Part 3
River stared at the oatmeal Book had put down for her. It wasn't that she wasn't hungry. She was. It was just that with the maniacal cackling and chanting coming from the bulkheads, it was hard to concentrate on food.
"Kill kill kill chew chew chew destroy destroy destroy," the chant went.
Trouble was, she knew they were talking about Serenity, which profoundly disturbed her. Serenity was a friend. River didn't want her coming to harm. The worst thing about it was Book and Jayne quietly chatting, like nothing was going on.
"SHUT UP!" River yelled, slamming her spoon down on the table. Book and Jayne immediately looked over, but the chanting continued.
"River," Book called, "are you all right? Would you like some sweetener for your oatmeal?"
Nobody ever listened to her, and now she couldn't even locate Hunts The Night and tell her where the little furry destroyers were hiding. In a pique, she threw her oatmeal against the far wall of the dining room.
"I ain't cleanin' that up," Jayne said.
"River," Book hurried forward as she buried her head in her arms, trying to shut out the voices.
"They won't be quiet! And I can't find her! Why won't anyone listen?" she sobbed. "They'll kill Serenity. That's what they do. Kill kill kill chew chew chew destroy destroy destroy."
Book kneeled at her side. "Who's trying to kill Serenity, River?"
"The mice!"
Jayne snorted and took another bite of his cereal. "Crazy as a wall-eyed bedbug."
Book frowned. "I think we need to listen. River's much more perceptive than any of us. She just has trouble articulating what she's aware of in a way we can understand. I doubt she means the mice, literally, but maybe there's something else going on the captain should be made aware of."
"Aware of what?" Mal asked, stepping through the hatch.
"Hey, did Wash really get his eyeball chewed on by one a those mice?" Jayne asked, grinning.
"Close enough," Mal answered, still eyeing River and Book. "Aware of what?"
"River says the mice are trying to kill Serenity," Book answered, well aware of how ridiculous he sounded.
"Yeah, well, I'm hearing that a lot these days," Mal responded. Before he could continue his thought, Inara and Simon arrived in the mess hall.
"What?" Mal demanded. "Does no one have a hobby other than bugging me?"
Then he realized that Inara was nearly vibrating with anger.
"What?" he asked, in a new tone of voice.
"When I signed on to Serenity," Inara answered, snapping out her words like the tip of a well-handled bullwhip, "you told me this was a clean ship. Explain this."
She held out her hand, and in it, resting on a square of silk, were several mouse droppings. True to her calling as a Companion, she'd arranged the droppings in a pleasing, symmetrical composition.
"I found these in my wardrobe. Two of my gowns have been chewed through. Destroyed! I expect to be compensated."
Seeing as how one of her gowns cost the same amount as would keep Serenity in fuel for two months, Mal took a deep breath before trying to find an answer.
"Captain," Simon interrupted. "I need to speak to you about these mice."
Oh, good. Someone he could be mad at, since the mice had been under Simon's care when they escaped. "What about the mice, doc?"
"The mice . . ." Simon started. "The mice are bad."
Jayne snickered.
"The mice," Mal repeated. "Are bad. Really? Because, you see, here I'd been thinking that we'd finally found that certain something special to round out Serenity's charm as a cargo ship. I mean, normally, it'd be rats. A little plague, a bunch of droppings, that sort of thing. But mice, being cuter, would be so much better. And now you're telling me that they're bad."
Jayne was now chortling.
"These aren't any normal mice," Simon answered. River nodded her head vigorously in agreement.
Jayne's chortles became guffaws. "Only on this ship would there be a bunch a lily-livered, pansy boys afraid a mice."
He opened one of the cabinets to pull out a jar of sweetener for his tea. What he got was a seething ball of white-furred fury leaping straight at his eyes.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
The mouse, bigger than any mouse had reason to be, bit Jayne just above the left eyebrow and dug in. As Jayne swung his head from side to side, the mouse dug in with its claws, ripping skin in all directions.
"Get it!" Mal yelled, trying to grab the rodent, and getting smacked by one of Jayne's flailing arms.
Inara somehow slipped past him, under Jayne's arms, pinched the mouse at the base of its jaws and twisted it off.
"AAAAAAAAH!" Jayne continued to scream.
Mal tried to right himself just as Simon was reaching across him, and they both bumped into Inara, sending her sprawling. The mouse leapt out of her grip and made a mad dash across the floor for cover. Book jumped at it, missed, and not two feet from where the bulkhead met a cabinet, something metallic hit the mouse square on its head. The sharp crack of the metal against its skull rang through the sudden silence, and a spoon clattered to the floor.
River stood up, walked over to the twitching mouse, and picked up her spoon. She carefully wiped it on her dress and returned to her seat.
"I don't like their whiskers," she muttered to no one in particular.
"Okay," Mal said, climbing to his feet and giving Inara a hand. "The mice are bad."
Kaylee hummed to herself as she worked on the wiring for the aux nav board. It was amazing the amount of damage that one small rodent had done. She'd come across mice chewing on wiring before, but this took the cake, the frosting, and the little birthday candles. She was going to have to spend most of the morning rerouting things around the damaged circuitry and all of that evening and the next day rewiring the boards. In a way, they were lucky. The mouse had started chewing on the first board it had come across. Three boards over was the life support master. If that had been taken out, they wouldn't have had time to repair it before the ship ran out of heat and air.
"RRrrrooooowwWWW!"
Kaylee bonked her head, swore under her breath, and pulled herself out just far enough to see her visitor. The cat had returned and was sitting not two feet away from her, purring and lashing its tail.
"Well, hey there, puss," she smiled and reached out to rub an ear.
The cat backed up without letting her touch it and meowed again, imperiously.
It was just out of her reach, so with a sigh, Kaylee withdrew entirely from the console's innards and sat up to put some proper love on the cat. But instead of accepting her pets, the cat ducked around her and went straight for the open panel of wiring. Kaylee started to intercept it, but the cat settled down into a hunting pose – tail lashing, head crouched, butt a few inches off the deck, and hind legs working back and forth.
"Is that mouse still there?" Kaylee asked, twisting to see behind her.
A low, rattling growl was her answer.
It all happened so fast, it was difficult for her to explain the sequence of events to Mal later. There was an explosion of hissing so loud, she dove behind the pilot's chair. That was followed by loud growling, and the cat batting at something behind one of the circuit boards. Something rattled, and then a white blur launched itself from one of the dark recesses right at her.
With a squeak, Kaylee scrambled into the pilot's chair, standing on its seat. The white blur ricocheted off the chair's base and made straight for a wall access panel. The cat, moving faster than any cat she'd ever seen, sprinted, bounded off the chair base as well, and landed on the mouse. The two animals blurred together into a ball of violence. They bounced off a cabinet and back into main portion of the cockpit, almost under Kaylee's booted feet.
Her mouth hung open in amazement – both at the speed and the brutality of the combat. At one point, the mouse had hold of the cat by the scruff of its neck, its jaws working furiously to bury its teeth even deeper. The cat, in its impossibly flexible manner, twisted, ripped the mouse off it with a hind claw, batted it two feet into the air, and then jumped, teeth slamming shut on the mouse's neck.
There was a loud crunch, and the mouse went limp. The cat landed on all four feet, stood still for a moment, then looked at Kaylee and set its dead enemy on the deck at her feet. It sat, licked its chops, and then it held up a paw, extended dagger-like claws and began to scrupulously wash each one clean.