Disclaimer – I don't own anything apart from the idea itself
A/N: Thank you for reviewing the story
The White Sun system – Aboard the Firefly
"The Authority are still requesting to come aboard the ship… They're trying to negotiate that they'll turn a blind eye to the ransacking we last did in return for Jaina Reyn," Zoe told the Captain, only relaying what Wash had told her. "What are you thinking?"
"We give her up," Mal replied with a sting that cut Zoe at the heart.
"But even after what Simon said about your DNA compatibility? Effectively your own flesh and blood – are you really willing to give her up?"
"In theory, she isn't mine. She just happens to be related to me. If I give her up now, I don't have the opportunity to establish any kind of relationship with her." Mal seemed to ignore the fact that Jaina was his only family because he felt like it was all some kind of a rouse to get the Authority on board his ship.
"Captain!" Wash called out with that usual panic in his voice whenever something went wrong. "They're docking now!"
Mal sprinted across the walkway, hearing the metal clanging with each step until he reached the hanger deck. Taking the comms link to the other side of the docking station, he held it to his lips.
"I really didn't want you aboard my ship – I agreed to your request if you drop the charges of anything you believe the crew on this ship have done."
There was a pause that followed a crackled response.
"Captain – you and your crew are not safe with Jaina Reyn aboard your ship so it is best we extract her ourselves."
A frown dug its way across Mal's face as he heard a whirling sound and crackling following it – he knew they were trying to force their way onto his vessel, and Firefly was too bruised and battered for him to let that happen. As much as he didn't want to, he pressed the comms link to his mouth.
"Knock it off – I'll open the airlock for you to come aboard if you just knock it off."
"Are you sure you want to do that, Captain?" Kaylee asked calmly, leaning over the railing above Mal.
"She can't take much more battering – Firefly needs more parts and I don't think it'll be easy to find a new airlock door, but we can put a scrap piece on the mess they leave behind."
"And by we, you mean me?"
"Well now that you've volunteered, yes."
As the airlock opened up, Mal's arm was instantly grabbed by one bulky looking authority guards. It was at that moment that he knew it was a setup to get two birds with one stone. The Authority not only got Jaina Reyn, but they were about to get the entire crew of the Firefly, including River. With his free hand, Mal pressed the red emergency alert button, signalling to the rest of the crew that something was wrong. A swarm of soldiers filed their way through the corridors and walkways of the ship, grabbing any crew members they came across.
"Captain Malcolm Reynolds – so good to see you. Now isn't this interesting that you are in possession of one of our workforce – Miss Jaina Reyn…" The leading Authority captain squared up to Firefly captain.
"What's so special about her?" Mal raised an eyebrow in curiosity, wanting to know the truth, but at the same time, he didn't care when his crew were at risk.
"She's only a survivor of a reaver attack, nothing too special." The Authority Captain turned to his officers who were awaiting their next set of orders.
"That's not the only thing, is it?"
"Oh, if I told you more, then that would just ruin the fun…" he said to Mal, smirking a little. "You won't find out anytime soon."
Simon came running down the pathway, calling out Jaina's name, but froze mid-sentence when he saw the Authority members holding onto the present crew members. "Oh."
"What was that? Did I hear you say her name?" the Authority Captain asked, smirking at the doctor. "Interesting, interesting because that confirms she is somewhere on this ship at least. I want this ship turned upside down if it must be done in order to find her."
"But she's where she belongs. She's among family here…" Simon said, stumbling over his words as he tried to string together a sentence that might help the situation.
"Well, well, well. You call her family," the Authority Captain replied before squaring up to Mal. "She is far from family – she is a genetically grown specimen that has survived a reaver attack. On top of that, she has taken a leaf from her father's book and stolen a spaceship that she has used to hold up many Authority bases across the system." When he realised that Mal was still following his taunts, he continued. "That's right, Captain Reynolds. That DNA sample that was acquired from you in return for your freedom. Admittedly it was a poor deal on our part. Your sample turned out to contain a gene trait that we were searching for. So we created a living and breathing human being, kept in stasis until she was ready, but a system's failure allowed her to escape before she was ready. We've been following her all this time, across multiple systems and on various station ports. Every single time, she managed to evade our clutches. Now, we have had enough, and we want her back."
Mal remembered everything about that day – it was years ago, when he was struggling for money and decided that it was worth giving his DNA to the Authority for that easy income. But it didn't make a difference as to whether Jaina was his daughter, or not. Having not shared a past together, he had no father, daughter relationship to break by handing her over to the Authority.
"Feel free to search the ship – you'll find her in the hospital wing," Mal informed them in a cold tone.
"She's not there, she got out. I tried to stop her, but the injection I gave her was not received well." Simon looked apologetically down at the captain before glancing at the other crew members.
The soldiers began to flip boxes and push them aside, creating quite a rift with the crew members as boxes were broken into. Looted items were carried back onto the Authority ship as a junior soldier informed his captain of the content of the containers.
"Take the crew under custody of the Authority," the captain declared, grinning maniacally as Mal and his crew were dragged away onto the Authority's ship. "I used to like this class and model," he added, looking up at the interior of Serenity. He started to walk up the steps to explore the ship himself, knowing that his soldiers were going to come back saying they never found the girl. Whilst he gave the order that the spacecraft be docked at the nearby space station, he found himself watching his senior officer guide the ship into the docking port. "Looks like the boss is going to be very impressed when we bring the whole crew under Malcolm Reynold's command to her, not to mention the addition of Jaina Reyn."
"You said it, Captain."
Malcolm Reynolds was in cuffs. His crew were in cuffs. There was some reaver woman roaming around his ship. The Authority was at the head of his ship. Things weren't looking great.
"What now, Mal?" Zoe asked, trying to catch his eye.
"Now we wait and see what happens…" Mal was beginning to admit defeat, much unlike his true personality, but right now, he didn't really know what this was. "But I don't have any plans if that's what you mean. We've been stripped of any weapons we had and there don't seem to be any escape routes without being seen." He glanced at the numerous soldiers that were standing guard at the two doors of the room they were being kept in.
"We might just have to sit tight…" Kaylee mumbled, leaning on Simon.
"Just give me a second and I can bust out of these cuffs," Jayne snarled, clenching his fists as if to imply it would be the perfect task to show off his strength.
"No Jayne, that's not a good idea. It's only going to get you knocked out."
The crew was sent flying across the floor as the spacecraft was knocked by something. The first thought was that another craft had collided with something… Soldiers filed into the room through one door and straight out the other. Whilst the crew questioned the soldiers, they were simply ignored and forced to stay where they were. However, Jayne was not prepared to sit and wait so he jammed his foot into the gap in the door just before it closed.
"Well I'm not sitting about waiting to be told what's happening…" Jayne rolled onto his knees and then his feet before heading out the door.
Zoe sighed lightly. "Guess someone better follow him so that he doesn't do anything stupid, even though it's a little late for that."
Mal and Zoe chased after their crew mate, even though all three of them were still constricted by the metal cuffs around their wrists. They darted about the maze of corridors after Jayne until he found himself facing a young and weak looking trainee soldier.
"Don't move or, or, or I'll shoot!" the boy called out in a shaky voice – his finger trembling as it rested on the trigger. "I mean it!"
"No!" a husky voice called out, and in an instant, a blur threw itself at the soldier, slamming his wrist against the metal floor so that the gun was sent flying across the ground, but when Jayne's saviour saw the Firefly crew, they ran away, disappearing around the corner.
"Was that- was that Jaina?" Zoe asked, looking at Mal with a concerned look on her face. "It's remarkable what science can do with a bit of DNA, don't you think?"
Mal mumbled an agreement before retrieving the magnetic device from the unconscious soldiers belt that would unlock the cuffs around his wrists. First, he unlocked his crew mates' so that they could do his ones. "Now it's time to get my crew off this sad excuse for an Authority vessel."
The three of them went back to free the Firefly crew with the unconscious soldier over Jayne's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Like a hostage, or a bargain chip, but with a quick word from Wash, they soon realised that this was a redundant plan. The Authority wouldn't care about a small soldier – there weren't many people that the Authority would care about, unless they had a high price on their heads.
"Captain – this vessel is moving. I think they're taking us to a station nearby…" Kaylee said, placing a hand on the wall. "I can feel it."
"Well it's time to take action…" Jayne remarked.
Before anyone could say anything, a flurry of soldiers entered the holding room.
"Oh, I don't think you will be going anywhere any time soon…" the Authority Captain said, waving his wrist to get the soldiers to put the cuffs back on Mal and his crew.
One soldier walked boldly forwards with their tinted visor down. Their gloved hands lightly pressed the cuffs onto Mal's wrists and then looked up at him for a moment, before clicking the cuffs tighter. Mal seemed to hear a slight growl from behind the visor.
"Let's leave Carson to watch the prisoners – if they move one inch out of line, do what you do best." The Authority Captain saluted the soldier standing beside Mal before ushering the other soldiers out of the holding cell.
Mal instantly delivered a kick to the soldier's knee.
"Let's kick the living daylights out of him," Jayne muttered, taking a step closer to the soldier lying on the floor.
"No, wait!" Zoe protested, kneeling beside the soldier whose visor had cracked on impact of hitting the floor. Putting her hands on each side of the helmet, Zoe started to slowly lift it off the soldier. "I thought so…" she added when she saw the young face she believed to be Jaina Reyn.
The young girl's opened shot open and she backed away from Zoe, clutching her side in pain. "No!" she hissed, scratching at her neck. "You ruined everything! I had it under control until you decided to play hero!" Jaina gestured at Jayne and Mal. "No wonder you're always captured by the Authority, you couldn't even hide a common cold."
"Hey- now you listen to me, missy. I am the captain of this crew, and if you think that you had a plan for saving my crew, then you are wrong!" Mal squared up to the young girl with a finger raised at the girl who had been grown from his DNA.
"Look at him having his first telling off…" Kaylee mumbled to Simon.
Jaina raised her eyebrows at the captain. "You're Malcolm Reynolds, you're who I've been grown from. The man who is believed to be my father. Sorry excuse for a father you are."
"But I am not your father, kid!" Mal shouted.
"Oh yeah, well maybe I don't want to be your daughter either – I've done just fine on my own without a father, so I can carry on doing so, okay?" Jaina retaliated. She then opened up a ventilation shaft and jammed the spinning propeller. "Well you enjoy getting yourselves out of this one then, 'Dad'!"
Before they could do anything, Jaina disappeared into the tiny ventilation shaft.
Thoughts from AspiringWriterGirl = Ah, another chapter out of the way, and it's been a while now, so I hope you enjoyed it!
