Prologue

This was the young pilot's first job, and he was anxious to keep it. The pay was fantastic, the ship was nice, and it was legal. He had a friend in flight school that had fallen in with criminals less than a week after graduating. He hoped he'd never have to resort to that sort of thing. He was a model citizen, he had never broken a single law in his entire life-he didn't even open his sister's mail without permission-and he wasn't planning on changing that. He didn't drink much or smoke, he'd never been in a fight, he wasn't terribly political, but he was honest. The Alliance would have been proud to have such a resident among its ranks, if it had ever noticed his existence.

He didn't have anything bad to say about the crew, or anything much to say at all, for that matter. He kept to the helm except when he went to eat, and they mostly ignored him. That part of the job was a real problem for him, who was generally a friendly sort of guy, but it was only his first week, he couldn't expect to be best friends with the crew already. He decided he should just wait and see how things went before he did anything stupid. He just wished they'd stop calling him "Pilot."

"Pilot!" the captain shouted.

"I have a name, you know," he called back.

"Now is not the time!" she shouted urgently. Looking at her, the pilot saw that her eyes were round as coins and she was clearly panicking, "Reavers are headed this way!"

A woman nearby screamed, and soon the whole town was in an uproar. "We should evacuate the town!" he said.

"We don't have room, we don't have time!" the captain said.

"There's plenty of room in the Cargo Bay."

"But the cargo bay is full of the cargo!"

"You would leave this entire town to the Reavers to make a few credits?" he asked, disgusted.

"Not a few credits. 500,000 credits!"

"But these are people!"

"Listen, pilot, just get into the bridge, that's an order!"

Seeing nothing else to do, he punched her in the face. Perhaps it was the shock of being sucker-punched by the mild-mannered pilot, or perhaps he was a better fighter than he'd guessed, but she hit the ground, unconscious.

"Everybody, get on the ship, and hurry. We need to leave now!" People rushed to the ship or ran to their homes to grab possessions or get family members, and the pilot found himself forced to direct them all. "Someone help me with these crates! Just dump them. Not those, they're food. No point getting you all to safety if you're just gonna starve to death. Come on, everyone in! There are bedrooms upstairs, we can fit maybe thirty people in each of those. Don't stand around the crates, stand on them! We need to fit the entire town on this ship, this is no time to worry about personal space! We can fit a bunch of people in the dining room and kitchen. Is that everyone? You last group can come with me to the bridge."

Miraculously, he managed to fit them all on the ship, although they were packed in rather tightly, but no one complained. They all knew what waited back at their homes.

As he started the ship, he caught sight of just what he was facing, and he was awestruck. He had heard of Reavers, of course, and over the past few weeks begun to believe in them, but he'd never actually encountered them.

"Wo de ma!" The Reaver ship was a huge, ugly craft, covered with war paint, and were those human carcasses? on the prow. He resisted the urge to be sick, and renewed starting up the ship with more urgency. He got them into the air a moment before the Reavers hit the ground. He knew they wouldn't remain in the empty village for long, and urged the craft as fast as it would go. He had never noticed it before, but the ship was extraordinarily slow, and he wanted to shout at it.

"They're following us!" someone shrieked.

"I noticed," he said calmly, checking the Cortex for a map. There was an asteroid belt a few minutes away. Perfect.

"What are you doing?" someone shouted when they saw it, "You're going to get us all killed!"

"If you could all calm down, I would really appreciate it," he said, not raising his voice.

"You're a maniac!"

"Would you just shut up for a second!" he said, his nerves getting the better of him. He had never been in an asteroid field in real life before. He'd done it on a simulator in school, and he'd only crashed once, but that he didn't find that thought very reassuring as he soared towards certain doom. If even a tiny rock managed to pierce the hull, they were all dead. "Let's see what this boat can do."

There was a moment of silence as he gripped the wheel tightly, broken by the sound of the captain waking up and finding her ship packed and her cargo gone.

"Pilot, you liu kou shui de bioa zi he hou zi de ben er zi!" she shouted, and kept shouting insults for over ten minutes, sucking in deep breaths between curses.

"Such a lovely person," the pilot said amiably. Then he turned the ship sharply to avoid smashing into the huge mass of rock that was hurtling towards them. He distantly heard people shouting and vomiting behind him, but he was too intent on his task to spare them any thought. Just another test, he told himself. You have to pass this to graduate. Simple as that.

A huge cheer erupted all around him, yanking him from his reverie. Looking in his rearview, he saw that Reaver ship smashed by a huge asteroid, killing everyone onboard. For one moment, he felt horrible. He had just killed an entire ship full of people. Reavers aren't people, he reminded himself. But the guilt was still there.

The rest of the ship was ecstatic as he pulled the ship out of the belt as easily as he'd entered it. They were all thanking him, praising him; he was sure they'd have lifted him onto their shoulders if he hadn't been preoccupied with flying the boat.

"What's your name?" someone shouted over the commotion.

"Call me Wash," Hoban Washburne replied with a smile.