Title: Above and Beyond
Written for the 2009 Live Journal Washathon, for honu_girl, who asked for:
Pairing Requested: Wash/Zoe.
Requirement One: Wife soup, perhaps the origin of it.
Requirement Two: Techno-babble.
One Restriction: Not all sex, all the time.
You know and I know Joss owns these people.
A final emphatic jounce snapped up Wash's spine, and he throttled the mule back, then cut its engine, setting the brakes. Releasing the handlebars, he leaned back in the saddle, lifting his cap by its bill to swipe a sleeve over his sweaty brow. His ears rang in the sudden silence. He peered up the steep, rocky hill before him through the polarized lenses of his sunglasses. No way he could get the mule up that. He'd have to do the last kilometer or so on foot.
He swung out of the saddle, opening up the rear compartment to haul out the toolkit he and Kaylee had assembled into a backpack. He set it on the mule's seat as he reached back down to pull out the semi-automatic pistol and its holster. He felt faintly ridiculous buckling it around his waist, like maybe he was overindulging his sense of drama. He'd been careful smuggling it out of his and Zoe's bunk so neither Kaylee or Jayne spotted it. It would have triggered a spate of worry from Kaylee and of mockery from Jayne, neither of which he wanted to deal with. And it would no doubt get a lifted brow or two from Zoe and Mal, and maybe even a couple snide remarks.
But he'd rather look silly than be without the pistol on the very off chance it might come in handy. There were locals in the area; he'd spotted a settlement of maybe fifty households about five klicks from where Zoe'd been forced to set the shuttle down. Out here on the Rim, even folks who were most times peaceful could pick up some glitches in their social programming. And then of course there were those who didn't even make a pretense of being peaceful. And humans aside, sometimes a world's designers were feng le enough to include venomous snakes and even people-eating sized predators in their ecosystem's food chains. They'd introduced sharks – sharks! – on Newhall. A beach would have to be totally, absolutely naked, with Zoe majorly featured, for him to consider sticking even a toe in the waves there, let alone other, more important appendages.
He slung the backpack over his shoulders, clipped the liter canteen of water on the belt opposite the pistol, then touched the portable comm unit in his thigh pocket. Sticking his thumbs behind the straps of the pack, he began working his way uphill, toward the one clear spot Zoe had found in this rough, rocky terrain to set the malfunctioning shuttle down. Feeling a little out of his element, never really the outdoorsy type, still, he thought he'd covered the wilderness basics, what with the water and his sturdiest shoes. But he woulda done this dry and barefoot if he had to, to get to his wife. It would be sheer carelessness to lose her just short months after acquiring her.
He'd gotten her mayday over an hour ago now, as she and Mal had been returning from their wheeling and dealing. Just a brief, static-ladened burst that the shuttle was losing power and she was looking for a place to ditch. Then contact had been sharply cut off. Hollering over the ship's comm that they were lifting off Now, he had launched Serenity, in an engine-stressing cold start, out of the narrow arroyo she'd had been tucked away in. Fortunately, Kaylee'd been warned this particular job might need a quick lift-off, so she had refrained from taking any relevant parts off-line to tinker with.
He'd shoved them in the direction Zoe and Mal had taken for their meet-up, anxious eyes scanning the horizon for an ominous column of smoke. Kaylee and Jayne had scrambled up onto the bridge, a stampede of boots, questions, and demands. Not in a chatty mood, Wash simply spat out, "Got a mayday. Shuttle lost power, went down."
While Kaylee fretted guiltily about not having had time for anything other than basic maintenance on the shuttles lately, Jayne offered up a wild series of crash scenarios, each more gruesome than the last. Wash ignored them both, intent on pinpointing the precise location of Zoe's last call.
Fortunately for his sanity, it didn't take him long to find them. Their landing site – on a near twenty degree slope in the one bare spot on a boulder-strewn hillside big enough for a shuttle – had him sending up waves of wordless gratitude for Zoe's survival to the 'verse at large. The relief he'd felt when he saw her (oh, and Mal too) outside the shuttle, waving up at Serenity as he overflew them had been dizzying.
Wash gathered, as Mal was waving with this hands rather than the shuttle's radio, that they must have somehow lost their back-up battery as well as main power. Then and there, he decided to make sure that ship-linked comm handsets were standard equipment in the emergency kits on the shuttles from then on, even if he had to buy them himself. 'Cause they would have been in range 16 klicks ago, and a little chit-chat would have prevented a lot of wear and tear on his nervous system.
He circled them three times, then waggling Serenity from side-to-side, slowly pulled away from them, hoping they'd get the message that rescue would be happening forthwith. Even as Wash scanned the terrain beneath them, he and Kaylee were batting ideas back and forth, Jayne happily shooting down some of their more excitable. In the end, Kaylee came around to Wash's way of thinking, and while Jayne kept at his picking, as no violence was impending, he really had nothing to suggest, useful or otherwise. So Wash's plans prevailed.
Those were to land Serenity as close to the shuttle as possible. She wasn't a big ship, and in fact, had a very neat and tidy footprint. Still, Wash needed a certain minimum of clearance to be able to set her down safely. And the closest spot he could find to the shuttle in these rugged hills was about four kilometers away. Wash decided that he would go alone, getting as close to the shuttle as he could with the mule. He'd hike whatever last bit he had to, and then do what he could to tinker the shuttle into flyable condition. As "flyable," for him, was a pretty broad spectrum, he figured he had a good chance of being able to get the craft back into the air and at least limp her back home.
However, if the repairs were beyond him, he, Zoe, and Mal could leave the shuttle, returning to Serenity on the mule. Mal could decide then whether he wanted to schlep their genius mechanic back through the wilderness to the downed craft to fix it up. Or maybe Mal would go for Kaylee's idea of rigging up a harness to the cargo bay's winching rig and lowering her down to the stricken vessel. Which Wash considered actually a pretty nifty notion, although one he was unwilling to implement with just the three of them on ship. With him stuck on the bridge flying, it would be Jayne working the winch. And while he didn't think Jayne would ever do anything to get Kaylee hurt on purpose, the thought of his hands on those controls gave Wash the heebie-jeebies. He did think Jayne could serve the valuable role, before they hitched Kaylee up, as test dummy to see how it all held together. Y' know, put some real weight on the system. One way or another, Wash figured Mal would get that job done. Never mind the cargo it was hauling; the shuttle was itself a very valuable piece of property. But Wash himself was not willing to put Kaylee into any kind of harm's way, so if he couldn't handle the repairs himself, the shuttle would have to wait until Mal got her there, either by mule or by winch.
About halfway to the top, he paused for a drink, easing the acridness at the back of his throat, rasped there by his heavy breathing in the thin, dry air. Lifting his eyes as he swallowed, he spotted movement where earth met sky, a dark shape rising up, and with a leap of his heart, he recognized Zoe's silhouette against the stark blue. With renewed energy, he dragged a sleeve over his smiling lips, and, replacing the canteen on his belt, pushed himself forward.
She started toward him, nimbly skipping from rock to rock, and after he'd tripped and almost fallen a couple times, distracted by his sheer delight in watching her move, alive and well, he forced himself to pay more attention to where he was putting his feet. He gave himself a break when she got a few meters away, stopping to watch her close the distance between them. He took off his sunglasses, sticking them in the breast pocket of his flightsuit, so that when she looked in his face, she couldn't miss how happy and relieved he was to see her writ all over it. And when their eyes finally met, he got to experience the joy of seeing the pleasure she felt on seeing him. Was true then that when her gaze dropped to climb up and down his body, the pistol on his hip did get him the lifted brow he'd expected. However, she politely made no comment. Instead, the first thing she said when she reached him, peering into his sweaty, and no doubt bright red face was, "Did you put on sun-screen?"
"And it's good to see you too, honey," he replied dryly. And it was good to see her, very good, and while a welcoming kiss would have been nice, being fussed over was kinda gratifying as well.
Not at all put off, she demanded, "Well, did you?"
Grinning, he nodded. "Yep. Slathered it on like icing on a wedding cake."
That got him his kiss. Smiling, she leaned in, tilting her head to duck under the bill of his cap, her lips on his a momentary sweetness. Still smiling, she turned away, jerking her chin toward the crest of the hill. "We're just the other side of that."
He squinted up at the ridge, nodded, hitched at the straps on the backpack, leaned into them, and began toiling his way uphill again. She fell in more or less beside him, the need to pick their way over the stony ground preventing them from walking right next to one another.
"Want me to take the pack?"
He shook his head, trudged a few more steps, the sandy soil sliding under his feet as the slope got steeper. Then, curious as to why the captain wasn't right there demanding updates and critiquing his decisions, he inquired shortly, "Mal?"
"He's fine. Wrenched his knee when he got up to mess with the cargo when we started slip-sliding around." While she wouldn't say it out loud in front of Wash, he could hear the that idiot at the end of her sentence in the acerbity of her tone.
"So, what happened? To bring you down?" He supposed he should wait to question her until they weren't using their breath for scrabbling over rocks, but he was eager to know what kind of repairs he might be looking at. She was quiet for a moment, and he knew she was gathering her thoughts so she could give him a concise report.
"Happened fast," she began. "One second we're fine, then we're sinking, nearly every tell-tale on the board goin' red. Diverted power to the pods for a moment, lookin' to get home sooner. They kicked right in, but we started sinking even faster, so I backed off, we rose up, just a bit. I call you, had enough juice to get in right over the clear spot, then everything cut out, and we pancaked the last four meters."
He winced at the thought of that neck-snapping, tooth-rattling drop, glancing over at her to reassure himself yet again that all her parts were whole and in working order. "Thrusters were responsive," he said, interested in that part of her iteration of the shuttle's symptoms.
"Uh huh. Right up until I just didn't have squat to work with. Even the battery was drained."
"A systemic failure like that suggests a power feed issue. A bleed somewhere. You were sinking 'cause the grav screens were weakening, and manually diverting more power to the thrusters just sped that along. Good thing you backed off the thrusters, let the power go to the screens longer. Ship's designed to do that, it's a safety feature, actually. Lose the screens and suddenly you're trying to fly a slightly aerodynamic brick. Not so good. So power gets routed their way first, but that means other systems, like the composite drive, get robbed, so, so, so-" he panted, his spill of conjecture on pause a moment as he allowed his lungs to catch up. He saw they were just meters from the crest of the slope, and with a burst of speed, he scrambled to the top. There he stopped, heaving in the puny air as he took in the terrain on the other side.
He was looking into a shallow valley, its bottom a dry stream bed. On the other side more hills, higher, ranged beyond. And rocks, of course, lots and lots more rocks, large and small, jumbled about everywhere. And just below him, about 30 meters away, the shuttle, tucked into one of few spots open enough to allow a safe landing. And it was tight, and the angle steep, an area he would have approached cautiously even with a perfectly functioning craft.
"You're a damn fine driver, mooncake," he murmured.
She shrugged off his words. "I was lucky," she replied. Which was true, but...
"Luck can only get you so far," he asserted, determined that she realize how much he admired her skill.
She shrugged again, but this time with a little sideways smile that seemed almost shy. Then she pointed, saying, "There's Mal," cutting off further conversation.
And there indeed the man was, clambering out of the hatch awkwardly, set as it was at the top of the shuttle's tilt. Mal lifted a hand in greeting, his grin pure happiness, and Wash felt his own mouth stretching in a matching smile as he gave him a jaunty wave. Mal, truly happy to see someone, was hard to resist.
A loud, sharp crack startled Wash, as did the sudden spurt of dirt and pebbles spattering his feet and shins. It came to him, as Zoe's hand darted out to grab the shoulder strap on his backpack, that they were under fire. This conjecture was confirmed as she spun him, sort of tossing him toward a niche in the rocks. Not a lot of speculation occurred during the next few seconds as his body took over, only partly under control, as he tumbled into the hollow, ending up flat on his back. Moments later, Zoe dove on top of him, the full body contact knocking the breath from him. More sharp cracks were followed by spanging noises as bullets ricocheted off the stones sheltering them. Zoe wriggled around on him, elbows digging into his biceps before finding spots to either side of him, the hand guard on her mare's-leg clonking him between the eyes before she got it to one side, its stock up on her shoulder.
Then everything became still, the only sound in Wash's ears that of Zoe's quick, light breaths. He peered up into her impassive face, just inches above his, watching her eyes flicking back and forth, assessing the situation.
He managed to get a little air back, so he wheezed, "Mal?"
"Rolled back into the shuttle," she bit out. "Wasn't hit."
"Who's shooting, ya think. Not your recent contacts."
"Nope. They'd be droppin' in from above. Gotta be locals. Lookin' for salvage. Passed over a settlement few klicks back."
He nodded, remembering the small cluster of buildings on the opposite side of this hill from Serenity, and about five kilometers away to her four. Someone must have spotted the shuttle in trouble, going down, and come to see if they could profit by it.
An erratic series of shots hitting just below the rock barrier in front of Zoe's face had her ducking, a shower of dirt and dust raining down upon them. Nose to nose, the wisps of her hair that had escaped their tie-back tickled his cheeks. Was it weird that, even under these circumstances, the sensation triggered a cascade of images from their love-making?
A little distracted, he focused himself in the here and now by asking, "How many?"
"Counted six so far. Could be more. Now let me listen."
He shut up, clamping his teeth on his lower lip to curb his need to ask questions, fighting against the frustration and fear spawned by not being able to see what was coming at them. All he had in his visual field was Zoe's face (and so, yeah, that was okay) with a narrow stripe of blue sky above her. Gray stone closed in on them from either side, maybe a meter high to his left and half that to his right, and he wished he could squash himself flatter so Zoe could duck lower in front of them. 'Cause that's where the incoming was coming in from and he wasn't happy that her head was their attackers' primary target. However, they did have the high ground, which he did know was a good thing to have.
But their hideout was extremely tight, a long, deep V shaped trench, with him stuffed in the bottom point, and he was very aware of the backpack he still wore underneath him, and something inside it, probably the spanner, gouging in under his left shoulder blade. He thought it would very nice if they could wiggle around so that they were side by side rather than with him stuck beneath her, more or less useless except as a firing platform. A lone shot striking the tip of the stone a meter above Zoe's head, then whining away up into blue sky caused him to rethink that notion. He realized he didn't want to do any of the major shifting they'd need to do that could lift her up into the line of fire.
He decided, unless Zoe told him otherwise, that he would just lie still. She'd never take up yammering in his ear, telling him how to fly. And this situation now was exactly her area of expertise. So Tianwang bu yao he stick his fingers in to gum up the works.
He finished his physical assessment, confirming that his shoulders were compressed forward, his arms along his sides, Zoe's elbows tucked in tight to either side, sorta kinda jammed into his biceps. His hands had found a natural resting spot on her backside, one palm per buttock. Their legs were twined together, and she had shoved one knee between his, to brace more securely on solid ground. This had her thigh tucked up pretty nice and tight against his crotch.
And then he heartily wished that that particular bodily configuration had not come to his attention. Because with that and the tickly wisps and general full contact and where his hands were and being fairly wound up already, what with bullets flying, a lot of physiological energy was being generated. And that energy just had to go somewhere.
He squirmed under her, trying to shift away, just a little, not wanting to jostle her aim. That added friction just made it worse though, and besides he really didn't have anywhere away to squirm to. And maybe if he hadn't moved, she wouldn't have noticed, as she was sort of focused on the folks out there trying to kill them.
But he had moved, and she did notice, ducking her head to stare down into his face. She blinked a couple times, flexing the muscles of her thigh. Which really was not at all helpful, not in the slightest. Her eyes widened, and a wave of heat crept up his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears. He hoped she'd just ignore it, but no.
"Wash, what the hell?"
"It's natural!" he blurted, staring earnestly up at her. "It's biological! It's a natural, biological, scientific response! To danger and, and stimulus. Dangerous stimulus."
She shook her head, then lifted it slightly to scan the area through narrowed eyes. The tiniest smile curled the corner of her mouth, as she muttered, "I've married me a crazy man."
"I never hid that from you," he pointed out. "I've always been right up-front, with the craziness issue."
She conceded that with a small grunt, tucked her head down as she acquired a target, and squeezed the trigger. The blast rang off the stone walls of their tiny alcove. Blinking, nostrils stinging with the acrid scent of burnt powder, Wash worked his jaw, attempting to bring his hearing back on-line.
Then he jerked, making an unfortunate "eep" noise, when something jammed between his thigh and the rock suddenly vibrated, buzzing angrily. It took a moment for his brain to shift out of the Snake! alarm mode to recognize it was the comm unit in his pocket signaling an incoming call.
Skinning knuckles on stone, he forced his hand down into his pocket. He figured it was Kaylee, and he wondered what the hell he'd tell her. Could Jayne make the four kilometers, on foot, over rough terrain, quick enough to make any kind difference? Wash was very well aware their firepower was finite. Mal, at least, if he was smart and stayed holed up in the shuttle, would be alive when Jayne showed up. But Wash knew absolutely Mal was not smart that way. And if Jayne left Serenity, Kaylee would be left defenseless if their ambushers decided to follow their tracks back to her for a possibly even greater prize. Of course, it would be impossible for them to force their way onto Serenity, if all they had were standard firearms. But Serenity wouldn't be able to move without him – or some kind of real pilot – at the helm. Now, if Inara and her shuttle were currently tucked into Serenity, all sorts of different scenarios would open up. But they weren't. They were the next moon over, doing Companiony things. He had no idea how Kaylee could help them or they could help Kaylee.
He was so focused on Kaylee, in the seconds he needed to retrieve the comm and thumb on the receive button, that it took him a moment to understand he was listening to Mal's voice, not hers. Static-blurred and feeble, but definitely Mal's.
"-renity, come in, this is the captain."
"He's got power," Wash exclaimed, careful not to bump Zoe's arm as he bent his elbow, trying to get the unit close to his face.
She shook her head. "We were hookin' the radio up to the flashlights' power cells when we heard the mule, and I came to fetch you. He musta got it done." Then she fired again, twice to her left, then shifting slightly to fire once to the right. Then she became still, expression intent, watchful. Ears ringing, Wash brought the comm as close as he could to his mouth, twisting his neck so he could speak past Zoe's shoulder.
"Mal, can you hear me? Come in, Mal."
"Wash! Y' got a comm! You two okay?" Mal's voice was faint, even as close as the comm unit was to the shuttle. No way he was punching through to Serenity.
"We're good. We're under cover, we got high ground." Wash was kinda tickled he'd thought to add that last bit.
"Can you get outta here, down the back, to the mule?"
Wash looked up at Zoe, brows lifted questioningly. She gave her chin a negative jerk, then turned her head so she could speak into the comm as Wash held down the send key.
"We're pinned down. We got at least eight shooters spread up and down the wash. They all got easy shots at the shuttle hatch," she rattled out. Wash realized she was strongly suggesting that Mal not stick his head out of it. Then she got a speculative look, and went on, "I could maybe set down enough fire to cover Wash so he can slip-"
And she stopped as Wash lifted his thumb off the key, cutting her off, glaring at her furiously. "Don't even think it, lambie-toes," he snapped.
"Wash-" she started, and she was using her first-matey command voice, and that just wasn't gonna fly.
"No," he said flatly, staring directly into her eyes. "You have fourteen rounds left now. Even if I leave you the pistol, that's just another eight. That's not enough to hold off eight or however many shooters, until I can get back here with some other cunning plan up my sleeve." Her lips compressed, and he realized she didn't intend that he come back at all. And that was never going to happen, and he said doggedly, "I'm not leaving you. 'Sides, I think I got a fix for this."
Well, it wasn't really a fix. Actually, it was a crazy-ass stunt first semester flight school plebes risked, one that got them mega big-time demerits if found out, to test their mettle and reflexes. But it was quick, and simple enough that he thought he could guide Mal through the technical bits. The real problem would be afterwards, whether Mal could avoid killing himself. The majority of the plebes managed not to kill or even seriously maim themselves, so Mal's odds weren't too bad. He hoped.
Her brows rose, and he replied, "It could work. Could get the shuttle running. Most of it rests on Mal."
And that was the right route to take, 'cause things resting on Mal were just shiny as far as Zoe was concerned. She only took a moment to consider it, then nodded. He keyed the comm on again, in an interval when Mal wasn't sending, and she said, "Captain, Wash can get the shuttle running. You'll have to let him talk you through it."
It surprised Wash, actually, how quickly and enthusiastically Mal came back on this.
"Hell, yeah, Wash. Let's do this."
Okay. Wash took a deep breath. Three shots sent another series of dirt showers down on their heads. Zoe responded with a single, judiciously placed round, and there was some faint, but alarmed sounding shouts from below. He didn't know where the fault in the system lay. He prayed it wasn't in the direct feed from the fuel cells, which it could very well be, because that fix was beyond the equipment Mal had available to him. Even Wash couldn't really fix that, it would take Kaylee, although maybe he could jury-rig a temporary work-around. If it were his hands actually in the shuttle, and he wasn't under fire, so he could take his time to noodle about.
He thumbed the send button. "First, Mal, go to the helm. Make sure everything is off, all toggles down, all sliders set to zero."
"Wait. Before we get started. Zoe, if we can't get this done, want you to raise Kaylee. Tell her to get a hold of Inara. They can work out how to get Serenity to the main port, an' any legal stuff needs get done. Inara will know what's what."
Zoe glanced at Wash, and he keyed the respond button. "Yes, sir," she said simply. And that was it. After a moment, Wash blinked, then lifted his thumb so they could receive, realizing, yet again, that reams of communication of the sort that went right over his head had taken place between the two of them.
"Okay, Wash. Everything's for sure off."
"Uh," Wash replied, gathering his scattered thoughts. "All right. Get back to the engine access panel."
"I'm there, got it open."
"Shiny. What we're gonna do next is take the regulatory system off-line. Just inside, upper left, there's a smaller box. Open that."
"I see the smaller box, I'm opening it."
"You should see a couple dozen system leads."
"What I'm seein' is a gou cao de tangle of rainbow colored noodles."
Wash chuckled, then said, "Yeah, well, go ahead and yank all those noodles free of their aft connection."
"Done," Mal came back a few seconds later.
"Okay, what you just did was take all the regulatory systems off-line – all the safety systems and the power governor. Stuff like that."
"Happy day," Mal said dryly.
"Yep. Shut-"
A flurry of incoming interrupted, cut off by a single sharp retort of Zoe's mare's leg. Then she reached behind her for the bullets in the loops on her belt, reloading swiftly.
Wash noted in the back of his mind that she now had twelve shots left, and continued, "Shut that box back up, and look way deep into the engine access." And here he closed his eyes tight, as he visualized, hoping he was remembering the power line configuration of the school's teaching craft accurately, and that the shuttle craft had a near enough arrangement. "What you want is the power routing board. They can look a little different in different engines, a square or a rectangle or sometimes a narrow bar in the center with two discs on either side. But it's flat and has all sorts of rainbow noodles wired into it, usually in bundles. See anything like that?"
"Gorram dark back there."
Wash opened his mouth to suggest Mal get one of the flashlights, but then remembered that their batteries had been cannibalized to run the radio. Instead he said, "Try following wires back. Lots of them originate there."
"Yeah! That's got it! A rectangular plate, 'bout 30 by 20 centimeters, loaded up with noodles."
"That's it, yes. Unclip it, pull it out as far as the leads allow. Don't jerk anything loose, but you're gonna wanna get it to where you can see it."
"Gimme a minute."
Zoe twisted, angling her gun sharply to the right, her left elbow digging pretty fiercely into his bicep, firing twice. The ejected shells pinged against stone, both bouncing back to hit Wash's cheekbone, tap, tap. He couldn't help flinching, hissing at the bite of the heated metal.
"Sorry, baby," Zoe murmured, shifting her weight off his arm.
"You can kiss it better later," he replied, grinning, and while her eyes remained intently forward, her lips curved in a return smile. Then she tucked her head lower, waiting out the dozen or so shots hitting the rocks around them. Maybe they were trying to scare her into laying low.
"Got it. Lord, I thought that first bit was a tangled mess."
"The leads aren't wrapped in bundles?"
"Nope."
Tzao gao. Having the wires bundled by unit would have made this so much simpler. "No problem," Wash said. "We just gotta track down the leads to the drive."
"Gotta tell ya, Wash, can't make head nor tail of this."
Wash, leaning heavily on the memories of a couple nights' mischief almost a dozen years back, replied, "Look to the upper right hand quadrant. Should be a block of leads there, in clumps of yellow, red, gray, and green."
"Uuuhh... Yep. Yep, there they are."
Inwardly thanking Alliance manufacturing standardization regulations, Wash said, "Start pulling everything but the yellow wires."
"Doin' it."
Wash took a calming breath, knowing this would take Mal a bit, given the two dozen plus connections he was gonna have to pull, then winced, wary of more hot shells as Zoe pulled the trigger, then levered in a new round, once, twice, three times.
"What am I doin', by the way?"
Wash grinned to himself. He'd been wondering how long Mal could go without asking questions. "These leads all go to the drive. They regulate the power feed to all the separate elements that, working together, make up the drive. You're yanking the leads to everything except the gravity screen, so only that part will be getting power when you activate the drive."
"I wanna do that why?"
"'Cause that-"
Again, Zoe's carbine cut him off, then she was reaching down between them, for the rounds looped on the front of her belt, feeding them quickly into the mare's leg's load port.
A tad distracted by Zoe's hand questing down around his midsection, Wash went on, "Because that and the thrusters are as basic as you can make the shuttle and have her still be flyable. Hopefully, we'll have cut out whatever in the system caused the power bleed."
"There's some corrosion. Couple just don't wanna come."
"Y' got wire snips?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Then just cut 'em. Just make gorram sure you don't cut a yellow one."
"Kaylee's gonna have my hide, hackin' away in here like this."
"You just tell her you were following my orders. She can take it out of my hide."
"Yeah, but you'd like that."
"I refuse to answer on the grounds that my wife is listening to every word I say."
Was right then when a dusty broad brimmed hat poked up on the other side of the rocks at Wash's feet, shading a pair of wary gray eyes. In a rush, seeing the awkwardness of their situation, the fellow under the hat reared up, grinning, slinging his rifle off his shoulder. Zoe heard him just as Wash saw him. For a moment, Wash froze as Zoe writhed, her thigh grinding painfully into his groin as she fought to turn, to get her carbine around in their narrow shelter without lifting her head into possible incoming rounds. An understanding of what was about to happen burst in Wash's mind, as the guy lifted his gun, its muzzle drifting, in a thick, time-clotted moment, toward Zoe's back. The shock galvanized his body, his fingers scrabbling at the holster on his thigh, his palm finding the pistol grip, twisting to pull it free, thumb finding the safety just before his forefinger squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, and the guy jerked spasmodically to his right, his rifle flinging wide even as it fired. He kept spinning, thrown back and to the side by the force of Wash's bullet shattering his shoulder. With a shriek of pain and terror, he abruptly dropped out of sight, pitched backwards down the steep slope. Wash could still hear him though, a retreating series of clatters and gruesome thuds, punctuated by sharp, agonized cries. Then he fell suddenly silent.
A lull enveloped the entire area, a pause on both sides, Zoe conserving ammo, while their ambushers absorbed the possible demise of their... kinsman, friend, neighbor? Wash found he was still pointing the pistol, his arm rigid, toward the last place he'd seen the man's face – eyes wide, mouth open and twisted – and slowly lowered it.
"Oh, my God," he breathed. "I think I killed him."
Zoe shifted around on top of him, kindly relieving the intense pressure on his testicles, glancing a few times at his face in between scanning their surroundings for movement. He holstered the pistol, then groped around for the comm he'd didn't remember dropping, found it, which wasn't hard to do, given Mal's angry voice rasping from it, and brought it to his mouth.
"We're good," he reported, repeating the phrase a few times before Mal let up on the send button long enough for Wash to get through.
"What the hell happened?"
"Guy came up on our rear. We're good. You done clearing the leads?"
"Ah. No. Just... Hang on."
Wash kept quiet, well aware that Mal was hating that their positions weren't reversed, him and Zoe covering each others' backs, while Wash tinkered in the shuttle's guts with his own hands instead of Mal's. Wash kinda hated it too.
"Okay, Wash. All's that's left is yellow wires."
Zoe fired twice in rapid succession, then said, "Much longer, Wash? They're moving in on the shuttle." She laid down three more shots, which, by Wash's count, left her one. Even through the ferocious ringing in his ears, he could hear a man screaming.
Speaking as quickly as he could, Wash rattled out, "You're almost done here, Mal. Reclip the board. You don't want that loose while you're flying. While you're back there, look for a dial set in the rear wall of the compartment, probably dead center."
Zoe loosed her last shot, then stated, "I'm empty."
Wash, who'd been keeping count, nodded, and not wanting his right hand to be messing with anything other than the comm unit, said, "Can you reach the pistol?"
She didn't answer, merely snaking her hand down his side, to slide the gun from its holster, while at the same time she flipped her carbine, putting it away at her thigh.
"Board's back. Aaaand... there's the dial."
"Right next to this dial, there's a toggle, right?"
"Yep."
"That's the manual engine start. Flip the toggle."
"Done."
"The dial, is it reading green?"
"Yep."
A wave of relief swept over Wash. That meant the problem wasn't in the feed from the fuel cells and Mal would have power.
"Okay, that's it then. She's ready to fly. Make sure to strap in before you start the drive, 'cause we cut out the ship's grav. And-" The comm clicked, and Wash realized Mal had cut him off, probably haring for the helm. "And go easy with the thrusters and be gentle with the stick," he finished, speaking into empty static. "She's gonna kick and yaw like an opiated elephant."
The sweet whine of jets spinning awake echoed between the hills, and Wash yelped, "Yes!" as Zoe grinned widely. Then both of them gaped, craning to look up, as the shuttle's pods shrieked, launching her straight into the sky. She shrank almost immediately into a silver coin-sized disc, then jagged eastward and out of sight.
"Lao tien ye," Wash gasped. "The Gs must have been intense. I hope to hell he didn't just break his neck."
A few belated, spiteful shots rang out after the craft. Not that they'd ever had a chance of hitting her, given her velocity. And even if they had scored, a hull designed to be able to absorb the dings of a little minor space debris would've easily shrugged the hits off.
And Wash realized he now had nothing useful to do, and that it was just him and Zoe and a pistol with seven bullets. Of course, Zoe by her lonesome, let alone with a pistol and seven bullets, was nothing to sneeze at. He glanced up at her, a thought forming in his brain that maybe she could slide down the backside of this hill to the mule while he set up some sort of diversion. 'Cause she could be sneaky that way. And him, not so much.
But the return glance she gave him was as stubborn a one as he'd ever seen from her, and she said, "Mal will be back soon." Then she looked beyond him, bracing her wrist on rock as she fired downhill.
"Okay," he replied, but he had a thought which he hated, which was that if he weren't a factor in this equation, that she'd be striking off on her own, slipping stealthily away, now that she no longer had to cover Mal. Then he was wondering how big a wrench their worrying about him had thrown into the finely-tuned mechanism of their combat partnership. Would they have tried talking their way out of this if he hadn't been in the picture? And negotiating now, given he'd probably killed one of them, on top of however many Zoe'd punctured, was probably right out. With the shuttle gone, the only thing their attackers had left to gain was vengeance.
As he tied himself in mental knots, Zoe continued to lay down careful, well-timed fire, encouraging their foe to move slowly and cautiously, buying her and Wash all the time she could. Wash couldn't help counting every shot. When she got down to one, he swallowed, knowing without Zoe's deadly defensive fire, as soon as they worked up their nerve, that the bandits would move in. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry I didn't think to bring extra magazines. I coulda chucked a couple in the pack."
"They don't know y' didn't. Don't even know how many we might have left in this magazine. Could be one, three, hell, even seventeen. Don't know exactly what I'm shootin'. Could even have yet another piece. So they ain't gonna be takin' chances." She took a moment to gaze down into his eyes, and say, with serene confidence, "He's comin', Wash, don't fret."
Wash had no doubt Mal was on his way. Absolutely none. He knew absolutely Mal would soon arrive – provided, of course, he hadn't already crashed and killed himself. How soon, really, was his only concern. 'Cause the cavalry charging gallantly over the hill was only so useful if the fort had already been wiped out.
He was thinking about trying to squirm around, out of the backpack, to get to the gorram spanner that had been gouging under his left shoulder-blade this whole time, 'cause it would make a shiny club. Then he winced as the tinnitus in his ears reached a fever pitch. But it was singing in two separate octaves, and he suddenly realized the lower one was in the shuttle thruster range.
And Mal did, indeed, come charging over the hill, swooping up the back side of it, and overshooting them wildly. The jets roared as he tried to stop and turn back, and then the shuttle was spinning like a top.
"Ai ya. Women wanle," Zoe muttered, craning her neck around to watch. Wash could only nod. With all the safety systems off, the craft had no auto stabilizers and every twitch of the stick would feed into a quick and forceful response. Delicacy was the key, and Mal didn't have much of that.
The spinning stopped abruptly, and Wash worried about whiplash, but then the shuttle was moving – well, wallowing violently, really, like a ship in a storm whipped sea – to hover over their position. And Wash could hear Mal bellowing though the open hatch, though he couldn't make out his words, but he figured they were along the lines of, "Get your asses in here now!"
Then they were standing, moving, and Wash yelled, "Jump!" as he grabbed Zoe's hips and launched her toward the opening in the wildly rocking craft. She did, and slid in, lithe as an eel, and he leapt after her, fingers finding the edge of the hatch, clamping down, as the swing of the shuttle jerked him upward. He dangled a moment, then heaved with all his strength, managing to get himself flopped on his belly over the hatch rim, hoping he wasn't about to catch a round in the ass, 'cause bullets were ringing off the metal hull, and he must have been presenting a perfect target.
And his fingers tightened spasmodically, as his upper body, now in the zero gravity established by the screen, provided no counterweight to his legs, still outside its effect. And Mal must have set the shuttle to spinning again, because a lot of centripetal force was happening, pulling hard on his feet. He gave another frantic heave, just as Zoe's hand closed on his collar. He caught a glimpse of her, other hand gripping the safety bar by the hatch, both boots braced on the hull against the equal-but-opposite forces she created as she smoothly hauled him inside.
His heave and her pull had him sailing across the shuttle, and he managed to tuck his head to one side so he hit the back of the pilot's seat with his shoulder, not his face. He quickly wrapped his arms around it to keep from bouncing backwards, maybe even out the hatch.
"Qingwa cao de liumang, Wash!" Mal yelled, sounding a tad on the excited side. "Don't jostle me! Damn near killed myself a dozen times already!"
Muttering "Sorry, sorry, sorry," Wash carefully swung himself to the left side of the chair, hanging on with white knuckled fists, as he shot anxious looks out the front view screen. He was relieved to see they had some altitude, Mal apparently focusing – wisely – on getting a lot of air between them and the rocks below. How much altitude would soon become worrisome, as, without power and under zero G, closing the hatch manually would be difficult and dangerous. So they needed to stay low enough so there was something breathable coming through that hatch. But Mal wasn't doing so well laterally, weaving and rocking them from side to side with his jerky over-control of the stick.
"Mal, let me get in there."
Mal darted him a grateful look, and took his right hand off the thrusters' controls, going for the buckle of the restraints in the middle of his chest.
"No!" Wash exclaimed in alarm. "Stay secured! Just let me slide in front of you." And then there was a slow, cautious shift of Wash's right hand to the stick, as Mal's left moved off it to bunch in the loose fabric at Wash's left hip as he drifted carefully between Mal's knees and the helm. Taking the stick in his other hand, Wash reached with his free one for the thrusters' power feed, Mal relinquishing control to grab Wash's flightsuit at his other hip, drawing him down onto his thighs, steadying him. Out of the corner of his eye, Wash could see Zoe pulling herself hand over hand into the crew chair, maneuvering her long legs around to get her butt into the seat, slinging the restraints over her shoulders.
And for the first time since he'd gotten Zoe's mayday, Wash felt at ease, as his body found the rhythm of his craft, one calming hand on the stick, the other on the jets' feed. The horizon before him ceased its gyrating, and he backed the thrusters off, letting them sink a little, to where the air was a tad thicker. He heard Mal sigh deeply behind him, and Wash guessed he was somewhat relieved to relinquish his piloting duties. Although Wash had to admit, he'd really risen to the occasion, and he'd be happy to tell him so.
A sudden eruption of laughter from the crew seat had both Wash's and Mal's heads jerking around to Zoe. Their concerned expressions got her going even harder, and she placed one hand on her stomach, trying to catch her breath, while she pointed at the two of them with the other.
Then Wash clicked on what had set her off; her husband sitting on her captain's lap, both no doubt with faces set in intent, serious, adult lines. Wash started laughing too, and then Mal did, which then had them both bouncing in the seat, which made Mal wrap both arms around Wash's waist, as best he could, as Wash was still wearing the pack, to keep him from bouncing clean free. Which made Zoe laugh even harder, and she looked pretty wild too, the tears from her eyes floating, tiny diamond spheres, in front of her face, the escaped locks of her hair standing up around her head, waving like some underwater plant.
"Oh, my God, stop, please," Wash choked out. "I'm gonna crash us and we'll all die. And they'll find me in Mal's lap, and all our reputations will be ruined."
This struck Zoe and Mal as hilarious, and Wash had to focus really, really hard, shaken by Mal's deep belly laughter and his own snorted guffaws, to keep the shuttle flying smooth. It took them until Wash was easing them down in an open patch of gravel some fifteen meters from Serenity to collect themselves.
"We don't have to tell the others about this part," Mal informed them, sniffing, unwrapping his right arm to swab his sleeve over his eyes.
"Oh, hell yeah, we do," Zoe replied, swatting teardrops away from in front of her face.
"Aw, gorramit," Wash said, suddenly remembering. "The mule. I left the mule back there." His hand had been on the toggle to cut the grav screen, but he moved it back to the thrusters' feed. "Should we go back and get it?"
"No!" Mal and Zoe barked together, and startled, Wash yanked his hand away. Then, more calmly, Mal continued, "We'll get the mule, but not in this thing."
Wash shrugged, said, "Okay," and turned off the grav screen.
"Oof," Mal grunted, as Wash's 70-something kilos, plus the backpack, settled down on top of him.
Wash let the following hurly-burly flow around him, smiling and laughing and commenting at the right time. His input to the stories were about Zoe's amazing landing and Mal's fancy flying. He had one very bad moment, as Zoe described events from their side of the little adventure and he realized the part with the guy surprising them from behind was coming up. His stomach clenched into an icy knot, 'cause he was just not ready to have the discussion that he knew that particular event would spark. He caught Zoe's eye, giving his head a little shake. And though she cocked him a quizzical look, she understood his silent plea, and skipped over that bit. After she'd finished up, having painted a vivid picture of Wash piloting perched on Mal's knees, and Jayne and Kaylee'd caught their breaths after a good laugh, Kaylee looked at him, eyes wide and expectant. Shrugging, he gave her a slanting grin, and said, "I spent all my time pinned under Zoe."
"Nothin' much different there then," Jayne quipped with a smirk.
Wash laughed easily as Kaylee leapt to his defense, slugging Jayne on the shoulder, not at all prepared to take umbrage on his own behalf. Given history to date, ninety-nine point ninety-five percent of the occasions he'd spent pinned under Zoe had been well worth his time. Hers too, he was pretty sure. And he found no need to deny that pleasurable fact to Jayne.
He got the shuttle docked, and then they went to get the mule back, and he would have liked to have seen Jayne dangling at the end of a line as he was winched down to it. But he was alone at the helm, holding Serenity rock steady as Jayne spidered down, then the mule was hauled up, and then Jayne. Mule's engine had been stripped, the tires slashed, and Kaylee was pretty certain someone had peed on it. Wash assured her it wasn't him.
He did most of all this on personal auto-pilot, as he thought things through. He'd only ever pointed a gun at a living person once before, and he hadn't been able to pull the trigger then. Figured if he had, if he had shot that terrified Alliance second lieutenant in the face when he'd had the chance, he could have escaped, avoiding those years in lock-up. Even that though, that long purgatory, he still thought was worth that kid's life. (It was funny, Wash realized, how he'd always thought of the guy as a kid, although chances were he'd been in the same age range as Wash's then twenty-two. Something about the huge, terror-rounded eyes and plump, Core-soft face.) And, the man had done him a favor as well, after Wash had realized his only choices were murder or surrender, and had chosen the latter, by confiscating his pistol, and never bringing it up again. So that Wash was tried only for smuggling medical supplies, instead of on a weapons charge, or even worse, arms smuggling. 'Cause there had been a real hard-ass prosecutor on his case, and he would have painted that pistol in the worst possible light, if that louie hadn't concealed it.
Then he was busy lifting them out of atmo, and plotting in a course for the quick jump to the next moon over to pick up Inara. That jump was more fuel efficient done manually rather than on autopilot, so he stayed on the bridge for that, contacting Inara when they were about a half hour away. She'd completed her business, so it was just a quick touch-down to pick her up, and then they were back in the Black, him plotting in a course for Greenleaf.
He'd done that, and put Serenity on auto, and had allowed himself be drawn into the stars, wrist draped lazily over the yoke, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned and was surprised to see Zoe, because he usually didn't hear her coming, but then saw she might have been focused on not spilling whatever was in the bowl she was carrying. She offered it to him and he took it automatically.
"What's this?" he asked, cradling the very warm dish in his palms. He studied the liquid within, a thick, opaque green. While the color proved a tad disquieting, the scent rising up on the steam was quite tantalizing.
"You missed dinner. There's left-overs, but it's that blue protein. Stuff's nasty cold, even nastier reheated. So I made you soup."
"You made me soup?" He raised his eyes to hers, brows lifted in surprise.
"A wife can make her husband soup," she replied, moving behind his chair. "'Specially one goin' above and beyond." Her arms circled his neck, busy fingers tucking a napkin under his chin.
"A wife can do just about whatever the heck she wants," he asserted, while processing, processing. Then he twisted his head around to squint up at her. "Above and beyond?"
It had come to him that maybe she was rewarding him for shooting, maybe killing, a man. And he wouldn't argue that he hadn't done exactly what needed doing. If someone pointed a gun at Zoe, and Wash had a gun in his own hand, he'd shoot at that person. He'd probably hit them, too, just as he'd done today, as he'd handled guns before, and was good at anything which required hand/eye co-ordination. But that was a terrible thing to do. Necessary. But terrible. And not something to be rewarded for.
Something in his eyes seemed to give her pause, because she became very still, studying his face for a moment, before saying carefully, "You really kept your head there, Wash. Y' had all sorts of things to juggle – taking charge of Serenity, making all the right choices in getting yourself out to the shuttle, coaching Mal while under fire." She shifted around, so she was looking at him face to face. Her hand came down to lightly cup his jaw. "That guy coming up behind us. You did good."
"Good," he repeated tonelessly. He didn't know whether to turn his face away from or into her palm. He didn't know if this was a gesture of approval for having killed someone. Or if it was as she said, she'd been impressed by how he'd handled the various events of the day. Or if maybe she was just showing him she loved him no matter what, wanted to give him a little domestic-type treat to center him after he'd been pushed outside his usual role. Or none of those things.
He didn't know. There were lots of times where he didn't know where Zoe was coming from. So he decided to simply enjoy his soup.
"Smells xiang," he said, arm snaking around her waist, drawing her onto his lap. Smiling, she shaped herself to him, tucking herself to the outside of his shoulder so he could have both hands in front of him to eat his soup.
And he was going to slowly savor every single spoonful. Heck, maybe he'd even be uncouth and lick the bowl clean. But then, then, he fully intended to take his wife to their bunk and show her, explicitly and in great detail, exactly what the phrase, 'above and beyond' really meant.
Chinese translations
Ai ya – damn, darn
Feng le – crazy
Gou cao de – dog humping
Lao tien ye – God, Heaven
Qingwa cao de liumang – frog humping punk
Tianwang bu yao – Heaven forfend
Tzao gao – damn it
Women wanle – We're in big trouble.
Xiang – delicious