Chapter 7

Sergeant Ernestine Brachman held up a hand and keyed her microphone twice. The platoon stopped, and each trooper checked their front for threats. They were spread out in a wide sweep to defeat ambushes, the line running perpendicular to the face of the valley. The little scout floater Brachman had slaved to her display showed a clearing ahead, and she wanted to take it a little easy before crossing it.

"Intensifiers off," she said into her mike. The members of her platoon flipped the light enhancing screens up into their helmet visors, and looked out into the grayness of Ebenezer's pre-dawn glow. Brachman took a moment to check her front again, moving her rifle with her head. While her platoon hadn't found any Reavers thus far, the reports from those who had found some made it clear that they were a threat as long as they were still in reasonably large pieces. Charlie Difasco had lost a man to one of them pinned under a piece of his wrecked ship, in the next sector over. She meant to take a whole platoon back to Impregnable.

"Odd numbers, twenty meters and hold." The man on her right scrambled forward, as did every second trooper down the line. Twenty meters should put them just outside the clearing. She waited a five count, and took a breath to order even numbers forward.

"Hello?" A voice, muffled but nearby, seemingly from the valley side of her. Brachman twisted and dropped.

"Down! Check targets!" The whole platoon fell on their fronts. She heard a chorus of grunts in her headset as various troopers landed on stumps, rocks or pieces of their own equipment.

"That's Alliance forces we hear?" A male voice, but she was damned if she could spot the source of it. "We're in a dugout, and if it's safe, we'd like to come out."

"Platoon, hold fire," Brachman said into her mike, then more loudly, "Come out slowly, and make your hands visible!"

A few moments later, there was a noise behind her. A patch of weeds was lifting, just behind her sweep line. She and the other five troops in sight trained their weapons at the apparition, realizing that one of the line must have walked over a trapdoor. A pair of tiny hands appeared, then a larger one. Shortly, a woman emerged in full view, hands high over her head and arms straight, almost like she was exercising, although the great pregnant belly in front of her hampered the effect. She was followed by an old man, in a mud-flecked priest costume. He had one hand at shoulder height, and the other held the door.

"Nobody here but us chickens," Book said, smiling benignly.

Brachman came up on one knee, her preferred shooting posture. "Michels, Khan, check it out." Two of her men moved forward cautiously, rifles on the two unexpected people until they were close enough to see into the space below the trap. They rushed inside, moving quickly to clear their comrades' lines of fire. A few seconds later, Khan called all-clear on the radio.

Squinting across at Brachman's uniform, Book said, "I have proper identification inside my jacket... Sergeant, is it?"

The two troopers emergered from Warner's House as Brachman said, "Michels, check him." The soldier grabbed a fistful of Book's jacket from behind, pushing him forward. He lost his grip on the door and it dropped loudly back in place. Book was pleasantly surprised that no one shot in response. He attended to keeping his smile in place as the soldier fished around in his jacket, eventually coming up with his ID case.

Brachman called over the ID, and had a look at it. She didn't have a reader to check the details on the chip, but it looked straight enough, and these two certainly didn't look like Reavers. She walked over to Book, holding out the case. "She got any ID?"

Book said, "I'll vouch for her. We were together at the chapel when the warning sounded."

Brachman noticed a dark brown bottle with a wire-and-ceramic stopper peeking out of the pocket of the woman's dress. "Having a little party?"

"Laying some poison against mice," Book replied, and then in a confiding tone, "They get into the host."

"Right. Between here and town has been checked, there's no hostiles, so go straight back and you should come to no harm. You go wandering, you're apt to get shot."

Han sat on the edge of the small desk of his day cabin. The reports from the surface indicated that the problem was essentially dealt with. The Facility, which had only been found by the Reavers minutes before Impregnable's fighters had hit atmo, was secure, and that was the only real concern he had here. He'd have the garrison platoon rotated out, put in some fresh troops-- according to Hopper, those few minutes had been enough to cause some serious morale issues.

He might face some repercussions for the damage done to the ship, but that seemed a distant likelihood. The action reports would sustain him, and High Command's main concern had been kept from harm. He'd done his duty. "Gascoyne, have section heads make preparations for return to patrol. I want us underway in three hours. Put in a call for a supply rendezvous as well."

The ship's god having spoke, his adherents rushed off to make his will manifest. Just over two and a half hours later, Impregnable was moving out of orbit.

Jayne had pressed once more for abandoning Ebenezer as a bad risk. He argued, with some conviction, that there was no real evidence that the planet wasn't swarming with Reavers, bereft of ships and slavering for an opportunity to secure a new one. He was unconvinced that the situation on the surface would be obvious well before they were low enough for even very tall Reavers to attempt boarding.

When it became clear that this line of reasoning was not going to carry the day, he changed tack. "Y'know, those folks down there ain't gonna be too happy to see us back. Run out an' left 'em to the Reavers, that makes folks mighty unhappy. Unhappy folks tend to express themselves all violent."

Mal nodded. "Yep. And if there's a torch-waving mob at the port, we'll not be staying too long neither. I'm not debating this any more, Jayne. We go back."

Unexpectedly, Zoe came in on Jayne's side. "I might be smart to lay back a couple of days, sir, let things settle down a bit."

Mal crossed his arms over his chest, looking from Zoe to Jayne and back. He knew that technically his word was law on Serenity, but like a king of old, he had to consider whether anyone would actually obey the law once it was laid. His authority lay in not yet having been disastrously wrong and in his apparent willingness to use a gun. The former was actually more useful than the latter, as there were some people on the crew that shooting would prove very counter-productive. Most would also shoot back.

"Fine. We stay here two days more, 'less Kaylee says all this sunshine is overwhelming our life support."

River blundered into the kitchen. Although it was finally breaking up enough for her liver to get ahold of it, the somnambutol was still affecting her. She looked around the grim faces in the room, and smiled drunkenly.

"S'okay. Storm's over. Rainbows!" She reeled towards Jayne, and he stepped back. "Write your mom," she declared with some conviction, and sat firmly on the floor between two chairs.

"Well," said Mal, working to maintain some grimness in his expression, "I'm glad that's settled."

Book had watched Serenity dropping toward port a half-hour earlier. He could have made his was back to town by now, but he wanted to get as much accomplished as he could. When he heard the mule grumbling up the path, he knew that his time was up.

"You planning on staying?" Wash called from the saddle of the mule. Book looked down at him from the roof of the chapel.

"No." He made his way to the ladder. "Just trying to clear up some of the mess left here. What have you got there?"

Wash glanced over his shoulder at the collection of small boxes in the mule's basket. "Oh, Mal thought a few spare tools and some extra med supplies we had lying around should be left here. Guy in town said we might as well send it on to the chapel, that's where the Alliance set up a med tent."

Book smiled as he grasped the top of the ladder. He had a pretty clear idea how little unnecessary material was aboard the ship, and was once again amazed at how far Reynolds would go to appear surly and hard-shelled. "Yes, the tent's around the back, out of the wind."

As Wash putted around the chapel, Book slung the basket he'd been filling over his shoulder. He looked over at the source of the fragments he'd been pulling out of the domed roof, an engine nacelle almost the size of the chapel. It had dropped a long way after being blown off the ship it belonged to, and had made a small, slightly lopsided crater when it hit. A slight change in some of the variables, and Warner's work would be no more than a pile of dust surrounding a lump of metal. Divine favour? Random chance?

Was there that much of a difference?

He had set to work doing what repairs he felt competent to accomplish, but he didn't know whether the gouges left in the exterior of the rammed-earth structure would prove a problem in the end. He didn't know enough about the building technique. Warner, he reflected, had spent his youth rather more profitably.

He wondered idly where Amber might be now. Once they had returned to town, she had been lost to him in the general chaos left by the attack. He had no idea what she had decided, and had been unwilling to ask questions around town for fear of either raising suspicions in others or provoking action by her

He took this basket-full to a pile of similar debris which he and a couple of other devout souls from town had been putting together. As he dumped it, he allowed his mind to wander to a possible Ebenezer, in a better future. It was a foolish notion, and Book shook his head at it. A form of hubris, to believe that he might have so much influence on a person who may not even be born. On the other hand, his profession was largely concerned with planting seeds of hope in the future. Whether or not those seeds flourished with Amber, it was only human to wonder whether a garden might prosper. He let the fantasy play on as he made his way along the path.

The chapel, still there decades hence in his fancy, still a testament to the miracle of human determination, but dwarfed by a new cathedral the now-prosperous parishioners of Ebenezer had erected. Presiding over the well-fed and content congregation, an elderly Jules, his pocket weighted with a ragged but still servicable bible, given him in his youth by his mother.