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Chapter Two: Transition
The infirmary felt unusually cold and sterile to Simon that morning. It wasn't just because of the standard disinfectant rub he'd given it recently, which he'd done mostly to get the tension out of his muscles. It was anxiety. He'd already finished packing up his medical kit with all the additional supplies he suspected they would need, so now he only had time to wait for them to get down to the surface.
Mal broke the news shortly after they'd changed course, but he'd made sure Book was there to give them the particulars. Jayne was a bit unhappy they were going to an Alliance-occupied world, and Simon was once more hit with that unsettling feeling of being in agreement with the mercenary, but he didn't outright object. They all understood how important this was to Shepherd Book.
That didn't mean Simon had to like it. They were all – or mostly, if one excepted Inara and Kaylee – wanted fugitives for one crime or another, so traveling to an Alliance-occupied planet under martial law wasn't the best of ideas. He'd confronted Mal with his concerns in the crew corridor, and as per the Captain's wont, Mal had led the doctor through half the ship during their discussion, which had ultimately amounted to "I'm the Captain, so we're going."
It didn't help that River and Kaylee apparently agreed.
River had been avoiding him for the last day they'd spent on the way to their destination, and Kaylee kept asking him for help with the engines or some other piece of equipment on the ship, when he wasn't taking care of his infirmary work. He was getting adept with mechanical work, though Simon knew he wasn't going to ever be as good with machines as Kaylee.
Now, as they got close to their destination, Simon found he had a moment between preparing to dive into danger and actually doing so, and he resolved to make use of it.
The door to River's room was closed, but he knew she was in there. Simon knocked and called her name, and there was no response, so he gently slid the door open.
River was stretched out in the opposite corner of the room. Making this especially impressive was that this was the ceiling corner. Her legs were braced against opposite walls, while one hand and her head were shoved up inside an opened ceiling panel. Loose brown hair hung down, her face out of sight.
"Um, River?" he asked. "What are you doing?"
"Preventative maintenance," she replied. "The ceiling is vibrating at a suboptimal level that is shaking several pipes that connect to the plasma vents. They will cause minor damage to the vent system in seventeen months if not properly aligned."
"I see," Simon said, following about half of what she was saying.
"Also, there are dust bunnies in the vents. I'm hunting them."
"Of course, that's much more important," Simon added, and her hair shifted, as if she were nodding. Suddenly, her legs shifted, her other arm flew up, and River hauled herself completely up inside the space over her room. He took a step into the room to follow her, but then her head and hair swung back down through the panel to face him.
"This will take a while," she said, eying him seriously while upside-down.
"Probably until we land," he guessed, and she nodded. He sighed, putting enough emphasis on it to make sure she knew he was joking, and sat down on her bed. "Fine. I can wait."
"You have doctor things to do," she protested, and disappeared up into the vent. Simon waited a moment before scanning around the room, and spotted the simple wooden scabbard against the wall. He stood up and walked over toward it. The moment his fingers touched it, he heard River move around somewhere up above, and her head swung back down. He picked up the sword, noting the U-shaped clamps attached to the mechanism on the scabbard, holding the weapon in place.
Her arm shot down toward the weapon, but Simon kept it back out of her reach with all the experience of a big brother, which earned him an annoyed glare.
A few moments of silence passed, and then that glare faded, replaced by something resembling guilt, and then River retreated back up into the crawlspace overhead. Simon waited for her to speak, but she said nothing, so he started instead.
"River, why didn't you come to me about this before?" he asked, sitting down on the bed, putting the weapon down beside him. A few seconds' silence passed, and then she emerged again, head and shoulders hanging down.
"It's not your business," she replied, and he blinked, taken a bit aback.
"River, I'm your brother," he said. "You could have told me you wanted to-"
"It would have made you worry," she said, and the faint smile faded to a frown, edged with a bit of tiredness. "And I'm an adult now. I am functional." She then withdrew back up into the ceiling, but her words echoed down through the panels. "I can make decisions for myself now."
Simon stared at the gap she'd disappeared into for a moment, and understood her meaning. She was developing properly into an adult, and Kaylee's words from before that he had to treat her like an adult instead of like a kid echoed back.
He'd said previously that she was a kid, and she just wanted to be a kid, but he understood that assessment was wrong. The fact that she'd left on her own to protect him and the rest of the crew on Silverhold was proof. The fact that she had to worry with her own biological cycle was more evidence. But the blade he was holding in his hand, locked by a security device she'd come up with on her own, confirmed it.
He stepped underneath the ceiling panel, and held the sheathed sword up. Her head poked around the edge, and she reached out to take the sword.
"You called it Laertes?" he asked as her fingers closed around the blade, and she pulled it up into the tiny crawlspace.
"After my brother," she said, and leaned over the edge. Her hand reached down and tousled his hair. "You are my Laertes."
Simon couldn't suppress his smile. He wanted to say more, to talk to his unusually distant sister, but the silence that followed was too pleasant to ruin.
"Hey, Doc," yell a voice behind him, in the hallway.
The Captain had a talent for ruining moments.
"Yes?" Simon said, turning to Mal, as he stepped into sight by the door.
"We're five from atmo, time to get ready for the big deception," Mal replied. He blinked, glancing around the room, and then looked up at the open ceiling panel, where River's hair dangled in view.
"Preventative maintenance," Simon explained as River's head emerged and she grinned at the Captain.
"Okay," Mal said, nodding because he didn't have the words or the time for the situation. "Come on, let's do the thing."
Everyone on board agreed that there would be some difficulty getting past inspection once they docked at Victoria. However, trouble hit them a little bit early, as Serenity descended toward the moon, framed by the oily swirls of the gas giant Zeus behind it. As they approached, Wash caught sight of the immense specter of an Alliance cruiser looming over the moon, and a trio of smaller Alliance warships beyond. A cloud of sensor contacts told him that more than a thousand smaller military vessels – troop transports, fighter groups, supply vessels, and light frigates – were moving across this region of space.
An equal number of civilian ships were also vying for control of the same airspace, but they gave the military-controlled zones a wide berth, and Wash quickly found out why when his nav computer chirped. On the screen, he saw a series of sections of space marked by red and blue boundaries, indicating no-fly zones. A section of space lit up with a flashing green marker, indicating the areas he was cleared to pass thorough, uploaded automatically by some authority or other that he had no interest in flouting.
"No one's shooting at us yet?" came Mal's voice as he moved into the cockpit.
"Disappointing," Wash replied, trying to sound like he meant it. "They didn't even challenge us. Port control just gave me a flight path."
"Just because it's under martial law doesn't mean folks won't want to trade," Mal replied, and glanced back as Simon stepped onto the bridge, fiddling with the earpiece Mal had given him. Mal had one of his own, and through the radio he could hear voices in the cargo bay.
"You're certain this will work?" Wash asked, to which Mal nodded.
"Doc came up with the plan," he explained. "Established criminal genius and whatnot."
"It relies on simple psychology," Simon explained. "Reactionary adherence to authority is natural among Alliance officials. Act like you've got authority, and they're more willing to do as you request."
"Right, and the most authoritative soul on the boat is Zoë, followed by Book and Inara," Wash said, nodding.
"Hey," Mal said quickly.
"Most authoritative who with unpunchy urges," Wash corrected, and Mal nodded.
"Better." Mal glanced to the Doctor. "You know an awful lot about making Alliance folks hop to your tune."
"Yes," Simon replied, grunting as he worked on the radio in his ear. "I do." He didn't say anything else, and he didn't need to. Simon had a hell of a spine on him, they knew, and Wash suspected that his efforts at saving his sister had taught him a lot of the skills he'd turned to their benefit.
As they spoke, the Firefly had continued to descend toward the planet. A formation of fighters maneuvered past, each bristling with enough firepower to shatter the freighter to pieces, but paid them no attention.
"We could have gone with my idea," Wash mused quietly. "No need to risk the ship landing."
Wash's idea, in this case, had been to park Serenity in orbit and send down the shuttle with just Book on it, plus whoever wanted to go with him. That was quashed when it turned out nearly everyone was volunteering to go with the Shepherd to help him investigate.
"I prefer having you on the ground," Mal said. "In case we need air support."
"In-atmosphere's no fly zones are enforced with orbital fire support," Wash replied. "I don't know how well I could back you up once you leave the areas around the space port."
"Better restricted than stuck in orbit," Mal replied. "And we couldn't smuggle guns down to the surface on the shuttle."
That was another issue: restricted firearms. Since the planet was under martial law, public display of guns was frowned strongly upon by the Alliance military, where it wasn't outright banned. But if Book was right on the folks who might have perpetrated the murders, they'd need as much firepower as they could muster. It would be harder to smuggle guns down to the moon's surface in a shuttle with passengers instead of a cargo ship carrying highly fake medical supplies.
The floating spires of the Alliance cruiser were now uncomfortably close in the viewports, which made Simon shy back a bit. A single telescope aimed at the bridge hooked up to some facial recognition software would ruin their day. Nothing of the sort happened, though, because as they well knew, the Alliance was too busy suppressing the unrest on the planet below to check every single ship passing through. Simply tapping into the communications channels proved that; a tidal wave of encrypted radio transmissions were rolling up from the planet as more than a three quarters of a million Alliance troops, police, and private security contractors tried to keep the world under control.
It wasn't enough, not by a long shot, and they knew it. The Alliance's force projection out this far was limited without a major military mobilization. Fully suppressing planetary unrest required ten times that many troops, which they just didn't have.
That was what they were counting on.
Serenity descended into the atmosphere, and dropped toward one of the several major cities on Victoria's surface, a place called Olivet. Olivet was like a big brown and red blanket dropped over a beach ball, consisting of a mixture of wooden, brick, and clay buildings, most not more than three or four stories tall, sprawling around a tall hill in the middle of the city, where the spaceport was established. The streets, if one could call them that, were a mish-mash of wide boulevards, narrow alleys, and everything in between, broken and twisted in all directions.
"I can see how this place would suck up an occupying army," Wash muttered.
"Urban fighting in that place would be a nightmare," Mal agreed. "No one bothering us?"
"No one's noticed us," Wash replied. "I'm suspicious that they don't even have a port authority down there."
That suspicion faded as Serenity descended toward a cleared spot in the docking facility at the top of the hill. It was a wide, circular landing bay of brown and white concrete designed to contain the explosion of a ship's drive engine, and waiting in the sheltered exit of the landing pad were a half dozen figures in armor and the familiar gray-blue uniforms of Alliance military.
Mal hurried down to the cargo bay, where Jayne, Zoë, and Book were waiting with a pallet of crates Mal used for smuggling contraband past customs, loaded onto the mule.
"What I don't get," Jayne was saying, "is why we ain't using the your special ID card to get us past customs."
"It'll draw attention," Book replied. "I do not want to draw attention to this."
"Can't you just order 'em to not say nothin'?" Jayne asked, to which Book shook his head.
"It doesn't quite work that way," he replied. "Too much oversight." Jayne grunted, but said nothing further as he climbed into the mule's driver seat.
"We good to go?" Mal asked as he approached Zoë, who nodded.
"Yes sir," she replied, and tapped her ear. "Coming through loud and clear."
"Alright, let's do this," Mal said, and stepped across the bay to slap the airlock button. The exterior ramp dropped and the inner doors opened, and a rush of too-warm-for-the-season air came into the bay, along with the familiar myriad stenches of docking bays in a squalor-ridden city.
And then Mal got a good look at something he rarely got a chance to see lately: Zoë taking charge.
"Come on, Dutch, get that thing moving!" she yelled, and her voice carried an authority that made Mal want to instinctively disobey due to his natural contrariness, as she walked down the ramp. "We've got people dying, I need this stuff delivered three days ago!"
The mule started moving, only it was moving directly toward the pair of Alliance officers and their armed escort. Mal noticed the troops' harried expressions, and those doubled over when they realized the crew of the ship they'd come to meet was already in a rush.
"Excuse me," Mal quickly apologized, moving to meet them as Zoë led the mule down the ramp, apparently not giving a damn about the presence of a port authority.
"Are you Captain-"
"Buck. Yes, I am," Mal said quickly. "Sorry, the Doctor's in a bit of a rush to get this stuff moving."
"I can understand that," the harried officer said, "I just need documentation and to inspect-"
"Captain Buck, is this port authority?" Zoë barked, walking over. Her aggressive gait and the look on her face made Mal take an instinctive step backwards.
"Yes ma'am, we need-"
"Documents," she snapped, handing over a pair of sheets of paper. She didn't say anything else, and instead let the officers check the papers authenticating a medical delivery to Victoria – documents forged by Jayne and Simon, of course.
This was the important part, where they had to play everything right. If she pushed the authoritative impatience too far, it might trigger the opposite reaction they wanted from the Alliance officers, which was to quietly agree and move along.
"The documents don't specify what medicine is being delivered," the officer said, looking up. Zoë sighed, closing her eyes, and rubbed the side of her temple, as if she was having a migraine.
In reality, she was listening to Simon speaking through the radio link.
"Tritovalin, isoprovaline, and pascalin-D," she said, and grabbed one of the documents. She pointed at a line, listing the medicines' names. "Right there."
"I apologize, Doctor ," the inspector said. "Where is this medicine being delivered-"
Another flash of annoyed migraine, and Zoë snatched the documents away again, and jabbed her finger at another point.
"Right there," she said. "Rustlung infection from terraforming operations. Antibiotics for seventeen different types of infection, same location. General surgical supplements and painkillers. Same location." She handed it back, with just enough migraine –generated annoyance to get the point across, and then looked back to the mule.
"Dutch, what the hell are you doing!" she yelled, and started off after the mule.
"Is there, ah, anything else, gentlemen?" Mal asked a couple of seconds later.
"No, I don't think so," the officer said quickly, as Zoë started berating Jayne loudly and colorfully for his apparent incompetence. "Your vessel is cleared here for four days' berth time."
"Thanks," Mal said, nodding and plastering on his best fake smile, and the port authority troops hurried to leave before the enraged, pregnant doctor with the migraines could further berate them for their incompetence.
Of course, Simon and Jayne had worked hard to make the documents difficult to read while still fitting appearances, just to make sure they could make the Alliance officer look like idiots who couldn't read a shipping manifest. It was kind of frightening what those two could do when they worked together.
"They're gone," Mal called as soon as the officers were out of sight, and the masquerade ended immediately. "Alright, let's get everything ready to go. I'll go rustle up some transport, soon as I know where we're heading." He glanced to Book, who was coming down the ramp.
"You do know where we're heading, right?"
There wasn't a local communications terminal in the bay, like there were on most planets with port authorities like Persephone. Instead, Mal and Book headed for a central terminal in the port's communications center, which was a big, domed building in the middle of the facility. It was packed with ship captains and crew either trying to register their ships, get maintenance work done, contact their buyers or sellers, and do all the other necessary work that needed to be done at a port. The two men found their way to an unused terminal sandwiched between a few service desks, and the pulled up the global map.
"You know where this village is?" Mal asked, to which Book shook his head.
"The Alliance officer I spoke to didn't give me coordinates, or even a name," he said. "But I think I know the general area where it might be."
"Yeah?" Mal asked, looking up and scanning the comms center. He spotted a pair of Alliance troops moving through the room, but otherwise there were only a few local port security officers and a whole lot of spacers, ubiquitous in their mixture of long coats, open vests, or rugged jackets and the abundance of personal sidearms they carried in spite of martial law.
"Father Forthill had established a church here, a mid-sized abbey," Book mused as he started searching the map, typing in names and coordinates. "A bit off the beaten path, but it is in the area where they said the village had been located. It might do us to go there first, get some information."
"Good idea," Mal said, agreeing. "Might we could use that place to-"
"Malcolm Reynolds!"
A gigantic bear arm slapped down on his shoulder and spun him around. For half a second, Mal let out an unmanly "Gaaaah!" of panic before his brain caught up and recognized the voice yelling his name, as the man towered over him.
"Monty!" he gasped in surprise, a moment before he was smothered half-to-death by the huge smuggler's bear hug. He took a breath once he was released, and grinned like an idiot. "What are you doing here?"
"Grounded," the huge said, drawing the word out. Mal gave him a once over, noting that his semi-balding head still held that long mane of wild hair, and his beard was growing back to respectable lengths.
"That's crap," Mal said, surprised. "Alliance?"
"Trying to find something to move, actually," Monty said, shrugging. "The Feds are limiting what we can carry. Can't find anything worth the fuel to lift off this rock."
"So you're just hanging around this dustball waiting for prospects?" Mal asked.
"Hell no!" Monty said, and then grinned. "We're getting drunk as hell, that's what we're doing!"
Mal couldn't help but laugh. Monty may not have been the brightest pirate out there, but he was competent at his job, and more importantly, he knew how to enjoy himself.
"Also, I managed to . . . Well, got my hands on this special Alliance charter . . . ."
"What kind of charter?" Mal asked, curious.
"Charter that lets me bypass customs here," Monty said with a grin. "I'm a fine, upstanding citizen. Apparently."
Mal had to chuckle again, because he knew exactly what Monty was doing with this charter he'd gotten. He had no idea how his old friend had managed to weasel something like that, but Mal was going to have to see about looking into getting one for himself.
"How did you get that?"
"A little bribe here, a little work there," Monty said, and shrugged. "Did some favors for a fella on Greenleaf. Got him some stuff he couldn't find otherwise, and he gave me a charter that lets me bypass customs on certain planets.
"What about you, what are you doing here?" Monty then said, and added a swift backslap as punctuation.
"Personal matter," Mal said, and gestured to Book, who was engrossed with the terminal. "Helping one of my crew with some trouble he's having."
"I can understand that," Monty said. "This whole planet is going nuts. Never really did buckle down under the Alliance, and after that Miranda business it's just gotten worse." He paused, and then spoke quietly. "Just got done running some weapons to these folks. Using my special charter. Paid a good fortune."
"Well, that's reason enough to clear out of here," Mal suggested, also quietly. "Not a good idea to stick around after moving contraband like that."
"Yeah, we're probably pulling out in the next day or so, if we can't find any prospects," Monty added.
"Captain," Book said, cutting in on the conversation. "Pardon me, but I found what we were looking for."
"Alright," Mal said. "Well, gotta get moving again, Monty," he added, and the big smuggler's hand engulfed his.
"Hey, you need me, Mal, I'll probably be here in port," he said. "You take care!"
"You too, Monty! Don't get into too much trouble!" The old friends split apart, and as they walked away, Mal turned toward Book. "You know where we're headed?"
"Yes," Book said. "Golden Phoenix Abbey of the Resurrection of the Son."
"Mouthful of a name."
"Forthill always favored extra syllables," Book agreed. "There's a train station about five kilometers from the abbey, and the abbey is about three kilometers east of the village."
"Sounds good," Mal said. "Let's rustle up a train, see if we can get a cargo box for the mule."
"We're taking the mule?"
"I ain't walkin'," Mal replied, and Book nodded in agreement.
The crew assembled in the bay an hour later, and Mal went over the basics of the plan.
"We'll load up the mule with all the weapons we can spare that those who are going can use," Mal said. "We have no idea what the tyen-shiao-duh we're going to be dealing with is, so we're going in heavy. You want to go with me and Shepherd Book, you're welcome, but if you want to stay with the ship, that's fine too."
"Like hell we're letting' you two run out alone," Jayne grunted. "I'm goin'."
"Me too," Zoë said, her tone not brooking any argument.
"I will too," Simon said. "If there are any survivors, they'll need medical examination." He left out the fact that the others might need medical assistance too, but that didn't need to be spoken.
"So am I," Inara added. Mal was about to object, but doing so would make him trip over his own words. And besides, Inara was a decent hand in a fight. She'd proven herself before, and he wouldn't deny her.
Mal glanced to River, who said nothing. She was holding Laertes in one hand, and that was all that he needed to know.
"If Simon's goin', so'm I!" Kaylee added.
"Yeah, me too," Wash finished.
"No, not for you two," Mal said quickly. Before they could protest, he continued. "I need someone to watch the ship, as I don't trust this town, and I want a tall card in my sleeve." Wash and Kaylee were about to protest anyway, but their arguments died before they could speak. Mal continued on in the silence.
"We're going to be taking the mule there, but I've arranged for some extra transport to the church, since I figured most of us were going and the mule only holds five. Train leaves in a couple of hours, so get what you're expecting you'll need out there together for the trip."
The train itself was eerily familiar, at least to Mal and Zoë. It had that dim-lit, stuffy interior of most hovertrains that operated away from high, civilized life, and both the seats and the walls had seen much better days. At least they didn't have Alliance troops shooting at them this time. In fact, with the exception of Serenity's crew, the train was almost empty.
"Don't usually have much folks going this far out anyway," said the train's engineer, a man who, in the nautical days on Earth That Was, would have been called "salty." Out here, he was just "dusty." He was thickset yet clean-shaven, and wore an orange cap with some kind of enormous black goggles over his eyes. "Now there ain't nobody taking the passenger trains with the war going on."
Mal and Zoë, along with the rest of the crew, had claimed the first car, which was fine by the train's engineer, who was standing in the doorway running to the engine car. Apparently, the thing ran so smoothly he didn't need to keep a constant watch on it. Zoë and Mal were listening to the dusty engineer drawl along while the others lounged about. Book and Inara were chatting among themselves, Jayne was engaging in his usual obsessive maintenance of their weapons, and Simon was keeping River from sticking her head out the window.
"You heard any news from out the way we're going?" Mal asked, sitting on the table by the booth next to the front door. The engineer shrugged.
"I run some folks for the Blue Sun hydroponics facilities out there, every month or so," he said. "Haven't had to do that for the last two months though. Last group I took out there was a bit . . . ." he frowned. "Couldn't remember much about 'em." He scratched his chin. "I know some folk out there were taking about the Alliance sending a mercenary company in to keep the locals under control."
"Mercs," Zoë echoed, glancing to Mal, who nodded.
"Got any idea how many?" Mal asked.
"Few hundred, what I heard," the engineer said. "I didn't bother about it. Not my way to mess with mean hubbards like that. Had enough of that during the war."
"Fought in the war?" Mal asked, and the engineer shrugged.
"Militia, fighting pirates mostly," he said. "Didn't see much fighting with either side of the war, not until the Browncoats lost and the Alliance came out this way." He grunted. "Victoria never liked knuckling down under anybody, Independent or Alliance."
And Miranda is giving them an opportunity to make life difficult for the Alliance, Mal mused.
"So, why ya'll heading out there?" the engineer asked. "Ain't a safe place for a small group like yourselves."
"Friend of ours died," Zoë explained. "Come out to pay respects."
"You're going a long way to visit a grave," the engineer said. "Got my sympathies."
"Yeah, thanks," Mal said, nodding. He suspected they'd be filling some more graves before this was over with.
There were a pair of ATVs waiting at the station, which Mal had rented ahead of time. They were the best transport he could get out here and, per his duty as Captain, he took one of the bumpy, uncomfortable vehicles as his ride. Jayne reluctantly volunteered for the second, muttering under his breath about their cheap-as-hell Captain.
"You coulda walked," Mal replied as the rest of the crew got the mule out of the cargo car, moving it down a ramp that extended from the side of the compartment. Once they were loaded up with their crates of supplies and baggage, they started moving. The new mule could handle a lot more weight, but didn't have the seats or the power to handle all seven of them plus their gear.
The dusty stretches of recently-terraformed land rolled past, the landscape and ecology still settling in after having been introduced a generation ago. With the exception of the small train station and a few wooden cabins springing up around it to service the minimal commerce passing through, there was little sign of civilization. They followed a long, packed-dirt road running north toward the jagged peaks of several particularly tall mountains, occasionally spotting windmills or solar panels in the distance. At one point, they noted a large solar farm, with three square kilometers of reflective panels set up on a particularly flat stretch of ground, but no other signs of humanity.
"Preacher, you sure this church of yours is out here?" Zoë asked as they passed into the foothills, which were gradually rising into more rocky terrain.
"Absolutely," Book said. "It's a bit off the beaten path, but that's what Forthill preferred."
The road ran through a trail heading into the mountains, and as they entered the rockier regions, some more vegetation began to make itself known. They continued along, following what looked like a natural cleft in the ancient stone, and as Serenity's crew rounded a bend in the path, they came into sight of a wide canyon in the rock, where the "Golden Phoenix Abbey of the Resurrection of the Son" resided.
The abbey was set into the canyon, whose walls stretched out wide to either side, nearly a kilometer across. It was almost like a fortress, a square of tall, gray stone walls matching the landscape around it, each corner dotted with a stone cross. They were high enough up that they could see the outer walls ringed a courtyard, and each corner of the abbey was actually a building, will the walls forming the connections between them. An enormous chapel sat in the center of the courtyard, a tall spire rising up above the landscape. Stained glass windows were apparent in each of the buildings making up the abbey, and a series of breezeways ran through the courtyard. Green vegetation – a few tilled fields, a small orchard, and some wild forest – surrounded the imposing gray structure, and the road ran across the distance, cleaving a narrow path through the young woods.
As they drew closer, the crew could see figures in the fields - workers tending to the crops. It quickly became apparent that the approaching visitors had been spotted in turn, as one of the workers pointed at the approaching vehicles. Another turned and hurried inside the abbey, but he wasn't running like someone bringing news.
He was running with that desperate, frightened gait of someone trying to bring a warning.
"That ain't like to be a good sign," Mal murmured, voice lost under the working engines of their vehicles. He gestured for Zoë to move the mule up toward the road alongside the workers in the fields, who by now were close enough that they could make out the nearest men's expressions. Mal could tell they were wary and alert, though they were all wearing work clothes and none of them were apparently armed.
A little closer, and Mal could see the white collars they all wore, indicating men of the Book, and now they were all looking up, watching the newcomers. Mal ordered them to stop about quarter of a kilometer away from the abbey, which put them about twenty meters away from the nearest worker, who was walking toward them.
Mal dismounted, along with Shepherd Book and Jayne, while the others stayed on the mule. He walked toward the man approaching, a middle-aged priest with speckles of silver in dark hair and the weathered features of a man who'd spent most of his life on the Border. They stopped about five meters apart, the priest regarding Mal and his crew warily.
"Hi there," Mal said after a few seconds, smashing the tension.
"Hello," greeted the priest. "What brings you folks out here?"
Mal was about to speak, but Book cut in, and the Captain was glad to let him take over the conversation.
"We're here to play respects to a friend who recently passed away," the Shepherd said, and stepped forward, extending his hand. "Shepherd Derrial Book." The other priest regarded him for a moment, even while taking his hand.
"Father McCauliffie," the other priest replied, and then smiled a little bit. "You've come an awful distance for a funeral, and no one's died here recently."
The way he said those last words sounded a tiny bit uncomfortable to Mal, who'd been bamboozled by the best liars in the 'Verse. McCauliffie wasn't among that lot.
"His name was Forthill," Book said. McCauliffie's eyes widened, and his breathing paused for a moment.
That was all Mal needed.
"Look, Father," he said, stepping forward, but quietly signaling for Jayne to stay put. "My name is Captain Malcolm Reynolds. We've heard some things that have happened out these ways, and we know what happened to Father Forthill. We're not here to cause trouble or nothing. We're here to find out what happened, and see to it them that did this pay up."
McCauliffie glanced back and forth between Book and the Captain, and Mal could see he was weighing their words, their appearance, and whatever he knew about the situation. Finally, he turned to Book.
"Shepherd Book," he said, "John spoke of you sometimes. He said you came from the Westbrook Abbey."
"Southdown," Book replied immediately, correcting him. "That was where I stayed at for several years."
McCauliffie nodded, and looked down at the ground for a second. He whispered something, and then looked up.
"I get the feeling we can trust you folks," he said. "Let's go inside, Shepherd. We can help you look into this."
It was a few minutes later that the mule and their ATVs were parked inside a small garage, which was more of a canvas-covered carport than an actual building. A couple of heavy-duty ground-cars were parked in there too, enough to carry a dozen people. Mal led the rest of his crew inside the modest wooden double-doors of the abbey, and walked into a cool, open breezeway of that slate-gray stone the buildings were made out of. Father McCauliffie led them down the breezeway, and the crew followed silently until they reached the chapel in the middle of the courtyard.
McCauliffie opened the doors, and the first thing Mal saw was the barrel of a rifle, mostly because it was pointed at his face. He jerked to a halt, but didn't move any further; getting a gun shove din his face was common enough. This didn't rattle him, anymore than the bearded man with hard arms and weathered knuckles holding the weapon. A second later, after McCauliffie whispered to the man, the old bolt-action rifle – a conventional slugthrower, not a charge-shot weapon like Mal's crew carried – was lowered.
"I apologize," McCauliffie said. "Please, step inside."
Mal walked inside, hand not-quite resting on his pistol, but it came away as soon as he entered the chapel and saw what was inside.
There were maybe fifty people in there, about a dozen men, and mostly women and young girls, and a few children. Most of them were bedraggled, dressed in button-down cotton shirts or long cotton dresses, hand-made clothes suiting out-of-the-way villagers in this season on this world. All of the men were armed, most of them were battered and weary, and to the man, they were terrified.
"It's okay, everyone," McCauliffie said, his voice reassuring. He then turned toward Mal and Book. "Captain, Shepherd, you said you came here to find Father Jonathan Forthill."
He gestured to the people behind him.
"These souls were the last to see him alive. They were the only ones who survived the attack on their village."
"You're protecting them," Mal said, noting more than one of the armed men were wearing priest collars.
"Yes," McCauliffie said. "We know that the men who attacked their homes will come again. Victoria is a warzone, Captain, and you and yours just walked into one of the battlefields."
-
Author's Notes: This chapter was a little shorter than usual, if only because it became a lot bigger than I'd estimated, and thus necessitated being split into two chapters lest it become just too damned big. So as a result, the action is going to be delayed a bit. This story is going to have a lengthy build-up before we get to the real action; there's at least one more chapter, probably two, before things really pick up.
As some of you have probably noted, there's a point to that file decryption going on at the top of each chapter. It will become apparent what relevance that has later. Also, as a preventative measure and a favor to other readers, I would ask that anyone who does figure out what is going on in this story in future chapters to please not spoil it in the reviews until this particular story arc is over. Feel free to speculate, but this is sort of a mystery arc, and if you think you've figured it out, PM me. I'll give you an idea of how close you are :P
Until next chapter....
