Firefly: Take the Sky
Chapter Six – Same War, Different Day
You know that you're on Beaumonde when you take your first breath and cough, repeatedly. It's the only place in the 'Verse where one can get the black lung from being anywhere below three thousand meters above sea level, and the only place in the 'Verse where going for a quick dip in the ocean will get your eyelids burned off; on account of the high levels of ammonia delicately mixed in.
And that's assuming you don't pass out before you even get to the ocean.
A quick visit will make you question: Why would civilization ever, ever, ever take root in a place like this? The answer is deceptively simple.
When humanity first entered the star system, after the Fall of Earth-that was, the race for resources began. Beaumonde was named after the insane—perhaps, retrospectively brilliant—mineral surveyor, Alexandre Beaumonde, who defied his own company on the hunch that there was something to be found on that hazardous planet of death.
And there was; Alexandre Beaumonde had the last laugh after discovering a planetary mother lode of useful minerals such as gold, silver, palladium and thorium. This was before he died of the black lung one day after his fiftieth birthday.
To avoid the toxic underground fumes and the ammonia oceans, mountaintop mining was/is the primary mode of unearthing precious minerals. Those mining facilities expanded clumsily across the mountain ranges, then rose vertically into tiered cities, before settling into the Beaumonde that we enjoy today: a planet driven by toxicity, with many different places to hide many different crimes.
"Enjoy" being a term of extreme relativity.
–
The city of Red Lotus, named for the mountain upon which it was built—as it was for most cities on Beaumonde—was taken up almost entirely by an aggressive industrial district. The whine of pneumatic tools and the the roar of mechanical construction vehicles created an ever-present layer of white noise that was impossible to escape unless you took shelter amongst the markets, where a harsh melding of professional and juvenile musical performances replaced it.
Mal didn't like Beaumonde, and of all the cities upon it, he hated Red Lotus the most—and between the industrial and market districts, he preferred the jackhammer sound of assembly lines over bad music.
"This place is messing with my gorram chi," Mal groaned, leading River, Jayne and Isaiah down another sidestreet—the last one before they'd reach the Maidenhead.
Jayne redirected himself to pass by a group of geisha standing in front of a brothel with paper fans waving in front of their faces. He marched up, held Vera up and flexed his muscles hard—then dramatically turned on his heels and rejoined the group, his face pale.
"What was that all about?" Mal asked.
Jayne shook his head. "Fellas shouldn't be allowed to dress that pretty. It's deceptive."
Mal snorted as he stifled a laugh. "Oh, Jayne, that's not so nice." He looked back. "Don't look now, but I think they were a might taken by you."
Jayne took a careful look over his shoulder and found the geisha waving their fingers after him. "Ain't right."
"Neither is your demeanor. Keep on your toes, the Maidenhead's just there." Mal turned to River. "Best keep your head down 'til we find the twins. Don't want anyone to get the feeling we'll be shooting up the place."
"Again?" River asked.
Mal glared at her. "Wasn't exactly my choice last time, was it?"
"Free will is an illusion. You've never had a choice." Her eyes went wide, and she lowered her head as her cheeks went red with embarrassment. "Sorry."
"Yeah, you'd better be," he snapped. "That's: Free will is an illusion, Captain. An Albatross has to know the pecking order, even when she's questioning my existence."
River smiled, but kept her head down.
They entered the Maidenhead Saloon with guns holstered, knowing they'd have to surrender them before they'd be allowed to enter. Mal had almost forgotten that little detail, but he was still fairly certain they could handle anything with River and Isaiah nearby. And if there was one thing Jayne excelled at in life, it was barroom brawling.
Actually, Mal amended, it was the only thing Jayne excelled at.
The music continued and the guards didn't budge as the companions entered, giving Mal the impression that they were either too scared to react, or the old guards had quit. The dancers continued making their rounds, the patrons continued drinking and the bartender didn't stop serving.
Best case scenario, so far.
Mal nodded to an empty booth. River and Isaiah immediately recognized the gesture and took a seat. Jayne, however, did not.
"What?" he asked, making a face.
Mal sighed. "We really do need to work out some secret codes for you, don't we?" He pointed to the booth. "屁股在座位."
"No call to get snooty," Jayne growled and took a seat in the booth.
Mal shook his head and addressed the bartender. "Qing, Ng-ka-pei."
"Yes, sir." Without making eye contact, he picked up a mug and held it beneath a tap until the precious brown liquor poured into it. "Anything else?"
Mal waited until he had the beer in his hand and had taken a good drink of it; he figured a negative reaction was incoming. "Yeah, I want to see the twins."
The bartender looked up, smiled. "They're not here."
"Yes, they are."
"No, they're not."
"Yes, huh."
"I assure you," the bartender said, his smile fading. "They're not here."
"Yes, they are so." Mal's eyes narrowed. "How long have you been working here?"
The bartender braced himself on the bar, holding his ground. "A few years now. What of it?"
"Nothing." Mal grinned back and took another drink. "Mind if I mess with the feed?" He pointed to the screen hanging near the booths. It was currently displaying some archery tournament that no one in the bar seemed particularly interested in.
The bartender shrugged and activated a small touchscreen dial on the bar. "Not at all."
"Fantastic." Mal bypassed the standard channel listing and tapped into the cortex. At the back of an advertisement listing, he found what he was looking for. "Kind friends, would you join me at the bar, please?"
River, Isaiah and Jayne approached, all of them looking a bit confused. Jayne especially.
"The hell do you want, Mal?" Jayne asked, true to form.
"Nothing!" Mal shouted across the room, drawing a few stares. "This bartender isn't being so cooperative, so I figured I'd mend broken bridges by introducing him to my good friends. One of whom, I'm sure he'll remember." Mal tugged River over in front of him and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I think these two might have met."
The bartender had been glaring at Mal the entire time, his finger likely edging for that panic button to call the guards over. Then his eyes carelessly drifted down and found River.
Mal almost laughed. He really did, as he watched the bartender's expression effortlessly cascade through each of the five stages of grief. And just before the man reached "acceptance," Mal tapped the final command on the dial, and the viewscreen hanging over the room clicked over to a very familiar, very colorful commercial—
"FRUITY OATY BAR! MAKE A MAN OUT OF A MOUSE!"
"Oh, shit." Jayne's hands fell down to cover his crotch.
"Stop it!" The bartender's hands were flying all over the place. "Please, don't—! Oh, god." He went to change the channel, but he found himself locked out of the controls.
Mal could be crafty when he felt like it.
"Christ alive! Please don't do this!"
Mal shrugged. "Gee-wiz, I don't know. You were kinda rude to me earlier." He swiveled River around so she could see the viewscreen. "Tell the nice man what you see, Little Albatross, and don't leave anything out." Her head slowly tilted to one side, and her eyes went as wide as saucers.
She slowly mouthed the word, "Miranda..."
"They're in the back!" the bartender shouted. "God, they're in the back! Please don't!"
Mal quickly turned River back around. Both of them were smiling. "Thanks for that." He clapped the bartender on the shoulder as the companions made their way into the backroom.
"Didn't much care for that di-version, Mal," Jayne murmured.
"Everything was under control." Mal leaned over to River. "All that kick 'em, shoot 'em stuff is out of your head, right?"
"You would be the first to know," she whispered, absently.
Mal glared at her. "I think I still remember that safe word. 'It's gorram... not... smeg?'"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Laughter for the chickens."
"That doesn't sound right either."
The companions passed through a curtain of wooden beads before they were in the office of the twins. They were playing a card game of some sort, and both looked up at the same time to see who was intruding. Likewise, both of them went pale.
"This is a... surprise." Fanty said. "If we had known we'd be entertaining guests, Fanty and I woulda swept up the place."
Mal crossed his arms. There were no guards around; they must have genuinely not been expecting anyone at all. "It's a pleasure," he said. "Now which one of you wants to get shot first?"
"Listen, hey?" Mingo said, holding up his hands. "I don't know what you think Mingo and me've done, but things don't have to go violent."
Mal's eye twitched. "He's Fanty, you're Mingo. If I have to do this dance with you again, I'm gonna shoot one of you just so people can tell you apart."
Mingo smiled. "As I said: no need for that, precious."
"Shiny." Mal took a seat at the table, leaving Jayne, River, and Isaiah forming a very intimidating wall of support around the room's only exit. "Now, I've already asked you once," he said, staring down Mingo, "and you know that I do not like docking on Beaumonde unless my money or my life are on the line. So far, both have been threatened a little, and I think one or both of you are in a cozy enough position to tell me why that is."
Fanty looked around. "Just because you find yourself getting shot at every now and then doesn't mean the 'Verse is out to get you, Reynolds. Gents in your line of work have to consider that their lead intake is going to increase drastically with every job pulled."
"And let's not forget what we told you last time, about your spacebound practices," Mingo added. "You run with you ought to fight, and fight when you ought to deal. And in the case of your little scuffle at Shilo Four, you fought when you shoulda buried your head in the sand. Fellows who receive Alliance love letters are not the sorts we deal with, Reynolds."
Mal reached beneath the table and found a bottle of liquor they'd tried to hide when he barged in. He cracked it open and stole a swig. "You know what's gorram funny about the Feds? They get under your skin even if you don't want 'em to, and they find better ways of doing it every so often."
He slammed the bottle on the table, cracking it a little. "I'm not gonna justify myself to them, and there's absolutely no way in hell I'll do anything similar for you. I've lost too many people out there, along with a great deal of my patience, and I don't care to lose anything else."
Mal upended the table, throwing cards and liquor around the room. Fanty and Mingo were about to run when they found an autorevolver being shoved in the general vicinity of their faces. "My crew's not gonna suffer because the two of you like to bite your tongue at the worst possible time." He pulled back the hammer. "Tell me what I'm into!"
"Okay!" Fanty and Mingo said in unison.
"One of you better start talking. Now."
"Someone came here asking for weapons," Mingo stammered. "Lots of them, and we had the best contacts in the system. The guy bought so much, we got away with five years' worth of earnings off of finder's fees alone."
Fanty continued. "A few months pass, and we get word that other people were getting bought out in the same way. Weapons, ammo and ship parts—in bulk. Some of our friends were able to retire off of what they made."
"So, the bad guys got good business," Mal interpreted. "What of it? What's that got to do with me and mine?"
Fanty laughed nervously. "Well, you'd be the one to know, wouldn't you, precious?"
"You know, people keep saying that. Kinda tired of being left out of the loop, so if you wouldn't mind..."
Mingo threw his arms up. "They were Browncoats, Mal. As best as we could tell, anyway."
So, at least that part of Isaiah's story was true. Mal didn't like the idea of finding him to be the trustable sort. "Last time I checked, there were quite a few people who fought for the Independents. Again, please, what's that got to do with me?"
"Faulty generalization, I suppose," Fanty explained. "Once we got word of how many were in on it, what they were doing, we just naturally assumed that Malcolm Reynolds, the man with a massive stick up his arse called 'the Unification War,' might have thrown his hat in with his fellow compatriots."
Mal lowered the revolver. "How many are in on it?"
"All of them? Minus one or two, here and there. You and Washburne might be the only two still on the sidelines."
"And you said they were planning something."
"Planned," Mingo corrected. "Past-tense. They planned something, and I think they're pretty damn well close to fast-tracking it."
Mal looked over to his companions. Isaiah was looking particularly disturbed at the moment.
Something had gone wrong.
"You boys know quite a bit about this," Mal said.
"Well, your average Browncoat isn't exactly the most subtle of creatures in the 'Verse," Fanty replied. "If we keep an ear out, we eventually hear it. I imagine your chum, Badger, did so, as well."
Mal grimaced, noticing the bits of luggage stacked in the corner. The twins weren't sticking around much longer either. "How much time have I got before the Browncoats follow through on this plan of theirs?"
"Oh, ah, well," Mingo checked his watch. "If our sources are correct, it started not a few seconds after you walked through that door."
Mal froze. There was just no way.
Fanty grabbed the bottle of liquor and raised it in a salute to his guests. "Cheers."
-Persephone-
-珀耳塞福涅-
It was just the way Monty had said it.
"Get. Off. This. Planet."
Inara had a chill creeping up her spine the entire ride back up to the surface. Though the lift was ridiculously small, she had no problem pacing back and forth inside of it. She lifted up her hand to bite at her nails, then stopped. When was the last time she had done that?
Not since she'd found herself a hostage of the Operative, used to lure Mal and Serenity into a trap. She had tried praying, but just ended up gnawing at her thumbs in nervousness; she'd known Mal would come to her rescue, even though that was the last thing she wanted him to do.
It had been a while, or just seemed like it. What happened at Shilo Four seemed like it had happened yesterday, and sometimes it seemed like a memory as distant as her childhood. Just like tragedy to transcend time and memory. No wonder it was so hard for her to get over it.
The lift ascended into the alleyway in the Sun Sun Wo District, the brakes engaged, and she stepped out into the relatively musty air of the city. She was almost near the landing pad when she felt something blow past her. It felt like a breeze, but the air went dead calm immediately after.
Then she was flat on her chest, pain darting up her arm and into her head. She felt a wave of heat envelope her as a terrible sound rose up in the distance. She was able to get on her feet, as difficult as that was, and pulled herself out of her daze just in time to watch a skyscraper on the horizon disappear into a cloud of flame.
