Fan Fiction Name: Firesong.
Chapter Name: Haven
Blurb: A year after the Miranda Wave, Jonah, Tomas, and rest of the crew of the Firesong makes their way of life through collecting bounty. Some spoilers ahead!
Disclaimer: Can you guess what will be said here? If you guessed "Firefly is not mine", you'd be right. OC's galore here! See Authors notes below.
Readers Challenge: Spot the geeky subculture reference made in the chapter. This time around, it's a very specific one. It has to do with and extraordinarily geeky thing created about thirty years ago by guys with last names like Gygax and Anderson that deals with pencils, papers, and funny looking dice. Find the reference if you can.
START
The Black can simultaneously be the most open and the most lonely of places to be. It can mean absolute freedom, but at the price that should anything go wrong the crews are subjected to the most brutal and unlivable conditions of the 'verse. The cold, dark of space can also be a bright, shining beacon to those who look for a better present and brighter future than what is given to them. But, in a place as isolated as the Black, the mind can bend and twist in unknown ways. The most common is for a mind to idle on the task ahead, no matter how far from the destination the ship may be.
For Jonah, this mechanism of the brain was running at full bore as Firesong slid through the Black, the destination being the obscure and under populated planet known as Haven.
Jonah had wandered the ship for three hours time, moving from place to place aboard the ship, his mind consistently on Hortance's info. Specifically, there were unanswered questions about the nature of the info and the suspicious nature they had received it. Why had Hortance given them this info? This was a woman who had a small but successful business brokering info to bounty hunters on large scale hits. Hell, at one time she had contact and business relationships with both Yahaira Kerlin and Jubal Early, before the former had her head blown off and the latter disappeared. Why them, a crew that had been solid with their retrieval of hits but known for their grace (or lack of it) to keep them off of large-scale hits. Hell, Gordy was their largest hit in the last five months.
Why this man? He was, by all means and purposes, a damn near perfect killer. A master of Tehn style sojutsu, a sniper caliber shot, and by all means a ruthless killer who had a knack for getting a hold of the best (and worst) of society and leave them torn to bits or filled with holes in the most dramatic of ways. This man was more artist that bloodthirsty killer, almost like he was trained from birth to be utterly dedicated to the ideal of death and strove to make it beautiful. This man was dangerous and a possible threat to Jonah and his crew. If this guy knew that Firesong was after them, he seemed to be the kind of guy who would spend a great deal of time and effort to simply make them suffer. Only the Alliance, even nowadays with the "kinder, softer hand" of the Rangers guiding them, could come up with such a killing machine. Come up with something like an Operative.
Another note would be Hortances' odd behavior back at the docks. She was acting all manner of suspicious. She always had the crews under her employ meet her in her building to discuss payment and strategy. She always gave complete or near complete info to the crew.
But the money…oh the money was good. One hundred thousand credits. Either this was a high profile military case (which is what Jonah would put the most money on), or Hortance had gone stark raving mad and lied through her teeth (an interesting, if unlikely possibility).
So there they were, making their way to Haven, damn near the farthest back you can get in backwater. Only Jiangying and Burnam could get more backwater than Haven. Only Burnam is physically farther back from Haven.
Well, other than Miranda. And no one has gone near Miranda. The Reavers, hurt badly during a massive air battle above Constantinople, were still there en masse. And only a full blown armada could have taken them down. An armada the Alliance didn't have. Too many planets, too many moons were threatening secession to gather an armada large enough without losing several moons. Among them would most likely be Shadow, Jonah and Graces home moon.
"Jonah, please come to the bridge."
Tomas' voice over the intercom shook Jonah out of his thoughts as he got up. Jonah, after wandering, somehow made his way to his bunk and had been on his bunk for the last few minutes. He got up and left, turning to the cockpit to see its doors closed. With a frustrated groan, he opens the door to see Tomas and Johansen huddled over the screen of the computer. "Did you find anything interesting? Some good porn, perhaps?"
Tomas didn't respond to the comment, instead motioning to the screen. "Here, take a look at this," he said as he continued pointing to the screen. Jonah looked haphazardly at the screen to see the capture of a rather haggard man, along with a list of criminal offenses ranging from smuggling to tariff dodging.
"This guy don't look too bright. Why am I caring again?" Jonah asked as he looked over the screen. Tomas looks up, surprised, before looking down at the screen again.
"Oops. Got ahead of myself. Here, let me start from the beginning." Tomas hit the screens back button several times before getting to a screen that looked all to familiar: the info page of the Man with No Name, as Mordecai had come to call him.
"Now, our man here had last been seen on Haven, correct?" Jonah nods and with a nod of his own Tomas continued.
"Now, I've been looking at the ingoing and outgoing records of the nearest docks to this gentleman's last known location, and found something interesting. There was a single ship docked there in the time between his known time on Haven and his last sighting on Jiangying, which also had records of this ship there."
Tomas hits the forward button to show a rather decrepit looking ship, as well as some technical data. However, from the design and familiar looking design, it had to have been a ship of the same family as a Stockholm class ship, like a Tengu or a Firefly.
"This ship is the ship that was in both locations. Now…"
"Rather poetic name for a ship, doncha think?" Jonah said, noticing the ships name.
"Well, Firesong is pretty poetic, don't you think?"
"Yeah, but it wasn't my first choice, remember."
"Anyways, I was thinking our man may have been on the ship under one of his alias'. So, I went over the crew roster for some names. Well, this name came up, and I thought 'wow, this is familiar to me'."
"O…kay?"
"Wo de ma! This name isn't ringing any bells, Jonah?"
Jonah simply shakes his head from side to side as Tomas lowers his head. Johansen looks between the two of them, before turning away with the smallest hints of a smile. Jonah notices this and turns to her, his face serious.
"Johansen, you have anything to add to this conversation?" Jonah asks, his voice the serious sergeant voice. Johansen looks up, shaking her head to the side. Jonah turns his attention back to the screen, where he begins to concentrate on the screen again.
"Ahh. It's cute when its trying to think," Tomas says, sarcasm dripping off his tounge like saliva from a starving man at a buffet. Jonah opens his mouth to make a quick witted response when it suddenly came to him.
"Wait, wasn't he at Du Khang with us?"
"Wo de ma! Finally you remember!"
"Yeah, he was a sergeant from the 57th. I was still a corporal at the time. We were stuck in that ruttin' school for ages and they were the only backups we had gotten in a week."
"Anything else about this situation you finally remember?" Tomas asked as he nodded, his face looking like it was a mix of amusement and relief.
"Well, not to much. 'Cept for that damn amazon always followin' him around. Either she was ruttin' his brains out or she was a dyke with strong manly ties to him, the way she acted with him around."
With this comment, Jonah is completely puzzled when both Tomas and Johansen begin to laugh (or, more specifically, Tomas roaring in laughter with Johansen giving a series of amused chuckles). Jonahs face screws up in confusion as he looks to the screen again for a clue. After some seconds, when the laughter dies down, Jonah uncomfortably says, "Okay, I missed something here."
Tomas, struggling to keep from laughing again, shows him the next two pictures on the crew roster. Jonah looks at them for a second before giving a knowing smile. "Cao ni zuxian shi ba dai! It's the damn amazon, and she done got married to another guy." Jonah gives a soft chuckle, before turning to leave.
"It is an improvement, sir," came Johansens quiet voice. Jonah turns to Johansen, whose looking at him with a blank face. After a second, Jonah turns away, loudly muttering "Dman thing I needed, a sniper not makin' any sense." Tomas turns to Johansen, his face nearly as puzzled as Jonahs.
"What did you mean by that?" Tomas asked the blank faced woman. Johansens lips stretched slightly to hint at a smile.
"It took him two minutes to catch on to your constant hinting, but immediately saw the connection between the 'amazon' and the other man."
Tomas chuckled before turning to the controls, his face becoming serious. "There is a problem though. Those records are over year old, so the hit may have gone already."
"Any hints?"
"I'm thinking it mat be the…"
Later…
"You did what now?" came Dukes disbelieving voice, all the crew sitting at the table in the common area. Tomas was in the middle of telling a story. Apparently, on the first day he was allowed to take the controls, the ship had been under attack by privateers and had to dump most of the cargo they were hauling into space. However, the captain was a tricky sort of guy and had the ship swing around to scoop up most of the ejected cargo. With the normal pilot unconscious, Tomas had to do it. He did it quite well, but had burned too soon and hit the ships with the brunt of the wake, damn near destroying both of them.
It was something they all enjoyed. The sharing of stories before a job. Especially a hard one. It was a tradition of sorts that held sway since Johansens first job aboard the ship.
However, the beeping of the request alarm made Jonahs heart sink. Tomas got up and somberly walked towards the cockpit, before saying something over his shoulder.
"Welcome to Haven."