"Hoyle..." Her protest faltered as she searched his face, and she resisted when he tried to steer her the way she'd just come, back toward Mal. "Simon wouldn't, I'm sure. He said there were a few things he needed to look up while he was here, but he can't have meant to - it must be a mistake."
Her thoughts were racing. Mal, she decided angrily. Mal had known something he had not shared with her. He'd known Simon would have reason to be in trouble. And Simon - Simon had been so odd, earlier. Then he'd mentioned River and she'd accepted it as though all her training counted for nothing.
"You don't bypass security barriers to access restricted files by 'mistake', Inara." He released her arm uncertainly. "What are you intending to do?"
"I - " She knew this man. She trusted him. She took a long breath. "I have to get Simon out. He can't be taken into Alliance custody. He's tagged, Hoyle."
"There isn't a way," he responded instantly, barrelling through his shock. "Security have him detained. They might not get much to do out here, but there are still too many of them, and they're hardly going to let you walk in and take him." He saw her expression and added defensively, "You know I want to help you. I didn't expect it to get so complicated."
"I'm sorry." She bowed her head. "I didn't intend to bring trouble down on you. I'm sure Simon can't have meant... it must have been something very important, for him to do this."
"You still maintain these are good people?" he asked; something of doubt in his voice, but also a gentle note of tease.
"They've been all but family for a year and a half," she told him with passion. "Hoyle, I need you to do something for me. I need you to go to Mal - to the captain. He'll need to know what's going on, and he'll need help. Get him on his feet if you can - " She briefly clutched his shoulders with both hands.
He caught her wrists as she withdrew. "There's no time. You both need to get out of here quickly. Your captain will be under suspicion, and maybe you as well once they've had time to do some digging. You can't rescue... Simon, but right now there's still a chance for the two of you."
"I'm not leaving him behind. If they take him, they take us all, Hoyle. That's how it works. It... isn't just concern for a comrade. Please, just... do as I ask."
"What have you involved yourself in?" He caught her shoulder as she turned away. "What will you be doing?"
"I need some things from my shuttle."
"Take my ground-car." A code-key pressed into her palm.
Inara silently nodded her thanks, then hurried away.
It didn't take long to get from the research centre into the landing pad outside Hoyle's apartment block in the vehicle. She parked it up clumsily in the low gravity and all but ran across the hard ground to her own shuttle.
Inside, she beamed a hasty message up to Serenity. "Wash, we need pick-up. Simon's got himself taken in by security. We'll try to get him out and get away in the shuttle, but we'll need you to meet us." The shuttle could not carry them fast enough nor far enough to avoid scout ships should the local Alliance policing forces be alerted. But Serenity could be out of there faster than it would take the Alliance to prepare their more powerful, long-range vessels. "Wash?" There was no reply, but they would get the message, hopefully sooner rather than later. "We'll see you in a few hours."
Silence and static, and she cut communication; her body sagged a moment in the chair before she could force herself back to action. They had left all weapons inside her shuttle - Mal could hardly go armed into the facility, but there had always been the possibility they'd have to fight their way out. Now, Inara strapped Mal's gunbelt on and hid her own tiny pistol in the folds of her dress. Finally, she pulled on a shawl and let its heavy fabric hide Mal's pistol at her hip.
She lifted off the shuttle, and guided it the short distance back to the research facility.
"Inara said she was coming back?" Mal asked, a disbelieving - or perhaps just despairing - laugh escaping him, as he yanked the edge of his shirt from Professor Sherwin's grasp and started clumsily fastening the buttons. Gorram fingers still felt like they belonged to someone else, and didn't it just top off his whole week having grandpa help him dress?
"Yes," the old man said crisply, and one thing at least, he wasn't sounding any happier than Mal felt about having Inara in the thick of all this.
Mal swore in Chinese and abandoned the buttons, figuring half was plenty enough for decency. He let the professor guide him to perch on the edge of the bed while he helped him on with his boots, leaning over still not being a plan of the recommended variety. Most movement still peppered his head with sparks, and it was as though after four days not being able to stand straight his body had forgotten quite how to manage it, even if it had all the parts required to do so. He watched the professor, the strain that showed in his lined face.
"Look, Prof, about the doc - "
"You don't need to explain anything."
And weren't that the most cynical... Mal dug his fingers into the man's shoulder, making him look up and pay attention. "We didn't set out to cause you trouble. Know you helped us and all. Helped Inara. Simon's... just trying to help someone that he cares about. Thought he could find the answer in your files."
"There's nothing in those except old research that has so many security codes slapped in place I've never even seen most of it," the professor snapped. "And from what I know of the history of this facility, it's hard to see how that information could help anyone, except yourselves to pocket the proceeds from selling Alliance weapon technology on the black market."
"'Cause obviously it'll only see safe and responsible use in Alliance hands - " Mal started, and cut himself off. "No, gorram it." He shoved the professor away and managed to get stood on his own two feet. Tottered the short distance over to the wall next to the door, as much for leaning on as to be ready for any security uniforms felt like bursting in. "We didn't come here to steal. Didn't set out planning to abuse your trust and, hell, even if I'm not so much for caring on that score, I certainly didn't set out to abuse Inara's."
Professor Sherwin was quiet a moment. Mal took the time to pull his suspenders up onto his shoulders. Stopped stone dead with the last one half-raised as the professor said, "You do care for her, don't you?"
"That's kind of complicated," Mal said cagily, setting the suspender in place and rearranging his shirt. "Reckon you know what I mean."
"Inara's a free spirit." And that statement was all kinds of bland, but he wondered, all the same, if all of Inara's wiles could catch the frustration - even anger - under there, or if there wasn't a point she became too close, wiles or no wiles.
As to whether you'd call that a flash of sympathy among the resentment... well, Mal wasn't about to over-analyse, though it did occur to him that if Hoyle could read him as clear then evasion was an exercise in pointlessness. "It's one way to put it. Plus, I ain't so keen on the whoring, and - like I said, complicated."
The professor coughed and looked mighty uncomfortable at the 'w' word, and asked in faint disbelief, "Yet you rent out a shuttle to her, and she... stays? She claims she's happy..."
Mal shot him a put-out glare. "Inara's just fine on my boat, don't you concern yourself. Woman can give good as she gets, else I wouldn't never... you know."
The door slid open, and he was halfway to either catching her in a stranglehold or landing himself in a heap at her feet - a toss-up as to which - when she said, "Wouldn't what, Mal?"
He caught himself against the wall. "Professor and me just talking."
She rolled her eyes and reached into the folds of her shawl to unclip something from around her waist. Moment later she dumped his gunbelt in his hands. "'Just talk' while you put that on, then."
He wasn't oblivious to her angry eyes on him as he awkwardly fastened the belt into place and experimentally drew. Slower'n hell, hands a mass of thumbs. Good enough. Staying on his feet would be the trickier part.
"When were you planning to tell me, Mal?" Inara asked.
"What - ?" he looked up, caught off guard, and saw her looking mighty pissed.
"Simon," she stressed. "He found something, didn't he? And there is only one thing that could make him take such a risk - "
She silenced as his eyes slipped over to Hoyle. Her outrage dissipated as she cottoned on that it was as much a matter of protection as trust. But Inara turned to the professor with betrayal in her face. "What are you involved in?" she breathed.
Mal opened his mouth to tell her it wasn't like that, this was all long before the fellow had even come to the facility, but Hoyle's face said otherwise, and he remembered the information he'd passed to Simon. Alliance was using this research centre to either develop or study the nastier of their weapon tech, and grandpa... grandpa was in it up to his neck.
"Inara," Hoyle said brokenly, hands reaching out but never connecting. "It was the compromise I had to make... to do the work I wanted to do. The funding, after that first year, it was... I was failing. I had to start looking at the options I'd ruled out. I couldn't run this place the way I'd envisioned. All those old thoughts proved... unrealistic."
"Is that why you'd have 'lost me'?" Inara demanded.
Mal caught her as she took a confrontational step toward the professor, and set her back a pace. "We don't have time for this right now."
"There won't ever be another time," Inara said, shaking him off.
He caught her again. "The professor provided Simon the information to let him sort this mischief of mine once and for all, so far as I'm concerned he gets the benefit of a doubt with me, and we don't have time for this, Inara. We need to get Simon and get out." He turned to the professor. "You know where they're keeping him?"
Grandpa nodded. Not much in the way of hesitation, and Mal guessed he was looking to redeem himself with Inara now.
And Mal wasn't averse to taking advantage. "That case, we need you to lay out the ground for us," he said. "We got to formulate ourselves a plan."
The light in the office felt somehow like a harsher glare, though was the same he'd been working under the past forty-eight hours. Simon clasped his hands together and kept them still on the table top in front of him, trying not to move at all. Perhaps it was the very fact they tended not to get many security situations on this far-flung moon that seemed to be making his guards so jumpy.
Even so, they'd taken a break in their inept questioning and just one of them was holding a gun on him now, while the second poured out three coffees and the flush of a toilet beyond the door at the back of the office advertised the whereabouts of the third.
These were civilian security personnel, not Alliance, but he knew the Alliance had been called, and Inara had mentioned there was no shortage of soldiers garrisoned on Riarden. Once the Alliance ran his genetic profile, they'd find out he was tagged and working under an alias...
The burlier of the guards walked behind him with the coffee and he stiffened, half-expecting another knee in the kidneys or some other such delightful trick. But as he came around and set the mugs down there was a tap on the door. The guard who'd just emerged from the back incautiously went over to key in the security code.
"Thank you." Simon tried to stifle his reaction when he heard Inara's voice. He blinked rapidly as the companion stepped over the threshold, security too astonished to stop her. Her green dress made her glitter like a jewel in their midst, and it seemed nobody could form words or react. "Steven," she greeted Simon, with a sober nod, and looked around at the guards with indignation. "Would you care to tell me what precisely is the meaning of this? I was most distraught to discover my friend had been arrested, of all things."
"I - we - that is - " The security man she'd rounded on - the one with his gun out to cover Simon - stammered, and his arm wavered. Inara was half blocking his aim, but faced with her swirl of finery and sexuality and, overwhelmingly, anger, he could neither edge away nor muster protest. "He's not arrested, ma'am. We don't have the authority - but the Alliance are on their way. You'll need to talk to Lieutenant Amner when he arrives."
Inara's gaze swept disparagingly over the small, shabby office and those present in it, the three security men still stuck at the gawping stage. And Simon did not miss the very deliberate catch in her eyes as she slid them from Simon to the guard who stood almost at his side.
He barely stopped himself from acting the moment the gesture sank in. There was still a gun upon him. There would be a moment for action - Inara's plan was surely to create one. Doubts ate at him as he made himself remain stationary. Even if they caught them by surprise, he and Inara could not take on three armed men and hope to win.
Inara had turned back to the guard she'd marked out as her own, and she railed in his face, "I have no intention of waiting for Lieutenant Amner to arrive! This is some wretched mistake on the part of you people. You took my friend in, and you can let him loose. I'll have you know, I can have you tossed out of this job in a second." Her voice rose to a painfully shrill level. His gun hand wavered, and then Inara's body was blocking his shot completely.
The guard next to Simon proved they weren't completely inept by way of the hand reaching for his weapon, but by that time Simon was already moving, praying he'd judged the signal and the timing right. He tackled the guard, throwing all his weight into the move, and for a moment was afraid he'd failed ridiculously as the heavier man staggered but kept his balance. Then the two of them were in a pile on the floor, the guard still trying to draw his gun as Simon desperately ploughed his fists into the man's face, trying to gain himself chance to find the pressure point at the neck that would send his opponent down quietly.
"Stop!" Inara's voice rang out. Simon looked up even as the struggles of the man beneath his grasp faded. Inara had drawn a tiny gun from... somewhere, and she held it up under the chin of the guard she'd marked. As for the remaining man...
Mal leaned against the wall by the door, looking very much as though he needed that support to stay upright. The pistol in his hand might not be completely steady, but the expression on his face provided threat enough.
Nobody moved. Then, slowly, Simon hauled himself up from the floor, taking the unconscious man's gun from its holster on the way, feeling the aches of his bruises.
"...Big damn heroes?" he asked weakly, looking between the barely-upright captain and the glitter of finery that was Inara.
"Absolutely," said Mal. "If you've got a minute, doctor, reckon you could find a hole in your schedule for a spot of daring escape?"
"Right," Simon said slowly. "How did you...?"
Mal took a half-dozen determined steps, and delivered a solid pinch that knocked down the third security man, wavered, landed on hands and knees on top of the unconscious man, and had to drag himself up again. A sound caught Simon's attention and he turned to see Inara standing over a final limp form. He couldn't guess at what she'd done, although he'd long been aware she was by no means defenceless.
"Prof came through for us," Mal supplied, head turning to the door and back, the pistol in his hand adjusting to cover the entrance.
"Where is - ?" Simon faltered as he realised how acid a glare Inara was directing toward Mal at the mere subject.
Mal rolled his eyes and looked defensive. His hands moved in the air in vague protest. "I knocked him out, okay? Seemed the thing to do, 'less you want him tarred with the same brush as the rest of us in this here escapade. Least this way, the man has a chance of slipping under Alliance radar for his little piece of treachery in helping us out."
"Oh." Simon frowned and glanced furtively at Inara.
She said, "We could have used his help."
"And I got no time for this discussion. We need to make tracks. Run now, gripe later." He waved them ahead of him out the door with the gun.
Simon only got a dozen feet before he realised nobody was following after. Inara had turned around in the doorway, and as he started back himself, he heard her say, softly appalled, "Mal, no."
"No... what?" Simon posed slowly, looking 'round the edge of the door. Saw only Mal on his knees by the nearest of the guards. "Captain?"
He turned and pinned Inara with his stare, ignoring Simon completely. "I'm not letting you take the fall for this," Mal said. "They've all seen you hold a gun on them. You used your real name here, damn it!" Simon couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the captain so harsh and bleak. Maybe those early days, when Kaylee lay dying, and he was living under threat of being tossed out the airlock.
"It's not worth it," Inara said, very softly. "Please. It's not... maybe Hoyle can cover for me..."
"Professor will have hard enough a time covering for himself, mess we're leaving him with."
"It'll be harder if there's murder involved. He may choose not to cover for any of us at all. You're not killing these men for me, Mal." They held that stare. Simon might have not been there at all. "If you kill them, then I will leave. And I won't be coming back."
"All right." Mal pulled himself upright furiously, reeling on his feet when he reached them, arms flailing in a manner almost drunken, though his expression was anything but funny. "Your choice." Simon's heart sank at that look on the captain's face, like she'd just sealed her fate. Despite Mal's hostility, Inara went to him and caught his arm and from there practically manhandled him out the door under cover of providing support. Mal turned his glare onto Simon. "Hope you found something useful, doctor. Looks like it might prove expensive."
"I - " Simon began, and stopped, realising it was not the time. "I think we should get out of here and back to the shuttle before this facility is set on full alert, captain," he finished.
Badger barged up onto the bridge. "What's going on?"
Wash shot a peevish glance his way and answered, with very apparent reluctance, "Message from Inara. They've got trouble, need us to fly in and pick them up. We didn't bother telling you on account of that you not being a member of this crew issue. You recall that one?"
Biting short a snarl, Badger glared out at the Black. Gorram monster of a planet still filling most of the view, the angle of it and the patterns on its bulk visibly altering as Serenity's position moved relative to it. He'd been down in the cargo deck when he felt the changes of the ship's motion - 'felt' in this case being something of an understatement, given she'd banked near hard enough to topple him off one of the walkways.
"What about the rest?" If they were headed into trouble, he'd be happier not to be in the company of a girl, a preacher and a clown.
"No time. We'll come back around for them later. Might have to double back, if we head out of here in a hurry. It's cool. We've done this before." Wash glanced up; eyed him as though asking 'why are you still here?'
Badger stayed anyway, eyes ahead on the void they traversed. After a while the pilot either forgot he was there or pretended to do so with an unusual degree of conviction. A while after that, the preacher came back, and Wash looked up and looked sharp. "Any joy?"
Book nodded. "Alliance radio traffic is... energetic. I'm not sure I'd call it 'joyful'."
Wash returned the nod, the set of his face tightening to something like grimness, and called up a bunch of readings on various screens and dials were only so much gibberish far as Badger was concerned. Frowned at one in particular, and tapped it so that Book leaned over and promptly took on a similarly downbeat sort of demeanour. "There they are."
"Who?" Badger asked. "What?"
The two of them wasted a moment exchanging looks before Wash turned and opened his mouth - then delivered a string of curses in Chinese as a series of jolts rocked the ship. "That!" he snapped, clawing at the instrumentation.
Everyone was already grabbing onto something when a jolt turned into practically a bounce and spin. Sparks fizzled in the control deck, and Badger lost sight of what was happening with everything else as he fought to cling onto a locker that was bolted to wall and floor and threatening to come away from both, preventing himself being batted clear from wall to wall by the convulsive motion.
When the ship righted itself again, Book had a handhold forward of the pilot's console, arms locked like he wasn't figuring letting go for anything. It was ironically Wash, only gorram one of them with a seat, who hadn't been so lucky. Man was flat out under his console, softly moaning. Badger looked around nervously. The view outside the ship caught his eye as something bright flared past them and popped in an explosion that looked tiny in the mass of space.
Book barked a curse in Chinese that good lecturing Shepherds shouldn't ought to use and sprang to the unconscious pilot's side, a force and energy in his motion that belied his age. Once there, he proceeded in having no luck at all reviving the man. A glance showed Wash had a gash on his head to go with his fading Alliance-issue bruises. Badger snapped at the preacher, "Can you fly this gorram ship?"
Even as Book shook his head, Serenity shuddered again as though in empathy. "The captain knows a little, but Wash is - "
"Ohhhh, we are so very, very dead," Badger assessed.
More shudders. He could see the shapes of their pursuers on one of the readout screens. Book followed his gaze.
"ZN33s," the preacher said. "Older model scout ships. Hornets. They'd have to hit us a whole lot, or else have some uncommonly lucky targeting, before they could cripple a robust cargo hauler like Serenity."
"Newsflash for you - given we got precisely nobody to fly this thing, I'm thinking they're gonna get that opportunity, no trouble." A thought struck him all a sudden and he swallowed. A last look at the unconscious pilot - "Where's River?"
"She was in the passenger quarters - "
Badger didn't wait, careening out of the bridge and ricocheting off the walls of the corridor beyond as he worked his way down the ship, through the kitchen and along past the infirmary to the passenger dorms. "River!" he yelled, and almost collapsed with relief when she stuck her head around a door and beratingly accused him of being very loud.
He grabbed her hand. "C'mon, girl. Need you up on the bridge."
She met his eyes a moment, and he had the distinct feeling she was ingesting every bit of what he knew. She nodded once and let him pull her along with him, back the whole length of the gorram long bloody ship.
Book looked bewildered as he pushed her in front of him onto the bridge and pointed her at the controls. "River can't fly the ship," he said. "She's never - "
"Yes, she can," Badger insisted, looking at the girl.
Who slowly raised her hand and with it flicked a button, the result of which was that the ride smoothed out noticeably. Nodding, smiling to herself, her hands running over the controls in a 'getting to know you' kind of caress, River sank down onto the edge of Wash's empty chair.
"I do apologise, Badger," the preacher said. "It seems she can. How ever did you - "
Badger shook his head. He wasn't about to own up about the events with the shuttle.
"She wants silence to work," River said, flat but oddly melodic. Her hands were a dance.
"Good girl," Badger said. "Get us out of here."
"We're not leaving," Book said, and his calm didn't completely obscure an impression of steely threat in that statement.
"I've found the shuttle," River provided, still robotic. "They're too close. Can't run. Caught in the eye of the swarm..." She did something to the controls that had the effect of turning the ship sharply, manoeuvring it out of a hail of fire that sparked away into the black, and bringing into their view the distant speck of the shuttle, limned in the twice-reflected light from the gas planet. "Too close..." The hornets surrounded the shuttle already, trying to herd it back down to Riarden's surface. Someone on board was taking issue with that plan. Of all the suicidal... "Engine room not manned. Rules out all category N manoeuvres," River stated, starting to do something, then stalling and taking her hands elsewhere on the controls.
Serenity juddered under another salvo. Badger swore. "We don't get out of here now, we won't be able to run."
Book was giving him that significant, preacherly look again. "I know you have it in you to rise above such thoughts... Badger. To do the right thing."
"Nine times out of ten, the right thing gets you nothing but dead," Badger told him. He gripped the girl's shoulder. "We need to be burning gas out of here, love."
She barely looked at him, attention pinned on the battle and... something else. More fire directed to the shuttle. River's hands rose to her head and she screamed. "No! Simon...!" She clawed at herself, collapsing into a mass of incoherent talk. On the screen, the shuttle listed, wobbling in its flight, trailing sparks.
"Another hit like that and they'll be crippled," Book said, helpless. "Maybe dead."
"I'm thinking maybe they already are. In which case, no reason at all for us to stay."
"They're not dead yet," River said. "Simon's not - " Her hands reached for buttons, stalled halfway, ruled out by an ever-more-desperate denial. "No..."
Something in the way she'd said her brother's name tugged at Badger's insides unpleasantly. The affection there, the need... and it occurred to him the girl wouldn't have much in the way of chances for a life at all without that brother of hers around - her doctor, her keeper, the schmuck to watch over her... And the way she said they weren't dead yet... well, it seemed to him, given the abilities she'd proved so far, that it was all too clear they were about to be.
Gorram it. "We're close," Badger said. "Must be something we can do. Alls they need is to get into position to dock..." He was thinking furiously.
"Can't - too many - " River insisted. "The controls are - they talk to me but it's all too - too much, too new, and - death... fire and death and - "
"Shhh." Badger set his hand on her shoulder, held tight. Okay, so the girl wasn't going anywhere without her brother, and they weren't going anywhere without the girl. All they needed was to get the shuttle into position to dock... or get themselves into it. He swallowed; took a breath. "All right. Move us. Put us between them all."
"What?" Book asked.
Badger ignored him, concentrated only on River. "Bring us around. This ship can do that, right? Firefly's a heap of junk with all kinds of manoeuvring power. So stick us in the way and bring her round for them to dock with us. Cut off that fire from the shuttle."
"Serenity's taken a lot of hits," the preacher said, though it seemed more a warning than a protest. "And she's a lot bigger a target than a shuttle." His gaze slid doubtfully down to River. "It's also a very precision manoeuvre."
Badger didn't need to respond that she could do it - girl already was. Maybe she'd picked the idea from his head 'fore he even said it, maybe she'd just come to the same conclusions. Trail of fire making a sound like ripping all along the ship's belly and the view reeled, even if the grav system made sure they didn't. Shook like crazy with the impact of those shots, had Badger's heart in his mouth, but somehow they all held together, and River calming beneath his touch surely had to be a good sign.
"We got them," she said, even as a wall of static fuzzed in over the comm and somewhere in the depths of it all Inara's voice said, "Shuttle two commencing docking - "
Another hit rocked Serenity. Bad moment for it... bad moment. "Are they in?" Badger asked. "Are they safe? We're gorram sitting ducks here!"
"They're in," River said, gleeful, laughing. "They're alive."
"Then hit it," Badger breathed. "Get us the rutting hell out of here."
"Aye, aye, cap'n!"
He could've sworn the girl was laughing at more'n their survival issue as she muffled a giggle accompanying the salute and the trite reply.
Badger, River and Book were still on the bridge when Mal made his way back up there. Had seemed for the best River stay, given the possibility of more attention from the Alliance, and that Book stay given the possibility of, well, craziness. God alone knew what Badger was doing up there, but from what he'd heard it had been almost what you might call fortunate he had been, a while back.
"How we doing?" Mal asked. Gas planet filled the top half of their view, reflecting Serenity's changed position, and the lack of Alliance space hardware in that view was a definite improvement.
"Keeping out of sight, captain," Book supplied. "We've established contact with Zoe and we're on our way now to pick them up, staying under Alliance radar."
River looked engrossed with her task of manning the helm, concentration on her face like she was communing with the ship itself, expression a very picture of serenity. Mal watched her a moment before dragging his gaze aside. "Damned if there ain't anything that girl can't do," he muttered to himself with... well, perhaps a trace of resentment. Weren't like he'd ever gone and wasted hours on end trying to get Wash to drum the knack of flying into him, back when.
"How about surgery, captain?" Book suggested mildly. "It's good to see you up and about."
"Good to be up and about." Mal patted the preacher's arm appreciatively, and since all seemed well on the bridge, turned to leave. In turning, happened to catch his eye on Badger, and memory gave him reason to pause. "Hear you been makin' yourself useful having a play at captain in my absence?"
"Screw you, Reynolds," Badger shot back, unhelpful.
Mal pressed his lips together and nodded consideringly. "Nothing's come up on the cortex," he supplied, "so we'll be headed back to Persephone after picking up the shuttle. All's well and we can be trusting you to keep your mouth shut - " he glanced toward River, but she was otherwise engrossed " - you'll get off there. Shouldn't take more'n forty-eight hours in all 'til we have you back on home soil."
Badger only looked mighty sour and Mal, unruffled, turned and headed out down the steps, taking it a mite more careful than usual true enough, but all-in-all feeling restored. He made his way down through the kitchen and along to the infirmary.
Wash was conscious and sitting up complaining that the verse had some kind of universal conspiracy against him as Mal entered. He stared out bemused from under the arch of Simon's arm, the doctor engaged in dealing with his head wound, before raising his hand in a weak wave. Simon carried out a fairly acrobatic manoeuvre to swap hands over and twist around to Wash's other side without taking the surgical pad off the wound. "You're on your feet," Wash said with the giddy content of the concussed.
"That I am." Mal looked to Simon. "He gonna be all right?"
"He'll be fine."
"Simon claims his crazy sister's flyin' the ship," Wash told Mal, conspiratorially, as though passing on a funny joke. "How about that?"
"That'd be because his crazy sister's flyin' the ship," Mal responded, deadpan. "You need anything passed over, doctor?"
Simon pointed, and he carried over the items indicated, then retreated to lean against a counter while the doctor worked.
"How come nobody told me River could fly the ship?" Wash asked, accusingly.
"Girl's like a sponge," Mal said. "Picks up all sorts. Knifing. Gunplay..."
Simon protested, "I thought we weren't dwelling on that any more?"
"Best hope she didn't spend too much time with Badger. Wouldn't like to think the sorts of things she'd be picking up from him."
"It's kind of sweet, in a... wholly revolting way," Wash reflected. "Okay, so not sweet, then. But something. Definitely something. There may not be a word for it, but that's definitely what it..."
"Yes, Wash," Mal cut him off, and addressed Simon. "Now that we're all secure, doctor, you got any cares to tell me precisely what you had to go running off to find down on that facility?" He didn't make a particular effort to keep the hostility from his voice, and Wash's eyes tracked between the two of them in surprise. Simon halted and his mouth hung open a moment, silenced.
Then he shook his head, his eyes drifting down, and his lips worked another few seconds before it seemed he was able to make the words come. "They did some work there... a long time ago. A decade, at least, and before... the information was old. Some of it, it looked like they've been working on for longer than I've been alive. The prototypes... the men we found... They used criminals, the insane... disposable minds. But it didn't work, they couldn't control them. The conclusions I saw before security came in were pointing out the next step as to be using only the very best. Talking about..." Wash was forgotten; his hands waved, empty, helpless, through air. "Breeding programs. Tests. Schools. Filtering methods, to find minds they might use."
"And they were trying to make readers? Psychics?"
"Oh, yes. 'Human weapons', was a phrase I saw used. A weapon." He looked away, and laughed bitterly. "My sister's a weapon. No, I didn't find anything useful. I didn't find anything I don't wish I hadn't found at all."
Mal just nodded grimly, and turned to head out, before he said anything he'd regret. Be time aplenty for recriminations later, when the situation in front of them was dealt with. But the internal comm chimed its cent's-worth, stopping him in the doorway. "Shuttle's coming to dock, captain," Book's voice said.
Mal left in chase of the message. Spent a few minutes waiting outside the shuttle dock before he heard the grind of mechanics that signalled they were being pulled in tight. Another short stretch of waiting and the door slid back.
"Captain!" Kaylee's face was one big smile all over at the sight of him. "You're walking!" She hurled herself into his arms as though to make a point of his shiny new stability, and near made a lie of it. Nonetheless, he tugged her to him and returned the hug 'til Zoe stepped out and diverted his attention.
"Sir." She smiled, and kneaded his shoulder with a familiar hand. Something arch and suspicious, though, in the way she queried him, "You sure you're meant to be up and about? Why, you can't have been off the table more than twenty-four hours."
"I'm good," he said, not about to tell her it was close to half that. "Doc fixed me up right fine. Just like he said. Spot of unrelated bother, but there's no call for dragging out the details here and now. How've things been with yourselves?"
"I did a job," Kaylee said excitedly. "Fellow needed his XNT7 fixin'. Got us some credit in, cap'n. Couple of crates need taking over to Nelson, too, ain't more'n a few hours past Persephone, and half paid up-front."
"Sounds shiny."
"'Shiny', he says. Ain't like you had to spend two days trolling the gorram armpit of the 'verse." Jayne's familiar griping preceded the man himself out of the shuttle. Once emerged, he gave Mal's upright state a once-over and nodded, apparently satisfied to let it pass without comment.
"No," Mal said, with Jayne-baiting sarcasm. "I just spent them flat on my back getting needles poked into my skull. You got the short end of that deal all right."
"Best let him be, sir," Zoe said with amusement. "Poor baby. He had a depressing time."
"You shouldn't pick on him," Kaylee berated her, a certain gush in her voice. Jayne very visibly winced and shrank away from the two women.
"You ladies been intimidating our muscle-man here? I'm shocked you would do such a thing." Mal shook his head at them. "Shocked, plain and simple."
"Gorram it, Mal..." Jayne ducked back into the shuttle and picked up a crate; stomped off with it down toward the cargo deck. The steps shook with every over-hard footfall.
Zoe and Kaylee exchanged a look and made what seemed a mighty effort not to burst out with their giggles. Then Zoe sobered and, looking around, asked, "Where's that straying husband of mine?"
"Wash is in the infirmary - nothing serious, just took a tumble in a slice of trouble we had. Reckon he'd be mighty glad to see you, too," he added. She was already heading down into the ship, away from him. He looked at Kaylee. "Simon's there too, doing the patching."
"Lookin' to get shot of me, captain?"
"No, I - "
Kaylee laughed at him, too, and he swiped a hand through her hair, comprehensively mussing it by way of retaliation. "Xie-xie, cap'n. I'll go down there now and... say hi to Simon." She set off as she spoke, near walking backwards, trying to look like she weren't in any kind of hurry at all.
More slowly, Mal crossed the width of the ship and paused a while outside the closed door of Inara's shuttle before finally scraping up the resolve to raise his hand and knock.
"Come in, Mal," her dry voice said from within.
He opened the door on a back view of her shrugging into a black and silver robe, and averted his eyes. "Had enough psychics on board, so I thought, with 'em numbering just the one," he said. "Expecting me?"
"To tell the truth, I didn't think you'd wait so long as this." Facing him, she fastened the cord on the front of her robe with a brisk tug, and let her hands fall to her sides. "Are you going to lecture me now on my choices?" The faintest hint of retreat, of uncertainty in her face, anticipating fending off his rage.
"I'm angry with Simon," Mal emphasised. "You're... what's done is done. This is..." And he faltered. Looked around the shuttle, the fancy accoutrements, the rich living. Trinkets and threads from a thousand different men and a hundred different worlds. "What will you do?" he asked, hearing his voice crack.
"What will I do?" Inara sat herself down and fussed with teacups and a teapot on a tray - he wasn't convinced there was any water in the pot, nor nothing but an excuse for distraction, and he wasn't used to seeing her off-balance enough to telegraph so blatantly. After a moment she gave up, folding her hands tight over her knees.
"Worst comes to the worst," he elaborated. "Which it's like to do, you surely must see."
"If it happens, I'll deal with it," she said. "It was my choice, Mal. You don't have to shoulder any blame, or add to that tiresome 'weight of the world' complex of yours. And..." She met his eyes. "I can't say I'm not a little angry with Simon myself. But I also can't say I'm surprised. He simply... acted according to his nature. As do we all."
"Maybe." Mal grimaced, and shook his head, more to clear it than in any denial of Inara's piece. He wasn't thinking about Simon just now. Other things had better priority on his mind. "You'll always have a place here. Don't matter what happens. Wanted you to know that. Hell, you already know that, and here's me - "
"Thank you," she said sincerely.
He was uncomfortable under that gaze. Too much going on, he thought, to be talking on this now. "Well. Since that's all spoke - probably best I get going, give you some quiet."
"Yes." Her chin dipped. "You should get some rest. Being dragged from a hospital bed into the thick of firefights... I imagine it's long past due."
"Yeah..." He turned to go, stopped midway, swung back. "Call me crazy, but is there something else we're not talking on here? Is this about your professor?"
She sighed and stood and crossed to the other side of the room to fuss with something there, almost obscured out of sight in the dimness among the fancy drapes. Mal waited out the unwelcoming vibes 'til she was forced to speak. "I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't get to... talk things out. And now I never will."
"He'll be safe, if he plays it right," Mal said stiffly. "That's a hell of a lot better'n closure."
She swore at him violently in Chinese. "You think I don't know that? It doesn't make it easier, Mal. I don't even know... if he was the same man I knew anymore. The man I knew would never have worked on developing tools of slaughter."
"We all change," he said. "We all have to."
Inara shook her head. Not a contradiction so much as an unwillingness to hear. "Please go," she told him, sinking down on the edge of her bed with her back to him. "Tomorrow, we'll talk. Right now I have to be alone."
Mal started to nod, slowly, then curtailed the gesture she couldn't see. Feeling uncommonly heavy, he turned and left the shuttle, closing the door behind him.
Alone, he headed back to his quarters, dragging an aching body felt like the most part of it was already asleep, dreaming gorram lousy dreams.