Beaumonde. A planet that smelled mainly of dirt, sweat, pollutants, and what the residents claimed was some kind of Kentucky bourbon. Still, it was a beautifully terraformed planet, and the Doctor thought that Clara should see where the human race would be years upon years from her time, and how they would develop. Clara didn't seem interested.
She wrinkled her nose and sniffed at the air. "What's that?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. "Something smells like manure."
"Ah, yes." The Doctor rubbed his hands together and breathed in the stench. "That would be the manure."
Clara turned and looked at him, her eyebrows inching together over that funny nose of hers. She was quite shorter than him and had to tilt her head up slightly to look him in the eye. Brown hair fell neatly around her shoulders, held back by a couple of hair pins. Her green tea-dress was hardly suitable for the area that they were going through. Perhaps that was his fault though. She seemed to have thought that they were going to some futuristic French Quarter type of town, not a terraformed outer planet. Her shoes, which only minutes earlier had been shiny black, were now caked with mud and dust.
"Why do we have manure in the future? Hasn't anyone figured that out yet?"
The Doctor gently poked her forehead with his index finger. "Yes, Clara, of course the human race has figured out how to prevent animals from doing what they do naturally."
She stopped walking and jabbed her finger at his chest. "There's no reason to be rude. I was asking a question. Not everybody's been to Beyo- Bee- Bao..."
"Beaumonde," he said.
"Yes. This place." She lifted one side of her lips into a lopsided smile. "It is pretty cool though. Sort of like a whole wild west thing in the future." Her eyes flitted among the wooden shops, spaced right next to each other so that the only way to tell which ones were separate were by the faded paint jobs. "Have you ever been to the wild west before, Doctor?"
The question caught him by surprise and he immediately thought back to his time with Amy and Rory in Mercy. "Yes," he said. "A few times."
"What's it like? Is it like what's on telly with the cowboys and Indians running around everywhere shooting each other?"
The Doctor gave a sad smile and ruffled her hair. "Yes. Something like that."
A roaring noise flooded through the streets as a ship, something out of date, if he had landed in the year he thought he had, came into view, speeding down at a reckless pace. Clara grabbed the Doctor's coat sleeve and he threw his other arm above his eyes to cover the blazing light from the ships rear turbo. A Firefly? Who drove a Firefly still? He paused and straightened his bow tie; then again, that was coming from a man who had stolen a Type 40 TARDIS. Older was not always a bad thing. Except sometimes, when you wanted a half-decent navigation system.
"What's that?" Clara yelled over the din of the ship. He barely heard her above all the noise, and motioned to a small shop, most likely some sort of tourist trap, though he didn't expect that Beaumonde had an excessive amount of tourists.
The pair hurried across the dirt road and mounted the steps two at a time, before entering the store through a flimsy white door with a dirty window.
The interior was as the Doctor had expected. Wood walls, wood floors, and wood shelves stocked with both supplies and odds and ends. There were a couple of displays filled with hand painted china, most likely done by a local artist. Rows of empty shelves lined one wall with a crumpled paper sign that read "Awaiting Shipment."
With the sound of the Firefly reduced to a dull roar, the Doctor finally managed to answer Clara's question.
"It's a ship. How they transport supplies and how people get around. That one up there's called a Firefly. It's complicated to explain..."
"So, it's sort of like boats, or the metro?"
He paused, considering the comparison. "Yes, sort of, I suppose. Think a boat that rents out spaces like a flat. Actually, forget that, it's not like that."
"What do you think that one's here for?" asked Clara.
The Doctor shrugged, then a grin lit up his face like a Christmas tree. "Would you like to find out?"
"Strange flying ship on a planet in the future?" She leaned close and smirked. "I don't even know why you bother taking the time to ask."
"Is that a no?" he asked.
She gave his arm a light punch. "It's a yes, silly. Come on! First bit of real action in this place. Let's go see!"
Malcolm Reynolds walked down the ramp, fifty pound sack of flour over his shoulder. He reached the ground, a sight he hadn't seen in well over two weeks and dropped the sack, wiping the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Mal leaned down and scooped up a handful of dirt, letting it sift through his fingers. First glimpse of Beaumonde seemed a right sorry sight from the landing position Wash had picked out. Town they were next to looked just about as near to a ghost town as there was, quite a change from the other, high profit factory areas in the cities.
"Come on," he said, glancing over his shoulders at the others. Each crew member on Serenity had hefted their own sacks of flour and were making their way down the ramp. Even the Doc had lowered himself to labor along with a bag. Mal found Doc's struggling a bit more amusing than he should have and couldn't help but give an involuntary snort.
River kept, for the most part, near the entrance of the ship, occasionally migrating to the opposite side as she scrutinized each of them with those big brown eyes of hers. Mal shuddered; sometimes, that girl just gave him the creeps. "What're you doing? Supervising us? How d'you think we're doing?" Mal asked, taking the edge off the unease with a playful jab at the girl.
"I've seen turtles move faster," she said quietly. She formed an imaginary turtle with her hands, petting the air and mumbling incoherently to herself.
Simon looked anxiously behind him, sweat plastering his shirt to his arms, arms that had clearly not seen much work outside of the field of medicine.
Inara appeared behind the girl, placing a hand on her shoulder and murmuring something in her ear that seemed to distract her from the imaginary turtle petting. "I'll take care of her, Simon. Don't worry."
"Thank you," he said, giving a smile that betrayed every single ounce of worrying the city boy planned on doing anyways.
"Come on," Mal repeated. "We don't got all day. Where the heck is Jayne?"
"Right here, Cap'n," he said, jumping down from the top of the ramp. The man was armed to the teeth; grenades strapped to his legs, knives on his arms, a couple pistols on his belt, and two massive guns at his back.
Mal raised an eyebrow at the Rambo-like get up and glanced at Zoe, who shrugged, though he could see the smile sneaking onto her lips. Kaylee was nowhere near as good as hiding her humor and was giggling into the crook of her elbow to mask the grin.
"What the blazes are you wearing, Jayne?"
Jayne lifted his arms, revealing a set of throwing knives on the torso of his shirt. "Weapons," he said. "Figured we might need 'em."
"We're delivering flour, not an arsenal," he said.
The other man furrowed his eyebrows. "I could put the pistols back?" he suggested.
"Nah, keep the pistols." Mal shouldered the bag of flour again. "Put everything else back."
"Even the grenades?"
"Even the grenades."
"But we might need the grenades," said Jayne.
"I think he looks cute," said Kaylee, earning herself a death glare from Jayne.
The captain waved one hand in dismissal. "Fine, keep one grenade. Kaylee thinks it makes you look pretty."
Jayne grunted and pulled himself back onto the ramp before disappearing inside the ship.
Mal glanced heavenward. "Honestly, who knows what goes through his mind." He sighed, inhaling a deep breath of clean, earthy smelling air. "Let's go. I don't want to be here long. 'Sides, Inara's got an appointment on Ariel."
"What about Jayne?"
"He'll catch up. Let's go."
The group trudged along through long, yet fairly sparse grass, the heat of the sun beat down on their back until all their clothes were soaked through. Jayne had caught up with them a few minutes after Mal had sent him back to change. He had the weapons Mal had let him keep, as well as the throwing knives on his chest. Mal pretended not to notice, seeing how the man, trying to show off, had made the foolish mistake of grabbing three bags instead of one and was now doing right about as bad as the Doc.
Kaylee staggered behind the captain, and Mal turned around, taking her bag and heaving it on top of his. The exhausted mechanic dusted off her flour coated hands on the hem of her qipow.
"I could've taken it, Cap."
Mal grimaced under the doubled weight of his load. "I know, Kaylee. That's why I took it. Couldn't have you showing us up, now could I?"
Kaylee beamed. "No, Cap, don't believe you could've."
A man carrying a purple waistcoat on one arm, and supporting a young woman in a green dress on the other appeared on the heat dappled plain ahead of them. Mal instinctively dropped both flour sacks and had his gun leveled at them in the time it took most men to blink.
The man stepped calmly in front of the girl and stared unblinking at Mal. "Are you going to shoot us?" asked the man; he had an accent that was difficult to place, quite similar to ones he had encountered on Persephone. "Two unarmed travelers. What are you? Coward or criminal?"
Mal cocked the gun, but the man remained unfazed. He sighed and returned the pistol to his belt. "What are two unarmed travelers doing in a place like this?" Mal asked.
"Traveling," said the woman in green, poking her head out from behind the taller man and stepping around him. She had a lilting voice, with a similar accent as the man, but different somehow. There was something in the voice that Mal expected only someone with the accent could place.
"Spunky," Mal remarked to Jayne.
"That a problem, Mal?" he asked, already reaching for his single grenade.
Mal shook his head. "Leave 'em alone. We stick to the plan. I'm not gonna lose all my business on Beaumonde over a couple of travelers."
"Look at their clothes though," said Jayne.
"They've got to be Alliance," Zoe agreed.
"All the more reason to leave 'em alone. Let's get our goods in place, get our payment and get out quick as you like so Kaylee can get those parts to fix the mule. I don't want to get stuck with transporting these goods by hand again."
"Yeah, couldn't you have parked a bit closer, Wash?"
"Depends," said the pilot. "Did you want there to be a town left to pay you after we got the goods there."
"Barbecued people don't pay very well," said Mal. "We just gotta make do with what we've got."
"Well, what we've got is a bunch of these dang bags of flour."
"Yeah," said Mal. "So pick 'em up and start making do." He turned to the pair of travelers. "You stay out of our way and we'll stay out of yours. We don't need no sightseers breathing down our necks. Ship's full and we don't do rides."