All disclaimers apply
Ch. 29- The Big Job- Part 3- Run Away, Run Away
"River?" Jayne's voice wavered slightly. "You seein' this?"
"Yes." She sounded puzzled.
"So…this is a robot pet-makin' company right? They look like pets."
"Yes."
"Then why am I feelin' the sudden urge to run away?"
"I do not know. Why are their eyes glowing, Jayne?"
"Whose eyes are glowin'?" Mal interjected.
"The kitties in the hallway with Jayne."
"Gorramit, Jayne, would you stop messing around and get back to work!"
The first and foremost feline suddenly stood, growled loudly, and began stalking forward, the rest of the pack following. Jayne started to pedal backwards, fast. The cat pack broke into a trot. Jayne broke into a run.
"River! Get me out of this!"
River's hands flew over the console bringing up as much of the building's schematics as they had been able to deduce. "Take your next right!"
Jayne was flying now; the growls, screeches, and what could only be described as grumbles and banshee wails coming from behind him were unbelievably motivating. He skidded around the corner, his hand nearly peeling the paint from the wall in an effort to remain upright. As he barreled down the next hall he gave up all pretense of sneaking around.
"Riv! A little help here!"
"Next left! Then left again!" River was trying to get him closer to an outside wall, but their knowledge of the layout was limited.
"There," David pointed. River nodded.
"Wash, Zoe, get ready. Big Bear is hot to trot."
"Enough with the spy games!" Jayne screeched. A particularly fast feline had caught up to Jayne and had locked its vice-like robot jaws into his calf. Jayne was forced to alternate between running and hopping, shaking his leg as if enduring electroshock therapy, trying to get the cat off.
"What the hell is goin' on now?!" Mal hollered over the comm.
"Jayne's been compromised, Captain. Albatross and Scooter are guiding him out now."
"Scooter?! Who the hell is Scooter?!"
"That's what I'd like to know," scowled David. River giggled.
"That's thirty six," commented Kaylee.
"Thirty-six? Thirty-six what?"
"Holes you've dug, Cap'n. Yer leaving an awful mess for those groundskeepers tomorrow."
Mal glared at her. "Zoe! We got ourselves a situation here!" No answer.
"Zoe! Zo!" No answer. Go se.
"Alright, people, we need to pull together here, we're two men down and Jayne's apparently being hunted by 'pets gone wild'. Albatross, what's his position?"
"Northeast corner progressing eighteen kilometers per hour."
"I'm doin' at least twenty!"
"Wow, Jayne, ya really movin'!" encouraged Kaylee.
Mal scowled. "Quiet! Inara, drum your fingers if you can hear me." Fingers drummed in everyone's ears.
"Alright, Jayne's in a pickle. I need you to extricate yourself immediately and see if you can drive around and pick him up on the other side of this place."
"Other side of where! Cap'n, I don't e'en see any windows, and I'ma gettin' eatin' alive!!" Jayne screamed.
"Jayne, keep moving north," River supplied. "You'll come to an intersection, take a right, go down the stairs, and through a back hall. There should be an exit door at the end."
"Got it!" he screeched. He skidded around a corner, managing to swing the clinging robot feline into the wall with a resounding smack! It fell away from his leg in pieces. He started to hot-foot it down the stairs when he realized that he suddenly didn't hear anything.
He hit the bottom of the stairwell and risked a second to take a look back. And was stunned. The cat pack had stopped at the top of the stairs and had quite literally sat down. They stared at Jayne, silent, eyes glowing, tails swishing, but no forward movement. Huh.
Catching his breath, Jayne raised his fist toward them. "Ha! Wassa matter, kitties gotta stay inna yard and can't come out and play?!" He turned and limped purposefully down the hall towards the door at the far end.
On the bridge, River turned to David sheepishly. "He's a little traumatized," she said of his behavior.
David smiled. "I can imagine why."
&&&&&&&
Inara suddenly made a show of looking at her watch. "Sorry, sweetie, I really must be going," she purred. She hopped down off the ledge of the counter where she had been swinging her legs back and forth in front of the security guard's appreciative nose.
"What? Wait, where're you going? We was just getting to know each other a little better," the guard whined. Inara had been stalling him by describing, in detail, fertility rites from Earth-That-Was. She smiled back at him over her shoulder and tapped her watch.
"Sorry, Love, I have an appointment I must attend to. It's been lovely conversing with such an erudite gentleman as yourself." She smiled her wiliest grin and swept from the lobby. As soon as the doors slid shut behind her she broke into a run for the coup.
"Mal! I'm out, which way is Jayne?" She slid into the car and slammed the door shut, then nearly slammed her head into the roof of the car as two heads popped up behind her in the back seat. Kaylee and Mal had dropped off their rakes alongside the building seconds before, casually strode over to the car and hopped in the back.
"Hey Inara!" Kaylee cheerfully greeted her.
"You okay?" grilled Mal. Inara nodded.
"Okay, swing around. Albatross, location on our re-possessing rabbit?"
"Two o'clock, Captain. Rabbit is nearing the hutch gate and will soon be free."
"Now wait a gorram minute! I thought I was a bear!" Jayne was incensed at his downsizing.
"Bears don't get chased by cats. It's not Darwinian."
"Dar-what?!"
"Doesn't make sense. Your felicitous felines would not have been a match for a bear, hense you are now a lagamorph."
"Baloney! You should'a seen them feli-, fel- cats!"
"I did. I think that I now no longer want a cat as a pet. Captain, may I have a puppy?"
"L'il one, as amusing as these ramblings are, I think we need to get back to the rescuing part of our evening here."
Inara whipped the car around another corner of the building and hit the brakes hard.
"Ah, Mal, that may be a little harder than we thought," she said, pointing. There was a patrol headed in their direction, no more than a hundred meters off.
"Go se! Inara, back up…" Inara was already whipping backwards around the turn they had just made. She slammed on the brakes again and spun the wheel, spinning the car around. Mal lunged over Kaylee toward the passenger door.
"You and Kaylee head straight back to the ship. Don't stop for anything."
"Wait! What are you going to do?!"
Mal turned around from crawling out of the tiny sportscar and leaned low on the door. "I'm going after Jayne."
"But Mal!..."
"Get goin', Inara. We'll catch up." Mal turned and headed for some shrubbery alongside the wall of the building. Kaylee crawled into the front seat.
"He'll be all right, 'Nara. Can we see how fast this thing'll go?"
&&&&&&&
Jayne approached the door at the end of the hall with a little more confidence now that he was not being chased by ten pound furry monsters. He placed a hand on the bar and pushed, testing to see if it was locked. Surprisingly, it was not. It popped open easily, not even an alarm going off. At least not one he could hear.
Jayne's comm crackled in his ear. "Jayne, Mal here. Hit a patrol. I sent the girls back to the boat and I'm headed your way. Get outside and sit tight."
Jayne nodded approvingly. "Roger that." He hesitated for a moment, glad that the Captain had sent Kaylee and Inara to safety, and appreciative that he wasn't leaving Jayne to fend for himself. All the relationships on the boat had grown over the past couple years, but Jayne wasn't about to start taking that for granted. Time was he had thought that survival meant thinking about yourself first. Now he was of a mind that survival wasn't enough if he couldn't have his family. He hurried to get outside to keep an eye out for Mal; the guy was a patrol magnet.
Jayne exited the building into a small grassy courtyard with an archway about twenty meters off. After ascertaining that no one was around, he let go of the door and started to jog across. He was about halfway when a small movement caught the corner of his eye, then another further up. A soft hissing sound drifted to his ears.
He slowed to a walk and looked around the yard carefully; he still saw no one. Or nothing. Then he felt it.
"What the…!?" he jumped into the air as he felt something brush across the back of his ankle, but when he turned there was nothing there. He started walking forward again, pausing when he heard another hiss. Suddenly, right in front of him, what looked like a King Cobra from Earth-That-Was, reared up. Hood flaring, eyes glowing, it hissed angrily at Jayne.
"Tyen shiao-duh!" he yelped. "This place is nuts! River!"
River clicked into his comm. "Hmm, looks similar to Ophiophagus hannah. An interesting choice for security purposes."
"Yeah, well, I'ma l'il sick of interestin' choices happenin' 'round me!"
"Stay still," David tried to help. "Don't move."
"Will it not bite me and go 'way?"
"Not sure, but it's worth a try."
"Not sure! I thought you were supposed to be the second genius on the boat?!"
"As flattering as that is, I'm not really an expert on the elapidae family."
Jayne sighed in distress. "Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?"
"Oh, of all the…" Mal had stuck his head around the corner of the courtyard entrance, gun drawn.
"I see ya found some new friends?" Two more snakes had approached Jayne from behind and were now rearing up and hissing. He looked pleadingly at his Captain.
"Help?" he said in a voice he hadn't used since he was five. Mal shook his head, glanced behind him to make sure there were no patrols close by, and cocked his pistol in Jayne's direction. Jayne screwed his eyes tight and prayed that Shepard Book was looking down and thinking kindly on him.
"On three," whispered Mal. He started to squeeze the trigger.
"Wait!"
Mal relaxed his finger.
"Do ya mean go on three, or, say one-two-three, then go?"
Mal could not believe they were having this conversation in the middle of animatronic snakes and Alliance patrols. He shook his head and sighed, trying to keep his cool 'cause he knew Jayne was stressed and losing it.
"I'll count to three, and on three you jump to the side, okay?"
Jayne nodded mutely and stared at Mal like he was his own personal savior. Which at the moment was not entirely inaccurate. Mal raised his gun hand once more, aimed, counted, and squeezed. As Jayne leaped right in an arc that would have made a synchronized swimmer proud, little metal snake bits burst and scattered. Mal quickly followed the first shot with two more, creating a miniature fireworks display of reptilian armaments. Jayne landed in a side roll, jumped to his feet and sprinted to the entranceway in case there were more snakes.
"Thanks," he mumbled, looking around warily.
"No problem," Mal replied, swinging his gaze and his gun from side to side himself. He eased back and turned to take a quick check outside the gate. No patrols at the moment. He nodded to Jayne and the two of them slipped out and started making their way back towards the front of the complex.
Translation: Tyen shiao-duh- name of all that's sacred