Bermuda doesn't live up to its name.
Simon remarks on it absentmindedly as they step off the ramp, another bit of folklore from Earth-That-Was that Mal is only half paying attention to. The doctor mentions oceans with labyrinthine depths, ships disappearing into the murk. But Bermuda is bustling and arid and the pleasant heat of it rolls over Mal as his feet hit dirt.
"Alright, we've got one hour before we meet the client," Mal speaks, letting his voice carry as he repeats information most of them should already know. "Reckon that's two hours till we're back with the money. Don't want anyone wandering off 'fore we're done, 'case we have to leave quickly. Jayne and the doc, you're with me. Everyone else, stay put. Afterwards, things go smooth-like, might see about getting us some shore leave." There's the odd bit of cheering at that, and Mal gives the crew his best nice captain smile before they part ways.
Paranoia aside, ain't no particular reason for this job to be going south, so he lets Zoe stay with the ship. Jayne's handy for cutting their way through a crowd, and it's just good sense to bring the doc along when the cargo is medicine.
Bermuda's docks and town square are tightly-packed this time of day. It makes the trip to their meeting point take longer than it should, the doc rolling the refrigerated case of sealed supplies through the crowd while Jayne clears the path and he and the captain both keep their eyes out for trouble.
They needn't have worried. They reach the hospital's back exit with nary a ruffle, and very soon Mal gets the pleasure of watching their client, a comely enough nurse by the name of Felicia, practically faint with relief at the sight of the contents of that crate.
"Thank goodness you made such good time," the client is chattering at him, while Mal smiles politely and counts out the credits. "We've requisitioned new supplies from the Alliance but we're far from the front of the line out here on Bermuda. Any longer and we would have had to cut into expired stock. You have no idea how many people this is going to help."
Mal smiles tightly back at her. "Well, the fuzzy feelin' we all get from hearing those words is why we do what we do. That, and the other thing." He gestures with the credits. Ain't clear on how a nurse has come up with money like that. Ain't his place to ask.
Even so, best he doesn't tell her that stock she's buying is their leftovers from the Ariel heist.
"Could think of 'nother reason, little lady," Jayne adds with a playful leer, and Mal scowls at him until he backs away.
He can't help but notice now that she seems tense, now she's done checking over the meds. And it's not from Jayne's brusqueness, because her eyes are on Mal's hands, on the wad of cash he's still counting as if it's about to sprout wings and fly.
"There a problem?" Mal asks, hackles raised.
"Please carry on. I don't have much time, is all."
"Meaning what?" he asks suspiciously, but she blinks at him like the question is odd.
"It's a hospital, Mal," Simon says softly, and gets a glare from him for his trouble.
"I need to get back to my shift," she explains urgently. We've been short-staffed ever since Alliance started pinching doctors for that rebellion on Lilac. We're lucky if we can work less than fifteen hour shifts on most days, and we still have to refer patients away."
Simon seems outraged by this. "They can't do that. Not without at least providing trainees to replace them."
Felicia shrugs. "It's the Alliance. They do as they like to folk like us."
She doesn't stay to pontificate, though. Soon as Mal's counted the last credit, she takes the goods and disappears through that back door.
He doesn't miss the wistful look Simon sends her way.
"I do believe that job went entirely smooth from start to finish," Mal says later with a smile, as they make their way back to the ship. If anything, the throng in the square feels thicker now, so he raises his voice to make sure the others can hear him. "And you were telling me earlier how that never happens!"
"Captain, all we did was drop off supplies," Simon answers him in the same loud voice, a little too amused for his liking. "That we already had. On board." He thankfully abstains from adding 'from a previous caper' in front of a mass of clueless civilians.
"Well, when you're captain as long as I've been, you learn to appreciate the little things," Mal smirks back, in a paradoxically good mood after that earlier false alarm. Feels mighty good when the client's twitchy for a change on account of somethin' ain't nothing to do with him. "Been on plenty jobs were supposed to be just about dropping off supplies, and still managed to get shot at."
"You do have a way of getting shot at, captain," his medic replies dryly. It's been months with the doctor on board, but Mal is starting to clue in on to the fact that lately Simon only ever calls him that when he's teasing.
He gets a moment to regret tempting fate before very long.
An explosion rocks the air, too gorram close and yet too far away to place. He hears the shockwave but doesn't feel it. A million half-buried muscle memories from worse times awaken all at once, and Mal's pushing the other two men down to the ground before he's even registered what happened.
His ears are ringing but his mind is sharp, and heady with adrenaline.
No injured as far as he can see, but the crowd is now screaming, and the three of them scrabble desperately to the side of the street, and out of the way.
"I reckon that's our cue to leave," Mal says. They're nearly at the docks, he can just about see Serenity up ahead, through the crowd.
The crowd that's turning like a wounded animal, pressing in the direction they came from. Liable to get trampled, if they're not careful, so he keeps the three of them to the side and starts to make his way through.
"Captain? Captain, come in." Wash's voice over comms, urgent and trying not to panic.
He clicks on the comm. "Wash, we're almost at the ship. We get any sense for what's happening out there?"
"Working on it, Mal."
He prays to the Black his crew had the gorram sense to follow his orders and stay put.
A panicking crowd is a hell of a thing. Mal swears when a woman in a dead run almost knocks him to the ground. Jayne pulls him back to his feet before he can get trampled and they keep inching against the flow.
"Alright, I checked the bulletins," Wash pipes in and his voice is grim. "Looks like a buried warhead from the Independence war just detonated in the neighbouring square, collapsed a building. Lot of injured, lot of dead, folk panicking. Guess it's good news in the sense that it won't be getting any worse, but it still don't look pretty. You need to get out of there, Mal."
"Easier said than done," Mal grinds out, going against the crowd step by step. In the corner of his eye, he's distantly aware that Simon has stopped moving.
"There's more," Wash says. "The Alliance cruiser is breaching orbit, prepping to dispatch shuttles. I guess they want to get a closer look."
And Mal doesn't like the sound of that one bit. Whole city soon be crawling with feds.
"Alright, move, people!" he barks, shoving at Jayne to keep clearing a path, and turns to Simon.
The doctor's got a look to him like he's in a trance. He's staring off in the direction of the hospital like he can't look away, heedless of the people who keep jostling him, then finally turns to Mal, eyes wide but with a set to his jaw that gives him a mighty bad feeling.
"Mal, I need to-"
"No. Ain't nothing you need that's dirt-side, doc. Alliance bearing down on us, we need to get going fast, dong ma?"
"But- You heard what they said - they're understaffed, even one extra person would be-"
Mal begins to answer that so is their ship, that Simon won't be getting any doctorin' done around feds with a warrant on his head, but he stops himself. They don't have time for this, and it's taking too much of his focus just to keep moving through this crowd and watching for threats.
"Jayne, bring him along," he says.
"What are you- get off of me!" Simon yelps as Jayne gets him in a headlock, claws up at the burly arms as best he can without dropping his bag.
"Cap'n said the word, doc. Best we be going," Jayne says with no hint of regret in his voice.
Mal turns away and concentrates on wading through the crowd.
"Wash, it's gonna take us a few to get back to the ship," he speaks into the comm. "Crowd's all manner of difficult to get through."
Mal doesn't hear his response, because there's a grunt behind him distinctly different from the hum of the huddled masses and he glances back to see Jayne on the ground, doubled over in pain. He stares past him in time to glimpse a dark vest and white sleeves vanish into the throng.
With a string of curses, he helps Jayne to his feet, the man grasping at his tenders.
"Caught me by surprise," Jayne grumbles defensively. "Never shoulda taught him how to fight dirty."
Mal just scowls at him.
Minutes later, he runs up the ramp with Jayne in tow and waves away Kaylee's protests as he slams his hand down on the airlock panel.
"Wash, get us in the air," he growls into the comm.
The crew's not happy. Long gone are the blessed days when no one questioned him and he could threaten to throw a man out the airlock with only the faint judgemental muttering.
"Alright, quiet down!" Mal grumbles, but in a shouty enough way that he gets what he wants.
"Doctor's a grown man," he says matter-of-factly. "He wants to stay on that rock, let him stay. Ain't nothing we coulda done to stop him short of hogtying him."
Which he's seriously tempted to try, 'case there's ever a repeat of this incident.
At least River's mighty calm, most likely because she's known what he's about to say next since the second he got back on board.
"Not leaving him behind," he assures the crew, and watches Kalee's whinging subside a little. "We're gonna do the refuel on Boros as we planned, and then we double back here and pick the doc back up. We dope him senseless and carry him, if we have to. Won't take more than five days, and by that time the Alliance ought to have lost interest. Won't be far out of our way, neither."
"And if he gets snatched?" Kaylee asks, all wide-eyed concern.
"Ain't nothing we can do for him now the rock's crawling with Alliance. We go charging back in, all we're gonna do is draw attention. 'Sides, doc knows his way around hospitals, might be the only place he can blend in. He keep his head down, ain't no-one gonna look twice at him before it's over and done with."
Something tells him Simon will not, in fact, be keeping his head down, but he keeps that thought to himself.
Or so he thought. He meets River's eye and she gives him a worried smile. Mal rolls his eyes, tucking those considerations far into the corners of his mind where she can't reach.
"Don't make faces," she says gently.
He gives her his meanest scowl and walks out of the mess, muttering to himself.
Simon nearly trips over a man, prone and curled in on himself on the ground - too far from the detonation site, so a clear trampling victim. He hesitates long enough to ascertain that the man may be injured, but not seriously so. He moves on.
In his distraction, Simon is shoved to the ground, swallows a mouthful of grit as he gropes blindly for his medical bag. Got it. He scrambles back to his feet.
Mal is going to skin him alive, he thinks idly, and have Jayne hold him down as he does it.
Somehow, this seems like far less urgent a problem than the utter chaos he knows awaits him at his destination. He has seen it before, once or twice, the aftermath of an earthquake or a train derailment and what it does to an ER. The patients will already be flooding in, fast as the EMTs can bring them, nerves and composure stretched to the limit and every delay, every absent pair of hands ticking down the prognosis of a patient's injury. He weaves past panicking civilians and stumbles back to the hospital, feeling its inexorable pull on him as surely as the pull of gravity.
He retraces his steps and doesn't bother with the back exit. He goes through the front, slipping between outbound EMTs, and makes a beeline across the room when he spies a familiar figure.
"I'm here to help," he tells Felicia, and watches her pale face go slack with relief for the second time that day.
He dons the blue scrubs - his uniform - and tries not to think about how much he's missed this.