SERENITY
Children of Shadow
I
Once, she was nothing more than a small moon orbiting a planet made of dust and death. Her face had more pockmarks than a child with pox. The distant sun's light touched her faintly, but it barely penetrated the gravel and ice that suffocated her surface. She was a ghost in space.
Then, one day, the humans came.
Wearied and wide-eyed, their ships descended upon her like hungry vultures, giant metal talons sinking into the earth. They had come from a far off world in far worse condition than this moon's black motherplanet. From Earth That Was. Machines floated down with them and chewed up the thick dirt and sprinkled seeds and melted centuries of ice to discover bountiful resources. They swiftly began to draw out the life that still prevailed deep in the moon's frozen heart. Soon, the grasses and crops spread wide. The air was cleansed and the skies turned blue and children ran at their laughing parents' feet.
All was well.
Until one day, a war began that ruined it all. Blast waves toppled towers and crushed babies' skulls and turned the streets blood-red. It was over all too quickly, but not without massive tragedy. As the dust settled and the giant hand of the Alliance gave way in mercy, those that remained kept their heads low and their hopes lower. Within weeks, the moon began to decay. Deserts expanded and rivers narrowed and disappeared.
There are many tales of woe in the aftermath of the war between the stubborn Independents and the stoic, steely Alliance. Some say, those that died in the war outnumbered those that survived. Few disagreed with that. But even fewer remembered this lonely island of an almost-world, this crossbreed between barren moon and hopeful microplanet.
This world called Shadow.
***
On the cramped bridge of his cramped ship, a captain sat studying the readouts of his navigation console. Numbers and graphs spilled across jaded screens. One in particular had his attention, displaying a little planet by the name of...
"...Shadow."
He blinked as if waking from a trance. "Huh?"
Boot-steps behind him; he swivelled in his chair and looked up into the eyes of his best friend.
"I said... How long's it been since you last set foot on Shadow?" With a playful smile, she leaned against a compartment door and added, "I thought you'd miss your momma's cooking long before now."
The captain smiled. "Rations are getting tiresome. And Serenity," he patted the console, "needs a refit and a rest. Besides, should be interesting to revisit the old homestead."
"I say: let's visit the bank."
"Zoe, did your voice just turn all manly and moody?"
A large and ungainly brute stepped out from behind her, chomping on an apple. "Manly? Mal, I'm flattered."
"Don't be, Jayne." Mal stood up. "And no. Shadow's my home planet. You rob from it, you rob from me."
Jayne nodded slowly. "Uh-huh..."
Mal looked up at the ceiling. "That means I shoot you in the face."
Jayne conceded, "That's not my style. You know that."
"Robbing from friends?"
"Getting shot in the face." Jayne took another big bite of his apple and disappeared into the hallway. Shaking her head, Zoe went over to the secondary nav-console on the left-hand side, checking a few dials and screens. Mal watched her. She was looking much better lately. There was a shine in her skin and a fire in her eyes that he hadn't seen since...
Malcolm blinked. That pain was still fresh. In his mind's eye Wash was looking at him with childish glee. I'm a leaf on the wind... A Reaver spear burst through the front window and punched through Wash's chest and out the other side, killing him. All that proceeded was instinct fuelled by fear and experience. The horrors of the war left echoes that would never stop ringing through Malcolm Reynolds. It also kept him sharp when times got testy.
It was only after the dust settled, and the battle was over, that he finally allowed himself to feel the effects of the loss.
Wash wasn't just a good pilot, he thought. "He was a good man." Mal winced as soon as he blurted it, but there it was, and now Zoe was looking him straight in the eyes. He slowly sat back down.
"Sir?" A tough woman, Zoe. Still calling him sir long since they lost the war. Even being the better warrior, she always looked up to him and stood by him.
There was a strange look on her face now, though.
"Wash," Mal said slowly, looking first at the banks of screens and controls in front of him, then giving Zoe a small, heartfelt smile. "I'm sorry he's gone. I'm...sorry for bringing him up."
The strange expression, the mild look of shock, melted away, and Zoe smiled from ear to ear, showing a strength that had, for a while, almost completely faded away. "Don't be. He'll always be my he-"
The rest was drowned out by a piercing scream.
***
A shrill beep cut through the silence of a young commander's quarters. He immediately closed his mediaviewer and hit the Receive command on his vidwall. He stood to attention, and adjusted his grey Alliance tunic as an old and scarred face appeared.
"Jonas," said the scarred man.
"General Hiro," Jonas replied, nodding gently. "It's been a lo-"
"Yes, yes. It has, and all that." Hiro smiled unpleasantly. "I hate pleasantries, Captain King. Let's get to business. I have a serious problem. Actually, we do. That problem needs fixing. Fast."
Jonas knew problem meant person.
The general went on, "You and your crew are no strangers to black ops. Consider this the blackest of them all."
Captain Jonas King raised his eyebrows a centimetre in measured surprise. General Hori was quite often the most robotic and unreadable commander he had ever served under. So compared to his usual deadpan attitude, the general was practically hysterical. Somehow this individual had successfully turned the rock into lava. Jonas watched with polite interest as the general punched a button hard, replacing his grimacing face to that of a man in his mid-thirties, with guarded eyes and a ready smile. Suspected of quite a number of deaths, according to the side-info.
One of his infractions had been blurred, Jonas noticed.
"Seems this man has been very naughty, General," he said. "Otherwise, why encrypt one of his crimes?"
Rather than reply, the general punched another button. Two words sprung up in gold:
Reaver Ally.
"What?" Jonas prided himself on his ability to detach from emotion, environment and pain. But the shock of those two words cracked his facade and his senses. "Reavers don't ally themselves with anyone. They just try to eat everyone, including each other."
The cocky face vanished and the general returned to the screen. "Tell that to five hundred dead officers."
"I was informed that they perished in a training...accident...ah..."
General Hori nodded slowly and low, so his chin touched his chest, while he kept his eyes rooted firmly on King. "He was the one that splashed that horrid video across the cortex. He's a terrorist, an anarchist, an extreme danger to our society, and he must be stopped before all hell breaks loose."
"Former Browncoat?"
"Yes!" Again, Hori seemed top burst at the seams. Sure, this target had caused all manners of shitness for entire departments of bureaucrats and the like, but that was far below the military's responsibilities or interests. Yet Hori resembled a man in the throes of torture, all uppity and terrified. That worried King. During the war, it had never bothered him seeing a Browncoat Independent in pain—they deserved their comeuppance—but to see an Alliance general so worried...
Something else was up.
Jonas dared not voice his suspicions. Instead, he gave a curt salute, and told Hori, "General, send me every gigameg you have on these boys and girls. I'll disappear them, no questions asked."
"Good man. Uplink sent. It'll arrive shortly. Keep the crew witless bar your special five. And King..."
Jonas had leaned forward to stand up, but sat back and said, "General?"
"This is the ship you're looking for."
A short video sprang up, captured from one of the Alliance cruisers before its untimely demise. There was a huge blue cloud of electricity sparking around the edges. In the far off distance, Reaver ships, cannibalised from countless victims' ships, tools and their very bones. And in the centre, spinning on its axis, ducking and weaving around intersecting fire-beams, a potbellied ship of ungainly shape rushed up to the camera. As it blurred past, its nose dipped down and on its "neck", painted in bright white against a golden emblem, was the word Serenity.
***
Mal's expression turned hard. He jumped out of his seat and clambered down the rear steps to the main walkway, Zoe right behind him, the scream still echoing through Serenity. They peeked into the engine room but the core spun soundly and without incident. Down they went to the secondary deck. A young man raced out of the small medlab, eyes wide, and muttered something urgent at them but it was indecipherable.
"Doc...?" called Mal, but the doctor was racing to his quarters and so they followed; no-one was there. The young doctor turned and pushed through them, went back by the lab and on through the open blast doors to the main hangar. Mal and Zoe were one step behind. There, in the middle of the hangar, stood a young girl in a silky green dress fit for a ball, except for the huge gashes in its material. Her hair was in knots and blood seeped from a dozen small cuts to her face. Her hands were held out as if offering something invisible to them and she fell to her knees wailing.
"Simon..." Zoe began, but the young man was straight over to the girl, hugging her tight and pushing her hair out of her face and whispering, "River...What's wrong...what's going on....what happened...?"
There they were, the two of them rocking slowly back and forth, Simon hushing her and River calming down, her cries turning to sobs and finally to barely audible moans. Mal noted that Simon had something pressed against River's shoulder; when the pulled his hand away he saw it was a morphine patch. She fell into a sleep against her brother's shoulder.
Simon looked up at the two veterans. "Sorry."
Mal shook his head, crouched down to the doctor and the sleeping girl. "Is she OK?"
Simon eased his hands under her neck and legs and with a grunt he stood up, cradling her. "I'll take her to the lab and find out."
Mal and Zoe watched as Simon brought his sister out of the cold hangar bay and into the sterile white and blue cocoon of the ship's medlab. Then their eyes met, and fell upon the spot where River had stood screaming. The overhead lights shone down on them, casting deep shadows across a puddle of River's blood.
***
Shadows and light.
Polar opposites. Neither tangible yet we live for one and retreat from the other.
Light burns shadow. Shadow dampens light.
Symbiotes and nemeses. One dies without the other.
Alliance and Independents.
Yin and Yang.
Earth-That-Was and Serenity.
Mal and-
River woke up and screamed. The overhead lights moved down to blind her and crush her, chew her up and grind her bones and drain her blood to fuel the engines and spit her soul into the deep bad black. She brought her shoulders and elbows and fists up to protect herself and when claws reached out and gripped her arms she lashed out, feeling her knuckles connect with flesh and bone. There was a yelp and a clatter of skull on distant metal and something told her she'd done something very very wrong.
"River!"
"Simon?" She blinked. The pain was still fresh. In her mind's eye Simon was looking at her with new-found strength. I have to get my medbag... A Reaver bullet burst through the blast doors and punched through Simon's chest and out the other side, flooring him. All that proceeded was instinct fuelled by fear and training. The horrors of her conditioning left echoes that would never stop ringing through River Tam. It also kept her sharp when times got testy.
It was only after the dust settled, and the battle was over, that she finally allowed herself to feel the effects of almost losing Simon.
Wash wasn't just a good pilot, she thought. "He was a good man." River winced as soon as he blurted it, but there it was, and now Zoe was looking her straight in the eyes. River slowly sat up.
"River?" There was a strange look on her face.
"Wash," River said slowly, looking first at the banks of screens and controls over her bed, then giving Zoe a small, heartfelt smile. "I'm sorry he's gone. I'm...sorry for bringing him up."
The strange expression, the mild look of shock, intensified, and Zoe frowned and stepped away, showing a fear in her eyes that River never thought she'd see.
"River..." Simon again, and he was pulling himself up from the floor. A large welt was growing on his lower lip, and he was wiping blood from his mouth. River felt awful.
"Simon I'm so sorry for one second I was standing in the middle of Osiris and the sky was blue and the fountains sparkling and the city was full of smiles and then the big blue hands wiped everything away and picked me up and ripped me apart. I fell apart Simon." She turned and looked at Zoe. "Everything fell apart."
The two adults stood over her and gave each other strange glances, as if the two of them were psychically linked. Is that what this is? she wondered for a moment. Are they psychics like me? They can block me? Discuss my problems and find solutions and work me out and break me down? Simon...no...
Zoe left quietly, while Simon remained, his tunic stained with blood both his and River's.
She thought about her dizzying dream, about the shadow and the light, feeding off each other.
If the shadow's bigger than the light, then someday, one day, soon, there will be only shadow. Shadow and death.
Then the darkness came once more and ate her up.