Story Notes: This is not quite a Firefly fusion, but, as the title suggests, it's pretty darn close. :D (Or, as my sister put it: "Firefly, but with Asians!" ... and Inuit, of course.) The names of the planets/stations/ships are: a) from canon, b) made up, or c) cobbled together out of vaguely apropos but indubitably ungrammatical Mandarin/Inuktitut/Tibetan. The description of Pai Sho, such as it is, is based off of a wikiHow article on the game - I have no idea how accurate to canon it is, but it sounded cool. :D Also, I ship Yue/Zuko something awful now.
Written for the Genretwisting Deadline Challenge on Dreamwidth. And thank you, as always, to my sister, for the gorgeous art of space!Toph that I used for the cover.
For those of you waiting for more Avatar!Katara, I swear I'm still working on it; but in the meantime, this is finished and ready to post. (And for those of you also on the AO3, sorry for spamming you with a repeat.)
Big Damn Heroes
Katara pushes past the curtains that block off the bridge - they have got to get a new door fitted - and stops behind Toph's chair. "I take it we didn't drop out of hyperspace on purpose," she says.
Toph finishes cursing and slams both hands against the console. "That would be a definite no," she says, fingers flickering over the keyboard; Katara can hear the low murmur of her screenreader where it's pinned to her ear. "I don't understand it - we had the nav-fix on the Lanse Xing, it was perfect. Exactly the same as every other time we've ridden a tow." She spits another curse at the console, and taps the pad that swaps her screenreader's link between screens. "I'll try to see if I can track it down from here, but."
She doesn't even need to finish the sentence; Katara knows. She's been the captain of the Appa for almost three years, ever since the day Aang crashed it just outside the little lunar colony where she'd lived. Aang's good with computers, but not with simple mechanics, and the Appa had needed a lot of work.
The Appa doesn't have hyperdrive. Most smaller ships don't; but they've got to get between star systems somehow. The issue is mostly navigational - smaller ships can't support the kind of sensor system it takes to lock a destination that's thousands of lightyears away. So transports that are midsize or smaller have to ride a tow: get a big ship, a hyper-capable ship, to lock the long-range nav-fix, and then set their own nav-fixes on the big ship, and follow it through. It can be a little tricky to hang on to a nav-fix through a dimensional jump when you don't have a hyperdrive, with the wake and everything - but that's why they have Toph.
But if you lose your nav-fix halfway through, you're going to stumble back out of hyperspace. Like they just did. And the ship whose tow you were riding is going to be long gone. Like theirs is.
Katara sighs. Toph's going to do her best, of course she is, and Toph's best is very, very good. But they had about a million-to-one chance of fixing on their tow again in the first second after they fell out of hyperspace, and that chance gets exponentially worse with every additional second that passes.
Of all the luck, Katara thinks grumpily, banging back down past crew quarters and toward the mess. This is the first run they've ever made with passengers, the first one where it definitely matters when they get where they're going - not that it didn'tmatter that time they had a hold full of ostrich horses, but that was mostly because of the smell; livestock dealers on the galactic rim are usually a flexible sort. But passengers have schedules to keep, precise ones. And this time, of all times, they lose their tow.
Suki's in the mess when Katara comes in, shaving down a crystal for one of her laser fans. They function on the same set of principles as laser knives, but Suki likes them better - more graceful, she says, but Katara secretly thinks she just likes the look of surprise on people's faces when she flips the handles out of her belt and thumbs the switches, and fans flare out instead of knifeblades.
She picks up an arc micrometer to measure the change in the parabolic curve she's adjusting - Katara made the mistake of asking her about it once, and now knows more than she ever wanted to about laser blade upkeep - and, eyes still on the crystal, says, "Lost our tow, huh?"
"How'd you know?" Katara says. It's never happened to the Appa before.
Suki shrugs. "Felt the shift. There are pilots in the Confederation fleet who make Toph look - well, even better than she already is. We used to sprint for the head at the slightest hint of it, because if you weren't quick enough-"
She stops abruptly, but Katara knows better than to make a big deal out of it. Suki was a lucky find for them; there aren't a lot of ex-Confederation military floating around. If you don't last long enough to make admiral, it's usually because you die in the service. But Suki was a peacekeeper on Kyoshi. Katara never saw it before the orbital bombings, it's pretty far out on the rim, but she's heard that it used to be beautiful.
Anyway, they don't pry into Suki's past much.
"Yeah, it got away from us," Katara says, like there was never any pause. "Toph's going to try to catch it again, but odds are we're going to be late."
"Really late," Suki says, "unless another fleet happens by. Where'd we come out, anyway?"
"Not all that far from Pohuai Station," Katara says, trying to remember exactly what it said on Toph's screens. "If we have to, we can sub-light there, and wait for a ship."
"Wait?" Suki says, skeptical. "The ansible's still working, isn't it?"
Katara sighs. She knows what Suki's about to suggest. "But he'll gloat," she says unhappily.
"He wouldn't be Sokka if he didn't," Suki agrees, "but the longer we take, the more we have to discount the fare, and we could really use a new-"
"Aang can take care of it," Katara says.
"-set of dishes, I was going to say," Suki says. "Although, come to think of it, the port compression coil could use replacing. Aang can't do anything for the mechanical stuff; you know that."
Katara does. Aang can do anything with a technological problem - programming errors in the processor core, faulty subroutines, even the occasional electrical routing issue. He doesn't even know how he does it; just puts his hands to the panels and asks with his mind. It creeps her out a little, the way his eyes fog over, but the Appa hasn't needed its core reset in all the time she's been on board, when most ships can't go a full six months without getting fouled up somewhere.
But ships aren't just computer cores with wings, and Aang can't think away purely mechanical problems.
"But he'll gloat," Katara repeats helplessly.
Suki slides the crystal back into its seat in her fan handle. "I can distract him for you," she says, her innocently helpful tone at odds with the grin on her face.
"... Please stop talking," Katara says, and puts her hands over her ears just in case. There are some things about her brother that she doesn't need to hear.
Passenger quarters are next to the hold, eight on either side, and two levels; before this run, they mostly put junk in there, or used them to hide things they technically weren't supposed to have. Jet's quarters are back here, too; he's crew, but he likes to keep to himself, doesn't like the thought that people could poke through his things. He's on the port side, though, and they've only got three passengers, so all of them can fit in the starboard side. If they make a run with more passengers, Katara's going to have to have a talk with him, which should be exciting. Jet likes to swing his shock hooks around when he's hearing things he doesn't like.
But they have to make it through this disaster of a trip first; so when the catwalk splits over the hold, she heads to the starboard side.
They picked a pretty quiet bunch - or maybe passengers are always like this, it's not like Katara knows, but either way all three of them have mostly stuck to their rooms. The young guy's like Jet, keeps to himself except for his uncle; his uncle's been polite and cheerful to Katara every time she's talked to him, but he always seems to be cutting himself off, holding back things he's just remembered not to say. And the girl, Yue, is the same way: polite, sweet, but not especially talkative. She doesn't look much older than Katara, but her hair is pure white all the way through, every strand.
Odd group; but not bad. At least, not yet, Katara thinks. It's possible this unanticipated change in schedule might ruffle a few feathers.
She knocks politely on the doorframe closest to the stairs - the old man's room, she remembers, a moment before he slides the thick paper pane aside and blinks at her curiously. "Captain," he says.
The knock and his voice rouse the other two, and a moment later two more doors slide open. "Uncle Iroh? What is it?" the young man says.
"Is there a problem, Captain?" Iroh says.
"A small one," Katara admits. "We are - unavoidably delayed, I'm sorry to say. I realize this could be a considerable inconvenience to some of you, and of course your fares will be appropriately discounted-"
"How much?" the young man snaps.
Katara makes herself take a deep breath. "The final percentage will depend on how great the delay is," she says, very calmly.
"You mean you don't know how long we'll be stuck wherever we are," the young man says, scowling.
"I'm sure it won't be long," the young woman says, and Katara smiles at her appreciatively, even as the young man shoots her a look of disbelief. "Is there anything we can do? If your crew will be busy fixing the problem, I'd be happy to take care of something else - cleaning, or-"
"Hopefully, that won't be necessary," Katara says, instead of bursting out laughing the way she wants to; the young man's eyes look like they're about to fall out of his head.
"No, really," the young woman says. "I insist," and she starts rolling up her sleeves.
"We would also be glad to assist," Iroh says, cheerfully ignoring the way his nephew is glaring at him. "Tell me, Captain, is your ship's kitchen stocked with tea?"