Firefly--Life Signs

by James Lovegrove

  Kaylee was awake and back at work on the engine. River contacted her over the ship’s intercom for an update.

  “How soon are we going to be space-able again?”

  “Couple more hours at least,” Kaylee replied.

  “Two Alliance ships are honing in on us. We don’t have that long. Can you make it an hour?”

  “I’m an engineer, River, not a miracle worker. But okay, I’ll try.”

  Next, River hailed the infirmary over the intercom.

  “Wash? How are you feeling?”

  “Just peachy,” came a very strained-sounding voice.

  “No, but really.”

  “Weak as a newborn kitten, and my eyesight’s still refusing to straighten out. It’s like the worst hangover in the world, but without any of the fun beforehand. I’ll fly if I have to, but I can’t promise we won’t crash into an asteroid or something.”

  “You won’t have to,” River assured him. “I’ve got this.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as eggs is chicken balls.”

  There was a pause, then Wash said, “I can’t quite tell. Does that mean yes or no?”

  “It means don’t you worry your pretty little head about a thing, young fella. Pilot Tam has the conn and it is on.”

  River cut the intercom connection, then sat back and eyed the console. Her gaze fell on the plastic toy dinosaurs parading around the rim. Wash’s little personal touch. She wondered whether, if she were ever officially Serenity’s pilot, she would replace them with some small customization of her own. Then she wondered why she thought that such a thing might even happen. It was a feeling, that was all. Faint and elusive. More like a hunch. A foreboding.

  And speaking of forebodings, her sense that Simon was in trouble had diminished but not entirely gone away.

  River and Simon had always been close. As children, they had been inseparable, and where many an older brother would not have liked his little sister constantly tagging along with him, Simon had never seemed to mind. Sure, there were times when it had been clear she was bugging him, but he had done his best not to show it. She had known his moods, and whenever it appeared that he was getting irritated with her, River would simply go away and leave him alone for a while. Her adoration of him was a constant, however, and she knew he adored her back.

  Everything had changed when she was sent to the Academy. It had been a wrench, leaving home and family—leaving Simon, especially— but their parents had insisted it was a marvelous opportunity and River should not turn it down.

  And then…

  The things.

  The things those so-called doctors at the Academy did.

  The brain things that had altered her, twisted her, made her strange and clever and simple and powerful and perplexed and perplexing and a whole lot more besides.

  What they had not managed to do was break her bond with her brother. Quite the opposite. After Simon rescued her, smuggling her out of the Academy and eventually onto Serenity, River had grown to realize that she was now even more deeply connected to him than before. The emotional bond remained just as strong, but there was another more intimate and indefinable link too. Whereas before she had been able to intuit what Simon was thinking from his facial expressions and body language, there were times now when she just knew. She knew his thoughts with crystal clarity, almost as though she could hear them, as though he was speaking them aloud. The same was true of most people around her, not least the ship’s crew, but with her brother it was like she could read his mind. Perhaps she was reading his mind.

  And that same connection accounted for the feelings she was experiencing at the moment. Even though Simon was several thousand klicks away, River could feel a tremor in her brain. A delicate tingle of alarm, as if some intangible, infinitely elastic thread that stretched between them was vibrating.

  She could tell that a trap was closing around Simon and he remained blissfully unaware. He was about to be set upon by someone vicious. A woman. A frightening, very violent woman. River wasn’t sure how soon this was going to happen, but she did know it wouldn’t be long.

  So apparently it was going to be her turn to rescue him. But to do that, she had to get to Atata as soon as possible.

  Kaylee had better hurry up.

  Time was running out.

  For all of them.

  56

  Ornery Annie surveyed the scene.

  Blood spatters everywhere. Scuff marks in the snow. Signs of a fight.

  Not to mention two terrafreak wolves sprawled on the ground.

  One of the wolves was dead, its skull bashed in. The other lay on its side, just barely alive. Its breathing was sharp and irregular. Frothy blood speckled its muzzle.

  Its ribs had been stoved in, Annie could see. A lung must be punctured. The animal was not long for this world.

  She knelt, unsheathed her shiv, and sped the wolf on its way to oblivion. As the light faded from the creature’s eyes, she wondered which of the group of impostors had been responsible for mortally wounding it and killing the other wolf. Zoë, most likely. Annie had no way of knowing this for certain, but she could easily imagine it: Zoë in a faceoff with a pair of wolves, and the wolves coming off worst.

  Otis was staring down at an untidy heap of tin cans. “They dropped alla this food they took. Now why in heck would they do that?”

  “They abandoned the Slugger as well,” Pops said. The Regulators had come across the vehicle a couple of miles back. “Leave a lot of things behind ’em, don’t they?”

  “The Slugger died on them,” Annie said. “They didn’t have a choice. Seems like they didn’t have a choice about the food either. They’d been using a kind of stretcher thing to haul the cans along. Those drag marks in the snow leadin’ away from the Slugger, right? And then they musta needed it for something else.”

  “My guess would be one of them’s been injured,” said Michael Pale Horse.

  “Mine too.”

  The Hobhouse twins were crouching beside a patch of brown goop that was spilled on the snow. They were taking turns dipping a finger in and licking the stuff off. There was a split-open can lying nearby, and Annie hoped and prayed that the brown goop was what it looked like, chocolate pudding, and not something more disgusting. Although, with those two, there was no knowing.

  “We gonna keep on after ’em, right?” said Cleavon.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Annie replied. “They’ve not got a Slugger anymore and now one of them can’t walk. They’re slower than ever.”

  She studied the tree shadows. The sun was past its zenith. There were three, maybe four hours of daylight remaining.

  The shadows themselves were dimming. Clouds were moving in, and if Annie didn’t miss her guess, there was going to be a snowfall. A big one. You could sense it in the air, a kind of looming heaviness.

  “They’re gonna go to ground before it gets dark,” she said. “They have to. They’re tired. They need to rest. My feeling is we’re going to find them sooner rather than later. We just have to forge on. Any objections?”

  She didn’t expect any, and there were none. The other six Regulators were keen to get the job done and return to CU #23. Perhaps not as keen as Annie was, but keen enough.

  “This way, then,” Ornery Annie said, striding away from the carnage.

  57

  Commander Levine stood at her station on the bridge of Constant Vigilance. Hands clasped behind her back, spine ramrod straight, she was a picture of determination.

  She was also, despite appearances, exhausted. She hadn’t left the corvette’s bridge once since the search for Tranquility began, not to eat, not even for a bathroom break. She was known for driving her crew hard but she drove no one harder than herself. She was like a terrier. Once she had her teeth into something, she hung on and didn’t let go till she was done with it.

  “Sir?” said her communications officer. He and the rest of the flight crew were showing signs of tiredness, even if Levine wasn’t
. There had been sporadic bouts of yawning all across the bridge over the past couple of hours, one yawn setting off another in a kind of chain reaction. Glazed, bloodshot eyes stared from every face. At one point the weapons officer had even nodded off in his seat, until Levine had roused him with a sharp rebuke.

  “Yes?” Levine said.

  “Freedom to Choose is hailing us.”

  Levine stifled a sigh. “Put it through.”

  “Commander,” said Marvin Ransome.

  “Commander,” said Levine.

  Ransome looked wrung out and rough around the edges—even rougher around the edges than normal. “We’ve been at this for about fifteen hours. My guys are on their last legs. I’m thinking maybe we can take a pause? Just for a short while? We go on like this, without resting up, mistakes are going to happen.”

  “On your boat perhaps, Ransome. Not on mine. Don’t forget, you volunteered to help. I never asked you to. If you haven’t got a big enough pair of balls to see this through to the end…”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with the size of my balls,” Ransome replied hotly. “What are you trying to prove anyway, Levine? The size of yours?”

  Levine did not rise to the taunt. “I’m trying to prove that you do not attempt to outwit the Alliance, and you certainly do not damage an Alliance corvette, with impunity. That gorramn Firefly is somewhere round these parts and it is not going to get away from us a second time. Furthermore, Ransome—”

  “Sir?” said Levine’s executive officer.

  “What?” she snapped at him.

  “Don’t mean to cut in, but we’re getting a ping from a warning buoy.”

  “So?”

  “So it means we’re approaching the wreck of the freighter. You know the one. Angel of Enterprise, I think it’s called. Got punched all to hell by meteors a few years back.”

  “What of it, XO?”

  “Well, I was just thinking. If you have a ship that’s taken a few knocks and you need somewhere to hole up awhile in order to carry out emergency repairs, somewhere that’ll give you a bit of cover…” He left the sentence unfinished, seemingly worried that he had said something ridiculous, so ridiculous it would incur his commanding officer’s wrath. Levine’s crew feared her as mice fear a cat.

  “XO?”

  “Yes, sir?” came the timid reply.

  “That is an excellent suggestion.”

  The lieutenant commander beamed from ear to ear. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Navigator? Put us on a heading for Angel of Enterprise.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “Ransome?” said Levine, turning back to his image on her console. “Is Freedom to Choose coming with? Or would you and your crew rather go beddy-byes and have a nice little nap-nap?”

  “All right, we’re coming with,” said Ransome testily, adding, “And by the way. Cāo nĭ ma, Vicky.”

  Levine smirked at him. “I think you’ll find, Ransome, that it’s ‘Cāo nĭ ma, Commander Levine.’”

  58

  “Kaylee?” said River over Serenity’s intercom. “This is it. We can’t wait any longer. Those two Alliance corvettes have abruptly course-corrected. They’re making a beeline right for us.”

  Which, she thought, is kind of funny when you think about it. Hornet-class ships. Beeline.

  “Engine’s not completely ready, River,” came the reply from Kaylee.

  “Is it ready enough?”

  A pause. Then: “I guess so.”

  “Okay. Good. I’m starting her up.”

  “You might want to cross your fingers.”

  “Can’t fly a ship with crossed fingers,” River said. “Makes pushing those buttons and levers so much trickier.”

  River initiated the ship’s startup sequence. There wasn’t time for the standard round of pre-flight checks. Either Serenity would go or she wouldn’t.

  She hit the ignition command.

  For a moment there was nothing, just a pregnant silence. It was as though Serenity was making up her mind, deciding if she had the wherewithal to move.

  Then came a low thrum that stuttered then steadied, becoming a deep, familiar vibration. River pictured Serenity’s bulbous stern-mounted propulsion unit starting to glow. A nimbus of rippling, golden coruscation manifesting.

  On the control console screens, a host of systems status indicators lit up. A few were red, but most were green. Serenity was operating at near optimal capacity. Not perfect, but better than River could have hoped. Kaylee had been wrong. She was a miracle worker.

  River eased Serenity away from the freighter. She felt a little sad to be leaving the larger ship’s sheltering shadow. She felt intrepid, too, like a fledgling bird trying out its wings, making its first tentative moves towards independence.

  Kaylee arrived on the bridge. Positioning herself beside the pilot’s chair, she studied the scanner screens over River’s shoulder. “We’re on the corvettes’ blind side for now, but you can bet they’ll do a full sweep around the wreck. What’s our play here? We just gonna go hell for leather? Try to outrun ’em and lose ourselves in the Black?”

  “No. We have to head straight to Atata.”

  “What for? We ain’t heard from the captain yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Something’s about to happen to them down there. Something bad. To Simon especially. They need us, and they need us right now.”

  “Okay,” said Kaylee. “You sound like you know, and I don’t know how you know, but if you know, then you know.”

  River grinned lopsidedly. “I know, right?”

  “But the Feds are gonna chase us every inch of the way.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “You have a plan.”

  “I remember Zoë saying once that if you’re in a jam, the best course of action is think what Mal Reynolds would do and then do the exact opposite.”

  “Sound advice.”

  “Only, on this occasion I’m not going to take it. I’m going to do something Mal-Reynolds-like.”

  “Now I’m worried,” said Kaylee.

  “Don’t be. Ever heard of the Kessler syndrome?”

  “Can’t say as I have. Is it some kind of disease?”

  “It’s from back in the old times. See, there were once so many satellites and chunks of spaceflight debris in orbit around Earth-That-Was that there was the fear of something called an ablation cascade. This astrophysicist, Donald Kessler, proposed a hypothetical scenario where one of these objects would collide with another, and that in turn would cause further collisions, and so on and so on…”

  “Kind of a domino effect,” said Kaylee.

  River nodded. “Exactly. And each impact would create all these smaller pieces of debris, until eventually there would be nothing up there in the exosphere but a swirling cloud of broken-up, whizzing-fast junk. It would make it almost impossible to send up any rockets, because there’s a very good chance they’d hit something. It would also obscure the sky, so that astronomers couldn’t stargaze anymore. None of that happened, but the Earth-That-Was authorities were very concerned it might. It was one of the things that spurred Madame Xiang to start organizing the mass exodus which led to all those generation starships seeking out new worlds to colonize. That and environmental degradation, of course. She wanted to get people off the planet while they still could. You could even say it’s part of the reason there’s a ’verse.”

  “All right, interesting, but how does it apply here?”

  “I’m going to Kessler syndrome the debris around us,” River said. “I’m going to knock one piece of wreckage against another with Serenity’s nose, and if I do it right, it’ll set up an ablation cascade.”

  “Which we can use as cover to fly out of here. River, you’re a gorramn genius.”

  “It’s been said.”

  “You’re also insane.”

  “It’s been said too.”

  “Unless we’re very careful, and very lucky, we could be caught up in the cascade ourselves. Get hit
by something. The propulsion unit gets taken out, and we’re dead in the water.”

  “I know,” said River. “And also we could find something large and heavy ramming into the hull at a thousand miles an hour, bashing a great big hole in the ship, and then it’s adios, nice to meetcha, seeya on the other side.”

  “But you can do it, yeah?”

  River switched her gaze back and forth between the forward viewing ports and the console screens. In her mind’s eye, she was calculating vectors within the debris field. Working out trajectories. Analyzing speeds and angles. A whole vast, inordinately complex geometrical computation was taking place inside her brain.

  “Sure,” she said finally. “Think of it as the ultimate pool shot, with Serenity as the cue.”

  59

  The wreck of Angel of Enterprise was just a distant dot in Constant Vigilance’s main viewing port.

  “Engage forward cameras,” Levine ordered.

  An image of the debris cluster popped up on her console.

  “Increase magnification by fifty.”

  With a lurch, the image expanded to fill the screen. Levine squinted. She couldn’t see anything anomalous amid all the freighter fragments. Not yet, at least.

  “We’ll circuit the wreckage slowly,” she said. “Everybody, keep your eyes peeled. Bonus of a week’s pay to whoever spots that gorramn Firefly.”

  If the Firefly was even in there. But Levine had the feeling it was. She had got the measure of Tranquility’s crew, she thought. Lurking among that wreckage was just the sort of sneaky stunt those people would pull.

  As Constant Vigilance drew nearer the remains of Angel of Enterprise—with Freedom to Choose tagging along behind—Levine spied movement.

  The debris, she knew, had been entirely static for years.

  Now, all of a sudden, there was a peculiar disturbance within.

  It started small, confined to a single spot. As Levine watched, however, the disturbance grew, spreading through the cluster. It was as though someone had poked a spoon into the debris and started stirring. Soon—astonishingly soon—the entire mass of wreckage was in motion, every bit of it twirling and spinning.