Chapter 11: Reavers!

"You've done it this time, boy." Mal stared at him, his blue-gray eyes as cold as the steel they resembled.

Standish said nothing. There was no way his silver-tongue could get him out of this mess.

"Take off your shirt," Mal ordered.

Unable to suppress a shiver of apprehension, Standish obeyed. He looked around the captain's cabin, a room he normally entered only to clean. He glanced down at his boots, then took a deep breath and forced himself to stare straight ahead.

Mal moved a bonsai plant and opened the chest beneath it. After rummaging through the chest a few seconds, he found what he was looking for. He stood up, a whip in his hand.

"I'm gonna be nice about this, give you a choice." Mal smiled at him. "We can do this here and now, twenty stripes from me. Or we can march down to the dining room – everybody ought to be there this time of day – and let Jayne give you ten stripes."

Standish shuddered. Ten was better than twenty, but Jayne was stronger than the captain. Ten from him would probably hurt as much, if not more, than twenty from the smaller man. But the humiliation of having the whole crew witness his punishment …. "Let's get this over with."

Mal's eyebrow raised. "You tellin' me what to do?"

"No, sir," Standish denied hastily. "I had no intention of –"

"Up against the wall," Mal ordered. He hefted the whip in his hand to punctuate his command.

Standish had no choice but to obey. He winced as the whip fell on his naked back. The whip came down again, and again. The third time he screamed; he couldn't help himself.

Standish sat bolt upright in bed. It took him a few seconds to get his bearings, to realize he was in his own bunk in his own cubicle. A dream. It had only been a dream. He took a deep breath. Mal Reynolds had not beaten him, not now, not ever. Despite threats and frequent humiliation, Mal had never laid a hand on him.

Standish closed his eyes. How had he reached the point that, even in a nightmare, he had willingly chosen to submit to a flogging? Perhaps it was time to contact his former friends and see if they were in a forgiving mood.

Standish looked at the franchised postal center, a shabby storefront that doubled as a branch of the Allied Postal Service. He looked at the letter in his hand and debated for the twelfth or thirteenth time whether to send it or toss it in the trash. He hated crawling back to Chris Larabee and his associates for help, after the way he'd walked out on them. But enduring the next few years as Mal Reynolds' bondservant … he'd go mad.

Standish was glad the helmet hid his face. He'd hate to let Captain Reynolds or the others know how nervous he was. He didn't have much experience working in a space suit, and he was less than happy about being on a dead ship. The suit's airtank was not large; so many things could go wrong.

When the port officials on the last planet they'd visited had complained that an expected supply ship had never arrived, Mal and Wash had worked out its probable course and gone looking for the ship. As they'd hoped, they found it – dead, and all its crew with it – in an asteroid belt. Mal gleefully made plans to salvage what he could from the wreck. Standish only hoped that they wouldn't meet the same fate, smashed against the asteroids.

Suddenly a klaxon sounded.

A minute later Mal ordered everyone back to Serenity.

"What's wrong? What's going on?" Simon sputtered over his spacesuit's communicator.

Mal's answer froze Standish's blood in his veins. "Reavers."

"Standish, take this." Mal handed him a gun and two clips of ammunition. "Find River, take her to the engine room. Your job is to guard her and Kaylee."

Standish nodded.

Mal retrieved a knife from a cabinet and gave that to Standish. "If worse comes to worst, save the last two bullets for Kaylee and River. Don't let the Reavers get 'em."

Standish's face paled as he realized what Mal was asking.

"Ain't got time to argue with you on this. You gonna be able to do this, or are you gonna chicken out and let those girls be raped and mutilated?"

Or mutilated and then raped, depending on the Reavers' mood, Standish thought. In a twisted sort of way, this assignment was a measure of Mal's confidence in him. He knew the captain regarded Kaylee as a kid sister. "I'll guard them with my life. And if it comes to that," he took a deep breath, "I'll make it quick and clean."

"Good."

"You know the drill," Mal's voice came over the intercom. "Everybody stay quiet. We'll wait 'em out. And don't start using your O-bottles until you have to." Mal paused a moment. "Kaylee, cut power."

Kaylee cut the power. The ship went dark. The engines stopped humming. The quiet background noise of the life support system – an ever-present but generally ignored humming – ceased abruptly. A moment later the red emergency lights came on, giving Serenity an eldritch appearance.

"You're quite safe, fair maidens," Ezra assured them in a whisper. "The asteroid field is large; the odds of us drifting into a rock are so slim as to be practically nil. That only happens in adventure vids."

"Talking wastes oxygen," River whispered.

Ezra nodded. She was right.

"We got 'nuff air in Serenity, it won't turn stale for a bit. And we got our O-bottles once that happens," Kaylee gestured at the oxygen canister next to her. "Just sit still, sit quiet, and wait the Reavers out."

"Alas," Ezra sighed melodramatically, "alone with two beautiful girls in the dark, and I can not recite poetry to you."

Kaylee giggled, more from nerves than amusement.

Ezra took each girl's hand. "We shall be as quiet as mice henceforth. Worry not, my dears, I shall protect you."

River shook her head. "You're not here to protect us. I know what Mal ordered you to do." She turned to face him. "You still think loud."

Ezra removed his hand from hers, then placed one finger over her lips. When she nodded her understanding, he removed his finger and took her hand in his again. And thus they sat for five hours, not moving except to take occasional breaths from their O-bottles.

"Ain't fair." Jayne kicked the chair. "We spread hours sitting on our rumps in an asteroid belt, waiting for them damned Reavers to get bored and go away, and what do we get for it? Nothing!"

"What drunken idiot ever told you life was fair?" Mal asked.

"But all that time, breathing our own exhaling, just sitting –"

"You rather have left that asteroid belt before the Reavers decided to pack up and go?" Zoe asked.

"Hell, no! But we deserve something for our time and trouble. And that ship weren't worth the waiting!" Jayne complained.

Mal sighed. "He's right."

Zoe looked up at him, startled to hear Mal say that.

"From now on, when ships get destroyed in asteroid belts, we're gonna have to ask them to have nonperishable cargos, so the salvaging efforts are worth our while," Mal said, completely deadpan.

Jayne started to nod, then realized that Mal was pulling his leg. Cussing in Chinese, he stomped out of the cabin.