Fragment caromed off fragment. Pieces of spaceship began spiraling outward. The cluster was expanding, losing cohesion, breaking apart. Even the main bulk of the freighter was drifting from its original position. The gigantic, hollowed-out hulk heeled over to one side. The meteor strike all those years ago had practically bisected it, with just a few spars of the ship’s frame left holding the two sections together. These began to snap one by one, until none remained intact and the two parts floated free from each other.
The disintegration was mesmerizing to behold. There were so many separate elements to it—thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands—it was impossible to keep track of them all. Levine at least had the presence of mind to order Constant Vigilance to halt. It would be unwise for them to get any closer to this bristling, growing chaos than they already were.
“This is them,” she said. “This is their doing.”
“But what are they up to?” her XO asked. “If they’re in the thick of all that, they’re as good as committing suicide.”
Commander Ransome’s face flickered into life on one of her screens. “Levine? You seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t be coincidence. Your Firefly’s in there somewhere.”
“You don’t say,” Levine drawled.
“We’re going in for a closer look,” Ransome announced.
“I don’t advise that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because this stinks of distraction technique. If the Firefly’s going to break cover, now’s its moment.”
“Then the nearer we are to it, the better chance we have of intercepting it.”
“Also, that debris is shooting off in all directions. No predicting where it’s going to go. It’s safer maintaining distance, as we are.”
“Know what your problem is, Levine?” said Ransome. “You’re too sensible.”
“And you’re too reckless. Hold your position for now, Ransome. That’s an order.”
“You don’t outrank me, remember?”
“We agreed I would take lead on this mission.”
“Yeah, well, I’m tired of that. I’m tired of you. I’m just overall gorramn tired. I want this thing done and dusted. We’re moving in.”
“Ransome…” Levine growled.
“Hey, screw you, Vicky, you bù huĭ hèn de pō fù. Really. Just screw you.”
Ransome cut the connection.
Levine cursed under her breath.
The wreckage maelstrom was still increasing not only in size but intensity. Freedom to Choose appeared in the viewing port, on a course that was headed straight for it. The corvette accelerated from half speed to full.
“No,” Levine said softly. Then, more loudly, “No,” again. She thumped the console with both fists. “That Firefly is mine. Mine, d’you hear? Not yours, Ransome. Not anyone’s.”
“Sir?” said her XO. “Do you want us to go after Freedom to Choose?”
“Yes. Not just after them. Overtake them.”
As the XO relayed the order, Levine turned to the weapons officer. “Weps? Cycle up all armaments. First sign you see of the Firefly, take it out. Don’t hesitate. Don’t wait for my command. Just do it.”
60
River held her breath. Any second now…
Amid the myriad of mental calculations she had performed, there was one which predicted the precise moment when Serenity could make her escape. A gap would open up, a tunnel leading safely through the debris to empty space. This window of opportunity was due to appear imminently.
Her fingers closed around the handles of the steering yoke.
Outside, everything was a blizzard of motion. The forward viewing ports were filled with swirling spaceship debris, like screen static on a sourcebox. River could sense Kaylee beside her growing tense. Her grip on the back of River’s chair was tightening. River wished she could give her some kind of reassurance, just a word or two, but she was too busy concentrating on other things. She needed every ounce of focus if she was going to get this right.
There!
Now!
Almost magically, the clouds of moving debris parted, leaving just enough room for a Firefly to pass through. Beyond lay pure, open Black.
River shoved the steering yoke forward.
Serenity lurched into life. She hurtled towards freedom.
Then faltered. Lost power. Lost speed.
“What?” said River. “No. No, no, no…”
It was as though Serenity had caught her toe on a rock and stumbled. She came to a shuddering halt.
“The coaxial compression coupling,” Kaylee said with a heavy sigh. “The seal on the coaxial compression coupling is too loose. I was afraid of this. The original nut broke and I had to use a two-inch nut to secure it because I didn’t have a spare one-and-seven-eighths. I hoped it’d be enough. Clearly it ain’t.”
“Come on, girl,” River said to the ship. “You can do this.”
The window of opportunity was closing. Closing fast.
River routed auxiliary power to the thrusters. It wasn’t much but it might just give Serenity the boost she needed to overcome the fault with the coaxial compression coupling.
Lights dimmed all over the ship and life-support systems went into sleep mode, even as Serenity lumbered back up to full speed.
Debris was starting to hurtle across the channel that led to the outside.
This was going to take some fancy flying.
Deftly, if not very delicately, River steered a course, avoiding each and every scrap of ex-freighter that came her way. Serenity pitched. She rolled. She yawed.
To River, a trained ballerina, it was more like dancing than piloting. It was pirouette and jeté and entrechat. It was reel and hornpipe and gavotte. It was twist. It was even shimmy. One thing it was not was a cakewalk.
Her awareness was heightened to an acute degree. The moment an item of debris entered her field of vision, she instantly worked out how fast it was moving and where it was headed, and made the necessary corrections.
“River!” Kaylee yelled in warning.
A stainless steel commode came hurtling out of nowhere towards them.
River threw the ship into a tight turn. The commode bumped along Serenity’s swanlike neck and over her rounded topside, then went careering off upwards at a steep angle.
“Wáng bā dàn de biăo zi,” Kaylee said.
“Pottymouth,” said River, quirking one eyebrow.
“Oh, ha ha.”
One last barrel roll, a final seesawing of the wings, and suddenly Serenity shot clear of the tumult.
“You did it!” Kaylee cried. “I could gorramn kiss you. In fact, I will.” She planted a smacker on River’s cheek.
“Not quite out of the woods yet,” River said. She nodded at the scanner screens.
The two Alliance corvettes were zeroing in.
“They’ve seen us.”
Kaylee was crestfallen. “I thought, with all this stuff whirling around…”
“They’d have held back and wouldn’t have seen us until too late, or even at all. That’s what I was counting on. But it’s okay.”
“It is?”
“Kaylee, do you trust me?”
“I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
“Then I’m gonna have to.”
River swung Serenity hard about.
The Alliance ships were a matching pair, both of them sleek, state-of-the-art machines, armed to the teeth.
Yet, for all that they were so alike, they differed. The one captained by Commander Victoria Levine, Constant Vigilance, was precise, efficient, orderly. The other was not. River could tell this in the same way she could tell so many things that wouldn’t be apparent to someone whose brain had not been tampered with like hers had. There was disorganization aboard the other corvette. A lack of restraint. It was flying straight at Serenity, but this wasn’t just eagerness. River thought of a small child rushing across the road in purs
uit of an errant ball, heedless of the traffic.
“Come get me,” River whispered to whoever was in command of the second ship. “I know you want to.”
She swooped in front of the corvette’s nose, darting past. The corvette pulled a sharp about-turn, pivoting on its axis.
Constant Vigilance was incoming. Serenity was poised between both corvettes.
“Weapons,” Kaylee said, jabbing a forefinger at the screens. “They’ve gone weapons hot. They have target lock on us. We’re in their crosshairs.”
“Shh,” River said.
The corvettes zoomed in from fore and aft. Crackles of light from their gun ports—they had opened fire simultaneously.
Serenity jinked and dodged. Kaylee flinched reflexively, but not one of the shots found its mark. River was evading enemy fire coming from opposite directions at once. It was incredible piloting.
The corvette behind them was so close, it was practically sniffing Serenity’s backside. The corvette in front loomed alarmingly fast.
61
Commander Levine didn’t see it coming.
Until—too late—she did.
Freedom to Choose was hot on Tranquility’s tail. Commander Ransome was flushing the ship towards Constant Vigilance, like a gundog with a game bird. This might not have been his intention but it was the result all the same. The Firefly’s pilot—Jed Race— was clearly panicking, not paying attention to where he was going, just fleeing blindly.
Levine’s weapons officer began firing, as ordered. At the Firefly’s rear, Ransome’s weapons officer did the same.
That was when it dawned on Levine that, panicking or not, this Race fellow was phenomenally good at his job. Tranquility hopped, skipped and jumped around both sets of oncoming blasts. She had never seen astrobatics like it. Neither corvette scored a direct hit. They didn’t even wing the Firefly.
“Hold fire!” Levine yelled, as the wildly darting Tranquility got ever nearer. It was possible a stray shot from Constant Vigilance might hit Freedom to Choose, and vice versa. If there had been time, Levine would have opened communications with Ransome and told him to stand his weapons down too. As it was, she just had to pray he saw sense.
He did. Freedom to Choose’s guns ceased blazing too.
And then it all went wrong.
Over the course of the next five seconds, events unfurled with horrifying slowness. Those five seconds, the final ones of Commander Levine’s life, saw her realize that no amount of precision, discipline or adherence to protocol could make up for the waywardness and unpredictability of other people. When it came down to it, nothing was ever truly under control. This wasn’t so much a revelation for Levine as a sad acknowledgement.
The Firefly abruptly veered upward, its downturned thrusters flaring.
Now Constant Vigilance and Freedom to Choose were heading straight at each other.
Standard procedure when two spacecraft were on a collision course was that, as in conventional aviation, both vessels should swerve to starboard.
“Starboard!” Levine yelled, and the response was immediate. Her flight crew were well drilled.
Constant Vigilance turned.
Freedom to Choose also turned.
But not to starboard. To port.
At the crucial moment, Freedom to Choose had made the wrong choice.
Everyone on the bridge of Constant Vigilance was agog.
Someone screamed.
As for their captain, all she said was: “Marvin Ransome, you liú kŏu shuĭ de biăo zi hé hóu zi de bèn ér zi.”
These were Commander Victoria Levine’s last words, and she growled the profanity with as much venom as she could muster, wishing her opposite number aboard Freedom to Choose could have heard.
Then she closed her eyes.
IAV Freedom to Choose plunged headlong into IAV Constant Vigilance.
There were no survivors.
62
Wash staggered up from the infirmary and onto the bridge. River had turned Serenity around to give them a clear view of the fireball consuming both Constant Vigilance and Freedom to Choose. Wash arrived just in time to see the roiling mass of flame begin to disperse. Nothing burned for long in hard vacuum, and soon all that remained of the corvettes was a collection of charred, incinerated ship parts pinwheeling off in a hundred different directions. Some of the fragments joined the still-expanding debris field from the freighter, merging with it. Others went hurtling away into the eternal blackness. A few bumped harmlessly off Serenity’s hull.
“What’d I miss?” Wash asked, as if he couldn’t guess the answer.
“Nothing much,” said Kaylee, grinning. “Just River being a total gorramn badass.”
“That was an Alliance corvette, right?”
“Two.”
“Zhè zhēn shi gè kuài lè de jìn zhăn. And you outflew them, River? Made them crash into each other?” Wash shook his head wonderingly.
“Wasn’t so difficult,” River said. “Somebody zagged when they should have zigged.”
“And did you know that was gonna happen?” Kaylee asked her. “As in, y’know, know know?”
River shrugged. “I didn’t not know, if that makes any sense.”
It didn’t, not to Wash at least, but obviously a lot had transpired while he’d been lying in a pain-wracked stupor on the med couch. Most notably, it seemed River was a competent pilot. More than competent. Downright skillful.
But then, wasn’t that always the way with River Tam? More and more it was becoming clear that the girl could turn her hand to just about anything and do it exceptionally well. Wash had a feeling there was no limit to her talents. This amazed and scared him in equal measure.
“We’re safe, for now,” River said.
“That’s good to hear,” Wash said.
“How’re you doin’, by the way, Wash?” said Kaylee.
“Head still hurts but not as bad. It’s gone from ‘agonizing’ to ‘just a little bit less than agonizing.’”
“Feel up to pilotin’ again?”
“Why? Where are we going? Did Mal send a signal?”
“No, but River says we’ve got to get back to Atata anyway. The crew’s in trouble.”
“Really?”
“Really,” said River, her face solemn.
Wash didn’t inquire how River could be so certain about this. He didn’t dare. Among those many talents of hers were a few that were uncanny, not to say supernatural. Those were the ones that amazed and scared him most of all.
“Okay then, let’s go,” he said. “But,” he added, “I don’t know as I’m up to flying just yet. My eyesight still hasn’t sorted itself out. Unless, that is, each of you has an identical twin I didn’t know about.”
“You are definitely not sitting in that chair,” Kaylee said. “River?”
“On it,” said River.
“And I’ll see if I can jury rig that coaxial compression coupling so it holds together. If I have to use sticking plasters, then sticking plasters it is.”
So saying, Kaylee quit the bridge.
River pushed the steering yoke forward, and Serenity gained speed.
Wash stayed beside her. He had exaggerated about his condition. His head definitely still ached but he wasn’t seeing double. His eyesight was fine now, pretty much. A little blurry, but he could have managed at the helm.
And it was hard for him to let someone else fly this boat. He felt as solicitous about Serenity as a parent does about their child. Nobody really should be in charge of her except him.
That said, he was curious to see River in action. As far as he was aware, River had no flying experience. Yet she was currently displaying a sure, deft touch at the controls, and of course there was the small matter of her getting the better of those corvettes.
Maybe, he thought, I can take her under my wing. Train her up. She could spell me when I need to take a break. I’d rather have someone human flying Serenity when I’m not than put her on autopilot.
R
iver Tam. Prodigy protégée. Future Serenity pilot.
Amazing.
Scary.
63
They conducted an inventory of their weapons.
It didn’t take long.
There were Dr. Weng’s homemade hunting spears. He had three of those in total. There was also a tiny pair of scissors in the first-aid kit.
And that was it.
“Don’t forget my can opener,” Simon said. He waggled it in the air in a jokey fashion.
Nobody was amused. Not even Meadowlark, who looked at the can opener with a little knot forming between her eyebrows.
“Okay.” Simon stowed the implement away in his pocket again. “Just trying to lighten the mood. But if you’re going to be like that…”
“Rocks,” said Mal. “Gotta be plenty of those lyin’ around. We can gather a stack of ’em.”
“I can perhaps make a shiv out of one of those cans,” said Zoë.
“Get to it,” Mal said, “and if you’ve time, make one for me as well.” He studied the layout of the cave. “This is a fairly good position, defensibility-wise. Access is restricted. You can’t get in except on hands and knees.”
“You can also only get out the same way. If the Regulators lay siege to us, we’re here for the duration. Any attempt to leave, and they could pick us off easily.”
“That’s assuming they’ve a hankerin’ to draw this thing out. Look out there.”
Through the cavemouth everyone could see that snow had started to fall. A few wind-blown flakes wisped inside, melting in the relative warmth of the cave’s interior.
“Nobody wants to be hangin’ around in that for hours on end,” Mal said.
“The snow may also bury our tracks and the Regulators won’t be able to follow them anymore,” Weng said hopefully.
“Depends how far behind us they are,” said Zoë. “I wouldn’t count on it, my own self.”
“And you really didn’t bring any guns with you to Atata?”
“Couldn’t. Not if we were going to pass ourselves off as prisoners.”
“Shame. It just seems crazy, using rocks and spears and knives to fend off an enemy.”
Firefly--Life Signs Page 24