Rogue's Gallery
by Sam Finneran
Corell System – Planet of Corellia – High Orbit – Approx. 2 Yrs. ABY (After the Battle of Yavin)
"HHRRRRRRRHHHWWWWGGG."
"Yes, Chewie, I agree. I miss Lando too. We'll see him soon."
"RRRRGGGGHHHWWW. GGGAA HHHNNG."
"No, Chewie. No. I know we were on vacation, but that Corellian Merchants' Guild courier sloop was just too sweet a mark to pass up. We'll leave the system for a little while, let things cool down, maybe take a run out to Dantooine. We'll be back here taking more of Lando's money at the sabacc tables before you know it."
"YOORRN."
Despite the powerful sublight engines pushing her up out of Corellia's gravity well, the Millenium Falcon flew more on the continual gripes and bantering of its two man (well, one man and one Wookie) crew than on any fusion reaction. The two occupants of the Falcon's cockpit, smuggling duo Han Solo and Chewbacca, really had no place that they would rather be despite the aforementioned carrying on.
If one were to judge by the speed of their exit, the old YT-1300 light freighter did indeed have it "where it counts," as Solo was apt to say. Those places where it didn't necessarily count, however, could still be rather troublesome.
"Yaaahh! Blast!" Han exclaimed, blowing on his fingertips as an unusually powerful static discharge coursed across the navicomputer's orientation controls.
His pained scowl turning pensive, the human pilot looked more closely at the coruscating sparks that continued to arc and write. "Fuzzball, you ever seen the Falcon spit out this kind of mynock dung? It's hangin' around a while... and pretty bright orange..."
Han trailed off as Chewie, silent and seemingly ignoring him, suddenly loosed an abnormally agitated "WHHHHGGGGAAA!"
Spinning in his rather threadbare captain's chair, Solo immediately comprehended the cause of the Wookie's distress: two contacts on the sensor screen, coming up fast on their stern.
"Cor-Sec on our tail? Damn! I knew that CMG bird was too easy. Nabbed those condenser pallets right off the landing pad. Must've been a sting, waiting for property liberators like us to come by."
Chewbacca merely intoned a long-suffering "HHHHNNNNOOOOONNNGGG," urging his smaller, paler, hairless companion to do more hyperdrive-starting and less talking.
"What do you think I'm trying to do, you walking carpet?" Han snapped back as his hands danced across the somewhat scorched navicomp board and drive interface. "Keep 'em off us!"
The Corellian Security Force gunships having advanced almost within engagement range, Chewie took the control yoke and began to whip the ungainly-looking craft into an unlikely series of sensor-baffling burns, twists, and accelerations.
Turbolaser bolts now flashing by, Han finally cajoled a viable course to safety out of the ship's still-ornery navicomputer, whooping, "Chewie, punch it!"
As the Millenium Falcon came straight and level, and the starfield began to lengthen and twist in the characteristic pseudomotion that preceded a hyperspace jump, Solo barely had time to consider the faint but distinct orange cast of the vista before them. Then, they were gone, rapidly fading, electric blue Cherenkov radiation the only memorial of their passing.
Sol System – Asteroid Belt – 2359 A.D.
"Amos, can you get the damned coffee maker going again?"
James Holden was rarely a happy man in the morning hours (morning being a subjective term in space, but he knew it when he saw it). He was markedly less happy on a morning when he was separated from half of his crew, the half that included both his pilot, Alex Kamal, and his executive officer, Naomi Nagata. That fact that Naomi was also his girlfriend had absolutely nothing to do with Jim's current surly outlook. Nothing at all.
The lack of coffee, however, was truly beyond the pale.
"AM-"
Before Holden could get the rest of his engineer's name out, the smell of that magical roasted bean, synthetic as it was, wafted its way into his nostrils. Following hard after it was a large, bald scalp, perched atop an even larger man as he ascended the ladder up to the Rocinante's bridge.
"Here you are, Cap. She was a bastard to get running today. Burned me real good-like."
"Burned you? Amos, you're faster than that," Jim admonished as he accepted the oversized mug.
Amos scowled. "Yeah, some real squirrelly orange sparks. Never seen 'em before. Must be a new quirk to the old girl. Had to break out the attitude adjuster here to get it done." His scowl lessened as he patted the large torque wrench holstered at his hip.
"Well, whatever it was, I'm glad we're good to go. I want to get out through the belt, shoot the Ring, and get back to Ilus. Flying with a skeleton crew, relying on the autopilot so much... It's not that I don't trust Roci, I just like keeping us together." Holden could be a worrier when he wasn't around to personally put down any crises he was sure would erupt at any moment.
Amos, however, was of a more pragmatic bent. "It'll be fine, boss. The settlers on Ilus needed them there. Fred and the OPA needed us to conduct some … assertive negotiations over here. Look, we'll get there when we get there."
So they did. Several mugs of coffee and most of an anxiously unproductive day-night cycle on the Rocinante later, they came upon the first of the buoys that directed traffic around and into the gate. They hung in space like a garland, bright across the electromagnetic spectrum, attracting both eyes and sensor arrays.
The Ring that they surrounded, however, was black. Constructed by an alien protomolecule of unknown origin and purpose, the sphere was defined only by the stars it blocked from view, an absence even in the void. Through it lay the "slow zone," the mysterious gate hub of whatever race had sent the protomolecule to the Solar System in the first place. Beyond that was Ilus, the first of thousands of newly available worlds to be colonized by humanity. And on Ilus, more to the point, were Alex and Naomi.
Shuffled to the front of the waiting queue by virtue of being the preferred "plausibly deniable" problem-solver for both Earth's United Nations and the Outer Planets Alliance, with transponder codes to match, Jim began the Rocinante's final burn into the Ring. Just before passing through its vast emptiness, though, he threw her engines into full reverse and exclaimed, "Amos, are you seeing-."
The vibrant orange portal that had suddenly appeared in the fast attack craft's path, already having swallowed the ship, disappeared just as quickly, a mere sensor echo amid the massive traffic around the Ring.
The Verse – White Sun (The Core) – Nearing Bellerophon – 2517 A.D.
"You absolutely, positively sure we gotta go through with this, Cap'n?"
"For the last time, Jayne: yes, I am. I pay you to look mean and shoot stuff, not to go worryin'. There's nobody needs shootin' yet, so just focus on doin' that first one."
"If you say so. I'll be in my bunk."
"You do that. I'll be here; I'll call ya if that shootin' thing comes up."
Jayne Cobb, mercenary currently serving as "public relations officer" aboard the Firefly-class freighter Serenity, tossed a grunt over his shoulder and slumped off the bridge. His captain, Malcom Reynolds, wasn't overly sorry to see him go. For such a big man, Cobb had a tendency to get awful persnickety, especially when it seemed that backup would be in short supply.
Mal was sorry to cause distress, he truly was, but Jayne just didn't understand. "It's basic economics. We gotta keep flying, and just because Inara's with a client, Zoe and Wash are on vacation, and Kaylee wanted to go chase down some engine part she swore up and down we'd need in six months, doesn't mean we can stop working," Captain Reynolds thought with no small degree of exasperation. "It'll be a milk run anyway. We're not even going down the well into Bellerophon anyway. A swing through a high-orbit Lagrange point to pick up a package and we're off to Niska's. What could go wrong?"
Fate being the fickle mistress that she is, something promptly went wrong. A thunderous "CLANG" echoed up from the engine room; the cabin lights flared, dimmed, returned to normal, then dimmed again, anemically illuminating their immediate surroundings.
"Shiong mao niao!" A veritable cascade of further Mandarin curses flew from Mal's mouth as he clambered down into the engine room, sniffing at the faint pall of smoke in the air. "What in the seven hells...?"
Back among the brush armatures that capped the main drive shaft flickered the small beginning of a flame, low and evil and … orange? Hands engaging before brain, Mal uncapped an extinguisher and hosed the brushes. The lights stubbornly refused to come back up, however. Muttering something about "women everywhere on this ship until you need them," the captain crawled toward the blown power couplings.
Several curses and bruises later, Reynolds triumphantly stood back up as Serenity hummed back to her normal state. Returning to the bridge, Mal dropped limply into the pilot's station, spun the chair around, and stopped. Connecting his hanging jaw to his wildly flailing thoughts, Mal managed to get out, "By Earth-That-Was... Jayne!" Then, the transport was gone, orange portal snapping closed behind it.
Unknown Space
Han flinched, then refocused, smuggler's instincts telling him to search the sky, look for familiar stars, and orient himself any way he could. Unfortunately, there were no stars to be had. None visible to his eyes, anyway. The only fixtures that he could see were two other ships, both substantially larger than the Falcon.
He immediately knew the one on the left was a warship of some sort. Fly rings around enough Imperials, Cor-Sec goons, and Outer Rim system militias, one developed a sense for these things. The other was just as obviously a transport, to Solo's eyes; he knew what his own "transport" could do, however, and remained wary.
"RRRRRAAAAAOOOOUUUURRRRRHHHH!"
"Easy, Chewie. Easy. I don't know what's going on here either, and like it less than you do."
"AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHNNNNRRRR!"
"Now, calm down. We're not going anywhere; the nav's fried all to hell. Get up into the the quad turret, just to be safe, but I have a funny feeling that we won't be needing it."
A skeptical "HHHHHNNNNYYYYRRR" floated down from the dorsal gunner's station, but Solo barely noticed it. Instead, his eyes were flicking between displays and readouts, frantically drinking in information. The warship looked blunt and effective, like a thick chisel with an upside-down caf cup stuck to its stern. According to the Falcon's sensor suite, however, it was bafflingly crude: the caf cup contained only sublight fusion engines, of all things, to make it go, its concealed missiles powered similarly, with a slugthrower of some sort tacked on near the bow.
"This can't be right," thought Han in consternation. The other one, the transport, was scarcely more advanced. It at least had some rudimentary inertial dampening device aboard, but it seemed completely unarmed! No sane, quasi-legal freighter (for the smuggler was sure he'd met a kindred soul) would go around without at least a couple of point-defense lasers... would they?
Realizing that somebody had to start the dialog off, and it might as well be him, Solo reached for the "All Freq" broadcast button. After all, who knew where those two buckets of bolts might be transmitting? "My name-"
"This is-"
"I am-"
…
"Why am I not surprised?" Solo thought to himself as the three open channels crackled to each other, captains all startled by the simultaneous voices. "Let's try this again."
"My name is Captain Han Solo. You're both looking at my ship, the Millenium Falcon. You there on the left, I can see you looking with targeting radar. Knock that off; those matchsticks of yours wouldn't leave their tubes before Chewie-"
A thunderous "RRRRRRRWWWWWRRRRGGGG!" rang over the comm link.
"Before Chewie would blow it apart. Then this discussion would get a lot less amicable."
The targeting radar beams persisted for a moment, then stopped painting the Falcon's hull.
The speaker crackled. "Oh, we're all amicability here, gents. Or... whatever you call the thing that made the noise was. Name's Jim Holden, captain of the Rocinante."
"Thank you, Jim. Now, unless I miss my guess, I'm the only one here with anything resembling a functional FTL drive. Yeah, big fella on the right, you've got some sort of inertial dampers, but that's no hyperdrive."
"No it sure is not. Can we do this in person? I prefer to look a man in the eye, get his measure, if ya know what I mean. I'm Cap'n Malcom Reynolds, of the Serenity."
"As long as there's no funny business, I'd agree. Jim?"
"Sure. Who's ship, though? Not to cause any offense, but you folks seem a touch jumpy."
The radio went dead. As reasonable as the other two captains seemed to be, nobody was particularly eager to host the meeting. Then, Han had a thought. "Malcolm-"
"Call me Mal."
"Mal, then. You can say yes or no, as your pride or paranoia allows, but my sensors told me your Serenity is unarmed. If we both went to you, Captain Holden and I could rig our autopilots to open up as insurance in case anything goes south, to keep you from trying anything, but we would be on your turf, to keep us from trying anything. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"Agreed."
A few short maneuvering burns later, the Roci and the Falcon pulled up on either side of Serenity, universal docking collars mated. Some hisses, clicks, and pressure equalization later, the hatches opened up. Han walked through into Serentity's hold, DL-44 blaster pistol heavy on his hip, but still holstered. Chewbacca followed just behind, bowcaster held at the low ready.
On the other side of the bay, Jim Holden strode in, his liberated Martian Congressional Republic Navy sidearm clamped to the thigh plate of his MCRN light armor. Amos lurked at his 4 o'clock, auto-shotgun strapped across his chest.
In the middle, beckoning his guests to join him, stood Mal. His big iron, a Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B, was also peacefully holstered. Jayne stood less at ease, surveying the new entrants from his post just behind Mal, clutching his beloved Callahan full-bore auto-lock, Vera. Her muzzle was, thankfully, also pointed at the deck.
Eyes widened at the sight of Chewie's seven and a half foot, furry bulk, but not too much; given what Jim and Amos had seen the protomolecule do at Eros, and Mal and Jayne had seen of Reavers, a Wookie was relatively small fry.
Some eyes stayed narrowed, however. Chewie, Amos, and Jayne had an innate sense of the others, a sense born of long exposure to and intimate acquaintance with violence. They were hard men, the three of them. Men who would make sure they were the last ones standing in any given room, once they'd thrown their captain through that room's door, out of harm's way. It wasn't often they met another like themselves. In this case, they liked what they saw. As one, bowcaster, auto-shotgun, and Vera were slung across their owners' backs.
Tension fled from the cargo bay, and a small, relieved chorus of exhalations was heard. A small, wry smile flickered across Han Solo's face. "Now that nobody's going to be shooting first, what's say we get a hold of what exactly is going on here?"
"I'm in."
"Deal."