Hello. Iverik here. Just a reminder: This story uses characters created by someone other than me.
Facing the Black
"Wuh de mah!" Mal stared in astonishment. The man with the blue hands was floating. Actually hovering in mid-air.
"What do you see?" Paul asked.
Before Mal could answer, the man vanished. A staccato sub-machine gun barrage passed through his former location. "I'm thinkin' we'd best be goin' this way," Mal pointed in the opposite direction. He took a step to do so.
A man appeared. A compact laser pistol sat in his blue hand. He squeezed off two shots, and ducked out of the line of fire.
Killer gave Mal a foul look. Mal grimaced uneasily.
"You soldiers shouldn't be here," the man said calmly, "you should go. Now."
Mal was all too happy to go. So was Zoe. The regular Alliance troopers hesitated a little longer, but they went.
There was a sudden, world shattering impact. All five soldiers, even Zoe, were thrown off their feet and into the wall. If they hadn't been wearing body armor, there would have been broken bones.
"That", Mal said, "was a hit." Alarms whooped. The Captain barked orders to abandon ship.
"Escape pods are this way," Paul shouted. The soldiers ran. Distant noises of ruin echoed down the corridors. A steady, growing wind blew past them. They ran faster.
Paul whipped into the outer corridor- and jumped back to a hail of bullets. "Autodemarchs," he growled, "lots of them!"
Mal only nodded. None of them had a grenade. His eyes fell on Zoe's boot. He explained his plan with an eye-twitch.
Moving like a cat, Zoe drew out a dagger from her boot. Slipping past her squad-mates, she threw the knife down the hall. Thrown by an expert, a knife can be made to resemble a grenade to frightened men familiar with them. The dark soldiers drew back in alarm. Just for a moment.
In that moment, Zoe and Mal spilled into the corridor, guns blazing. The Alliance soldiers quickly joined the fight. The autodemarchs retreated before a wall of bullets. Crew members popped out of hiding and ran for the escape pods.
"Go!" Mal shoved Zoe into an escape pod, his gun roaring. As the Alliance evacuated, Malcolm Reynolds, browncoat, defended them. Some of the enemy regained courage, and snapped off quick bursts. They missed. Mal kept shooting. The Alliance kept running.
With a deafening roar, the wall fractured. Mal lost his rifle. It tumbled, and was swept towards the collapsing structure. Paul grabbed Mal by his coat and yanked him into the escape pod. The door slammed, and the pods jettisoned.
Moments later, the Alliance cruiser lost atmosphere, twisting itself apart in the process. Missile flashes and fast gunships dotted the sky. In the distance, another Alliance cruiser was deploying its full combat potential as fast as it could, staving off death itself.
Seconds after that, the pods reached the atmosphere. The bumping, teeth-loosening ride to the surface did not improve the combat tension roiling in the small vehicles.
Touchdown. More bruises. Slowly, Mal unbuckled his harness and climbed out. There was a gas giant in the sky overhead. Flashes of light indicated the ongoing battle. More practically, it was readily apparent that they were on the wrong sector of the moon, without transportation, with a superior enemy force in the sky overhead, with group of Alliance marines he didn't trust.
Perfect.