"I reckon we're breaking, oh, about a hundred traffic laws here," Kaylee said cheerfully, from where she was hunched over all kinds of mechanical and chemical components, some of which Book recognised and some he didn't, "But not to worry. Persephone's Alliance air police force catch on, we can always ditch the junk and say I was drivin', then that's just drunk in charge." She cautiously placed a tray with a tiny pile of powder on it at arm's length, and used a spoon to scatter an even smaller fraction of another powder over it. The resulting conflagration, though he'd been expecting it, still made him jump.
"Whoo! That one near took my eyebrows off. Yup, the stuff's still good." She grinned up at him. "Y' reckon Simon'll still think I'm pretty with no eyebrows? There's a fair bit more going into the main feature than this little explosion."
"I'm sure he would," Book said. "But right now, eyebrows are hardly the most pressing matter." Whatever Simon had given Kaylee to wake her up, it had kicked in with a vengeance. Trying to keep a girl who was high as a kite fixed to the ground long enough to safely handle quantities of highly combustible materials... well, it wasn't the best distraction for a man who hadn't flown much of anything in years trying to guide an unfamiliar shuttle through a tricky manoeuvre.
"Yes." Kaylee swallowed, nodded with purpose and made an effort to at least ape his gravity. "Got to get River and Wash back. I know that. You - " She waved a pointing finger vaguely his way. "You just keep hovering right where y' are." She finished scraping together the components and stood up, wavering slightly more than the shuttle was doing. She crossed to the hatch and flung it wide, shouting something back that was lost into the night air and the suddenly much louder engine roar. She pulled her head back inside to repeat it: "Need to lose just a little altitude - not too much, mind, 'less we want to be wedged in to the wall of that 'scraper as a permanent feature. Fun for the tourists."
Book eased the little ship very gently down. "Left a bit," Kaylee supplied. "No - no - whoo! Almost had us fried, there. That's good. Keep her... just... like... that..." She checked the silent comm clipped to her belt with a pout. "Sure hope the cap'n and the others are on schedule. I figure we got about fifteen minutes tops hovering up here 'fore someone reports us."
She dipped her body out of the shuttle, reaching for the unseen jagged silver towers of the power substation mounted atop its sculpted near-mile-high post. Out of view, the structure was a mere scatter of digital information to Book.
They'd had to disable two hovering warning buoys to get this far, and any plan involving Kaylee leaning out quite that far over quite that much nothing in her current state was a plan made Book uneasy. Occupied with the controls as he was, there wasn't anything he'd be able to do if she lost her balance. They'd had to disable half the auto functions just to get up close to the substation.
Kaylee all but disappeared a moment, in which it took all his restraint to keep the ship steady. But she bobbed up again breathing heavy and pulled herself right back inside the shuttle. He was sure he breathed more a sigh of relief than she did. "Some good old-fashioned sabotage," she said, wiping off her hands again. "Can't stray far, I'm afraid. With this much energy around to be causin' interference, we'll have to be all but on top of this little pop-bomb to set it off remotely. Oh, don't worry, though - should have three or four seconds to get clear 'fore it goes, and it ain't that big." She sank down on her haunches next to the shuttle's open hatch. "Now all we need is word from the captain."
"And soon," Book observed, as the shuttle juddered under his hands.
Kaylee agreed. "This goes wrong and all those large, violent types the cap'n brought back won't be thinking too well of me. Mind, considerin' if this goes wrong there ain't none of us gonna see the light of day again long enough to care 'bout things like that, I guess that's one thing at least I can quit worryin' over."
"Mr Grey, Mr Halloran," Lieutenant Armin greeted the two men respectfully. He tried to remain unmoved by their flat stares and the distraction of their odd gloves, though they always made his skin feel like it was being crawled over inside by a thousand tiny, unsavoury things. "I hope your journey went well. I didn't expect to see you here so soon - "
"So we gather." The taller man on his left spoke, but their disapproving expressions were the same, and it seemed to him it wouldn't matter which spoke, in either case what emerged would be identical. "Some trouble with the plumbing." On anyone else, it would have been amusement. But it wasn't.
"A programming glitch. The city's systems are automated." Armin made to turn and lead the way. "I'll take you to the prisoners."
A raised blue hand stalled him, made him swing back over-quickly and betray his unease. "Isn't there something else you want to tell us first, Lieutenant Armin?" The man he knew as Mr Grey was toying with something long and thin in his hands.
"We hear that isn't the only trouble you've been having," prompted the man he knew as Mr Halloran.
Just like he'd known would be the case, the voice was slightly different, but the words were exactly the same.
"Thunder," River said, into the silence that followed the scream. Her head turned not to the door beyond which it had originated, but raised to the ceiling, as though her stare might penetrate right through it, and through the buildings overhead, up into the empty sky beyond.
"It ain't like with the lassiter, or on Ariel," Kaylee had said, all of them 'round the table 'round her. "We started out on those jobs with all the details. Here what we have's just guesswork, though Shepherd Book helped fill in some blanks."
Jayne snorted at that last, and the preacher avoided meeting anyone's eyes, looking consummately neutral.
Kaylee continued, "Most Alliance offices and installations are built to a standard set of layouts and specifications - only way they could do it, speed they whammed most of the things up during and after the war. Managed to get a sense of the basic plans and layouts from off the cortex, figuring what space and materials they've had to work with here on Persephone, but we can't count on 'em too well..." She lay the plans out anyhow, in front of Mal.
"What about their security?" he asked.
She grimaced, which was answer enough. "Functions - power and water and the like - we had more luck with. Can't get to their auxiliary power or into security direct, but I can take down the power for the block. There should be a few seconds while it makes the transition over to their emergency stores. We figure the main part of the base is underground, beneath that little office space on the surface, so if I hit their power at the right moment, we can use that to get inside the outer security perimeter, at least. Like I say, we're going in blind here. Gonna have to improvise."
"Then we'll improvise," Mal said. "You just get in place, and we'll figure a time frame."
"Oh," Kaylee added with a quick grin. "And I... could also back up their drains, if you like. Real easy, in fact."
"Might distract them more'n a little in itself," Mal agreed neutrally.
He gunned down the uniform blocking their path and ducked just in time as Zoe threw a grenade on one hell of a short fuse. "Who you tryin' to blow up?" he asked, coming to his feet in a sharp turn to get the man rising from behind a desk.
"Just keeping you on your toes." She smiled, and they made it through the end of a corridor didn't seem to particularly lead anywhere, shooting the guard stationed at the end and entering an oasis of calm as Badger's men put in a good showing for themselves behind them. "This should be it." She reloaded quickly, her eyes staying on the corridor they'd just come down, while Mal examined the door the dead man had been guarding. "It's not like there's anywhere else left to search if it isn't. Not an overly large building, sir."
Mal searched the man's pockets, briefly attempting to decipher the purpose of various keycards, but everything indicated that a more subtle entry would require more figuring than they had time for. Jayne rebounded off the corner, firing behind himself and cursing as a shot singed his T-shirt but left his skin intact. Mal called him over.
"This it?"
"It'll have to be."
"Good doors. Reinforced. All that looks a fancy piece of work, too." He nodded to the control pad at the doors' side.
"All relies on power." Mal flashed him a forced smile. "Guess the Alliance have gotten complacent now the war's over and they ain't expecting any all-out attacks."
"Uh-huh. Easy as pie next to that fancy pad of Niska's. This place sure as hell wasn't made for a war... What's complacent?" Jayne dropped the bag he'd been hauling along extra to the weight of his own portable armoury and Mal joined him sifting through the contents 'til they both held wrenches, while Zoe stepped aside and concentrated the rifle in her hands on the task of guarding their backs.
Mal set the wrench in place, carefully, and lifted the comm to his mouth. "Kaylee? Now."
He heard her chirpy assent, "Yessir!" even as the comm was falling to bounce among the overspilling contents of the bag on the floor.
There was a delay long enough to make them all feel a bit foolish and then to catch them by surprise when the lights flickered and dimmed, and the ambient hum of power from the many machines about the place died, never so noticeable as when they were gone. Mal planted the wrench and hauled the doors wide, matched by Jayne doing the same the other side. As the emergency power was kicking in, Jayne was swapping his wrench for Vera. The mechanisms had been blasted all to hell by the time the lights were back on full, just nasty-smelling smoke in the air. Mal hung onto his side of the door as it continued its attempt to shut automatically and Jayne swore and flung a shoulder against his side. Then, as the connections finished frying and the last of the power drained, the resistance choked up, doors hanging stuck in place.
Zoe had Simon and a half dozen of Badger's people gathered with her. Only one sported any injury of note, one of Badger's men who'd a bloody, charred patch at his shoulder. He saw her ordering two of them in place to guard their exit.
"Jayne," Mal prompted.
The merc held up the grenade, which had been prepared with a little something extra taped around it.
"Heads down," he said, with a broad grin, as he hurled it into the shaft.
"You told them, didn't you?" He leaned in closer to Badger to hiss the words while the guards were uneasily paying the larger portion of their attention to the door. They hadn't seemed surprised by the scream, almost like it wasn't anything they hadn't heard before, but it had made them jittery. Taking the opportunity to vent some of his anger at Badger at least distracted his mind from the cold chill that had snaked itself through him at what he'd heard in that scream.
"Of course I told 'em," Badger snapped. "What the hell do you think?"
"Of course he told them," River said, with an odd patience, her voice all her own again now there was no call for subterfuge. "It's what he does. It's the way the 'verse turns."
"In his world, maybe - the world of the snivelling little big-talking lowlife creep - " Somehow, his fury descended into a brief shoving match composed mainly of elbows, which ceased abruptly when one of the guards turned.
"Some people juggle geese." River's lips moved slowly, and she stared straight in front of her, but Wash would've laid good odds her gaze didn't fall on the wall.
"That's my l - " he began, but she was talking again, her hands squirming against the cuffs. "They're here." A plummeting fear in her voice, that matched the fear and pain in those screams. But then something else anew imbued the words' quiet repeat, as her body calmed. "They're here..."
"Once we're inside," Mal said, "We shoot to kill. Everything Alliance is a target. No mercy - we can't afford it. They're stronger'n us and they won't be hesitating. I want you all to understand that. Odds are bad enough as they are without having to watch the wounded we leave at our backs, and what's more anyone we leave can potentially identify at least Wash and Badger, and maybe more of us."
The words reverberated in his head, following Mal and Jayne down the narrow, difficult access ladder set into the side of the elevator shaft. Simon tried to bury any thoughts along the lines of how he should have gone with Kaylee and Book that might - hypothetically - be trying to enter his mind. It didn't matter that a gun still felt unwieldy and alien in his hand, because what he was here for was River. When they found her, she might well need him. He'd seen her panicked, seen her when the medication failed. He had no particular faith in the ability of the captain or Jayne or even Zoe to coax her away with them if things were bad. At least... not in any fashion it didn't make him wince to contemplate.
He went a step too far on the ladder and trod on Jayne's fingers while Mal was still disembarking at the bottom. The mercenary cursed him in imaginative Chinese while he tried to stammer an apology.
"Bi zui!" Mal hissed up at them both.
There wasn't enough space for everyone on the floor of the shaft. Mal motioned Simon back up onto the ladder, replacing him with a gunman from Badger's group. "Now I'm guessing," he said, "that someone up there could've sent the alarm down, even if they didn't hear us coming. Reckon we best reckon on one heck of a welcoming committee waiting on the other side of these doors."
Jayne and Zoe moved like they read his mind and each other's, each taking up a wrench and a position either side of the doors. Mal produced some grenades, palmed one and handed the others to a tall, black-skinned gunman behind him for safekeeping. "Everyone keep clear the middle of the shaft." To Zoe and Jayne: "One... two..." They wrenched open the doors the barest fraction, not more than a hand's breadth. Mal activated the grenade and rolled it through. A shower of bullets pinged off the doors and, a few, the back of the shaft. Soon as Mal's hand was out of the way, Jayne and Zoe let the doors close. The explosion shook them violently a second later.
"Go!" Mal said, and this time the two of them hauled back hard, forcing the doors full open. Mal and those of Badger's gunmen on the ground poured through and took position, while Simon was jostled by those wanting to get down from the ladder.
"Oh, damn, this place smells bad," Jayne said.
"Think that might be Kaylee's doing," Mal called, already lost up ahead somewhere in the shifting dust from the explosion.
Simon found himself sticking close to Jayne, the only familiar body anywhere in his vicinity, proof enough that the world really had gone mad if that made him feel safer, and belatedly drew the gun he'd holstered in order to climb.
"Point that at somethin' in grey," Jayne growled, taking pause from shooting at a flash of uniform to eye the gun in Simon's hand distrustfully.
"I told you, you can trust me," Simon responded, annoyed. "It doesn't mean I'm not still angry with you, but I'm not about to shoot you."
"It ain't what you'd do on purpose worryin' me," Jayne said, sourly.
"Oh." There was no reply he could make to that.
The grenade had clearly done damage to masonry and men both, but in dealing with the immediate threat it had also brought more attention running down on them. Simon supposed there was nothing more like to catch the attention of reinforcements than very loud explosions. He flinched as Jayne, grinning like a kid in a toyshop, shot a man who'd ventured around the corner in front of them square in the face. Jayne enjoyed his work.
Zoe on the other hand was a businesslike killer, no emotion in her face when she pulled the trigger. Old soldier. Only Mal, against Simon's expectation, displayed the odd glimpse of reluctance or disgust in his face, if that was indeed what they were. Jayne and Zoe, he had seen go to war before, of course... He grimaced, remembering his own negligible contribution to that firefight, as well. Mal, he had seen only in scuffles and brawls.
Mal seemed to be noting with growing frustration the layout of the corridors he pressed them onward through. Finally, he swore. "Doesn't match the plans Kaylee dragged up near enough. Don't know where the hell we are. Time for a new plan." He called across to Jayne, "We need us one still living."
Jayne nodded, and lowered his aim only to get a scrape across his shoulder for his trouble. "Gorram it, Mal, I sure hope you're lettin' me kill this one later," he growled, advancing quickly to kick a gun out of a sprawled hand. The downed man's other hand had fingers pressed tight against a hole in his thigh, but it had missed shattering the bone and wasn't bleeding enough to have hit an artery. Only painful. Simon's own leg twinged in sympathy.
"We'll have to see about that." Mal hauled up the injured Alliance man and slammed him back against the wall. "Where are the prisoners? The girl and the two others?"
His answer was an unsurprising silence. Without hesitation, Mal blew a matching hole in the man's other thigh, nothing betrayed in his face at all now. "Where are they?" he demanded again, while the man hung gasping and Simon gaped. "Got no reason to kill you, you tell us straight. You don't... you still got two fine and undamaged arms I ain't touched, not to mention other appendages."
"Corridor C6, room 6B8," the man choked. Mal studied him a moment, gave him a tight nod, then raised his pistol and shot the man in the head. Simon rocked on his feet, feeling it like a physical punch. Nobody else reacted at all.
"Why did - ?" Simon began, angrily and more than a little self-consciously.
Mal's stare showed that dead something in his eyes that occasionally rose up to make itself clear. "He would've remembered me. Attention I don't need. Too easy to trace, records the Alliance still have on anyone who fought in the war. Would've left all of us in danger. No mercy, if you recall."
"Yes," Simon said slowly. He avoided looking down at the gun he hadn't fired yet.
Wash's heart all but stopped when he heard the distant gunfire. Sweet Jesus, they hadn't run, they hadn't... Were they insane? You didn't go up against the gorram Alliance armed with Jayne's fetishist gun collection and a box of old grenades the captain kept bolted to the roof of one of Serenity's crawlspaces. Not with their crew, less fighters than weren't. Not even if the preacher was really a rutting ninja assassin killing machine in that big secret past he'd been hiding from them all. There was just no way.
It had to be something else. It had to be.
Badger was watching the door, puzzled, and their guards' agitation was increasing, though they held to their posts. River had crossed her ankles and she gazed at the floor between them, her pursed lips exuding concentration. Concentration in her case could mean anything - for all Wash knew, she could be counting the molecules in the synthetic floor beneath their feet.
Her head jerked up sharply.
"Wouldn't want to forget me, so far from home," she blurted, like coming in on the middle of a speech, and her voice had a soft burr now that might've been spawned somewhere like Bradley or Londinium. "That's what she said, but you did, didn't you? Lost the thing, because after all a thing was all it was, wasn't it? A useless piece of a trinket and you could afford better yourself even then, even in those last days kitting out for the war. Thinking of a glory in body-counts like collecting scalps. She didn't mean anything, really, it was all in her head, not any in yours. Stupid girl. She sent you letters to the front, but the last one wasn't written by her. But sure, she didn't mean anything anyway, it could only be something about the fighting that set it in your thoughts and wouldn't let it leave. Why you took it out of that browncoat bitch who looked a little like her. Let the feel of her dying under you as you slit her throat after take all the memories away."
The guard her eyes pinned flinched and all but dropped the gun in his hands, and the other looked at him uneasily.
"What did you - ?" The first moved a step forward, out of position.
"Don't," the other said. "It's some kind of trick. You know what the orders are. No talking, no touching. You heard - " His head tipped toward the door, and he shuddered, a tiny convulsive judder that shook his shoulders.
"She... you can't..." Raw anguish and fury. He shook off his fellow's restraining hand and caught up River by a fistful of her hair, making her shriek and struggle and try to bite.
The bullet cut him down almost before the door had finished sliding back. The second guard managed to half raise his gun before Jayne, a step behind Mal, shot him in the head. The gun he was using didn't leave much of anything of the head, and Wash ducked away from the splatter that speckled his hair. Crazily, what came to his lips was "Must you?" in the same aggrieved sort of tone he'd use when Jayne exercised his lack of table manners.
"Well," the mercenary said, stroking his gun like he was telling it it was a good girl. "There's a nice thank-you. Think we should shut the door again and turn right around, Mal?"
Mal had a keycard dangling on a chain and what looked like someone's finger in the hand that wasn't gripped around his pistol. He ignored Jayne, kneeling next to a fallen guard to search for keys, finding them on the second guard. A fighter Wash didn't recognise backpedalled past the open door shooting Alliance men, and Simon scooted in after, bent over almost double, crossing straight to his sister's side.
"What's going on?" Wash asked with some disbelief, his voice rising to a higher pitch than he generally considered could pass as manly.
"Cavalry, Wash," Mal said, matter-of-fact, jiggling the keys around to a right-looking selection, hampered by the fact he kept a hold on his gun. He hauled on Wash's shoulder to turn him around and worked on the cuffs a moment; swore and had to switch keys twice before they finally fell loose. He moved on to River, and Simon folded his sister into his side as soon as she was loose, his body blocking her from the open door.
"Your people... and my people," Badger said, incredulous, as Mal set him loose. "Shooting up the gorram Alliance? What the hell have you done?"
"Saved your sorry backside, among other things," Mal pointed out.
"But why?" Wash asked.
"Needed the extra men - " He broke off. "Best of limited options. No time for talkin'. Reckon we should start moving about now." A renewed frenzy of gunfire and a warning shout - Zoe's voice, Wash recognised, and his heart jumped with equal joy and fear - turned Mal's head toward the door.
"Definitely about now," the captain amended.
"Go!" Mal pushed Zoe ahead of him, seeing as how the husband she was supporting looked like he'd collected a bit of Alliance justice about the face. Ahead of them, Jayne and one of Badger's folk led the way in a deadly partnership, Simon and River hanging just behind along with Badger, who'd armed himself with a dead fellow's gun.
"Where the ruttin' hell are they all coming from?" Jayne growled.
"Must be more down here than we thought. Maybe another entrance somewhere," Zoe said breathlessly, turning a moment to help return fire at those coming from the corridor behind the cells. The henchman of Badger's who'd been helping out at the rear was gurgling on the floor, shot through his throat. Most of the rest of them were up ahead somewhere, probably halfway to the surface by now.
"You concentrate on getting Wash and River out," Mal said again to Zoe.
She nodded tightly, and turned and tried to hustle her husband along faster. And it wasn't playing fair with her, Mal knew full well. But he needed them out and safe to get everyone else flying free, and things were starting to get themselves just a little bit too frantic.
He ducked as a hail of fire came at him from an unexpected direction; a corridor they must've diverted 'round trying to cut them off, and come almost too late. He sure wished he had a better idea 'bout the layout of the base. He tried to return fire with no cover to speak of. A shot drew a fiery scrape along his ribs. One, two, three more shots of his own, and two of the uniforms on the ground, then the hollow note of an empty chamber he could least afford right then.
"Take him alive," ordered a voice that sent a chill through him, and while he backed away like a fool with his empty gun in his hand, able to do precisely nothing as they abandoned their cover and approached, someone fired an air compression rifle. The impact knocked him into the wall and he rebounded off it to roll over the floor, landing almost at their advancing feet.
Feet clad in black, and not Alliance grey. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes to look upwards. Saw only the blur of a huge blue hand as it descended.
"Nice flyin'," Kaylee said, as Book finally managed to get the shuttle righted and the floor and the ceiling resumed their more usual positions.
"I lost them, didn't I?" He could feel the sweat starting to dry on his brow.
"Yep. That's... what I meant." She nodded encouragingly. "Sure you don't want me to take..." She faltered, slumping in her seat, and her hair hung limply around her suddenly pale face as she seemed to concentrate hard on breathing, which she did in deep gasps. "Not... feeling so well, preacher."
Book nodded grimly, and reached across to the passenger seat to gently pat her arm, although he had to cut the gesture of comfort short to ensure they didn't end up upside-down again - or, in fact, a pretty fireworks display and a burnt smear on the side of a building. "Simon mentioned that would happen. It'll pass."
"I sure hope he stuck a 'soon' on the end of that." Kaylee curled over miserably, then jerked to one side and retched onto the shuttle floor. Book winced at the noises. The smell wasn't the most pleasant in the confines of the small shuttle, either. "Sorry."
He sighed and smiled. "Not to worry... I think Jayne pulled cleaning duties, this week."
She managed a weak giggle, but it faded fast. "Hope he's still alive to do 'em," she said.
"Not working for nobody," Mal said, gasping against the grip the two feds had on each of his arms. He surreptitiously studied the blue-gloved freaks' blank, set faces. "Just came in to spring the boss, is all."
The nearer of the two, the tall one - his lip twisted. Kinda dismissive of a move, like he really didn't care. Like he knew he already had the answers. "Your boss, then?"
Mal thought about it for all of a second, then shook his head fractionally, not letting go the man's eye. Setting a trail to Badger would betray them all in the end, anyway. Even if...
"'Badger'," the fellow said smugly. He drew something out of his coat; toyed with it in his hand. It wasn't a gun. "The man your 'boss' was working with. Malcolm Reynolds. What do you know about him?"
"Reynolds? Hun dan Independent type with a giant-size stick up his pigu? Boss used him the odd job here and there, is all. When he was hard up, you know?" His voice cracked as the man on his right twisted his arm harder. "Why? You got some trash you need to offload on the cheap?"
"As it happens," the second of the men said, amused.
His fellow freak raised the thing he'd been toying with, snapping it level in his hand a few feet in front of Mal's face. The men holding his arms slammed him back against the corridor wall hard enough to daze, then got clear fast.
"What the hell - ?" Mal began, staring at the thing, and coughing a bit of a nervous laugh. It didn't look like any kind of a weapon. "That s'posed to frighten me?"
There was something dribbling down his upper lip. He raised his fingers to it, confused. Felt an odd pressure building inside his head as he brought them away painted with blood.
"No... no... no..." Without warning, River began to struggle in his grasp, as they waited tucked into the side of the elevator. Zoe and Wash were already on the ladder and starting the climb. Badger crouched at the other side of the door with his stolen gun. Jayne leaned against the wall a way down the corridor, looking uneasily back where they'd just come from.
"We're getting out of here," Simon told her, setting his hands to her shoulders, trying to quiet her panic.
"No!" she screamed, shoving out of his grip entirely and falling to her knees on the floor, in too-full view if anyone were to round the corner and get a shot off before Jayne could drop them. Her eyes were so wide they all but bugged out of her head, and her hands convulsed against the floor, fingers scraping so hard he saw nails splinter. "The captain..."
"What's up with her?" Badger asked, jerking his head. Almost looking like he wanted to go to her, but didn't dare.
"I - " They had no time to spare for Badger. "River...?"
She screamed, her hands reaching up to her face and twining, tugging, in her hair.
"Zoe!" Simon spun, shouting up the ladder, changing tack. He could see her boot heels in the dark shaft, above Wash's broader form. "Zoe! Something's wrong. I think Mal - "
River's cry took on a raw note of furious antagonism, rising to drown him out.
Mal was slumped, sliding slowly down the wall and tasting blood, feeling it thick and cloying 'gainst the back of his throat, when his tormentor wavered, hands rising to his head, giving a rattling cry.
He had enough left in him to lash out with his foot, twisting it around the man's leg and yanking it out from under him. He spun, falling, arching the device over his blue-gloved partner and the Alliance men behind him. Off-balance from the manoeuvre, and in the absence of the immobilising pressure the weapon had seemed to induce in every cell in his body, Mal slid all the way to the floor.
The Alliance folks were complaining mightily at getting a taste of their own medicine, and Mal didn't feel sorry for them one bit. His vision was a kind of hazy red-edged affair, and nerve-memory of the pain still lingered throughout his body, but the overall weakness he felt was the only thing that threatened to kill him now. He clawed his way along the floor as those behind really started screaming, getting well clear before he tried to stand. Tried, couldn't, glanced back to see that the faces of those he'd left behind him were masks of blood, their bodies twitching in what sure as hell looked like the last spasms of life... He scrubbed a hand over his own face, stared at the blood that decorated it in small streaks... and continued clawing his way back to the elevator, one hand-span's scrap of ground at a time.
Pressed himself into the floor and stilled as running feet approached, but raised his head as he heard Jayne swear. Simon, coming out of the merc's shadow, drew an audible breath.
"Captain?" The doctor was down at his side in an instant. "What happened? River wouldn't let - "
Mal caught Jayne's ankle as he made to explore the way behind him. "Don't go back there."
"No," Jayne agreed, looking freaked. He knelt down, shoving the doctor out of the way in the process, then looked down at Mal and the gun in his hand, and screwed up his face in reluctance before dumping the monstrosity - Vera - into Simon's empty arms, clearing his own to gather up Mal.
"Wait," Simon protested, casting the weapon one helpless frown then ignoring it. "He's hurt - I don't know that this is - Jayne, he's bleeding from his eyes - "
"No time," Jayne said, voicing Mal's thoughts exactly. "Take a good hold of Vera, doctor. Cap'n's a heavy sumbitch. Won't be able to drag him and keep the feds off us at the same time."
Simon nodded and gamely tried to set his hands correctly on the weapon and hold it like he was threatening. Mal loosed a ragged laugh.
When he was hoisted over Jayne's shoulder, he curled his fingers convulsively in the damp cloth of the merc's T-shirt, fighting the sensation of vertigo the motion brought on, and didn't pass out.
