by Tim Lebbon
“All over the ship?” Mal asked.
“It’s gone from night to day where we are,” Kaylee said.
“I thought you were heading back for Serenity?”
“Well…”
“Jayne?” Mal asked.
“Maybe we will now,” Jayne said. “What’s happened?”
“We found something—a man asleep in a pod. Not from back then, but someone the Alliance put here, I reckon, and with security systems to guard him. Seems like we woke up a sleeping ship.”
“Er, guys,” Wash said, “not sure what’s going on down there, but it’s not just the ship you’ve woken. Those drones appear uppity about something, and they’re closing in on you.”
“You said you could control them.”
“I said I could track them and block any signals. There are no signals being sent, and I am tracking them. As they move toward you.”
“Great,” Mal said. He and Zoë shared a glance that he knew all too well. We’re outnumbered and in big trouble, but we’ve got each other’s backs. Their resolve and closeness had gotten them out of sharp scrapes before, both during the war and after. He only hoped it would work one more time. What Alliance sentry drones lacked in logic and intelligence they made up for in speed and firepower. Jayne must have been lucky before, possibly because the drone he’d taken down had been investigating what it thought was a malfunction, not an incursion.
Its seventeen comrades would not make the same mistake.
“Jayne, Kaylee, where are you exactly?”
“Still in the suspension hanger,” Kaylee said.
“What?”
There was silence for a moment, then Kaylee said, “Jayne’s looking for valuables.”
“In the pods?” Mal asked, aghast.
“Well, not yet.”
“Give me some credit!” Jayne said. “I ain’t no grave robber.”
“You’ll be in a grave if you don’t get back to the ship,” Mal said. “Hustle. Wash, keep a channel open and see if you can get us around those nasties.”
“I’ll do my best. Head back the way you came, then pause at the first junction.”
Hefting his gun, Mal led Zoë away from the sealed room.
“Hold there,” Wash said. They paused by a corridor junction, breathing softly, crouched against either wall. Mal and Zoë moved and flowed as one. He was aware of her position, attitude, and readiness, and the same would go the other way. Jayne was an accomplished fighter and killer, but in a fight Mal would prefer Zoë by his side every time.
“Drone closing from your right,” Wash said. “It’s not slowing.”
Mal pointed at Zoë, then at his head. Then he tapped his chest.
“Ten seconds away,” Wash said.
Mal waved his hand with five fingers open, four, three, two…
On one, Zoë stood and turned the corner, and Mal stretched into the corridor on his knees. Their gunfire sounded like one shot. Zoë’s took the drone in the head, and Mal’s hit dead center in its metallic torso. As it jerked to a halt and turned in a slow circle, leaking sparks from its head and fluid from its chest, Zoë stepped forward and pumped two more rounds into it. With its control center destroyed, the wheeled drone trundled in a wide circle until it came to a stop against the wall.
“Okay, go the other way,” Wash said.
“What’s the lie of the land?” Mal asked.
“Three more incoming from the same direction,” Wash said. “And five from the direction of the ship’s bow. They’re converging on where you saw the sleeping gentleman, not your position.”
“They don’t know we’re here,” Zoë said.
“That makes no sense,” Mal said. “We’ve tripped the alarm; woken the ship.”
“Better get a shift on,” Wash said.
Mal and Zoë moved. One drone they could take easily, but three would be different. They hurried along long corridors, passing closed doors and a few that stood open, and with every step Mal felt more uneasy. It wasn’t just that they had done something to wake the ship and its drone guardians; it was what they’d seen back there. One man, asleep in a lone suspension pod. A man who had not come here from Earth-That-Was. On a ship filled with dead people from centuries ago and countless trillions of miles away, piled in transport halls and left to wither and rot, it was this one man that the Alliance had seen fit to hide away and protect.
Something not quite right with that, he thought. They’re not protecting him. They’re guarding him. But he had to keep his wits about him now, and trying to work through the problem took too much headspace.
Ten minutes later Wash came on the comm again. “Two drones closing in on you from starboard,” he said. “Maybe thirty seconds out.”
“No warning, dear?” Zoë asked, exasperated.
“Sorry, I didn’t see them until they moved, and there’s something—”
“Not now,” Mal said. He and Zoë assessed their situation. They were at a wide vestibule where several corridors met. It had a high ceiling, a steady level of diffused light from panels around the walls, and a scatter of fixed seating set at jaunty angles. Maybe five centuries before this had been a relaxation area for the ship’s crew.
“Chairs,” Zoë said, and Mal nodded. As they darted for the chairs he heard the soft rustle of rubberized treads on metal… and then the sound stopped. They heard us! he thought, and glancing at Zoë he knew she’d heard the same thing. Kneeling behind a chair, he turned and raised his gun just as the first flash of laser fire sizzled across the backrest of his chair, singeing the hairs on the back of his hand. He fired three times and saw the drone spin on its hidden wheels, its weapon discharging harmlessly into the wall. Behind it the second drone opened fire, cutting its damaged companion in half and unleashing a storm of laser scatter into the room. Zoë cursed and rolled, coming up in a crouch with her gun hand extended. Mal ran to the left, drawing fire, and he saw the drone turn from the corner of his eye. He fired twice without looking, then leaped forward and slid across the floor, feeling the heat of laser contact tracking him and closing on his trailing feet. He heard two shots and a crackling sound, and the drone let out a long electrical cry, sparks jumping from its damaged head. Zoë stood and advanced, firing three more times and putting an end to their pursuer.
“You okay?” she called.
“Yeah. You?”
“Knee got a little cooked by melted plastic.”
“Your knee got cooked?” Wash asked.
“I’m fine, baby.”
“But cooked? Is it rare or well-done?”
“Just stings.”
“Wash, any more of those things nearby?” Mal asked.
“I don’t think so, but there is something a little more pressing. I’ve picked up a transmission from the Sun Tzu, it’s not something I’m familiar with but—” Behind Wash, Mal heard another, softer voice. It was River. He couldn’t tell what she was saying, but he sensed her excitement, and he’d not heard her saying that much in a long, long while.
“Wash?” Mal asked.
“Seems lock picking is another of her talents,” Wash said.
“What’s she saying?” Mal asked. The comm channel was open, and he sensed Jayne and Kaylee listening.
“River says the signal’s out there and it’s already been answered by an Alliance ship.”
“Gǒu shĭ!” Mal said. “I thought you were blocking signals?”
“Thought so too. Nothing on scopes yet, sir, but I’m keeping a close watch.” Wash’s voice was quieter, and lacking any of the usual lightheartedness. This had gone from vaguely dangerous to deadly serious in the blink of an eye.
“Starting to feel like the time’s come to get the hell outta here,” Jayne said.
“If you’d done what I said…” Mal said, but he shook his head. “Wash, how much closer can you get Serenity to the ship? More time we can save, the better. Did she…?” He trailed off, staring into the distance.
“Mal?” Zoë asked.
�
��This isn’t happening because of us,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Zoë asked. “We’ve tripped an alarm and—”
“It’s because of him,” Mal said. “The drones don’t even know we’re here ’til we blast them. The defenses in that room were initiated to keep something in, not out. And the signal sent to the Alliance ship… I’d be willing to bet Serenity they’re coming in because they think that gentleman back there, whoever he is, has woken up.”
“Actually, Mal,” Wash said, “I was just about to get to that. The room you left behind—” The comm went silent.
“Wash?” Zoë asked. “Wash! Anyone hear him?”
“Cut off,” Kaylee said. “That ain’t good.”
“None of this is good,” Mal said.
“Incoming!” Jayne shouted, and Mal heard shooting, and shouting, and the unmistakable ragged roar of laser fire. Then their comm link to Jayne and Kaylee also fell silent.
“Let’s hustle,” Zoë said, and they ran together, senses alert and alight, back the way they’d come.
River has never been this close to something so amazing.
“What are you doing?”
It’s time for her to take control. Perhaps she has been in some sort of control since the first moment she saw the map, but now events are speeding up, and she can feel her future coming close.
Silas is awake! She can feel that, and she also senses his confusion and fear. He’s been asleep for so long. She has to go and look after him. And in him, perhaps she can discover just what the Alliance had wanted with her.
“Get away from there, you ain’t allowed—”
She only has to look at him. Wash, the pilot. He’s a good man, she likes him, but he’s also afraid, and she uses that to do and get what she wants. Simon is standing behind her in the doorway, and she senses his doubt. Mostly, though, he loves that she is this animated. He has rarely seen her so awake and alert, so in control of her own actions. She understands that for him this might even be something of a release. Responsibility is draining.
She loves Simon and will never let anything hurt him.
Wash tries to communicate with the captain and the others down on the ship. He opens comms, but River passes her hand across the control panel, sensing which dials and switches do what, and when she finds comms she turns it off. Wash talks into space, then stops when he realizes what she has done.
She looks at him again. His fear is palpable, like a glowing aura. It pulses and changes color, and she stares at it in fascination.
“So pretty,” she says, and even as she speaks the words she cannot really accept that they are true. Fear should never be pretty, especially when she causes it. “I’m sorry,” she says, and his aura changes again, the colors not so vital and clear. His fear lessens. Perhaps he sees that she does not mean him harm, but she is still in his position at the ship’s controls, and still in charge.
She has his gun. She cannot recall having taken it, but it sits in her belt in easy reach. Wash keeps looking at the weapon, but he understands the truth—that she can draw and use it before he even takes a breath.
She doesn’t wish to use it on him, but he’s realized that she will if she has to. That knowledge is deep within his eyes and speckled around him in a scattering of yellow thoughts.
“River, what are you doing?” Simon asks, and she glances back at him, smiling.
“Taking control,” she says. “As much as I can and for as long as I can. Long enough to meet him, and then he’ll take control, and together we’ll be more than the sum of our parts. We’ll be…” She smiles when the description comes to her. It’s as if it has always been there, and now is the first time she has been able to understand its relevance. “We’ll be two rivers flowing into one, faster and heavier, more powerful. And flowing both ways.”
“Who is he?” Simon asks.
“You’re my brother,” River replies. “But he is my blood.”
River takes control of the ship. She has never flown Serenity before, but a few seconds examining the consoles, running her hands back and forth across the grubby, messy surface of the panels and boards, and she understands all she needs to know. She probes inward, her consciousness flowing and seeping deep like water, penetrating and conducting back to her everything about the workings of the vessel. It’s quite simple, really.
She slips into Wash’s seat and senses him stepping forward again.
“No, Wash,” she says, and in a blink she has the gun drawn and aimed back at him. Her finger strokes the trigger. She can’t imagine shooting him, but there are many things she has done that she would never have imagined before. Not wanting to shoot him isn’t the same as not needing to, and if he comes closer, tries to stop her, wrestles her aside, she will need to. “I don’t want to shoot you.”
“River, this is madness, you don’t know what you’re—” She switches her aim and Simon stops talking.
“I don’t need to shoot you,” she says. “Either of you. I need to… I want to…”
She flies the ship with her free hand. It takes only a tweak to take it closer to the Sun Tzu, and when she sees the place she is aiming for, she engages an automatic docking procedure that does most of the work. A thump, a judder, and then Serenity comes to rest.
“What have you done?” Wash asks. “We need to get away from here. Once the others get aboard we have to—”
“No,” River says, and she spins the chair to face them both, her brother and Wash. She reaches back and turns the comms on again. She hears confused voices, and shouting, and the sounds of guns firing, but she knows this is just background noise to the future she has come here to find. “We need to stay. And I have to sing.”
* * *
“What is that?” Kaylee asked.
“Sounds like… singing,” Jayne said. “Spooky girl’s singing. We’re about to get frazzled, and she’s singing a song. That’s just shiny.”
“I don’t know the words, but it’s kinda beautiful,” Kaylee said. She frowned, unsure of whether that was an accurate assessment. Kaylee knew beautiful—colorful cloths and scarves in her cabin, like Inara uses in her shuttle; strings of pearly lights slung from the ceiling; a quiet moment in her hammock in Serenity’s engine room, swinging gently to the movement of the ship. That was beautiful.
This song was haunting.
Jayne was grasping a wound on his left arm and he wouldn’t let her look at it. She smelled burnt clothing and singed hair, but he was still upright and functioning, so she thought it was pride more than anything that prevented him revealing his wound. He’d taken out the second drone, but the third evaded his first couple of shots, unleashing a hail of laser fire that cut across the room they’d entered and brought down a shower of smashed and broken shelving. One errant shot skimmed past Jayne when he’d stood and dispatched the drone.
Kaylee thought they’d been lucky. But now time was ticking, because the Alliance was on its way.
“It’ll take them a while to get here,” she said, more to comfort herself than Jayne. “They’ve gotta navigate through the planet’s rings and approach the Sun Tzu carefully, like we did. And destroyers are much bigger than Serenity, more likely to get hit by a rock or chunk of ice. Yeah, plenty of time.”
“Good,” Jayne said. “Let’s hustle.”
“That needs cleaning and fixing.”
“It’ll give the Doc something to do when we’re back on Serenity.”
She was about to berate Jayne when Wash’s voice came over the comm.
“Captain, and the rest of you. Change of plan. River’s taken control of the ship, and she’s docked it somewhere on the Sun Tzu.”
“Somewhere, where?” Mal asked.
“If I knew that I’d tell you. She won’t let me close to the controls.”
“She’s taken my boat?” he asked.
“Well, stop jerking about and take it back,” Jayne said.
“I can’t. She took my sidearm, and… well, you know.”
&nb
sp; Kaylee knew well enough. She’d seen River using a gun. She’d seen River fighting, flowing like sunlight. If Wash went up against her she could break his neck and gut him before he even saw her moving.
“This just gets better and better,” Mal said. “Where are you now?”
“In your cabin, using your comm link.”
“So is there any good news?”
“She’s stopped singing,” Wash said.
The silence was loaded. The Sun Tzu was holding its breath for whatever came next.
* * *
Wash climbed the ladder from Mal’s cabin and paused with his head and shoulders at corridor floor level. Held his breath. Listened. He didn’t like being away from the bridge. Apart from in his cabin with Zoë, the two of them nestled naked in each other’s arms, that was the place he felt most at home. During jobs where they landed somewhere, ready to steal or haul or maybe track someone down, if the captain said, Wash, you stay with Serenity, that was when he was happiest.
He’d had a moment of happiness earlier, when the four of them left the ship for the Sun Tzu. Sure, he felt a frisson of interest in the old ship, but nothing like Kaylee or Jayne. Stay with the ship, Wash. That had been good enough for him. He was a flyer, not an explorer, and certainly not a fighter. For him the best view of anything, even amazing things like the Sun Tzu, was from the windows of Serenity’s flight deck.
River’s strange song had ended. The ship hung in silence, apart from hums and grumbles that were so familiar that he barely heard them at all. The loudest silence he had ever heard was when the ship was landed and powered down, all systems offline. Hearing the ebb and flow of its engines, its heart, always gave him comfort.
He climbed from the cabin and headed up toward the bridge. As he approached he saw Simon at the top of the steps, sprawled on his back and with one hand overhanging the metal staircase.
“Simon!” He climbed quickly, then stepped over the motionless man and onto the bridge. It was deserted, and his empty flight seat beckoned. He checked Simon, found a pulse and gentle breathing and a bump behind his right ear, and crossed to the seat and sat down. He sighed. Then he scanned the controls, looking for any that River might have touched and left out of place.