Chapter: 2
The hatch to the scanner bay opens, and enters Mal to see Zoe kneeling by a console running a diagnostic. He stands silent, looking at his first mate. Sure she was an attractive woman, any man would think that. But their relationship goes back to the War for Independence. That was as far as the ventured. Anything else, would had made things complicated in times of a crisis.
But Mal couldn't say he never thought about venturing farther beyond the realm of their professional relationship. He would never admit that to a soul. Not even Shepherd. But Zoe was more valuable to him than any other way. Any ways, his heart was off-limits to anyone. Or at least that was what he kept telling himself.
"It just gets in the way," Mal had told Zoe when she announced she and Wash were getting married. "But it's your life. Just don't say I didn't warn you."
"If I'm not mistaken, isn't that Kaylee's job?" Mal said as he handed Zoe a cup of coffee.
"She asked if I could fill in for her. While she slept in."
"Oh, I'm sure they're sleeping in. How long have you been up?"
"A couple of hours, sir."
"And remind me, what's wrong with the scanners? I must had missed the memo."
"Just a routine diagnostic, sir. Serenity's running smoothly," she replied as she took a sip of her coffee and continued with her work waving a diagnostic wand over a circuit board.
There is silence as Mal stands, looking at the terminal beside him, listening to the hypnotic sound of the Serenity's deep hum emitting from the engine reactor. That deep hum keeping them all alive. The deep hum that was the only comforting thing or a crew to hear on a boat in the Fringe.
Mal knew what it was like to not hear the constant hum of the Serenity's heart pumping. It happened when the boat ran out of gas as Mal referred to it and the crew abandoned the ship. But Mal refused to leave his ship. If he was going to die, he would die with his ship.
And die he nearly did.
"I don't know, how do you and Wash do it?
"Do what, exactly, sir?" She replied as she continued to tests.
"You know, that."
"That? What's that," she stopped scanning and looked at Mal. "Oh, that!"
"I mean were on a tin can in the middle of space, in a vacuum where sound doesn't travel. Aren't you afraid someone will hear?"
Zoe laced the wand down and took another sip of her coffee. "Would this unusual conversation be in any relation to our new residential lovers, Sir?
"What makes you say that? I don't know what you're a talkin' about. It's not like we don't talk about sex and other, matters that--ah--"
"This is not a conversation that we have, sir."
"Okay, damn. Yes, it's about Kaylee and Simon."
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Zoe requested as she got up and dusted her pants off.
"Since when did you need permission to speak freely?"
"Old habits, sir. If I may say so, you look like a father giving away his daughter."
"I'm not sure I'm catching on," Mal said, hiding the expression of his face in his coffee mug.
"Kaylee's young, and your afraid of her getting hurt." Zoe paused as she took another sip of her coffee. "This you special?"
"Yep," Mal nodded.
"Tastes like dung, sir."
"See if I ever go out of the way to give you a boost." "Back to the conversation. We've been on this boat for two years. Same crew, bonds are formed. And I'm not the only one to see that a bond has been formed between you, and Kaylee."
"I see your point. Simon's the last person I think that would hurt her. But---even if he did, he shouldn't. If he knew what was good for him."
"My point exactly. Kaylee's been without a father for a good while, and you've unofficially has stepped into the capacity. Except for the time you insulted her when she wanted that dress.
"Something I think no one will ever let me go off."
"It's totally understandable that you see Kaylee as a daughter you never had. And--"
"Wait just a rutting minute. Since when did you get a psychology degree? I thought I knew everything that happened on this boat." Mal paused as he took a sip of his mug. "Even if I didn't want to know everything."
"Captain, calm down, sir. Our dear doctor's probably the best bet for Kaylee."
"He's from money, and Kaylee's a drifter like the all of us."
"Love finds a way, sir. And whether you want to believe it, it will find you."
"Oh! Oh no! I'd rather go against an Alliance cruiser, hell even the Reavers before I go through that again."
A shocked expression formed on Zoe's face. "Why, Sir, I never knew you--"
"Just because we fought side by side knee deep in death, and serve on the same boat, doesn't mean you know everything about me, Zoe."
"I see. Well, we learn something new everyday, don't we."
"How's the scanners going?"
"I'm almost finished with the diagnostic."
"As soon as your done, get something to eat. Hell, sleep in. It's not like we're up to anything important today.
"Yes, sir."
Malcolm began to walk off until the comm built in the wall chirped and Wash's voice came over the device. "Mal, come in. Oh Fearless Leader, please respond."
"What is it, Wash?
"I've got a distress signal coming in through the A-band. It's from a colonial boat, the Rising Star. They're---"
"Rising Star?" Mal interrupted with a tone of familiarence to his voice as he finished his coffee mug and placed it on the terminal.
"You know it, sir?" Zoe asked.
"Last time I checked, that was Phil Chamber's boat."
"I'm not familiar with him?" Zoe announced as she finished her coffee.
"He and I go long ways before the war. Wash, set in an intercept course."
" Does anyone remember the last time we answered a distress signal?" Wash asked with silence over the comms. "Okay, away we go!" Wash narrated as he entered the coordinates in his terminal and the Serenity rolled off her axis and sped off in a new direction. "And hope no Reavers," he breathed as the stars stopped shifting.
"Belay that sleep in command," Mal announced as he turned around and reached for the hatch handle to open it. As the hatch was halfway open, Zoe cleared her voice.
"Forgetting something?" Zoe inquired as she stood inert.
"What?" Mal asked, shrugging his shoulders.
Zoe pointed to the terminal where Mal paced his coffee mug.
"I'll get it later," Mal said.
"Sure, like I haven't heard that one before."
"What?" Mal said as he stepped forward to Zoe and reached for the coffee mug. "You're a full time soldier, part time shrink and maid?"
"I do what I can, sir."
"I know," Mal smiled as they walked out of the bay with his coffee mug in his hand.
They entered the corridor, and Mal closed the hatch behind Zoe as they walked side by side forward to the bridge.
"Does anyone remember the good old days, when we were thieves, runners?" He asked as they reached a ladder that led up. "Not exactly saving the day.
"Those were the good days, sir." Zoe said as she climbed up the ladder first with Mal following her.
The good old days, Mal thought as Zoe stepped off the ladder onto the bridge with Mal not far behind her.
"Course laid in and we are on our way," Wash announced as Mal walked over to the comm terminal.
"Everyone up and at it. Get to your stations. We got a ship in distress." His voice echoing throughout he entire boat as it pushed forward to the unknown on the horizon.
Chapter: 3
In the cargo hold, Shepherd took up position behind the punching bag as Jayne came at it with a series of right and left hooks with ferocity. Shepherd could se in the eyes of the mercenary he was in his killing zone.
The intra-comm buzzed and Mal's voice came over the speakers built into the ceiling of the cargo bay stopping Jaycee's frenzy and giving Shepherd a moment to catch his breath from the assaults.
"Everyone up and at it. Get to your stations We got a ship in distress." Mal announced before the link was cut.
Jayne's eyes grew wide as he leaned around the punching bag to look at Book. "Did he just say a ship in distress?"
"Indeed he did," Shepherd said as he reached for his towel and patted the sweat from his forehead.
"Oh man, another distress signal. Anyone remember what happened the last time we answered a distress?"
"Distinctly," Book remarked as he gulped his bottle of water in one swallow.
"Still gives me the creeps." Jayne said as he reached for his water and drank from the bottle. "And I don't much care what you say, Book. Them Reavers ain't men."
"We're all men." Book said as he placed his hand on Jaycee's shoulder. "Some just chose to drift from that path."
The event happened two years ago when the Serenity answered a distress signal from a hauler. When they got there, the hauler was a drift and abandoned. Or so they believed when they found a boy in his teens had survived the slaughter that was the works of Reavers. Group of men who had been out in the stars for so long that their humanity was lost. A cannibalistic nomad gathering that no one had ever lived to tell the tale of their carnage first hand and survive.
Jayne and Shepherd entered the corridor just as Kaylee set foot on the deck with Simon following her. This sight of the two leaving her cabin such early in the morning caused Jayne to look, in fact stare.
Shepherd's reaction was a little more civilized and polite as he passed the two lovers. He looked dead in Simon's eyes who tried to look away embarrassingly as if a kid who got his hand caught in the cookie jar. Book's right eye brow raised slightly as they continued forward.
Oh, I'm going to hell, Simon thought as Kaylee reached for his hand and they both walked forwards to the bridge. He looked into the eyes of his lover. May not be so bad, as they reached the bridge.
"Tell me you just didn't announce ship in distress, Cap'? That's what, three in the last two months?"
Mal stood before the terminal, leaning forward as he looked out the cockpit as the group settled down behind him. "Times change, Jayne." He straightened his back and turned about leaning against the terminal.
"What's wrong with her?" Kaylee inquired as she stood close to Simon. This act that everyone could see.
"I don't know, never got that far. Wash, what's wrong with her?"
Wash leaned back in his seat and swiveled around. "Oh, I forgot to ask. No, that's not right. They never said. But the weird thing is, they called us by name. And the captain want's to speak with you."
"That'd be Chambers, alright," Malcolm remarked.
"Chambers?" Simon asked. A name he had never heard of before spoken by the captain.
"An old buddy of the Captain's back before the war." Zoe announced.
"Yeah, he went to smuggle guns for the Independents, and I stayed behind and fought. Smart there, wasn't I?"
"Well if you didn't stay behind, you never would had met my lovely wife. Hell, if you didn't stay behind, I would never had met her."
"I'm glad my sacrifice was worth your happiness."
"So am I," Wash responded as he went back to his controls.
"What's our ETA?"
"I'll get us there in forty minutes. Hope there's a good parking place."
"Let's get moving, people. Doc, you ready the infirmary. Kaylee, get what tools you may need. Jayne, do, whatever it is you do. And Shepherd, go pray or something."
The group dispersed, leaving Ma, Zoe, and Wash on the bridge. Mal looked at the group from behind, watching them leave the bridge as he noticed Kaylee grab Simon's butt which made him jump.
Mal had to handle it to Kaylee, on the outside she looked sweet and innocent. Hell she was sweet, but hardly innocent. When he first met her, the original engineer, a man named Bester had her pinned against the bulkhead of engineering with her legs wrapped around him. A sight Mal to this day tried to forget.
But it was the moments that you wanted to forget that are the ones so hard to erase. Never the moments you want to keep that you can.
Kaylee and Simon are in the corridor, she about to go in one direction towards engineering and Simon about to head to the infirmary when Simon grabs Kaylee and kisses her passionately. Kaylee's legs begin to buckle like a bulkhead with a poor infra-frame.
"Don't you ever leave me, Doctor."
"I would never think about it," Simon winked at her and stopped. There was something that was troubling him. Had something been troubling him the entire night? Kaylee didn't know.
"What's wrong?"
"River. I'm worried about her."
"She's in good hands. Inara will take good care of her."
"I still wished she didn't go."
"You left instruction with, Inara. You even said so yourself that she was doing much better than you had anticipated. She'll be fine. Anyway, it's not like this is the first cargo run she's been on."
Simon nods his head, dolefully. "I'll just feel better once she gets back." Simon begins to walk off, but stops. "What if the Alliance catches her? What if the fugitive bulletins got this far?"
"Even in the bulletins have, it's been what, a year and a half since Aerial City? They would had forgotten about both you and her by now. And we're as far as you can go to be away from the Alliance. Don't worry, Simon. She'll be back." Kaylee blows Simon a kiss, with a wink, and walks away.
As she reaches a hatch, he is entranced by her walk, her smell, how she feels. "Slow down, Simon," he breathed as he headed towards the infirmary.
The hatch to the scanner bay opens, and enters Mal to see Zoe kneeling by a console running a diagnostic. He stands silent, looking at his first mate. Sure she was an attractive woman, any man would think that. But their relationship goes back to the War for Independence. That was as far as the ventured. Anything else, would had made things complicated in times of a crisis.
But Mal couldn't say he never thought about venturing farther beyond the realm of their professional relationship. He would never admit that to a soul. Not even Shepherd. But Zoe was more valuable to him than any other way. Any ways, his heart was off-limits to anyone. Or at least that was what he kept telling himself.
"It just gets in the way," Mal had told Zoe when she announced she and Wash were getting married. "But it's your life. Just don't say I didn't warn you."
"If I'm not mistaken, isn't that Kaylee's job?" Mal said as he handed Zoe a cup of coffee.
"She asked if I could fill in for her. While she slept in."
"Oh, I'm sure they're sleeping in. How long have you been up?"
"A couple of hours, sir."
"And remind me, what's wrong with the scanners? I must had missed the memo."
"Just a routine diagnostic, sir. Serenity's running smoothly," she replied as she took a sip of her coffee and continued with her work waving a diagnostic wand over a circuit board.
There is silence as Mal stands, looking at the terminal beside him, listening to the hypnotic sound of the Serenity's deep hum emitting from the engine reactor. That deep hum keeping them all alive. The deep hum that was the only comforting thing or a crew to hear on a boat in the Fringe.
Mal knew what it was like to not hear the constant hum of the Serenity's heart pumping. It happened when the boat ran out of gas as Mal referred to it and the crew abandoned the ship. But Mal refused to leave his ship. If he was going to die, he would die with his ship.
And die he nearly did.
"I don't know, how do you and Wash do it?
"Do what, exactly, sir?" She replied as she continued to tests.
"You know, that."
"That? What's that," she stopped scanning and looked at Mal. "Oh, that!"
"I mean were on a tin can in the middle of space, in a vacuum where sound doesn't travel. Aren't you afraid someone will hear?"
Zoe laced the wand down and took another sip of her coffee. "Would this unusual conversation be in any relation to our new residential lovers, Sir?
"What makes you say that? I don't know what you're a talkin' about. It's not like we don't talk about sex and other, matters that--ah--"
"This is not a conversation that we have, sir."
"Okay, damn. Yes, it's about Kaylee and Simon."
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Zoe requested as she got up and dusted her pants off.
"Since when did you need permission to speak freely?"
"Old habits, sir. If I may say so, you look like a father giving away his daughter."
"I'm not sure I'm catching on," Mal said, hiding the expression of his face in his coffee mug.
"Kaylee's young, and your afraid of her getting hurt." Zoe paused as she took another sip of her coffee. "This you special?"
"Yep," Mal nodded.
"Tastes like dung, sir."
"See if I ever go out of the way to give you a boost." "Back to the conversation. We've been on this boat for two years. Same crew, bonds are formed. And I'm not the only one to see that a bond has been formed between you, and Kaylee."
"I see your point. Simon's the last person I think that would hurt her. But---even if he did, he shouldn't. If he knew what was good for him."
"My point exactly. Kaylee's been without a father for a good while, and you've unofficially has stepped into the capacity. Except for the time you insulted her when she wanted that dress.
"Something I think no one will ever let me go off."
"It's totally understandable that you see Kaylee as a daughter you never had. And--"
"Wait just a rutting minute. Since when did you get a psychology degree? I thought I knew everything that happened on this boat." Mal paused as he took a sip of his mug. "Even if I didn't want to know everything."
"Captain, calm down, sir. Our dear doctor's probably the best bet for Kaylee."
"He's from money, and Kaylee's a drifter like the all of us."
"Love finds a way, sir. And whether you want to believe it, it will find you."
"Oh! Oh no! I'd rather go against an Alliance cruiser, hell even the Reavers before I go through that again."
A shocked expression formed on Zoe's face. "Why, Sir, I never knew you--"
"Just because we fought side by side knee deep in death, and serve on the same boat, doesn't mean you know everything about me, Zoe."
"I see. Well, we learn something new everyday, don't we."
"How's the scanners going?"
"I'm almost finished with the diagnostic."
"As soon as your done, get something to eat. Hell, sleep in. It's not like we're up to anything important today.
"Yes, sir."
Malcolm began to walk off until the comm built in the wall chirped and Wash's voice came over the device. "Mal, come in. Oh Fearless Leader, please respond."
"What is it, Wash?
"I've got a distress signal coming in through the A-band. It's from a colonial boat, the Rising Star. They're---"
"Rising Star?" Mal interrupted with a tone of familiarence to his voice as he finished his coffee mug and placed it on the terminal.
"You know it, sir?" Zoe asked.
"Last time I checked, that was Phil Chamber's boat."
"I'm not familiar with him?" Zoe announced as she finished her coffee.
"He and I go long ways before the war. Wash, set in an intercept course."
" Does anyone remember the last time we answered a distress signal?" Wash asked with silence over the comms. "Okay, away we go!" Wash narrated as he entered the coordinates in his terminal and the Serenity rolled off her axis and sped off in a new direction. "And hope no Reavers," he breathed as the stars stopped shifting.
"Belay that sleep in command," Mal announced as he turned around and reached for the hatch handle to open it. As the hatch was halfway open, Zoe cleared her voice.
"Forgetting something?" Zoe inquired as she stood inert.
"What?" Mal asked, shrugging his shoulders.
Zoe pointed to the terminal where Mal paced his coffee mug.
"I'll get it later," Mal said.
"Sure, like I haven't heard that one before."
"What?" Mal said as he stepped forward to Zoe and reached for the coffee mug. "You're a full time soldier, part time shrink and maid?"
"I do what I can, sir."
"I know," Mal smiled as they walked out of the bay with his coffee mug in his hand.
They entered the corridor, and Mal closed the hatch behind Zoe as they walked side by side forward to the bridge.
"Does anyone remember the good old days, when we were thieves, runners?" He asked as they reached a ladder that led up. "Not exactly saving the day.
"Those were the good days, sir." Zoe said as she climbed up the ladder first with Mal following her.
The good old days, Mal thought as Zoe stepped off the ladder onto the bridge with Mal not far behind her.
"Course laid in and we are on our way," Wash announced as Mal walked over to the comm terminal.
"Everyone up and at it. Get to your stations. We got a ship in distress." His voice echoing throughout he entire boat as it pushed forward to the unknown on the horizon.
Chapter: 3
In the cargo hold, Shepherd took up position behind the punching bag as Jayne came at it with a series of right and left hooks with ferocity. Shepherd could se in the eyes of the mercenary he was in his killing zone.
The intra-comm buzzed and Mal's voice came over the speakers built into the ceiling of the cargo bay stopping Jaycee's frenzy and giving Shepherd a moment to catch his breath from the assaults.
"Everyone up and at it. Get to your stations We got a ship in distress." Mal announced before the link was cut.
Jayne's eyes grew wide as he leaned around the punching bag to look at Book. "Did he just say a ship in distress?"
"Indeed he did," Shepherd said as he reached for his towel and patted the sweat from his forehead.
"Oh man, another distress signal. Anyone remember what happened the last time we answered a distress?"
"Distinctly," Book remarked as he gulped his bottle of water in one swallow.
"Still gives me the creeps." Jayne said as he reached for his water and drank from the bottle. "And I don't much care what you say, Book. Them Reavers ain't men."
"We're all men." Book said as he placed his hand on Jaycee's shoulder. "Some just chose to drift from that path."
The event happened two years ago when the Serenity answered a distress signal from a hauler. When they got there, the hauler was a drift and abandoned. Or so they believed when they found a boy in his teens had survived the slaughter that was the works of Reavers. Group of men who had been out in the stars for so long that their humanity was lost. A cannibalistic nomad gathering that no one had ever lived to tell the tale of their carnage first hand and survive.
Jayne and Shepherd entered the corridor just as Kaylee set foot on the deck with Simon following her. This sight of the two leaving her cabin such early in the morning caused Jayne to look, in fact stare.
Shepherd's reaction was a little more civilized and polite as he passed the two lovers. He looked dead in Simon's eyes who tried to look away embarrassingly as if a kid who got his hand caught in the cookie jar. Book's right eye brow raised slightly as they continued forward.
Oh, I'm going to hell, Simon thought as Kaylee reached for his hand and they both walked forwards to the bridge. He looked into the eyes of his lover. May not be so bad, as they reached the bridge.
"Tell me you just didn't announce ship in distress, Cap'? That's what, three in the last two months?"
Mal stood before the terminal, leaning forward as he looked out the cockpit as the group settled down behind him. "Times change, Jayne." He straightened his back and turned about leaning against the terminal.
"What's wrong with her?" Kaylee inquired as she stood close to Simon. This act that everyone could see.
"I don't know, never got that far. Wash, what's wrong with her?"
Wash leaned back in his seat and swiveled around. "Oh, I forgot to ask. No, that's not right. They never said. But the weird thing is, they called us by name. And the captain want's to speak with you."
"That'd be Chambers, alright," Malcolm remarked.
"Chambers?" Simon asked. A name he had never heard of before spoken by the captain.
"An old buddy of the Captain's back before the war." Zoe announced.
"Yeah, he went to smuggle guns for the Independents, and I stayed behind and fought. Smart there, wasn't I?"
"Well if you didn't stay behind, you never would had met my lovely wife. Hell, if you didn't stay behind, I would never had met her."
"I'm glad my sacrifice was worth your happiness."
"So am I," Wash responded as he went back to his controls.
"What's our ETA?"
"I'll get us there in forty minutes. Hope there's a good parking place."
"Let's get moving, people. Doc, you ready the infirmary. Kaylee, get what tools you may need. Jayne, do, whatever it is you do. And Shepherd, go pray or something."
The group dispersed, leaving Ma, Zoe, and Wash on the bridge. Mal looked at the group from behind, watching them leave the bridge as he noticed Kaylee grab Simon's butt which made him jump.
Mal had to handle it to Kaylee, on the outside she looked sweet and innocent. Hell she was sweet, but hardly innocent. When he first met her, the original engineer, a man named Bester had her pinned against the bulkhead of engineering with her legs wrapped around him. A sight Mal to this day tried to forget.
But it was the moments that you wanted to forget that are the ones so hard to erase. Never the moments you want to keep that you can.
Kaylee and Simon are in the corridor, she about to go in one direction towards engineering and Simon about to head to the infirmary when Simon grabs Kaylee and kisses her passionately. Kaylee's legs begin to buckle like a bulkhead with a poor infra-frame.
"Don't you ever leave me, Doctor."
"I would never think about it," Simon winked at her and stopped. There was something that was troubling him. Had something been troubling him the entire night? Kaylee didn't know.
"What's wrong?"
"River. I'm worried about her."
"She's in good hands. Inara will take good care of her."
"I still wished she didn't go."
"You left instruction with, Inara. You even said so yourself that she was doing much better than you had anticipated. She'll be fine. Anyway, it's not like this is the first cargo run she's been on."
Simon nods his head, dolefully. "I'll just feel better once she gets back." Simon begins to walk off, but stops. "What if the Alliance catches her? What if the fugitive bulletins got this far?"
"Even in the bulletins have, it's been what, a year and a half since Aerial City? They would had forgotten about both you and her by now. And we're as far as you can go to be away from the Alliance. Don't worry, Simon. She'll be back." Kaylee blows Simon a kiss, with a wink, and walks away.
As she reaches a hatch, he is entranced by her walk, her smell, how she feels. "Slow down, Simon," he breathed as he headed towards the infirmary.