1930 Hours, December 14, 2542
Elduros System, Planet Aleria
John took another swig of his beverage.
It wasn't refreshing. It wasn't anywhere near cold. It was hardly even palatable. But when one found oneself sitting in a dusty bar, on top of a dusty cliff, on the face of a dusty moon colony, one took what one could get.
It was one of those days.
"Your move," Fred said from across the table.
John looked down at the board. Tiles of three different colors were spread around in a seemingly patternless array, each member of the table controlling one color. John didn't even understand the game, if he were being honest. But then, he wasn't that honest. He picked up one of his tiles and confidently set it down.
"That's a bold move, Captain," Kelly remarked, studying the board herself.
John offered her a smile. "I like to live on the edge."
Kelly returned the smirk, then picked up one of her pieces and skipped it across the entire board, removing three of John's and four of Fred's in the process.
Fred grunted and dropped his forehead onto the table.
"I've given some thought to relocating off the edge, though," John said nonchalantly, lifting the mug to his lips again. "I hear some real estate might have opened up more toward the middle. Much more my speed."
Kelly gave him a sharklike grin and nudged Fred's shoulder. The man lifted his head to shoot some insult John's way, but his voice was drowned out by the bar's other patrons.
A rowdy crowd sang some awful tune around the synthesizer in the corner. Somehow, nearly two dozen faces of various species had encircled the musician frantically stabbing away at the synthesizer's keys, belting out one horrid chorus after another in what a drunkard might assume to be called unison. Truly an impressive assembly, given that the rickety building's official occupancy was likely listed somewhere around ten.
"Do you think they know how bad they sound?" Fred asked, skipping a piece over two of John's and effectively cutting him out of the game.
"I don't think they care," Kelly remarked. "They're too drunk to notice."
"It isn't the singing that bothers me," John muttered, turning away from the crowd. "It's the topic of the song."
The cacophonous group was celebrating Unification Day – the anniversary of the UNSC finally admitting defeat and humanity being absorbed into the Covenant. The anniversary of John-117's death, along with his entire squad. According to official records, at least.
The impromptu concert – made up of Jackal, Grunt, and human voices – was seemingly dedicated to hymns celebrating the fall of the UNSC and the glory of the Covenant. It made John sick to his stomach.
The floor of the dusty establishment began to shake with heavy, thudding footsteps, and against his better judgment the captain turned to see what new face had entered the fracas. He discovered a massive Sangheili – easily breaking two and a half meters in height, and seemingly that wide across the shoulders as well.
The creature stumbled, standing on unsteady legs as he made his way to the bar. He was already clearly soused, yet the bartender wordlessly filled a large flagon with the lukewarm ale and slid it directly into the alien's scaly hand. Taking the drink, the Elite turned and raised it to the crowd.
"Quiet!" he thundered, and the singing immediately ceased. He offered a satisfied nod when all of the patrons turned their eyes to him. "A toast!" he declared, and almost in unison the others raised their glasses to match his. "A toast to the seven years since the wretched UNSC was shown for the sniveling cowards they were. The seven years since the might of the Covenant brought unending peace to the 'verse! To Unification Day!"
The resounding cheer bounced off the walls of the small building, echoing in John's mind like a concussion grenade going off right next to his ear.
"That's it, I've lost any will to imbibe," Fred said disgustedly, dropping his mug on the table. "Let's get out of here before someone says something that gets them hurt."
John leaned back in his chair. "Let them have their drink," he said almost sullenly. "I suppose they earned it."
The floor rumbled again until John felt a shadow drop over him. "Share a drink with me, to the Covenant," the drunken Sangheili slurred, swaying back and forth.
John didn't turn to face him. "Don't see as there's much to drink to, friend, but why don't you go right on without me?"
The scaly creature made to lean against the table, but his massive hand knocked against John's mug and spilled his beverage across the table. "You got something against the auspiciosity of this day?"
John rose to his feet.
Fred immediately started to rise as well, but Kelly put a hand against his chest to stop him. "Captain," she said warningly, throwing John a glance.
"I only aim to refill my drink," he said amiably. He turned and made his way toward the bar.
"You didn't toast, you won't drink . . . I'm starting to think that you're one of them UNSCs," the Elite behind him called out.
The room fell silent.
"And I'm starting to think that you weren't endowed with an overabundance of intelligence," John answered from the bar. "How's about I ignore you and you ignore me until we both go away?"
The Sangheili's proud chest puffed out, and he beat one fist against it like a gorilla issuing a challenge. "The way I see it, all of you UNSC should have been wiped out of this 'verse seven years ago. Eradicated, like the bugs you are."
John finally turned to face his accuser. "Why don't you say that to my face?"
The Elite stumbled forward until he was looming over John's comparatively smaller frame. "I said you are a bug and that you ought to be stepped on," he glowered. "Now, what are you going to do about it?"
John smiled openly. Then his fist connected with the creature's jaw with enough force to kill a smaller being.
As it was, the Elite's head snapped to the side. He held one hand up as his eyes rolled in his head, took one more staggered step toward John, and then collapsed in a heap on the dusty floorboards.
John shook his hand and clamped a bar towel over the back of it where some of the elite's sharp teeth dug into his flesh as he fell to the ground. Still, John couldn't wipe the smile from his face. Until, that was, he turned back to the formerly jovial singing group surrounding the synthesizer. The captain slowly backed away from the bar, sensing rather than seeing when his crewmates flanked him. The trio backed toward the door in unison.
Then an excitable Unggoy squeaked something unintelligible, and the entire establishment erupted into chaos.
John picked a Jackal up and tossed it bodily into a pair of angry-looking men, getting clipped on his shoulder by a chair thrown by a different Kig-Yar off to his side in the process. Kelly and Fred were not faring much better, surrounded and outnumbered as they were.
The issue wasn't that the three of them were actually outmatched – far from it, in fact. Even outnumbered, they could have easily killed every other being involved in the brawl. The issue lay in their attempts to not kill their attackers. Pulling their punches made them slower and sloppier, less capable of defending themselves.
"Linda," John shouted into his communicator as he was pushed out the door, "we seem to have kicked up a hornets' nest down here. Your presence at the party would not go amiss." He didn't wait to hear her answer, distracted as he was by the punches, kicks, and barstools coming his way.
The whole crowd pushed forward, managing to drive the three former soldiers out into the dusty surroundings that made up Aleria's formerly lush landscape. The clamor of the brawl quieted, however, when a now-familiar massive shadow made its way out of the bar.
The Elite fired a shot from his plasma pistol, the sound drawing everyone's attention. "Enough!" he shouted, bringing the weapon to bear on John. "The UNSC should have been wiped off the face of this 'verse years ago. I guess I'll just settle for wiping your face from your body." He depressed the trigger on his weapon, the machine buzzing as it collected an overcharged plasma round.
"I feel fairly confident that's against the rules," Fred said, subtly dropping a hand to the M6S on his own thigh. He froze when two of the Sangheili's lackeys produced weapons of their own, aiming them at Fred and Kelly.
The Elite and his accomplices pressed forward, pushing John and his companions backward until their backs were to the edge of the sheer cliff face.
"Far be it from me to criticize your diplomacy, captain, but perhaps this is the time we propose negotiations?" Kelly muttered from John's left.
John mulled it over but couldn't come up with anything they had to trade for their lives that the crowd might accept. "We seem to be a step beyond that. Might have to dirty our hands some," he warned resolutely.
Though they weren't soldiers anymore, they were still more than fast enough to outmaneuver three drunken gunmen. With the right order, their attackers would be dead before they even managed to loose a single round. Just as John made to give said order, a strong gale began buffeting the assembled group.
"All of you, go back inside," Linda's stern voice warned over Serenity's outboard speakers as the old ship rose over the edge of the cliff, "before I blow a brand new crater into the tiny speck of dust you call home."
The elite squinted through the billowing dust devil elicited by Serenity's twin turbines, finally dropping his pistol and releasing its charge into the dirt. Without a word, he stumbled back into the bar. As Linda put the ship close enough to the ground for her errant crewmates to jump into the open cargo bay, the others slowly filed inside behind him.
Fred turned and gave a friendly wave, ignoring the single-digit responses he garnered from the last stragglers of the brawl, before Kelly pulled him into the cargo bay itself and John slapped the control to close the airlock.
"I can't believe they fell for that," Kelly laughed as they made their way up the stairs to the cockpit. "'Blow another crater into your speck of dust,'" she imitated. "Can't they see the old girl hasn't got any guns on her?"
"You're lucky they didn't," Linda shouted, sternly as ever, from the cockpit. "If they did, the three of you would be showing up on a new list of Covenant wanted posters."
"Wasn't nothing to it," Fred countered as they drew into the confined area, settling into the copilot's chair. "Just an honest brawl in a scummy bar. It's the kind of fun we've been missing of late." He turned to Linda. "Even you might have enjoyed yourself."
The pilot shook her head. "I'm too old for that type of game. Captain's already mixed me up in enough of his trouble for this lifetime."
"Me, stir up trouble?" John asked, feigning shock. "All I was after was a friendly drink."
Kelly leaned against the back of the chair Fred occupied, shaking dust from the end of her dark brown ponytail. "Funny how, come U-Day, you always manage to be looking for a 'friendly drink' in a Covenant-friendly bar."
"Please tell me you at least made contact," the pilot muttered as she pulled Serenity away from Aleria's surface.
John smiled brilliantly, fishing a slip of paper from his pocket and slapping it down on the fiery haired pilot's dashboard. "What, you didn't think I brought us all the way out here just to pick a fight in a bar, did you?" he asked in mock surprise.
The way Linda glanced at him, one crimson eyebrow arched as she looked him up and down, answered his question more succinctly than words could have. "Go get that hand cleaned," she said, turning to inspect the coordinates scrawled in messy handwriting on the slip of paper, "you're bleeding on my bridge."
0840 Hours, December 15, 2542
Zehar System, moon Virgo, orbiting Zehar VI
Virgo, one of Zehar VI's moons, was once home to a black site medical research facility established during the height of the UNSC's power. Known to a very exclusive few, the facility had everything from ace bandages to fully kitted cloning equipment. When the UNSC surrendered, all equipment was spirited away and the facility was scuttled.
The garrison installed on the planet to service the facility was another story. According to John's contact, there were crates of UNSC weaponry still hidden away within the garrison's armory containing everything from sidearms to rocket launchers. Supposedly, there was enough weaponry and ammunition to keep a full platoon fighting for a week straight.
When traded into the right hands, that promised a hefty profit.
Heavy winds buffeted Serenity as Linda brought her to ground. The erratic shifts caused anything in the cargo bay that wasn't tied down to fall to the floor – including several of the crewmates. Soon enough, though, the ship landed in the facility's hangar and its crew disembarked.
John stepped down the gangplank, flashlight in hand as he scanned the hold. Fred and Kelly descended on either side of him, their flashlights illuminating the hold as well.
"It's a mite dark out there," Fred commented dryly. "You're sure we can't wait 'til sunrise?"
"We'd be waiting a long time," Linda answered over the radio. "Virgo's orbit with Zehar VI keeps this hemisphere in the dark for thirty standard days at a time. According to reports, we're on day three of a new cycle."
Fred shook his head, his hand dropping to the grip of his M6S. "Right. So we don't wait."
"Oh come now," Kelly snickered, looking over at her crewmate, "don't tell me that the fearless Fred is scared of the dark now?"
"It isn't the dark I take issue with," Fred answered warily, "it's what's out there in the dark."
Kelly opened her mouth to make a witty retort, but none came. She finally closed her mouth, hand straying to the M90 shotgun slung over her shoulder.
"Eyes and ears open," John ordered as he made his way through the empty hangar. "We don't know what kind of beasties have moved into this place since our boys moved out. We're probably better off not knowing."
When they reached the sealed door that led into the facility proper, he let Kelly take point – since she had the datapad that contained their best-guess schematics of the base, she would have the easiest time directing them to their target. She thumbed the activation on the tablet and confidently strode out ahead.
The heavy silence of an empty building fell around them, broken only by the soft sound of their footfalls down desolate hallways. In many ways it felt like a tomb, the walls steadily creeping in to enclose them. In a disquieting turn of events, John found himself feeling almost claustrophobic.
As they passed a doorway Fred paused and tried the handle. The metallic clicking was almost deafening in the otherwise utterly silent facility.
"You know that isn't the armory," Kelly hissed, her voice subconsciously a whisper to match the somber tone of the building.
Fred shrugged and turned back to face them. "Can't hurt to make sure there's nothing else worth taking off this rock, right?" he asked. "As long as we're here."
John considered it for a moment. The weapons cache was definitely the priority, but Fred had a point. It was worth making sure there was nothing else left behind for them to see.
"Besides," Fred added when John took a while to respond, "we're in a top-secret facility on the perpetual dark side of a moon. You couldn't pay me a billion credits to believe there isn't some shiny stuff hidden around here."
At that, John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Clear the rooms we pass. One quick glance inside. If you think you see anything interesting, call it out." He then pointed his flashlight directly at Fred's face. "Anyone lollygags, they get left behind."
Fred tossed a winning grin and a two-fingered salute John's way while Kelly rolled her eyes.
"You're a raccoon," she said to Fred as he eagerly opened the door he was trying earlier.
Fred didn't turn to acknowledge her, merely shrugging and responding, "I've been called worse."
They fell into silence again, the routine of quickly clearing rooms as they passed filling the time. John found himself increasingly disappointed with every empty room they passed by, but he did his best to keep that tamped down. The truth was that Serenity needed money to keep herself in the sky, and her crew needed this job to get that money. If they came up empty-handed again, he wasn't sure what he would do.
His thought process was derailed when they came to a fork in the hallway.
Kelly consulted the map for a moment before shining her light down one direction of the hallway. "Near as I can figure, that's the way to the central control room for the facility." She turned 180 degrees and shined the flashlight the opposite direction. "Which makes that the path to the armory."
"Right," John said, glancing both directions. "We'll split up. Kelly, go plug yourself into the main computer and see if you can't find anything worth keeping. Fred and I will head on to the armory and meet you back here." He held up his handheld radio. "Stay on comms."
Kelly nodded and jogged off while the two men turned in the opposite direction.
It took time to navigate their way through the facility's winding, pitch-black corridors and it didn't help that Fred continued to try every door they passed. However, even with the added time, it wasn't long before they rounded on what had to be the armory.
"Five credits say it's behind this door," Fred bet confidently, rapping his knuckles against the final door at the end of the hall.
"Not much of a bet when I'm the one who led us here," John responded gruffly, then tapped the door control. When nothing happened, he tapped it again. Finally, he pulled the radio from his belt. "Kelly, are you in yet?" he asked.
"Working on it," she answered, annoyance clear in her voice. "We lucked out – somehow this place still has power. But the system is making a pain of itself to get into. Why, I'm of half a mind to –"
Her voice was drowned out when John tucked the radio into his coat pocket. He looked at Fred and nodded at one side of the door, then took hold of the opposite side himself.
The two men heaved against the door. The two sides shrieked in distress, but eventually they gave way and inched apart until there was a two-foot gap between them. The men cleared both ends of the hallway to ensure the sound hadn't caught the attention of something out in the dark. Once satisfied, they ducked through the doorway.
John's hand radio crackled, and Kelly's voice declared, "Let there be light."
A dim glow began emitting from the emergency lights that ran the length of every wall in the facility at knee-height and the gentle hum of distant generators made itself known.
"Praise be," John answered over the radio. "How are we looking?"
The door to the armory, propped half-open as it was, opened fully with a hiss. A robotic dolly rolled through the open door.
"Door access, automated helpers . . . we have full control. Is there anything else I can offer you gentlemen this fine evening?" she asked smugly.
"Could have done that a couple of minutes earlier," Fred grumbled, slowly scanning the room.
John ignored him. "Take a look into their internal systems. See if there are any files that haven't been wiped and what else you have control of."
"Copy," Kelly replied. She hummed thoughtfully. "You two didn't run into anybody else in here, did you?" she asked.
John tensed. "Elaborate," he ordered.
Static washed over the radio as Kelly sighed absentmindedly before answering. "I was doing a systems check, and it brought up some FOF trackers onscreen. There were some extra contacts – looked like a couple dozen, all huddled in one room together." A heavy silence filled the room for a moment as she paused, then finally said, "They're gone now."
His shoulders still tense with unease, John did his best to let it roll off his back. "Most likely just rusty wiring," he said as dismissively as he could. "Keep an eye out in case they show up again. In the meantime, we'll find the haul and lug it out of here."
"Speaking of finding the haul," Fred grunted from one corner of the armory as he pried up a heavy false floor panel. He shined his light down into the hidden compartment for a moment before proudly declaring, "I do believe I've just made us some money."
John looked down into the false floor and hummed appreciatively. Within the compartment were half a dozen crates of varying dimensions, carrying everything from M6 handguns to SPNKr rocket launchers. Typically it would take a full squad of men to claim that much ordnance, but the two former Spartans made short work of it on their own. In a matter of minutes, they had everything stacked on the back of the dolly.
Fred knelt beside the crates and let loose a quiet, appreciative whistle. "They kept the chuck wagon full, didn't they?" he said, patting one hand on the top of the crates. "We ought to keep a few of these for ourselves."
"This stuff is for an army," John answered dismissively. "We're out of that line of work." Not exactly by choice, he wanted to say, but he held himself back. No use dwelling on the past.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and headed out the door. Fred followed along, the trundling dolly dutifully keeping pace behind them. Somehow the corridors seemed even less inviting with the dim illumination of the emergency lightstrips – instead of empty, the building now felt as though it were dead.
To call it unsettling would be an understatement.
Feeling like the eerie silence was driving him mad, John plucked the radio from his belt. "We're on our way back out," he reported to Kelly, "is there anything we should stop and look at on the way?"
Kelly remained silent for a moment. "If you take your third left, you should come into the lab. It looks like the main facility was used to cook up all kinds of experimental who-do, and this building had some of the more interesting backups. Maybe it'll be worth the detour."
"Roger that," John said, signaling to Fred to continue along their current route. "Wrap up what you're doing and meet us there."
"Way ahead of you," Kelly responded. "Race you there?"
"You're on," John answered, though he shook his head at the prospect. He doubted there was a creature in the 'verse that could beat Kelly when she got into a mood to race.
The door to the lab was already open when they got to it. Fred instructed the dolly to wait for them in the hall, then the pair ventured in. Kelly was already inside, her M90 resting on one of the stainless-steel countertops as she rifled through one of the floor-level cabinets.
"Find anything worth finding?" Fred asked as he crouched down beside her, taking her flashlight for her so she could search with both hands.
"Not a thing," she answered boredly, turning away from the cabinet and blowing a stray strand of hair from her eye. "Someone did a downright fantastical job clearing this place out before we got here. What did you two come up with?"
"Enough ordnance to make the trip worth it," John assured her. "Anything else we haul is extra, so it's no skin off our hides if we don't find anything in here."
"That's good, because I doubt very much that there's anything to find." She turned back to her work, only to sigh exasperatedly as she realized Fred had grown bored and wandered off with her flashlight.
"What are all these vials for?" the man in question mused, shining his borrowed light over a disorderly collection of test tubes and jars filled with various unknown liquids.
Kelly rose to her feet, took quick strides to Fred, and yanked her flashlight from his grip. "This was a research lab," she explained, rolling her eyes at him. "A bio-weapon research lab. That's why the UNSC was so careful to keep it off any maps."
Fred looked at the disheveled vials uncomfortably. "So you're saying we really don't want to open any of these things up, then."
John looked around at the clutter that littered the various workspaces around himself, finally opting to inch his way closer to the doorway and further away from the questionable substances.
"It would certainly be on the safer side if we left them be," she answered, inspecting the vials herself. "That said, according to what I was able to get off the main computer, their focus was mostly on using pheromones. Seems they had some kind of local canine predator on the planet and they were looking into what kind of smells would make the thing go berserk on somebody. Seemed they were even getting close to a breakthrough, if they weren't –"
The sentence died mid-delivery when the sound of breaking glass filled the lab. Slowly, the woman turned back to Fred, shining the light in his face. "Tell me you didn't," she said, her tone somewhere between a plea and a warning.
"Hey," the man said, raising his hands defensively, "I didn't touch anything."
"Your feet," Kelly groaned incredulously.
John shone his flashlight at Fred's feet to reveal that the other man unwittingly smashed a small vial beneath the thick sole of his left boot. Fred looked down at his feet, then back at up at his crewmates, offering nothing more than an apologetic shrug.
Kelly hissed something to Fred about watching where he was going, but John tuned her out when he thought he heard something outside the lab.
Outside the lab.
In the empty facility.
"Kelly," he interrupted the woman's angry tirade against Fred, shining his light out the door. "How sure are you that those extra life signals were a glitch?"
"They didn't ever come back, so fairly certain," Kelly answered slowly, curiosity evident in her tone. "Why?" she prodded.
John held up a single finger and his crewmates fell silent just in time for the sound to carry down the corridor again – faint, but definitely there. It sounded familiar. Strong, aggressive, commanding. It sounded like a howl.
When that faint howl was answered by a chorus of others, John turned back to his team. "I think we need to go," he said.
Kelly, as usual, was the first to act. She snatched her shotgun from the countertop she'd left it on and pulled the tablet from her satchel, bringing up what John hoped was an updated map of the facility. She brushed past John into the hallway, followed closely by Fred who only paused long enough to order the dolly to follow as quickly as it could. John followed after them at a dead run.
The trio sprinted through the dim yellow corridors of the research installation, the dolly doggedly following along. Another chorus of howls and snarls sounded off behind them, noticeably louder.
"How didn't you pick these things up?" Fred snapped as they careened around a corner in the hallway.
"Scanners are calibrated for active life signs," Kelly yelled back, glancing periodically at the map on the datapad to ensure they were going the right direction. "The animals might have been in some kind of hibernation, which would keep them from showing up consistently."
"I don't much care how they tricked the scanner," John barked at both of them. "Let's just try to get back to Serenity without running into any of them!"
He took Kelly and Fred's silence as agreement.
Though the sounds of their pursuers were growing louder by the moment, the small group somehow managed to get back to the hangar before being overtaken by the animals. As soon as the ordnance-laden dolly crossed into the relatively spacious room Kelly slapped the door controls, the pneumatic door sealing shut with a satisfying hiss.
"That was too close," John said, leaning on to his knees for a moment to catch his breath. "Those things sounded like they were right behind us. It's a good thing we got away from –"
"I wouldn't go counting your chickens just yet, Cap," Fred cut him off.
Confused, John glanced up at his teammate. Fred, however, wasn't looking at John. He was staring, sidearm in hand, in the direction of Serenity.
John followed the other man's gaze, uttering an expletive when he saw what Fred was talking about.
A canine the size of a bear blocked their path to the ship. It snarled and barked, frothing at the mouth as it stared them down.
John's hand dropped to his M6. "I think we might have to put this dog down," he said quietly.
His crew didn't answer, warily staring down the beast on either side of him. The beast growled once more, and John immediately drew his firearm. He spared a fraction of a second to look either direction to ensure that his crew were ready to fight, but saw that both were transfixed on something behind him.
When the captain leaned back far enough to find what they were looking at, he was presented with the sight of a tiny girl holding one hand out. She resolutely stepped down the gangplank toward them.
"Joy, get back inside!" Kelly shouted, but the girl continued on down as if she hadn't heard.
The alien dog watched, seemingly bewildered, as Joy continued her steady march until she stood at the foot of the gangplank. She slowly raised one hand while John whipped his gun from its holster and aimed at the side of the hulking creature's head.
The dog, however, wasn't paying him any mind. Instead it ceased its intimidation show, opting to lay on the ground with its chin between its front feet.
"You should enter your ship, captain," Joy said calmly.
John looked back and forth between the tiny girl and the ursine creature looking up at her like a house pet. He decided that he didn't mind so much being told what to do. "I don't rightly know what you're doing kid, and being honest I don't much care to," he said as he slowly stepped toward the ship, being sure to give the beast a wide berth. "Just make sure you don't stop doing it until we're all back inside."
With a thrust of his head he ordered his companions onto Serenity and the small group slowly backed their way into the ship. Miranda, waiting inside with mouth agape and the blood drained from her face, slapped the door control and the outer hatch slowly rose.
For just a moment John thought the dog might rise and try to get through the door before it sealed shut, but a silent glare from Joy seemed to convince the creature against that course of action. When the airlock finally shut, the familiar knocking of magnetic clamps signifying that the hatch was locked into place, John finally let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
He sat down on the grated floor of the cargo bay with a heavy thump, resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands. When he looked up, Joy was staring at him with a somber expression crossing her small face.
The captain worked his jaw for a moment, his mind racing as it tried to decide just what to say. At the look in her eyes, any angry outburst he might have given her over being disobeyed died in his throat. He finally settled on a bewildered, "How did you do that?"
Joy continued staring him down for a moment. "I don't rightly know," she said, perfectly mimicking his childhood accent from Eridanus II. A mischievous smile crossed her face as she continued, "and being honest, I don't much care to."
She then bounded off to her quarters, singing some playground song as she skipped out of the cargo bay.
John stared after her for a moment before determining it was in his best interest to push his curiosity on this particular subject to the back of his mind. The weapons were in his cargo bay, and none of his crew were ripped apart to get them there. They'd make the sale, and they'd keep Serenity in the sky a little longer.
Sometimes that was all a man could hope for.
Author's Note: I am very sorry for the wait on this one. I'd give you all a big long list about it, but I'm imagine that's not particularly interesting to you. Anyway, this chapter is mostly based on the discarded idea for an episode that never happened, but that I thought was fun. Let me know what you think!