no clothing — not that it seemed to matter to her. In fact, nothing ever seemed to matter to her but his happiness, which suited him just fine, considering the completely unfulfilling nature of his job.
He’d taken her as his only minutes after she’d first walked off the Alliance cruiser that brought her here, unaware that her career as a sensor maintenance technician was about to turn into a full-time job as a sex toy and personal slave. Whatever they were pumping into the air worked pretty quickly, and she barely knew what was happening before she found herself naked and collared ... and in the service of Second Class Air Traffic Control Officer Macawber for the past three years.
As Silas looked down at her kneeling before him, his toes resting on her magnificent breasts as her strong fingers pressed into his arches, he saw the look of adoration and love in her eyes, and wondered if he could take her right here in the control room before the next shift started.
‘Damn,’ he thought with a smile. ‘Life is good.’
Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
An alarm began to sound. At first, it was a gentle beeping, but when Silas failed to respond (never having heard that particular sound before), it grew louder and more insistent. By the time Silas reluctantly removed his feet from Wynona’s ministrations, the beeping had become a klaxon, and entire areas of the main board had begun flashing bright red. Cursing, he stared at the screens, only to find the words “PROXIMITY ALERT” blinking above displays that showed an object with a rapidly decaying orbital trajectory from several different angles.
Reading the object’s transponder ID, Silas realized it was the Firefly transport, and it seemed to be heading directly for the airspace right above Hustler. He flicked a few switches, swiveled the mike into position, and began speaking.
“Firefly transport! This is Flynt Control! Break off! I repeat, break off!” The warning came out a bit high-pitched with a slight quavering, and he struggled to regain some kind of command tone before trying again. After all, this was being recorded. “You are engaged in an illegal approach! Return to orbit at once! You have not been cleared to land!”
The response was a little slow in coming, but the vid screen came to life, revealing a close-up of a woman with a lop-sided smile and a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, honey,” she said, her voice clear and strong through the control room’s speakers. “We’re not plannin’ to land. We’re just gonna hover over your city for a while and let the engines burn it to the ground ... unless you release our two crewmembers and return our shuttle, a’course.”
Silas felt his jaw drop as the words registered. He reached over and turned on the external monitors, slaving the cameras to the telemetry data so he could focus in on the piece of sky where the Firefly was supposed to be.
He needn’t have bothered.
In the center of the monitor, less than a hundred meters above him, two balls of fire framed a spacecraft hull, holding it suspended almost directly above the center of the city. He could almost feel the heat from the engines through the screen, even though the sweat pouring down his face had nothing to do with fire — and everything to do with that Firefly.
The blood drained from his face as he realized he’d let that ship get too close to Flynt’s capital city. The fact that he had no real way to stop them wouldn’t matter to the mayor ... or the Governor. It was clear that no matter how this ended, he was going to find himself without a job.
At first, that bothered him more than the thought of watching Hustler burn. Until he remembered he was IN Hustler, towards the top of City Hall. And if she started from the highest point and moved downward ... well, that focused his attention.
“Maybe you should get your head honcho on the line,” the woman continued, still smiling, “before I decide to cut altitude and set fire to that big damned department store across the street. Be an awful shame to fry all that merchandise ... and all those shoppers. Don’t you think?”
Silas’s hand reached for the phone before his head even knew he was reaching.
Serenity’s second shuttle had separated from the main ship as the Firefly had passed over City Hall on its way to the center of Hustler. The small ship landed so quickly that it was barely in the air for a full second before touching down lightly in the center of the air car circle.
Sean Barris, the young police officer in charge of the landing area, didn’t even see it leave the Firefly. He just saw it land in a restricted zone without clearance, and marched out to the landing pad intending to cite the people responsible before ordering them to clear the pad.
He reached the door of the shuttle just in time for its door to open and reveal a dark-haired man in an Osiris-tailored business suit, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. A young woman stood behind him, also in business attire, but her submissive posture and the silver collar around her neck made it plain she was just as much a slave as every other woman on Flynt.
“You can’t park that here!” The officer pointed at the shuttle. The new arrival held up one hand, gesturing for silence. When he raised the other hand, it held an Alliance ident badge, identifying him as Lawrence Dobson, special agent.
“Let me ask you something,” the man said, his voice as calm as a frozen lake. “Officer ...?”
“Barris.”
“Officer Barris.” The man nodded, and put his ID away. “If you’ll look behind me, you’ll see a Firefly-class transport hell-bent on setting fire to your capital city. Your planetary governor made the mind-bogglingly stupid mistake of luring that ship to this moon — a moon the rest of the Verse doesn’t even believe exists, mainly because we didn’t want anyone to know it was here.”
“So the Alliance spent billions of credits to equip and hide this moon specifically to conduct highly classified, need-to-know research, and now that research is about to be burned to the ground by a ship full of women who want their men back, or else — and all because Hugh Aubrey wanted some pretty new slave girls to play with, and didn’t want to wait for the next Alliance ship to bring him some.”
He straightened his shoulders, and stared at the officer. “Now, here’s that question I was going to ask you, son, so pay attention. We’re in the midst of a planet-wide emergency, with the city in danger, lives on the line, and only minutes left before your capital starts to burn — and you want me, the only Alliance agent on the planet with a hope in Hell of stopping this massacre, to drop everything, get back in my ship ... and find another place to PARK?”
Officer Barris looked past the man at the Firefly a few blocks over, its engines cooking the tar on the roofs of the buildings below it. Then he looked back at the man.
“Sorry, Agent Dobson,” he said, snapping to attention. “What are your orders?”
“Let’s start by having a little talk with Governor Aubrey about what the words ‘operational security’ really mean,” the agent replied. “Maybe we can still salvage this mess if he hasn’t done something really stupid, like kill his hostages.”
“Yes, sir.” The two men and one woman walked back to the doors leading down into the building, completely oblivious to the two women who waited just inside the shuttle, watching them leave.
Zoe stood clear of the doorway and looked at Inara. Her hair had been lengthened to reach just above her hips and colored to a honey blonde, and her eyes were now bright green. She wore nothing but a silver collar, a smile, and a pair of silver four-inch heels.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” The first mate asked, her voice muffled by the breathing mask she wore. Inara nodded.
“We need the other shuttle for the rest of the plan to work,” the Companion replied, “and Kaylee can’t rig a remote control from the ship. So somebody has to go down and fly it while River and Simon are rescuing Mal and Jayne. Since I’m immune to the Pax, that somebody has to be me.”
Zoe put her hand on the other woman’s arm. Inara smiled. “I’ll be fine, really, Zoe. Just a short walk to the docks, over to the shuttle, then fly away. As Mal would say, ‘easy peasy.’”
“Ain’t nothing easy about walking to the dock in those heels,” Zoe smiled and shook her head. “Sensors say the roof is empty, and you’re clear at least three levels down before you’re gonna meet anybody. Good luck, ‘Nara. Anything happens, you know we won’t leave without you.”
“I know.” The Companion walked to the door, turned and gave a wave, and was gone.
Pressing the plate that closed the shuttle door, Zoe slipped into the pilot’s seat and watched Inara on the external monitor as she cat-walked across the landing pad to the stairs leading down. Once she was sure the other woman was on her way, she began bringing the ship as close to being fired up as she dared without actually tipping anyone who might come by that someone was still aboard.
“You really should consider joining us on Flynt, Captain Reynolds.” Aubrey leaned back in his chair and looked at his two prisoners. “It’s a man’s paradise.”
“Depends on the man,” Mal replied, “and what he thinks is paradise.”
“What could be better than a world where women do whatever a man wants?”
The captain grinned. “A world where a woman does what she wants — and decides to please a man because she wants to.”
Aubrey looked at Mal in disbelief for a moment, then shook his head and turned to Jayne.
“What about you, Mr. Cobb? There’s always a place for a man of your talents here.”
“Wrong fella to ask, I’m thinkin’,” Jayne replied, giving the Governor a smirk. “Hell, I only just figgered out a few weeks ago that a woman who wants me because I’m me is a hell of a lot better than a doxy who only wants me for my coin.”
“But the women here on Flynt are dedicated to your happiness,” Aubrey insisted, leaning forward in his chair. “You don’t have to lift a finger to get them to want you.”
“Yeah, but some things are worth workin’ for, sah gwah. Some women, too, I reckon.” Jayne shrugged. “You like women who don’t say no. I just finished learnin’ I like the chase almost as much as I like catchin’ them. And I got someone I’m chasin’ right now. Somebody I love.”
Mal shot him a look, but the other man ignored it and kept looking at Aubrey. “So you keep your ‘paradise,’ mister. There ain’t nothin’ here for me.”
The intercom buzzed.
“Governor Aubrey?” The voice on the other end of the line shook a little. “This is air traffic control. There’s a Firefly transport hovering over the center of town, threatening to burn down the city. They want to talk to you about getting their men back.”
Aubrey stared at the intercom, then looked up at Mal. The captain shrugged.
“That would be my crew, I expect. Sounds like you’re at the mercy of a bunch of women who really like doin’ what they want.” Mal smiled. “Maybe you’d best tend to that before they turn your capital to smoke and ash.”
The Governor licked his lips and looked back at the intercom.
“Put them through,” he said. There was a click. “This is Governor Aubrey.”
“Well, hello, Governor!” The voice that came through the tinny speaker was cheerful and undeniably female. “So glad you could take the time out of your busy schedule to take my call, what with your city bein’ only a few inches from bein’ char-broiled and all.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, some strawberries would be nice, maybe with a bit of ice cream on the side.” Aubrey could almost hear her smile. “But what we’d REALLY like is the captain and Jayne back, and sooner rather than later. Otherwise you’ll get to see what the engines on an unarmed transport can really do.”
“Maybe you should take your ship back into orbit,” Aubrey said, trying to sound in control. “Or I’ll kill them both.”
“And maybe you should think a while before you make a threat like that,” the woman replied, her voice taking on an unmistakable edge. “’Cause if anything happens to them, there ain’t gonna be nothing stopping us from flying across this little moon and frying every town we come across, startin’ with this one, until we run out of cities ... or fuel.”
“Don’t push me, girl,” the Governor growled. “Back off now, or we’ll blow you out of the sky!”
“With what, Mister Aubrey? As far as our sensors can tell, there ain’t anything on this moon bigger than a huntin’ rifle, and all that would do is scratch our paint and make me mad ... well, madder than I am now. If there was somethin’ bigger, you woulda used it already. So there ain’t.”
The voice took on a teasing tone. “Who woulda thought the Alliance woulda left you bare-assed naked when it came to defendin’ your own selves, just because they thought no one would know you were here? If only they had left you a few missile-launchers, maybe ... or a garrison of fine Alliance troops just to keep you all safe. But no — you’ve got nothing that can stop us. Nothing at all. And that’s why one little ol’ Firefly can come along and take it all away ... unless you give us back our men and let us be on our merry. Donh-mah?
As they approached the door to the Governor’s office, the Alliance agent stopped.
“River.” He spoke with an unmistakable air of command. “I need you to keep an eye on the location of the Firefly. Go to air traffic control and contact me when you know something.”
“Yes, Master.” The young girl threw a smirk at her brother behind the police officer’s back before spinning and gliding down the hallway. The officer in question looked at the agent curiously, and ‘Dobson’ looked back and smiled.
“Not to worry, son,” he said. “She knows her place, like all the women on Flynt. She’ll do her job, and that’ll help me do mine, right?” Barris nodded, and the agent smiled. “Good man. Now let’s head on in and see about saving your city.”
He reached for the doorknob.
“You can’t kill everyone on Flynt for two men!” Aubrey rose to his feet, his voice rising with the rest of him. “That’s insane!”
“Well, maybe it’s that time of the month, mister Governor sir,” the voice replied, shifting to a harder edge. “You know how moody and outta sorts a girl can get — especially when she’s not bein’ brain-burned by that gos se you’re pourin’ into the air down there.”
“You know about that?”
She laughed, and Aubrey felt the blood drain from his face. “You think a woman would want to be your slave ‘cause it’s fun? You got to be doin’ something to make ‘em obey. We just didn’t know what it was for sure ... until you told us just now.”
Aubrey fell back into his chair, stunned that he’d given away Flynt’s secret so easily.
‘How did this go so wrong so fast?’ he thought. ‘And how can I fix it before it gets any worse?’
“So let’s talk about how we get our boys back,” the voice continued, “so we can get on with our lives and you can go back to being a slave-mongering lecherous hump who thinks he’s God.”
The door swung open and everyone turned to see two men standing in the doorway. The tall one in a business suit put his finger to his lips as he walked across the room, holding his ID up where Aubrey could see it. He pointed to the intercom and watched as Aubrey punched the mute button.
“Who the hell are you?” the Governor said, and the agent gave him a look that Mal recognized as being a male version of the one River used when she thought you were being stupid.
“Lawrence Dobson, Alliance operative,” he growled. “I’m the man who’s going to save your sorry ass, Aubrey, along with everyone else on this rock. After all you’ve done to screw up an operation it took us years to set up, you’re lucky the Alliance left somebody behind who knows what the hell he’s doing, instead of trusting you to keep things nice and quiet — like you were SUPPOSED to.”
The agent turned to the officer he’d brought with him.
“Get these men up to the roof and wait for me there,” he said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
Barris saluted, and Mal and Jayne stood up. ‘Dobson ‘ looked at both men.
“Just go with him, both of you, and you’ll soon be back on your ship. Try anything else, and everyone loses, yes?”
The captain and the mercenary looked at each other, and back at the agent.
“Whatever you say, ‘Lawrence,’” Jayne said with a smirk. “We’ll just wait up on the roof, right, Cap’n?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Mal replied, the corners of his lips twitching just a bit. “Needin’ a bit of fresh air anyway.”
The two walked to the door and straight through it. The officer gave the agent a look and followed behind them, one hand on his gun still in its holster. He shut the door behind him, and ‘Dobson’ looked back at the Governor in disgust.
“I’d ask you what the hell you were thinking when you brought this man and his gorram ship to a top-secret installation, but I just don’t have the time — even though I suspect your answer would be, ‘thinking? I’m supposed to think first?’”
Aubrey’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The agent nodded. “That’s about the level of intelligent discourse I’d expect from you, after deliberately bringing a known Independent sympathizer and his crew here.”
“Known Independent?”
“He was a Browncoat, Aubrey! Sergeant in the war, fought at Serenity Valley. I know you knew that — I’ve read your mail, and watched your conversations with that idiot Berenger — and yet, even though you knew he was an enemy of the Alliance, you lured him here anyway. Now he knows about Flynt — and if he knows, others will, too!” ‘Dobson’ shook his head. “I can’t let him leave, but I can’t let them burn the planet, either. So I get to clean up your mess.”
The Governor cleared his throat.
“What ... what do you want me to do?” The agent pointed at the intercom.
“Tell them they win,” he said with a grimace. “Then tell ‘em to send a shuttle to the roof to pick up their men. I’ve got a magnetic mine placed on the center of the pad, disguised as part of the landing pad’s navigation array. They’ll land right on top of it, and the mine will attach itself to the bottom of the shuttle. Then they’ll fly back to their ship, and I’ll wait until they’re far enough away before I set it off.”
“Why wait?” Mayor Danbury spoke for the first time, and the agent gave him a withering stare.
“Because I’m trying to save the city, you idiot. Blowing up that Firefly over Hustler will start the very fire we’re trying to avoid. Am I the only person in this room who can think?”
‘Dobson’ turned his attention back to Aubrey. “Tell ‘em they win and get that shuttle down here, now. Let’s finish this thing.”
Inara Serra didn’t care about being naked and collared on a world full of people who wanted to see her dead. She just wanted to make sure her part of the getaway plan went smooth.
She was surprised no one had stopped her. Not leaving the police station, not walking through the center of town, not even when she’d reached the docks. It was like being invisible. Women mattered so little on this planet that even being stark naked barely managed to catch the interest of men who had their own sex slaves to look at.
Inara almost found herself a little upset at how little attention she was getting, until she realized that a woman about to steal a small spaceship from the center of a crowded city really should prefer being unnoticed. She shook her head and focused on her mission.
The clicking of her heels as she walked down the line of empty bays echoed on the walls of the dispatch office, and as she approached the shuttle, she heard a door open behind her.
Justin Hammer, Flynt’s dockmaster, was sitting at his desk when he heard something echoing out on the docks. He switched on the monitors just in time to see a lone girl walking down the line.
‘What the hell is she doing here?’ he asked himself, then rose and walked over to his office door. She was just passing by as he opened it.
“You! Girl!” His voice stopped her in her tracks, and she turned, eyes down.
She stopped and turned, eyes down. “Yes, Master?”
“What’re you doing here?”
“I was sent to deliver a message to dockmaster Hammer.”
Hammer nodded. “I’m him. What’s the message?”
“Governor Aubrey wants you immediately.”
“Well, now,” Hammer said, thoughtfully. “That’s strange. Why not just comm me?”
“He said something about not causing a panic, Master.” The girl stayed still. Hammer’s eyes narrowed, and then he looked up to see the Firefly hovering over the city. He nodded again.
“The bitches on that transport are trying something, and he doesn’t want to broadcast anything where someone would overhear.”
“This girl does not know.” There was a slight pause. “My Master wishes you to take the Firefly’s shuttle to City Hall and land on the roof, Master.”
“Why?”
She shrugged, her eyes still down. “This girl does not know,” she repeated. “She does what she is told, and Master wanted her to tell you to take the shuttle.”
Hammer eyed her from the doorway to his office, and sighed.
“I’m going to have to check in with the Governor on this,” he said. “Come in here while I make the call.”
“Yes, Master.” The girl strutted forward, and as the dockmaster watched her walk towards him, he thought maybe he could have a bit of fun with her before sending her back to the Governor.
As she walked through the door, Hammer’s hand reached over and cupped a breast, giving it a small squeeze. The girl smiled at him happily, then took his hand and twisted it hard, pinching it in such a way that the pain shot up through his arm and took him totally by surprise. He gave a strangled cry.
“Oh, am I hurting you, Master?” She smiled and gave his arm an extra twist. “Let me put you out of your misery.”
She slipped her leg behind his and pushed him hard. As Hammer fell, Inara kicked him in the head, and by the time he reached the ground, he was mercifully unconscious.
The Companion stripped off the man’s shirt and tied his arms with it, then dragged his body into a closet and left it there.
‘Zoe was right,’ she thought with a smile as she walked out the office and headed for the shuttle once more. ‘The hardest thing about this job was walking here in those heels.’
Kaylee shut down the main comm, smiling like she’d just won a million creds.
“That was so shiny! He up and folded like a busted parasol, just like River said he would.” She looked over at the pilot. Linda’s arms were shaking, and sweat was slowly trickling down the sides of her face. “Oh, honey! You look beat. Can I take over for you?”
“Nice thought,” Linda replied, sparing the mechanic a quick smile even as her voice betrayed her fatigue. “But you can’t. If I let go of the stick even for a second, bad things will happen.”
“I could turn on the autopilot ...” Kaylee’s hand strayed towards the button.
“NO!” Her strangled yell froze the mechanic’s finger an inch from the button. She looked at Linda, eyes wide, and the pilot sighed.
“I’m sorry, Kaylee, but we can’t. The autopilot’s fine for out in the black with nothing but vacuum to bump into. But this close to dirt, surrounded by buildings with changing winds and balanced on the big engines, Serenity needs someone at the controls who can keep her steady — a human pilot. That means me. I need to keep her balanced every second, and that’s ... hard. So let’s just hope they get back here quickly.”
Wash focused on flying, and finished her thought in the privacy of her own head.
‘Otherwise there might not be a ship for everybody to come back to.’
Simon walked across the landing pad towards the waiting shuttle. Playing “Bucky Batson, Alliance super-spy” was starting to get tiring, and he was looking forward to being back on Serenity — and being Simon Tam once more.
‘Still a few more minutes to play before the curtain goes down,’ he thought, and straightened his shoulders.
Mal and Jayne stood on the landing pad, looking like they were waiting for a bus. Barris stood beside them, staring at them both with his hand still resting on the butt of his gun.
“Stand down, son,” he said, and the officer took a step back and let his hand slide off the gun. Simon held out Mal’s revolver and Jayne’s pair of Enforcers.
“Here are your weapons. I’ll keep the ammo. Just take ‘em, get in your shuttle when it comes, and go.”
There was a muted whine from the side of the building, and a second shuttle rose up next to the roof, its hatch opening. Mal and Jayne looked at each other and ran for the door, diving in headfirst. The door slid shut, and the shuttle turned and headed for the Firefly.
There was the sound of heels clacking on the permacrete rooftop, and River fairly flew across the landing pad towards her brother. The door to the shuttle still on the pad slid open, and she ran through it. Simon turned to the officer and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.
“We’ve got to follow that shuttle,” he said. “After it docks with the transport, we’ll follow it until it gets far enough away, then we’ll detonate the bomb it’s carrying and end the threat to the city. We may not make it back. If we don’t ... well, thanks for your cooperation, son. The Alliance won’t forget your help.”
He slipped on his sunglasses, threw the boy a smile, and jumped into the shuttle. It rose almost immediately and headed after the first shuttle, chasing both ships away from the city and over the horizon.
Officer Barris watched them as they flew away, and eventually saw a bright flash that lit up the sky where the ships had vanished.
The Firefly and all its crew were gone.
“Full burn in atmo!” Kaylee danced around the cockpit. “Damn, girl, that was somethin’! Lit up the sky for miles around. Musta looked like we blew up into a million tiny bits of Firefly.”
“I think that was the idea,” Linda said, her voice faint. “Now that everyone’s back on board and we’ve got some space ‘tween us and the dirt ... could you take over for a while, Kaylee? I think I need to take a little break ...”
She just managed to turn on the autopilot before everything went black.
Wash opened her eyes to find herself staring up at the ceiling in sick bay.
“You gave us quite a scare, Linda.” Simon moved into view and shined a bright light into her eyes, one at a time. She winced. “Nobody realized how hard that was going to be on you — keeping the ship steady that long so close to the ground.”
The pilot shrugged, then winced. Her shoulders felt like there were icepicks embedded in them “That was my job. Got to do my part, no matter how hard it was.”
Simon moved the light away and looked down at her.
“Maybe, but it didn’t have to be as hard as you made it, did it?” Wash looked up at him, confused. The doctor sighed.
“I’m not a pilot, but I know you could have taken the ship up a bit once the threat was established,” he said. “You could have given yourself more space, made it easier for a while before coming back down to threaten the city again. Right?”
Wash shook her head. Even that hurt. “That would have burned more fuel, and I needed to save everything I could for the full burn in atmo at the end of the con. Besides, they needed to think what I was doing was easy. If I had to back off, they might have figured out just how hard it would have been for us to torch the entire moon one city at a time. We needed them to be scared and stay scared long enough to pull this off.”
“Maybe, but you also cut things awfully fine, and hurt yourself in the process.” The doctor sighed. “Linda, you wouldn’t have fainted if it hadn’t been too much for you. You pushed hard and now you’re paying the price. I’m taking you off of flight duty for twenty four hours, starting now, and you’re going to be pretty sore for a while even after that.”
She lowered her head and closed her eyes. “Okay, Simon. I give. I’ll be good.”
Simon looked at her for a moment, then leaned forward. “You did great up there, Linda. No question about it. But you don’t need to prove anything, you know. You’re crew. You’re family. And you sure don’t have to try and out-macho Mal or Jayne. Or even Zoe — as if anyone could.”
“Says Agent Dobson, Alliance operative!” She opened her eyes and threw him a grin. “From the idle chatter I heard over the comms before I passed out, you did pretty well at being all take charge and everything.”
“I did what I had to, to make the plan work.”
“So did I,” Wash replied, reaching out and touching his arm. “I’ll be more careful from now on, okay? Even though I don’t think we’ll need to try that same stunt again anytime soon.”
“I hope not.” The doctor grinned. “I’ll be happy to retire Agent Dobson and go back to practicin’ medicine.”
“Looks to me like you can stop practicin’, Doc.” A voice came from the doorway, and both of them turned to see Jayne standing there, grinning. “Seems like you’re doing just fine takin’ care of Linda.”
Simon smiled. “That joke is so old, they were groaning at it back when we left Earth That Was behind.”
Jayne’s face went blank. “Joke?”
The doctor looked at Linda, then looked back at the mercenary and shook his head.
“Never mind,” he said, stifling a grin. “I think you and Linda have some things to talk about, so I’m going to leave you alone for a bit. Get a little more rest, and then we can move you to your bunk, all right?”
Wash gave Simon a small smile and nodded once before looking down. The doctor turned and walked out the door, leaving the two of them alone for the first time since the rescue.
“Hey.” Jayne spoke first, and Linda looked up into his eyes and smiled.
“Hey,” she replied. “Thank you for coming back alive.”
He smiled, just a little, but his voice was serious. “Thanks for, uh ... caring, I guess. I don’t think I ever had anybody who did, before.”
She nodded. “I do. Care, I mean. A lot.” She held out her hand, and Jayne moved forward to take it. His hand was hot and rough in hers, and Wash felt a flash of ... something, deep inside. It rolled through her, warmed her inside with promises of something more, just out of reach. And for once she just let it. She didn’t push back, she didn’t second-guess it. She just let it happen, because it felt good, and right, and at that moment, a little bit more of Linda and Wash came together as one.
Wash — and Linda — looked up into his eyes.
“In your message, you said you loved me, even though you’ve never felt this way about anyone before,” she said softly. “But when I heard you ... when I looked into your eyes, I could feel it. It touched a part of me that made me see ... that I love you too.”
His eyes opened just a little wider, and his hand squeezed hers.
“Because you trusted me, Jayne.” Her voice became almost a whisper. “You’ve always been so tough, so hard. Never letting anyone in. But this time, you took a chance. You opened yourself to me ... let down your walls, showed me how you felt, and trusted me not to hurt you. You trusted me. You must really love me to trust me enough to let me in — and I realized I love you because you loved me enough to take that chance, even though you couldn’t know how it would end.”
“There wasn’t nothin’ else I could do.” Jayne’s voice was rough with emotion. “I didn’t even want to think about what life’d be like without you in it, that’s how scared I was. But if I didn’t get the nerve to tell ya how I felt, I’d never know if you felt the same. And I really needed to know.”
“Well, now you do.” Linda brought his hand to her lips and kissed it softly. “I’m not sure what the future is going to bring for either of us. You’ve never loved anyone before, and I ... well, I had someone I loved once, in another life. I gave that someone my heart, and it was wonderful — but it ended too soon, and there’s no way I can ever bring it back.”
She stared up into his eyes, seeing him become very still, wondering what she would say next. Then she smiled.
“But I can honestly say that I have never loved another man the way that I love you. And a girl would have to be pretty stupid to run away from love ... especially when the man you love loves you back so deep, he’d put his heart on the line just to hear you say it.”
Wash-and-Linda took a deep breath, and reached up with her free hand to touch his cheek.
“I love you, Jayne Cobb,” she said.
His eyes lit up, and his smile was full of happiness. The pilot felt the same happiness filled her soul as well, and Wash finally embraced who she was and who she would be at last.
And when he leaned forward to kiss her, she raised her face to his and kissed him back.
A lot.
Simon stood out in the corridor, giving the pair some privacy. From the silence, it seemed they’d come to some kind of decision, and he hoped that both of them would wind up happy, and together.
“They have, and they will,” a voice behind him said happily, and he turned to see River dropping down from the ductwork above.
“Kaylee’s right, you know,” he said with a smile. “You’re going to get yourself electrocuted if you keep that up.”
She smiled back and shook her head. “Never gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
River shrugged. “Serenity likes me.”
She danced her way across the compartment into the passenger lounge, with Simon not far behind. He walked over and sat down on the threadbare sofa, watching his sister moving around the room to music only she could hear.
“Are you telling me the ship is sentient, now?”
“I don’t know whether she thinks or not,” she replied with grin, dropping down beside him. “But she sure talks to Kaylee a lot, and I don’t think she’d love Serenity so much if the ship were as dumb as a post. Although come to think of it, she does love you, so maybe I’m wrong ...”
Simon faked outrage, then reached out and tickled River. She wiggled around giggling until she managed to roll away from her brother’s fingers, even though both of them knew she could have easily moved away long before his fingers could reach her.
“You just be careful, Simon Tam,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “Remember, I can kill you with my brain.”
“Maybe so,” he replied, leaning back on the sofa. “But I’m not too worried. You are my sister, after all.”
“More’s the pity.” River sighed, feigning disappointment. “I really have been wanting to try out that whole killing people with my brain thing.”
She curled up on the sofa next to him, a small smile twitching at the corners of her lips.
“I wish we could have done something about Flynt,” Simon said. “I know we’re not here to police the Verse, and yes, we were lucky to get out of there with everyone on board and the ship intact. But still ... after all that, we left the moon with only what we came with — and half the population still enslaved.”
There was silence for a moment, and he turned to find River’s smile had shifted to become something more appropriate for a Cheshire Cat then a little sister.
“Well, we did leave empty-handed,” she said cheerfully, “but only because after you sent me off to erase us from all from the central database, I found an empty terminal and used the Cortex to transfer a nice chunk of the planetary treasury and all of Governor Aubrey’s off-world holdings to a numbered account on Osiris. So technically, we’re not actually holding onto the coin at the moment, but it’ll be waiting for us when we need it.”
Simon stared at her, almost too shocked to speak. “You stole ...?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t steal anything. What is it Mal said to Patience on Whitefall? 'I do the job, and I get paid.' Think of it as payment in full for all the trouble they gave us, just for trying to do our job. And yes, I wiped all the records of the transaction — not that anyone there will be in a position to wonder where the money went. Not anymore. I know Aubrey won’t be needing it.”
River stood up and rolled into a handstand, balancing on the back of the sofa.
“And yes, technically half the population of Flynt is currently enslaved.” She spoke without a hint of strain entering her voice. “But we both know that G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate is a complex chemical compound, full of all sorts of enzyme interactions and RNA recoding processes that can turn on themselves without warning. What happened with the Reavers proved that.”
River rolled forward off the sofa and landed on her feet. She turned her head and looked at Simon over her shoulder, still grinning. “Since formulations on complex compounds tend to get a bit ... wonky after a few years, sometimes odd things happen. Especially when a clever girl finds her way to the environmental processing controls and starts wandering through the systems.”
Her brother stared at her, his thoughts racing.
“Oh, please,” she said, reading his mind. “What’s good for the gander is better for the goose, Simon. Just a minute ago, you were complaining about us not being able to fix things on Flynt before we had to go. Well, I did my best. For a while, the slaves will be the masters. And when the Alliance shows up, they’ll find their grand mind-control experiment in ruins, with the formula apparently intact. With any luck, they’ll think it’s another flawed attempt, like Miranda and the Reavers, and drop the whole idea before they realize it actually succeeded.”
“You forgot one thing, lil’ Albatross. The Alliance would just as soon fry that little moon from orbit ‘stead of lettin’ ‘folks free to tell the Verse what they were up to.” Simon and River turned to find Mal standing in the doorway with Inara at his side. “Of course, the anonymous tips I sent to the newsies will make sure they get to Flynt long before the Alliance does. Hard to kill thousands of folks with cameras watchin’, I’m thinkin’. Reckon I learned somethin’ from Miranda after all.”
River grinned. “I reckon you did, too.”
She tilted her head, almost as if she was listening to something, then looked back at Mal.
“Please excuse me. I need to make a few calls before we’re out of range.”
Without missing a beat, she leaped upward and slipped into the ductwork above the lounge. She stuck her head down and looked at Mal.
“See, Captain? Sometimes a plan really does go smooth!”
The girl pulled her head back up and disappeared.
“I guess she and I got differing ideas of what smooth means,” he said slowly, staring up at where her face had been. “Still I remember Wash sayin’ somethin’ once about any landin’ you can walk away from being a good one, and right now we seem to be walkin’ away just fine.”
Mal turned to Simon, a half-smile on his face.
“In fact, didn’t I hear somethin’ about a great big stack of creds waitin’ for us on Osiris?”
Hugh Aubrey sat in his office, pretty much numb.
At first, after the Firefly had exploded (and apparently taken that Alliance agent along with it), he had worried about what his Alliance contacts would say about his little “adventure” with Captain Reynolds and his crew. But if Dobson had managed to get a report back to his superiors, Aubrey was going to wind up in a prison cell on some backwater moon for violating security on a top-secret project. At the very least, he’d be out of a job.
But after an hour or two, Aubrey had started feeling ... empty. As if he didn’t know what to do next, or didn’t care. It was as if the part of him that made decisions had decided to take a vacation for a while. And that suited Aubrey just fine, since he was pretty sure the last few decisions he’d made didn’t turn out so well after all.
The viewscreen on his desk lit up with the picture of a pretty young girl. Her eyes caught his and held them, and he just knew he had to listen to whatever she had to say — that it was going to be very important.
“Hey, there, Mister Governor, sir. You and all your friends need to forget all about me and my friends on the Firefly. After all, do you really want to remember how badly you messed up?”
Aubrey shook his head, and the girl smiled. “Good boy. I’ve already taken all of the evidence we were there out of the database, so you don’t need to worry your pretty head about that.”
“Thank you.” Aubrey’s voice was rough, and the girl’s eyes flashed.
“Did I tell you to speak?” Her anger poured through the screen, and Aubrey flinched and looked away.
“No, ma’am.”
“Then don’t. If I ask you a question, the correct response is yes, Mistress or no, Mistress. Understand?”
The former Governor swallowed once, suddenly afraid of the girl and her anger. He felt tears begin to form in the corners of his eyes.
“Yes, Mistress.”
She smiled at him. “Good boy.”
The smile washed over him and through him, and his eyes closed as a wave of happiness flowed through him from head to toe. He had pleased her! So much happiness from something so simple! He had to do it again.
“I’m going to leave and call all your friends, now, and when I’m gone you’ll forget all about me and mine.” From that blissful high, Aubrey felt his spirits drop to the floor. His tears began to fall, and his lower lip began to quiver. But he couldn’t say anything. She had forbidden him to speak.
She saw it, though, the goddess on the screen. She looked into his eyes and sighed.
“Don’t worry, boy. You won’t be alone for long. I’ll send a new Mistress to look after you.” His whole body shuddered with relief. “But you want to show her what a good boy you are, right from the start. So why don't you just take off all those uncomfortable clothes and kneel by the door with your head bowed and your hands behind you? She’ll be along shortly, and of course you’ll do whatever she tells you, won’t you?”
“Yes, Mistress.” She smiled again, and his heart flew towards the sky. He’d pleased her again!
“You get ready for her, then. And remember ... we were never here.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
The screen went dark, and Aubrey stood up quickly, knocking his chair back in his haste to get his clothes off as quickly as possible.
His new Mistress could be here anytime, and he knew ... just knew ... he had to be ready.
He just hoped he could be waiting by the door when she arrived. If the first thing she did was frown, he didn’t know what he would do to make it right.
But he did know she’d tell him, in time.
Hope you enjoyed this latest adventure, folks. I'm going to work on some other projects for a while, but the crew of Serenity will be back in action soon enough, don't you fret. *grin* Thanks so much for reading! -- Randalynn